|
A Call to Sanctified Worldliness
Andrew Lim
A graduation address for The Bible College of New Zealand, Manawatu Branch on November 16 , 1995
My own passion for the subject I am addressing tonight has been strongly shaped by the educational philosophy of the Stony Brook School in New York. For my own thinking in this area, I am gratefully indebted to the writings of men like Frank Gaebelein (The Christian, The Arts, And Truth; The Pattern of God's Truth) and Arthur Holmes (All Truth Is God's Truth; The Idea of a Christian College; Contours of a World View). For my thoughts on this talk, I am particularly indebted to the writings of D. Bruce Lockerbie (The Timeless Moment: Creativity and the Christian Faith; The Cosmic Center; Thinking Like A Christian).
These men have helped me understand a little of how we may integrate our faith to learning and what a seamless philosophy that comprehends the unity of all truth under God may look like.
For our purpose tonight, let me pick up our cue from Justin Martyr, the 2nd century apologist. Justin Martyr was born around AD 100 at a place called Nablus, where Jesus met the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well.
Justin Martyr was born of pagan parents near the town of Shechem, Samaria. Having drunk deep from the wells of the Stoic philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, he spent his early years as an honorable teacher of rhetoric and he wore the celebrated blue robe of a teacher of philosophy.
He tells us that one day, walking near the shore at Ephesus, he met an old man “of meek and venerable countenance” who pointed him to the Scriptures and Jesus Christ. That day God saved Justin Martyr.
Now having believed that Jesus Christ was indeed the Logos, Justin Martyr faced the puzzle: Should he discard his profession, should he take off the blue robe that symbolized his commitment to philosophy and rhetoric?
He decided not to.
He believed that the fullness of life through Christ that he had found, completed rather than negate the best that he had been taught and all that he had seen around him.
And so Justin Martyr wrote these words: "Whatever has been uttered aright by any man in any place, belongs to us Christians."
Now some of us evangelical Christians find this kind of talk somewhat at odds with our faith and we are a little uncomfortable with Justin Martyr. How could we accommodate someone who acknowledges the presence of the logos in the arts and the literature of pagan antiquity; someone who makes room for myth and pagan poets and philosophers; someone who considers Socrates to be a Christian?
And yet 250 years later, at the beginning of the 5th century, another person came along and said virtually the same thing. Augustine of Hippo in his treatise On Christian Doctrine argued against those who would restrict Christians from studying and appreciating the work of non-believers.
And then in a passage of radiant and awe-inspiring insight, Augustine said "Every good and true Christian should understand that wherever he may find truth, it is his Lord's." By recognize the universality of truth and its divine origin, Augustine gives us a model to emulate.
But in our own time we seem to have lost much of this breath of philosophical and theological appreciation. We seem to have short-changed ourselves with our own narrow, defensive and unattractive views of truth.
If Christianity is true then surely it must encompass a much broader spectrum of life than we have allowed it. Surely we need to be open and free to all that is reasonable, and lovely, and orderly, and inspiring. We need to grieve over our blinkered, smug and pietistic view of what fullness of life means. Only then can we begin to reclaim for God what He has given us and which we have squandered.
You'll certainly remember 15th and 16th century Europe, the period known to students of European history as the Renaissance; the term was originally restricted to the revival of classical learning, but as the term came to be applied the renaissance, it referred not only to classicism and literature but also to a rebirth, a reawakening of delight in all of nature, a departure from the cold objectivity of the medieval scholastic temperament. This rebirth found new expression in painting, sculpture, music, and poetry. And from their sheer joy in being human, they developed, what is to become the most complex and contradictory of "isms", humanism.
Today it still ruffles us a little just to hear that word "humanism". This may be due in part to Protagora's definition of the human person as the measure of all things which in turn flung the door wide open to a denial of the supernatural. But the humanists of 15th and 16th centuries found no need to have a special designation to set themselves apart as "Christian humanists" distinct from "non-Christian humanists."
It may be argued that the original concern of humanism did not have as its agenda any attempt, overt or otherwise, to oppose the truth of God. It has been said quite rightly, that above any other interest, the early humanists were more consumed with their attempts to balance the spiritual with the physical, the eternal with the temporal.
But as church history so evidentially documents for us, such an equilibrium had always been difficult to maintain. We do not deny the fact that there were humanists who lost sight of the cross, who carried too far the glorification of man. But if they did so, perhaps they were only overcompensating for the frequent error in the church’s teaching that diminished and repudiated the value of earthly existence and achievement. They were more preoccupied with the life to come after death.
To the honor of God, there were humanists who did not cave in to the temptation to draw any artificial distinction between sacred and non-sacred elements of life. To them no such distorted and pretentious dichotomy existed.
Lockerbie makes the point that it is here, that we find the greatest one single distinction between religion and our Christian faith. Religion separates the sacred from the profane. And so it is, that the devout Hindu has his sacred cow, his holy River Ganges, his temple at Madras, his Tiapusam ordeal. The Muslim has his Mecca and Ramadan. The Jews have the Western Wall and Yom Kippur. Other animal, other rivers, other buildings and cities, other celebrations may or may not have, invested in them, the same measure of sanctity.
But to the Christian no such designations apply. Yes we may speak of the first day of the week as the Lord's day but we set one day aside as holy in order to consecrate each day as holy. We may revere the sites of biblical history but we do not venerate any of the several gardens that have come to be identified as Gethsemane.
Paul Tillich may have been wrong in some crucial things he said, but we agree with him that the universe is God's sanctuary, every work-day is the day of the Lord; every supper is the Lord's supper; every work the fulfillment of a divine task; every joy a joy in God.
Thomas Howard, brother of Elizabeth Elliot has written a most refreshingly charming book about finding the holy in the mundane, finding the timeless in the temporal, finding what he so tastefully calls the Splendour In The Ordinary.
But from time to time, Christians have forgotten this distinction that sets our Christian faith apart from religion. We have erected our own religious categories by drawing artificial lines between sacred and non-sacred in music, art, edifices and festivals. But when Christians fall into that trap and begin drawing rigid lines between sacred and non-sacred, the work we call "sacred" as distinct to that which we call "non-sacred", almost always fails to reach the level, the quality of that which we call profane, non-sacred.
By contrast, when Christians refused to be hamstrung by such fabricated doublethink, when they freely and simply do their work to the best of their ability through the gift God has given them, when Christians go about their work dutifully and unselfconsciously as Johan Sebastian Bach did, then all their work becomes sacred or perhaps better, sanctified. So Bach's non-sacred piece The Brandenburg Concerto is as sanctified as his more distinctively religious piece Sleepers Awake. So too Rembrandt's self-portrait is no less honouring to God than is his biblical masterpiece The Return of the Prodigal Son.
At this point, it would naturally be easy for us to conclude that surely the work of the artists, the scientists, the songwriters and the poets who oppose God is hollow and unsanctified. We imagine that their work would naturally fall below whatever line we draw to mark the profane from the sacred.
Not necessarily.
Was it not John Calvin who cautioned us, saying: “In reading profane authors, the admirable light of truth displayed in them should remind us, that the human mind, however much fallen and perverted from its original integrity, is still adorned and invested with admirable gifts from its Creator. If we reflect that the Spirit of God is the only fountain of truth, we will be careful…not to reject or condemn truth wherever it appears…Shall we say that the philosophers, in their exquisite researches and skilful description of nature, were blind? Shall we deny the possession of intellect to those who drew up rules for discourse, and taught us to speak in accordance with reason? Shall we say that those who, by the cultivation of the medical art, expended their industry in our behalf were only raving? What shall we say of the mathematical sciences? Shall we deem them to be the dreams of madmen? Nay, we cannot read the writings of the ancients on these subjects without the highest admiration; an admiration which their excellence will not allow us to withhold. But shall we deem anything to be noble and praiseworthy, without tracing it to the hand of God? Far from us be such ingratitude; an ingratitude not chargeable even on heathen poets, who acknowledged that philosophy and laws, and all useful arts were the inventions of the gods. Therefore, since it is manifest that men whom the Scriptures term carnal, are so acute and clear-sighted in the investigation of inferior things, their example should teach us how many gifts the Lord has left in possession of human nature, notwithstanding of its having been despoiled of the true good.”
And was it not the psalmist who said: "Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee." If this is true, then, cannot we find in the most ardent disbeliever's enmity and resistance against God, evidence of divine grace? I believe we can. I believe the Christian view of life is both consistent and relevant to the entire spectrum of human experience; and that it has the capacity and the durability to restore to us the gentle dignity and beauty of what it means to be human.
But for that we need to be fearful of piecemeal learning. That morning at Athens when the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers dismissed Paul as a babbler, they hurled contempt at him. For the word “babbler” was a contemptuous expression which referred to "a picker-up of seeds", and hence, "a gatherer and retailer of scraps of knowledge, a prater”. It speaks of someone who barters in bits and pieces of learning but with no desire for or understanding of the need to weave them into a coherent picture.
We need to be weaving a seamless philosophy of the gospel and culture. For that we need to have Christians who are unafraid of exploring God's world and excelling in all fields of learning. C.S. Lewis once said that “What we want is not more little books about Christianity but more little books, by Christians, on all other areas of life, with their Christianity implicit and latent." He tells us that our faith in God is not very likely to be shaken by any single book on Hinduism, no matter how well-written. But if whenever we read a good book, whether on the arts or the sciences, we found that its implications were Hinduistic, we will be shaken.
In the same way, it is not specific books defending Christianity that will really trouble the non-Christian. But she will be very troubled, if whenever she wanted an introduction to any subject; whenever she watched a good play, saw a good movie, the best work on the market was always one by a Christian, with his Christianity implicit in the work, as its working principles.
It is in this sense that we need a Christian renaissance that will capture our culture for Christ. In short we need Christian humanists in the best sense of the phrase.
And for that we need to live in "sanctified worldliness"
|
