Cultural Relativism and Scripture
Feb 12th, 2008 by Nathan White
This semester, I am taking an anthropology class at Kennesaw State University. This particular class is an online class (my first experience of such), and there is a good bit of discussion that must take place in a ‘classroom’ web forum.
Lots of discussion in a class like this usually means lots of debating. Homosexuality, evolution, enculturation, and of course, religion (particularly Christianity) have been a few of the hot debate topics. I have enjoyed these discussion thus far, as you could probably imagine.
Nevertheless, if it wasn’t apparent to me already, I have been somewhat surprised at how epistemically weak so many people are when it comes to debating these issues. That is, almost everyone is content with arguing for a particular position without any foundation of knowledge whatsoever. Or, if there is an ultimate epistemology (foundation/source of knowledge), it is to be found in statistics, the scientific community, recent research, etc. There is of course NO source of absolute truth, and it is painfully obvious that all opinions are relative and open to critique/further enlightenment.
As I experience this type of relativism in the world, I cannot help but lamenting how prevalent this same type relativism is in the church today. What does the Bible mean? Does it teach this or that? Does it condemn this or this? Is it referring to that as a sin or not? Is it silent here or not? Does scripture speak directly to this issue or leave it to conscience? And the questions go on.
For one thing, we have *so many* ‘Christian’ opinions out there, that people now think that they have the freedom to choose whatever side they deem the best, regardless of the ultimate truth in that particular area. Because Mr. so and so holds to this particular position, who is a reputable and good Christian teacher, it must not be that bad, so I am free to choose whatever I like. So the logic goes.
Overall, however, the root in the Christian community seems to be the casual attitude regarding the authority and sincerity of scripture. As I read in Piper’s ‘Supremacy of God in Preaching’ this week, this relativism “enables people to dispense flippantly with uncomfortable and biblical teaching.”
A few years ago, when I was largely unfamiliar with the Christian community and popular teachers/ministries of this day, I would gauge every teaching I came across on two basic criteria: Were they Calvinists (I still do this today, somewhat, just with more grace), and did they have a history of preaching through tough books of the bible. I cannot tell you how many times I would pull up a sermon series, sometimes of life-long ministers, only to find Romans 9, or even the entire book of Romans, absent from their history. That was severely dissappointing, for I wanted someone with clear views/teaching on what I saw as very important matters of the faith.
Thus I learned early and often that those who approach the scriptures flippantly –and whose shallow teaching testified of such, they simply refused to preach through the tough books of the Bible like Romans 9. They’d rather avoid it altogether, instead passing it off with a flippant, brief explanation, not considering for a moment that their dismissal of the text reveals their own epistemology: themselves and the belief that they were free to believe what they wanted, no matter what scripture says.
Relativism allows a pick and choose type of ministry. Relativism allows for glaring and unbiblical inconsistencies in doctrine. Relativism allows for a ‘love’ that leaves men in their sins, deceives them with emotional manipulation, and promotes false-assurance through a post-modern foundation for truth. Relativism is scary, it is everywhere, and I’ve seen it first hand.
“…the times require at our hands distinct and decided views of Christian doctrine. I cannot withhold my conviction that the professing church of the nineteenth century is as much damaged by laxity and indistinctiveness about matters of doctrine within, as it is by sceptics and unbelievers without. Myriads of professing Christians nowadays seem utterly unable to distinguish things that differ. Like people afflicted with colour-blindness, they are incapable of discerning what is true and what is false, what is sound and what is unsound. If a preacher of religion is only clever and eloquent and earnest, they appear to think he is all right, however strange and heterogenous his sermons may be. They are destitute of spiritual sense, apparently, and cannot detect error…carried away by a fancied liberality and charity, they seem to think everybody is right and nobody is wrong, every clergyman is sound and none are unsound, everybody is going to be saved and nobody is going to be lost. Their religions is made up of negatives; and the only positive thing about them is, that they dislike distinctness, and think all extreme and decided and positive views are very naughty and very wrong!” - JC Ryle
Thank you for the insights. Hope you don’t mind me quoting you extensively.
Blessings, brother.
Scott
It’s amazing Ryle wrote these words in the 19th century. I’m reading through Pink’s “Sovereignty of God” right now (amazing), and find myself occasionally surprised by how he laments the deplorable condition of the church in his day (early twentieth century) … what would these guys think about today?
Ben
Ben,
That is a very good question. I have often read in amazement as Ryle, Spurgeon, and even many of the Puritan divines speak of their own generation in this manner.
As I think about it more, I’ve come to believe that everyone thinks their generation is much more wicked than the previously. Nobody that I have read of spoke of their own generation very well; the best would be to refer to their own generation as recovering and repenting, and returning to old paths.
One reason for this is because we are not present in past generations, so we only know what we read. We/they don’t experience it first hand.
Another reason, I think, is that although sin remains the same, the expression of sin changes over time. Man is wicked, and that hasn’t changed, but it is being expressed in new and more ‘in your face’ ways as the years go on.
Just some thoughts. I do, however, look at Ryle’s generation and wonder how he said some of the things he did…
I guess you had to be there.
Nathan,
I hadn’t thought about it like that, but certainly true; no one can truly know what a previous (or obviously, a future) generation was like. You just can’t help but wonder, though, as you look at the corruption all around you, if we’re not sliding into the blackest of the black abyss of sin. I think of Romans one, where there seems to be a downward spiral to sin (but hey, am I contradicting myself here? that was written two-thousand years ago, about a previous generation!), and Ephesians 4, where Paul talks about the old self being “corrupted in accordance to the lusts of deceit” - almost seems to indicate an ongoing, worsening corruption and defilement.
God opened up my life about five years ago to Puritan/Reformed writers like Edwards, Lloyd-Jones, Spurgeon, Pink, etc. - I was just blown away when I first read “Religious Affections” - it was like reading someone from another planet. Just makes you wonder what that “planet” was like, and what they would think of “this one”.
Ben
Nate, this topic actually dovetails from the last discussion I had with Thomas about what is “good”. Are morality and ethics easily determined through a fixed set of parameters, or do they vacillate?
For example: is murder (however you define it) morally evil when God forbids it but morally “good” when God commands it? If we define murder as the unwarranted taking of human life (i.e., not for self-defense or for retribution for murder), it seems God has, in instances commanded that very thing:
1 Samuel 15:3 ” Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”
Hosea 13:16 “Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.”
In both instances, God commands the taking of infant human lives. It would seem that the prohibition against murder is not an absolute prohibition, but only when God forbids it. If He commands it, then it’s “good”.
Of course, this would seem to make the business of determining what is “ethical” in any situation a rather perilous endeavor.
Am I off here?
This is right. If I was to look only around myself in the seventies, I would say that that period of time is much worse than now. Now that I am older and have broadened my horizons and learned to use binoculars instead of a microscope, I can see that there hasn’t been much change. I would think too, that Edwards or Whitefield working in their particular fields of harvest, or Wesley in his, might come away thinking that the other guys have it better, or worse depending on what letters and circulars were saying. Our centricity tends to blind us to the rest of the world. I think we can survey the epistles and Revelations two and three, see the variegated appearance of the church and be ableby that to observe from above, the chutney consistency of the church throughout the world.
James said:
However? It matters to the infinite degree how we define it.
To communicate, we must have shared definitions, so since it is whatever to you, I will define it, then, let us stay with an agreed upon definition or the result will be that we do not know what is is.
Murder is the taking of innocent life. It is also murder, when one takes non-innocent life without the proper authority to do so.
Innocence is the operative term in the first case. Authority in the second. In the Scriptures that you listed: where is there a taking of innocent life? And, if not that, where is there a taking of non-innocent life without due authority?
My questions for you still stand. But, I have another, James. Who is innocent according to Scripture?
Thomas asks: “In the Scriptures that you listed: where is there a taking of innocent life?”
Are “infants and sucklings” capable of sin? Yes, they are “born in sin” (have a sin nature), but what sort of actual sins can a four-month-old commit that would render them worthy of being hacked to pieces? I’m just wondering. (note: lest I be accused of hypocrisy, I oppose abortion
)
Thomas asks: “Who is innocent according to Scripture?”
Well, I’m not sure how you define “innocent”, but Scripture does label several men as “righteous”:
Job 1:1 “In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.”
Genesis 6:9 “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.”
2 Peter 7:9 “Lot … that righteous man.”
Is the possession of a sin nature an act of sin? Romans 5:12, says that yes, and not only that but that the penalty was death to all men, not because they will commit sins, but that they already have. The sin that a child is guilty of is deicide by fiat of rebellion. You may not like it, but God has so declared that in Adam all have become guilty of murder in that they are born hating God, and Jesus equates hate with murder.
Yes, men are declared righteous, and by the same power that declared them a all under sin. It is not that virtue or intemperance is inherent in them. We are neither mystics, nor gnostics. But, rather that God has by his authority, made his creation to be what he creates it to be. When he declares all men under sin, they are worthy of death.
Our determinations of what constitutes innocence, and righteousness do have differing levels of reckoning, and those are fixed by God. God is inherently good, we by his declaration are what we are. Paul’s retort to “man” is found also in Isaiah, but particularly it is this, “Who are you O man to speak back to the one who has made you.” It is an act of sin to question him and say, “Why have you made me thus.” In another place Paul puts the glory where it belongs, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” The unbeliever confuses this with caprice, accusing him of wrong doing, calling him a harsh taskmaster reaping where he has not sown. But God does not change, his work was completed from the beginning, it is perfect, and is what he has declared it to be. The creature, cannot complain, for in doing so, he shows that he is not innocent, but resposible and held accountable for every word, thought and deed.
Jesus made it clear there is no one that is good, except God. You can look at it this way: value is in the eye of the beholder. The beholder, is God, and what he deems valuable only becomes so because he is of infinite worth, alone worthy of honor and praise.
Again, you desire categories, black and white, humanistic dicotomies by which you may determine good from evil but they do not fit within the realm of the wisdom of God. But, as I said before, that is the sin which condemns all man kind. What God says is sin is sin. It is not for us to choose which is what. God declares Job righteous, but the book of Job declares him a blasphemer and accuser of God for which he is rebuked by the prophet, Elihu, a sort of John the Baptist who preaches of the intercessor right before the appearance of the Lord, where Job is called to account for his sins and repents. For those sins God is fully righteous in sending the Devil to Job in the first place. Because the only thing that was put on display was the true nature of what God had created Job to be. Something of which Job had no idea, that is, the sovereignty of God (see God’s rebuke of Job). Lot, was declared righteous but that was before his drunken incest with his daughters. I suppose you think him innocent? No one who is so drunk that they know not who they are having sex with, can even have sex. He may not have known what time it was, but he knew who it was. In either case, whether you think the man innocent in the act of incest, the man was a drunk like righteous Noah. And even though Lot’s soul was vexed by the actions of the men in Sodom, how did Lot come to live there? What price did he pay? Why would he prostitute his daughters, if he was so righteous? Why would he need to be dragged from Sodom, if it was within him to do so?
Among Calvinists there is a question pertaining to the death of the innocents. Are they afforded salvation? Some say yes, others no, still others will not say. The latter is probably the safest, because Scripture does not directly address it. One thing that no will assume though is that they are innocent of the guilt of Adam for which they are under condemnation. The question on innocence comes into play not even in their actions, but in God’s work of regeneration by which he declares the guilty innocent.
So we have definitions which we must apply. Those definition do not come to us from the world. They come to from the Word. How do we apply ethics? If you are asking that question, it is most likely best that you start with understanding the Ten Commandments as given to us by God, not Moses. But you might also consider what Jesus meant when he said:
Thomas, I appreciate the thoughtfulness and time you’ve put into your replies to the questions of a semi-anonymous blogger, so I hope you don’t take my questions as an assault against you personally.
I have one other question, and it’s a difficult one and I’m not sure it’s a fair one, but it’s an honest question: do you love God because you believe He’s “good”, or do you love Him because you believe He’s chosen you to be saved from a horrible eternity? In other words, were you to find out that your hopes were wrong, that you were not, in fact, a member of the elect, would you still praise Him? I’ve met many people who can live with the idea that God has not chosen their mothers, their fathers, their brothers, sisters or wives or husbands, but I’m not sure I’ve met any who do not believe that God, for whatever reason, has not chosen them.
If you came to the realization that you were not chosen, would you still love Him?
James, I love God because he has shed his love abroad in my heart. Faith is not a mere hope, but Hebrews 11:1 tells us that faith is the substance of things hoped for. In other words, it is not a blind expectation, but true faith is the possession of the thing hoped for, namely Jesus Christ. He put it this way, if you are believing you have passed from death to life. Eternal life is ours now, not just in the future. Jesus also said, “You shall know the Truth and the Truth shall set you free.
I love God, who is good. I love God because he has saved me. I love God, because he is God. All men will praise him, elect and reprobate alike for “Every knee will bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.” In the final assessment, if you do not know him, then you do not know him to have chosen you. Our faith is vital union with the Eternal One, so that there is no finding out differently than what faith delivers to us, surety and certainty.
Hope that answers your questions. And forgive my curtness. Your questions and statements are welcome and caused me to study more deeply. My hope is that you come to understand the faith in truth. Jesus spoke to Nicodemus, a seeker, who wanted to know. Jesus’ answers seem short and cutting. But, he explained that the reality can only be known by those who have already been born again. It was for this purpose that Christ came into the world, that those believing in him would have eternal life. He gives faith, we place it in him, and unless one is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom. So, if today you hear his voice, repent and believe and you will have eternal live now and for evermore.