Lessons from the Past to Guide the Church into the Future
Introduction
The kingdom of God continues to expand. What is amazing about the history of the kingdom of God is the manner by which God has chosen to expand it on earth. God the King chose to incorporate the people of God into the growth of the kingdom of God. The people of God remain on earth to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom of God (Ladd 2009, 92). Luke wrote the book of Acts about the beginning of the dissemination of the gospel. The book of Acts ended with Paul in Rome “proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 28:31 ESV). The people of God still have the same job—to proclaim the kingdom of God and teach about the Lord Jesus Christ. That same Jesus Christ promised, “This gospel will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matt. 24:14). In other words, until the end of the earth, the church has the same job, the proclamation of the gospel.
The student of history can look back at the history of the expansion of Christianity and learn about how the church has succeeded and stumbled in her pursuit of Jesus’ task. Then, that student can take those lessons and apply them to the present to make the church more effective at her job. This work will begin with an analysis of three important forces that affected the expansion of Christianity. It will then examine three episodes from history where the church became more effective at evangelism by learning from its past. The work will conclude with an application of historical considerations to some forces at work which conspire to slow the expansion of Christianity in the future.
Factors Associated with the Historical Expansion of Christianity
Multiple factors contributed to the expansion of Christianity over the last two thousand years. Ten of the most important factors were (1) Jesus’ resurrection , (2) Pentecost, (3) the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, (4) monasticism, (5) nationalism, (6) Scholasticism, (7) the Reformation, (8) the age of exploration, (9) the Evangelical awakenings, and (10) disestablishment. Although each of these factors influenced the expansion of Christianity, this section will analyze Pentecost, the Roman Empire, and the Reformation to demonstrate their importance for the expansion of Christianity.
Pentecost
At the time of Jesus’ Ascension, His disciples only numbered 120 (Acts 1:15). By AD 500, the majority of the citizens of the Roman Empire professed faith in Christ (Latourette 1975, 236). By 2014, Christians numbered about 2.5 billion (Chai 2018, 118). How did Christianity grow so quickly?
Christianity began to experience exponential growth after Pentecost. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, Peter preached his first sermon in Jerusalem about the events of Pentecost, “and there were added that day about three thousand souls” (Acts 2:14, 41). After Peter’s Pentecost sermon, Christianity grew from 120 to 3,000 believers. The new believers continued to tell people about Jesus, and according to Luke, “The Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47).
To understand how Pentecost contributed to the expansion of Christianity, the student of history must begin with the words of Jesus. Prior to His Ascension, Jesus gave the disciples instructions for the future. Jesus instructed, “Repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:47–49). The historian should note two things from this passage: Jesus’ instructions included the dissemination of the gospel to all nations, and Jesus promised to empower His followers to complete that task.
The empowerment began at Pentecost; however, by the end of the book of Acts, the gospel message still had not reached “all nations.” In fact, although Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire by AD 500, the message still had not reached all the nations of the world. Kenneth Latourette noted, “Most of the Persians and the Indians and all the Chinese were as yet ignorant of it” (1975, 236). The task remained to be completed. Would the power of Pentecost continue to foster the completion of the task? Peter, “filled with the Holy Spirit,” informed the gathered masses that “the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself” (Acts 2:4, 39). Hence, Roger Stronstad correctly surmised that the “baptizing of the Spirit is potentially universal” (2010, 58). The Holy Spirit would continue to empower Jesus’ followers to fulfill the Father’s plan for the world.
The historical record demonstrates that the Holy Spirit has kept the promise He made through Peter. In the latter half of the second century, Montanus and his followers in Phrygia experienced the gifts of the Holy Spirit, including prophecy and glossolalia (Stotts 1973, 232). The Montanists promulgated their experience across the Empire, and many men and women, including the famous apologist Tertullian, became a part of the so-called New Prophecy (Stotts 1973, 224). In the latter part of the seventeenth century, the Protestant Huguenots in France experienced a renewal of spiritual gifts. The Huguenots spread their experience all over France then fled to England and other parts of the world as a result of persecution (Stotts 1973, 242).
The Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles marked the inception of the most recent Pentecostal movement (Stotts 1973, 258). The Christians who experienced the baptism with the Holy Spirit in Los Angeles spread the movement throughout the world, such that their movement numbered 631 million worldwide by 2014 (Chai 2018, 118). Thus, throughout history, the Holy Spirit has continued to inspire Pentecostal movements, which have invariably resulted in the increased spread of the gospel message.
The Roman Empire
The Roman Empire played a complicated but important role in the expansion of Christianity. The Roman Empire affected the spread of the gospel first in its persecution of Christianity, then in its acceptance of Christianity, and finally in its own collapse.
The leaders of the Roman Empire initially opposed Christianity. Their opposition continued until AD 313 (Latourette 1975, 90). The gospel spread despite Roman persecution. Latourette hypothesized that Christianity spread despite persecution because of “the constancy of the martyrs under torture” (Latourette 1975, 106). When the Christians refused to recant under pain of death, they demonstrated the power of the gospel, and the Holy Spirit effected the salvation of the witnesses. Persecution of Christians became a twisted version of free publicity for the gospel message.
The year 313 marked the end of organized persecution of Christians within the Roman Empire. That year, co-Emperors Constantine and Licinius met at Milan and officially agreed to tolerate Christianity (Latourette 1975, 92). After Constantine, every emperor except Julian the Apostate professed faith in Christ (Latourette 1975, 95).
After the edict of toleration, the church entered into a complicated relationship with the Roman state. When the Roman Empire flourished, its leaders tended to dominate the church. For instance, it was Emperor Constantine, not the pope or the bishops, who called the Nicene Council in 325 to iron out the church’s position regarding the Trinity (Latourette 1975, 153). Constantine’s successor Constantius disagreed with the ruling at Nicaea and actually excommunicated bishops such as Athanasius from the church over the issue (Latourette 1975, 160). In 380, Emperor Theodosius moved the church back into alignment with the Nicene Council (Latourette 1975, 163). That the emperors had the clout to call councils, decree doctrine, and depose bishops shows the degree to which they dominated the church during this period. Did the church expand because of their domination or in spite of their domination? What would happen if the Roman Empire ceased to exist?
In 410, the Goths sacked Rome, which marked the beginning of the end of the western part of the Roman Empire. Although the church experienced a period of decline in influence on the world scene from around 500 to 1000, in the West, Christianity continued to spread (Latourette 1975, 270). The pagan barbarians who overran the Roman Empire embraced the faith of the people they had conquered. By 1000, the majority of the Germanic and Scandinavian peoples had become Christians (Latourette 1975, 270). Christianity became so ingrained into Western culture that the West became synonymous with Christianity (Latourette 1975, 624). In the next millennium, when the West expanded, Christianity expanded with it, such that by the end of the twentieth century, Christianity counted converts among every nation on earth (Latourette 1975, 560).
The collapse of the Roman Empire created chaos in the West. The people increasingly looked to the pope to provide leadership (Latourette 1975, 370). Latourette observed that by the year 1000, “with its parishes and their priests, its dioceses and bishops, all heading up in the Roman Pontiff, the Catholic Church could touch all those in Western Europe who called themselves Christians” (1975, 459). Hence, the collapse of the Roman Empire also created a question that would resonate through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. To what degree should the church of Jesus Christ have centralized human leadership?
The Reformation
As it turned out, humans have difficulty remaining pure when given excessive power. By 1500, the Roman Catholic bureaucracy had become a bastion of corruption. To gain office, bishops would engage in simony, the procurement of position through the exchange of material goods. Many of the clergy, including bishops, practiced nicolaitanism, the keeping of concubines (Latourette 1975, 460). The popes were worse. The best of them was “too prone to use the worldly tools in his effort to make actual the City of God” (Latourette 1975, 482). The worst of them lived in luxury gained through taxation of the poor and fathered illegitimate children whom they appointed as bishops (Latourette 1975, 639).
The church did not spiral down into depravity without opposition. Early reform movements emerged through what some scholars have labelled the proto-Protestants (communication with Bruce Epps, November 23, 2021). The Waldensees, the Lollards, and the Hussites each advocated concepts that would become important in the Reformation, including the fallibility of all humans, the sovereignty of God over salvation, the need for the laity to read the Bible in their vernacular, and the corruption of the papacy (Latourette 1975, 451–453, 666).
Martin Luther joined the opposition in the early part of the sixteenth century. The year 1517 marked the beginning of an epoch shift in the history of Christianity. When Luther disseminated his theses “On the Power of Indulgences,” he initiated a series of events that would alter Christianity and the world forever (Beutel 2003, 7). Luther would come to embrace all of the convictions that distinguish Protestantism including justification by faith alone, the removal of the barrier between clergy and laity, the inerrancy and authority of the Bible, and the right/duty of all Christians to read the Bible (Latourette 1975, 715).
The Roman Catholics made war against the Protestants from 1541 to 1648, which precluded organized foreign missions from Protestants (Neill 1986, 187). However, the Protestants consolidated forces on the European Continent and in England during this period. The Protestants incorporated the remnants of the Waldensees, Lollards, and Hussites into the movement, as well as many Roman Catholics who abhorred the corruption in that Church. Protestants quickly gained the majority in Germany, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Scotland, England, and Switzerland (Latourette 1975, 699).
After the cessation of hostilities with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the Protestants began to inaugurate foreign missions. From the eighteenth century to the present, the majority of the worldwide expansion of Christianity has occurred through Protestantism (Latourette 1975, 997). Protestants added some important and effective new tactics to Christian missions. As Stephen Neill noted, “The first principle of Protestant missions has been that Christians should have the Bible in their hands in their own language at the earliest possible date” (1986, 177). The Roman Catholics never emphasized Bible translation. In fact, the popes often discouraged translation of the Bible (Neill 1986, 177). Furthermore, the Evangelical Awakenings, which began in the eighteenth century, emphasized personal conversion and evangelism, as opposed to the mass conversion strategies of earlier Christian missions (Latourette 1975, 1019).
The Protestant missionaries also pioneered indigenous church principles. In 1854, Henry Venn, secretary of the Church Missionary Society in London, became the first missiologist to advocate the creation of “self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating Churches” (Neill 1986, 221). Once the church in a region attained those three benchmarks, missionaries should move to another area. The integration of those three missiological principles has led to Protestantism finding expression on every continent and almost every nation in the world. Of the unprecedented growth of Protestantism, Latourette observed, “At the outset of the nineteenth century confined almost entirely to North-western Europe and the Atlantic seaboard of North America, by the dawn of the twentieth century it had spanned North America, was making a rapid growth in Latin America, was the dominant religion in Australasia, and had been planted in most of the countries of Africa and Asia” (Latourette 1975, 1467).
How the Church Has Learned from History in the Past
Pentecost, the Roman Empire, and the Reformation represented three important events in the history of the expansion of Christianity. George Stotts advised, “History is didactic, or should be” (2015, 44). Christians can and should mine the historical data to become more efficient at evangelism. In fact, Christians have a history of learning from the past.
Technology
The earliest Christians made use of technological advancements in their advance of Christianity, and their spiritual descendants have followed suit. Christians made use of the Roman roads. The Romans built roads that “made possible more extensive travel and trade than the region had ever known” (Latourette 1975, 21). The Romans violently protected the peace on their roadways. Travel was safer and easier in the first three centuries of the Roman Empire than at any time in that region prior to the nineteenth century (Neill 1986, 24). Early Christians also made use of the written word. By the first century, the Roman Empire had established a process for transmission of letters throughout the Empire (White 2016, 131). Christians used this postal system to convey the gospel across the empire. At a time when the Romans opposed the spread of Christianity, the Christians could have declined to make use of Roman technology out of fear or pride. Instead, the early Christians hijacked the technology of their oppressors to continue the proclamation of the gospel.
Starting in the sixteenth century, sea lanes became the new Roman roads. Wherever the sea powers sent explorers, Christian missionaries went with them (Neill 1986, 118). Much of this exploration led to negative events such as the slave trade and the subjugation of other races through colonization. Pious Christians might have refused to become involved in such a dirty affair. Instead, missionaries made use of the advances in sea travel to spread the gospel. Along the way, Christian influence mitigated the evils of colonization (Neill 1986, 212). The printing press, invented in the mid-fourteenth century, was quickly pressed into service to the kingdom of God. Bible translators, especially, made use of the printing press (Latourette 1975, 715).
Christian missionaries made use of the explosive technological growth of the twentieth century as well. As the Internet has increased the ability to communicate over long distances, Christians have employed it in their efforts. With the advent of COVID-19 in 2019, the Internet took on higher importance in Christian worship. When the United States government prohibited private gatherings, Christians worshiped together over the Internet. Christians now use social media to disseminate the gospel message. They also use long-distance communication to strategize with foreign missionaries in real-time. Christians learned from the past how to use technology for service in the kingdom.
Bible Translation
Protestants learned about the necessity of Bible translation from the Catholics’ tumultuous relationship with Bible translation. During the first 500 years of Christianity, the Catholics generally supported Bible translation projects. Ulfilas, a Gothic convert and missionary to the Goths, translated the Bible into Gothic in the fourth century (Latourette 1975, 100). By the end of the sixth century, almost all of the Gothic people had embraced Christianity (Latourette 1975, 101). One of the first Christian monks, Jerome, translated the Scriptures into Latin during the fourth century (Latourette 1975, 232). The Latin Vulgate remained the standard Catholic Bible for a thousand years (Latourette 1975, 232).
The Catholic stance toward Bible translation began to change as the pope became more powerful. Constantine, the first missionary to the Slavs, translated the Gospels into Slavic (Latourette 1975, 307). After Constantine’s death, his brother Methodius continued his work. The pope condemned Methodius’ use of the Slavonic language, instructing that both the Bible and the liturgy should persist in Latin (Latourette 1975, 308). In 1229, the Council of Toulouse officially proscribed vernacular translations of the Bible. The Council justified their decision as a method of preventing the rise of heresies (Latourette 1975, 456). In actuality, their proscription of Bible translation served to preserve the church’s authority. If only the Roman Catholic Church could understand the Bible, then they could hold onto power.
Protestantism and Bible translation went together. The proto-Protestant John Wyclif received post-humous excommunication for his English translations of the Bible (Latourette 1975, 666). William Tyndale (1494–1536) translated the Bible into English and died a martyr’s death in Latin Europe (Latourette 1975, 799). Martin Luther translated the Bible into German (Beutel 2003, 11). The desire to translate the Bible ensued from the Protestant belief in the priesthood of all believers, which they understood from 1 Peter 2:9. Bible translation represented the empowerment of the common man against the oppressive Roman Catholic hierarchy. The common man needed to know the Bible if he was to take his rightful place in the royal priesthood. King James of England instructed his scholars to translate the Bible into English. They completed the famous Authorized Version in 1611. Politics, rather than theology, seemed to inspire James’ translation (Latourette 1975, 817). Still, the King James Version represented a repudiation of Roman Catholic control.
When Protestants began to take the gospel to foreign nations, they realized the benefits of translating the Bible into the language of the unreached people groups (Neill 1986, 177). Hence, every Protestant mission included Bible translation, which was one of the main reasons why Protestants missions became so much more successful than Roman Catholic missions during the nineteenth century. By 1900, the Protestants had translated the complete Bible into over 100 languages (Neill 1986, 216). By 2014, the Bible (or at least part of it) had been translated into 2,883 different languages (McDowell and McDowell 2017, 13).
Disestablishment
The separation of the church from the state, or disestablishment, has had an interesting effect on the expansion of Christianity. Disestablishment has mostly been a Protestant phenomenon that ensued from an interaction between theology and the study of history. The Roman Catholic Church has never sought disestablishment; it has always sought control of the state. The pope exerted a large measure of control over Western politics during the Middle Ages (Latourette 1975, 482). On the other hand, the state has historically dominated the Orthodox Churches (Latourette 1975, 283). During the Byzantine continuation of the Roman Empire, nominally Christian emperors controlled the church. When the Ottoman Turks overran Constantinople, Muslims assumed control over the Orthodox Church (Latourette 1975, 900). When the center of the Orthodox Church shifted to Moscow, the Russian tsars became the functional rulers of the Orthodox Churches (Neill 1986, 181).
Most of the early Protestant Churches also entered into a relationship with the state. Germany had the Landeskirchen, in which the ruler of the region decided the church for his subjects. Luther supported the Landeskirchen structure (Latourette 1975, 723). The Reformed Church became the established state church in the German-speaking regions of Switzerland as well as in the new nation, the United Netherlands, which became independent in 1609 (Latourette 1975, 761, 764). The Protestant Church of England became the state church of England after Henry VIII severed ties with Rome (Latourette 1975, 804).
Initially, only the radical Protestants sought separation from the state. The Anabaptists were the first prominent Christian movement to advocate religious liberty. When they became unable to convince the governments to grant religious liberty, the Anabaptists withdrew from society (Latourette 1975, 778). Anabaptists formed into autonomous, freely gathered churches that elected their own leaders democratically (Latourette 1975, 782). Despite withdrawing from society, the Anabaptists remained “ardently missionary” (Latourette 1975, 779). Anabaptists withstood harsh persecution from other Protestants as well as from Roman Catholics for their advocacy of the separation of church and state (Latourette 1975, 779). The Anabaptists refused to renounce their position because they believed that the establishment of national churches caused the church (1) to become worldly and (2) to become full of nominal, false converts (Latourette 1975, 780).
The United States became the first Western country to follow the lead of the Anabaptists and legislate separation of church and state (Latourette 1975, 1483). The growth of the Thirteen Colonies serves as a case study for established churches versus religious liberty. Although not all of the original colonies “were founded for explicitly religious reasons…religious assumptions heavily influenced all the English colonies” (Kidd 2019, 21). The Puritans founded Massachusetts and Connecticut to create the perfect ideal of the Christian state (Kidd 2019, 24). The Puritans expelled all dissenters. One of the expelled dissenters, Roger Williams, founded Rhode Island based upon the idea of “full religious liberty” (Kidd 2019, 25). Rhode Island quickly became “a destination for other Christian sects” and grew (Kidd 2019, 25). Conversely, fewer and fewer people joined the Puritan Church in Massachusetts. The Puritan experiment came to an end in 1692 when William and Mary required the Puritans to tolerate other Protestants in Massachusetts (Kidd 2019, 27). The other colonies tolerated all forms of Christianity if not non-Christian religions (Kidd 2019, 28).
The Great Awakening began in the “gathered churches” in New England (Latourette 1975, 957). Historians traced the inception of the Great Awakening to the preaching of Jonathan Edwards in Massachusetts in 1734–1735 (Latourette 1975, 959). The Congregationalist George Whitefield toured the colonies preaching in 1739–1741 and reinforced the Great Awakening (Latourette 1975, 959). These new Evangelical preachers emphasized the importance of individual decisions for Christ plus personal evangelism (Latourette 1975, 960). They did not desire to create a national church because they believed such a venture would staunch their movement.
When time came to form the government of the United States of America, “no one church was given a favoured position” (Latourette 1975, 1045). The Christians who contributed to the foundation of the United States believed that Christianity would flourish if the church and state remained separate (Latourette 1975, 1045). History proved them true. After the dust settled with the American Revolution, the Great Awakening began again (Latourette 1975, 1035). Christianity spread quickly in the new United States. In 1783, 6% of Americans held church membership. By 1975, that percentage had grown to sixty (Latourette 1975, 1483). Latourette further noted, “By 1914 more missionaries served from the United States in the overseas extension of Protestant Christianity and more money was given than from any other country” (Latourette 1975, 1272). The separation from the state freed the churches to act upon biblical principles and follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit rather than a politician.
How the Church Can Learn from History for the Present
Regarding the continued expansion of Christianity in and from America, three important trends need to be addressed—Christian nationalism, postmodernism, and the secularization of the American universities. To the extent that the church applies the lessons of history, it will adequately address these trends.
Christian Nationalism
Although America was founded on principles of religious liberty, Christian nationalists would have America become a Christian state. By Paul Miller’s definition, “Christian nationalism is the belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way” (2021, italics added). Essentially, Christian nationalists want the American government to legislate Christianity. Jesus instructed His followers to “make disciples of all the nations” (Matt. 28:19). Every Christian should desire for all people to become Christians. That desire coheres with biblical principles. Thus, on the surface, Christian nationalism, as defined by Miller, probably sounds like a good idea to many Christians. Christians should desire for America to become (or remain) a Christian nation; however, issues arise when they look to the government for satisfaction of that desire.
In the past, nations and regions have attempted to legislate Christianity. As mentioned above, many European nations required their citizens to embrace Christianity in one form or another. However, Latourette contended that over the past two hundred years, Europe has undergone a period of “de-Christianization” (1975, 1355). What part has Christian nationalism played in this continental apostasy?
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, France became the most powerful nation in Europe (Latourette 1975, 1008). The French monarchs had always defended Roman Catholicism. To be French meant to be Roman Catholic. When the Huguenots embraced the principles of the Reformation, they were forced to flee France. The Christian nationalists who governed France viewed Protestantism as anti-Christian and anti-French. Thus, Christian nationalism prohibits reform movements. In Christian nationalism, reform is treason.
The French Revolution, which began in 1789, was the worst event regarding the expansion of Christianity that occurred in the eighteenth century (Latourette 1975, 1009). The formerly Roman Catholic nation became a Deist nation after the National Convention won (Latourette 1975, 1010). The Deists merely followed the pattern of the Christian nationalists before them. Instead of requiring the people to be Christians, they required the people to be Deists. Hence, with Christian nationalism, the religion the adherents of which possess the most physical power get to decide what religion everyone else holds.
When the French people rebelled against the National Convention, the Directory came into power. The Directory elected Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799, who became a dictator and terrorized Europe for a generation (Latourette 1975, 1011). Over the next century, France oscillated back and forth from monarchy to republic until the republican form of government took hold for good in 1870 (Latourette 1975, 1105). The French republic allowed religious liberty, which revealed the true state of French Christianity. As it turned out, France, the former defender of Roman Catholicism, contained a higher proportion of atheists than any other nation in Western Europe (Latourette 1975, 1107). Latourette termed this phenomenon “de-Christianization,” but that was not what happened (Latourette 1975, 1107). The removal of Christian nationalism in France revealed the true state of French Christianity. Christian nationalism masks the true spiritual state of the citizens of that nation. In a nation dominated by Christian nationalism, people claim the label Christian for political expediency, but they do not actually embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ. Christian nationalism actually prevents evangelism because true Christians do not know who they need to evangelize. Nominally, everyone is a Christian.
For Christianity to continue to grow in America, American Christians need to eschew Christian nationalism. The founders of the United States of America understood the dangers of Christian nationalism and wisely legislated religious liberty (Latourette 1975, 1045). Modern American Christians should not become so short-sighted as to unmake what the founders created. The American government has no business legislating religion. American Christians should not attempt to use the government to enforce Christianity. Christians should engage the culture through the marketplace of ideas.
Postmodernism
Postmodernism denotes a set of the ideas in the marketplace with which Christian thinkers must engage. Postmodernism entered the marketplace through the writings of atheistic philosophers in mid-twentieth-century France (Smith 2006, 23). Many in academia and the popular culture have championed postmodernism as the new worldview for American society (Smith 2006, 9). Critical theory represents a subset of postmodernism, which categorizes humans based on their level of social power. Critical theory has become influential in the culture (Strachan 2021, 21).
What is postmodernism? Postmodernism constitutes a denial of the objective nature of reality. Postmodernists deny such concepts as the correspondence theory of truth (truth is that which corresponds to its reality), the objectivity of moral values, and an overarching purpose for life (Moreland 2007, 23). The Emerging Church plus a congeries of Christian scholars including James K. A. Smith have embraced postmodernism (Smith 2006, 24; see e.g., Cargal 1993, 165; Poloma 2010, 174).
Smith suggested that the church should accept the tenets of postmodernism in order to reach the postmodern, post-Christian culture (Smith 2006, 23). For example, Smith advised that Christians should follow the postmodernists by integrating into their epistemology (= theory of what constitutes knowledge) the “Nietzschean claim that ‘power is knowledge’” (2006, 23). On this epistemology, people accept an idea as knowledge because the most powerful group tells them that idea is true, not because of the inherent worth of the idea (Smith 2006, 86). Thus, according to Smith’s rationale, Christians who embrace this pillar of postmodernism will demonstrate the power of Christianity through increased gospel dissemination. (2006, 23). The Christians will attempt to saturate the media with the gospel message, so the gospel message will appear most powerful. Then, the culture will accept Christianity as true.
Smith made a decent point. Christians should work harder to disseminate the gospel. However, they should do so not in some sort of attempt to out-propagandize the competition. People should believe the gospel message because (1) the gospel message corresponds with reality and (2) the gospel represents the only path to salvation. Contra postmodernism, the gospel message does not become true merely because it occupies more billboards than competing narratives. On postmodernism, the biblical message becomes one narrative among many, instead of the objectively true revelation of God that it purports to be. Hence, J. P. Moreland correctly concluded, “The postmodern option is a concession to our culture that goes too far, however well-intentioned it is” (2007, 88).
How should American Christians respond to the proliferation of postmodernism? Timothy Cargal recommended that the church should jump on the “postmodern bandwagon” in order to remain relevant in this postmodern culture (1993, 163). The thinking would be that since the majority of the culture has embraced postmodernism, the church should embrace that worldview as well. However, history shows that the church does not need to embrace postmodernism to remain relevant. As Moreland noted, “Even though the early Church was a minority movement that faced intellectual and cultural ridicule and marginalization it maintained internal cohesion and a courageous witness, thanks in no small measure to the powerful role in the broader Christian community of the philosophically trained apologists in the first centuries of the Christian faith” (1996, 124).
One of those “philosophically trained apologists” was the Christian lawyer (hi, Dad) Tertullian. The philosophy of Gnosticism became popular in the Roman Empire during Tertullian’s lifetime (Latourette 1975, 83). When a bishop’s son named Marcion applied Gnostic reasoning to the Scriptures, he invented the heresy known today as Marcionism (Latourette 1975, 84). Tertullian led the church’s response to Marcionism. Tertullian did not employ a Gnostic paradigm in his response. Rather, Tertullian used commonsense reasoning to demonstrate where Marcion erred (Latourette 1975, 84). The lawyer Tertullian demonstrated how Marcion read his own meaning into the Scriptures, rather than uncovering the authors’ intended meanings (Tertullianus 1872b, 3). Tertullian would not have had the epistemological grounds to condemn Marcionism on either the Gnostic or the postmodern paradigm.
Christians should stand up against postmodernism in the same way that Christian thinkers of the past, such as Tertullian, responded to the unbiblical worldviews of their age. In this manner, Christian thinkers will continue to foment a cultural environment conducive to the acceptance of the gospel (Craig 2008, 16).
Secularization of the American Universities
Postmodernism represents just one of the many anti-Christian philosophies that permeate the American liberal arts universities of the twenty-first century. The historical record betrays a pattern in how Christians have interacted with universities. Christians build the universities then abandon them once the universities become secularized. The Roman Catholics built the first universities of Europe then gave them up when they became worldly. Instead of attempting to reform the secularized universities, the Roman Catholics built new universities (Latourette 1975, 1088). Now, formerly great bastions of Christian scholarship such as the University of Paris lead in the dissemination of atheistic philosophies such as postmodernism (Smith 2006, 23).
The Protestants in Europe fared no better. Protestants allowed the great German universities to become infected with liberalism, which staunched the spread of the gospel. For example, Elector Frederick III founded the Wittenberg University in 1502 (Junghans 2003, 80). Wittenberg became the center of the Reformation, from which Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon spread ideas such as the inerrancy of the Bible, the priesthood of all believers, and justification by faith (Junghans 2003, 88). In the nineteenth century, the University of Halle, which had absorbed the University of Wittenberg, became one of the first German universities to espouse theological liberalism (Latourette 1975, 1121). As liberals, the Halle professors applied rationalism to biblical studies. The university where the Reformation started gave way to a liberal denial of such important Protestant principles as the inerrancy of the Bible, the literal resurrection of Jesus, and the exclusivity of Christian truth. The other German universities followed suit, which conspired to halt the spread of Christianity on the Continent. Latourette observed, “Those Protestants who were most active in propagating the faith were the least reconciled to the interpretations given by the German theologians and Biblical scholars of the ‘modern’ schools” (1975, 1120).
The American universities are following the same pattern. Christians started the majority of the colleges and universities in the United States for Christian education (Latourette 1975, 1271). At their inception, American universities aided the spread of the gospel with the development of future Christian leaders (Moreland 2007, 69). However, around the beginning of the twentieth century, a shift occurred. Following Charles Darwin’s lead, university leaders posited an inherent conflict between science and religion. The university leaders exaggerated the conflict in order to gain control of the universities (Keller 2018, 92). According to Moreland, “The universities are now the powerbase for the secular left, and the American university has become an indoctrination center for political correctness and its loathing for traditional values, the Judeo-Christian religion, and conservative ethical, religious, and political thought” (2007, 73). The church must reestablish its presence at the secular universities, which they can do by treating them as a mission field where they target both students and professors. Perhaps, missionaries could establish outreach centers at the universities that include gatherings for services, evangelism at the university, and creation of self-perpetuating Bible study groups within existing campus interest groups (more on this in my next article).
Conclusion
George Stotts correctly stated, “History is didactic, or should be” (2015, 44). Jesus gave the church an important mission to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19). The church that respects the didactic nature of history will have a greater rate of success in that venture than the church which does not.
From the history of Pentecost, the church should learn to look for the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. From the history of the church’s relationship with the Roman Empire, the church should learn how to check the power of individuals marred by sin. From the Reformation, the church should remember to allow biblical truth to guide her. Christians should continue to innovate regarding the use of technology in gospel proclamation. The church’s history with Bible translation should help the church to remember to prioritize Bible reading. The successful history of disestablishment should inform the church’s response to Christian nationalism. The responses of the church fathers to extrabiblical philosophies should aid the church in responding to modern ideas such as postmodernism. Finally, the church must not neglect the secularized American universities, which form the values of the future leaders of the world. Let these lessons from history shape the church’s response to the present until the future when we are “caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (2 Thess. 4:17).
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