Okay, we've been discussing the whole question of religious existentialism. And last time I used the two examples, the two theological examples of David Friedrich Straves from 1834 in his life of Jesus, and the modern example of Francis Young in the myth of God incarnate. And we looked at the way she made her division between what she calls very parallel to the way Schaefer describes it as his lower and upper story. She called it remember the trivial and the tragic. Now as we begin to, as we go on to think, think about this, I think the, let's just summarize some of the consequences of this. If there is this kind of of division, if as Francis Young says that the events of Jesus, the other events that are recorded in the Bible on the level of history or on the level of reason have to be regarded as, as not true, as falsehood. And if on the level of the trivial as well, and that is in the area of reason of understanding the universe in which we live, we have come to conclusion that life has no meaning at all. For her meaning is put in the tragic level and what Schaefer calls the upper story. And for her, that is Christian faith is in that realm. So down here, we have Jesus as a man, as she says, no difference from any other human being has ever lived. He's not any more unique than you or I are unique from each other. So this is what we know about Jesus historically. Jesus was a man just like you or I, another human person, but at the same time she can still talk about Jesus in the realm of faith, Jesus who gives meaning to our lives, Jesus to whom we pray, Jesus who forgives us sins, Jesus who promises us life, Jesus who who who who who provides purpose in my everyday, Jesus to whom I go and trouble, Jesus whom I praise for creation. And yet this isn't Jesus who I think of is literally existing or ever having literally risen from the dead or anything like that. This is in a quite separate religious realm. And I think I finished last time by pointing out that she gives us an illustration which is very helpful. She says that the Christian faith works like music. She gives the example of listening to Baleo's mass for the dead and she says that music has the power to convict me and terrify me even though I don't think for one moment there is actually going to be a judgment after death or a future life. Still the music moves me and she suggests that Christian faith and Christian worship and Christian doctrine work in the same way. But just as we listen to music and are moved by it regardless of its content and regardless of its truth, the music itself moves us but our Christian faith works in the same way. Sheifer says elsewhere that Heidegger in his later years used to say listen to the poet, but poetry moves us to. The poetry appeals to us. It gives us a sense of meaning. It excites us. And really that's what she's saying. Jesus is like music to our ears having the power to comfort us, to move us, to challenge us. Now that's the what we can say fundamentally religious existentialism is the separation of Christianity from literal factual actual truth and yet the insistence that one can still have Christianity without that truth. Now let's summarize some of the consequences of this that sheifer calls attention to. The first is that once one has lost the foundation of historical Christianity, what you have is faith in faith. Faith is one of the most abused words in our culture today. I think perhaps often as Christians we shouldn't use the word faith at all, that we ought always to substitute another word for faith though of course no words keep you safe, but you have to understand if somebody in this tradition is talking about faith, they're not speaking about biblical faith, biblical faith is trust in commitment to the person of God who we know exists. As Hebrew says we, the person who that an individual must believe that God is and that he's the rewarder of those who diligently seek him. In other words there must be an object to our faith. We have faith that Jesus died for our sins. We have faith in the person of Christ and his trustworthiness. We have faith that he rose again from the dead for us. Real Christian faith is faith in an object that is faith in God. It is a response to who God is and what he's done. It's a response to what we know to be true about him. It's because we are convinced that God exists. It's because we are convinced that Jesus is the Son of God. It's because we are convinced that Jesus died for us to bear our judgment and rose again. It's because we know those things to be true that we believe in him that we have faith in him. Now in the context of neo-orthodox, your religious existentialism, whatever expression we want to use, the faith is not really in an object. There's no necessary belief that God exists. There's certainly no necessary belief that Jesus actually died for our sins in history or rose again in history or was the Son of God. But the faith, therefore, is not really in the object of faith that is God and the person of Christ, the faith is in faith itself. That's how Shaffer describes it. What we actually have here is not really faith in Jesus. We have here in the upper story faith in faith. It's the faith itself which curves rather than the object of the faith. I remember hearing a liberal theologian on radio in Britain. It was on a call in program. They were discussing death and life after death and so on.
He said this, if I can remember the words exactly, he said faith in Christ and the resurrection of Christ means to me, but even though I know that death is the absolute end, I can still have faith.
Now you may respond, what was that? Does that make any sense? Even though I know that death is absolutely the end, I can still have faith, and that's what faith in Christ means to him and faith in Christ's resurrection. In other words, that in the area of reason, in the area of rationality, we know that human beings are simply accidents. We are here by chance. We are developed from the animals just as an animal dies and rots in the ground so human beings will die and rot in the ground and that is the end of us completely. There is no other dimension to human existence whatsoever and on the level of rationality we know that human beings die. When they die, that's it. Their life has come to a total end. They are extinguished like the light of a candle, like a candle flame, but we still have faith and we may use the word Jesus and we may use the word resurrection and we may preach lovely sermons at somebody's funeral about Jesus and the resurrection, but you see it is not actually faith in the historical Christ or faith in the historical resurrection of Christ. It is simply faith in faith itself, but somehow this faith that I have to which I attach the name Jesus will enable me to cope with the reality of death, to which there is actually no real solution. That's the first thing that this does. It means it's tremendously important that you listen carefully to what somebody says, that you don't just say, oh, he's preaching a wonderful sermon about Christ. What is actually the content here? How does he define his terms? What does he really mean by faith? Is he actually talking about the faith which the Bible speaks about? Now it's no surprise then that precisely because that is what is taught in so many liberal churches that most non-Christians, if you tell them that you are a Christian who has faith, they will say, oh, well you have faith and isn't that nice for you, but I don't have faith because for them, for the non-Christian, every non-Christian around us assumes that it's this kind of faith we're talking about, that despite all appearances we still have faith even though life is hopeless we have faith. Non-Christians have absolutely no notion that we are talking about faith in an objective event in an objective person, they think we just have faith like catching the measles or something and they haven't caught the measles so they can't have it or they don't need it at the present time but that's how non-Christians hear you if you talk about Christian faith and you have to understand that you need to challenge that so that when you talk about faith and that's why I think it's better to use another word maybe like trust or whatever because as I said words can't save you but just change the word because the word faith itself means nothing really to the people around us but you have to get through that barrier if you're going to communicate with people. The second consequence of this existential view of the Christian faith, the second consequence is that biblical language becomes a banner, biblical language becomes a banner that's Schaeffer's expression biblical language becomes a banner he speaks about semantic mysticism semantic mysticism semantic mysticism biblical words become simply a banner to which we can really attach almost anything. Schaeffer puts it this way in the God who is there, page 59 in that volume 1 of Schaeffer's complete works and also in on page 90 in the same volume in the God who is there in volume 1 of the complete works he says the phrase Jesus Christ has become a contentless banner which can be carried in any direction for sociological purposes. What he means is that because the word the name Jesus Christ still has power in our culture it still has memories which it evokes but in a situation where you've really removed the biblical content from that name it becomes his name Jesus Christ can become a kind of rallying cry for any cause.
Let's just think of some examples of that now perhaps you can think of some examples of that let me ask you a question what examples would you think of where the phrase Jesus Christ or the name of Jesus has been simply used as a banner to attract people or to influence people yeah that's a good example you'd say certainly with people who who pushed for for the extension of civil rights Jesus became one of the banners of that movement Jesus is a person who treated everybody with dignity maybe there may be elements of truth in the appeal but there's no necessary commitment to the person of Christ or to all that the New Testament has to say about him his name becomes a rallying cry for people who are concerned for others or concerned for the extension of civil rights one might say quite properly his name could be appealed to in that content but you must understand that it's being used like a flag we will wave this flag it will arouse people's interest it will cause them to emotionally respond and then we will use it for our cause I would say that the political right at the moment has certainly done this as a second example that the political right right now of course there are some real Christians in it but those who are not real Christians also appeal to Christ and appeal to scripture and appeal to God to make your political conservative and preserve traditional values but it becomes a kind of rallying cry we will and I would say that without any question there was completely unscrupulous use of that by some politicians in the last elections that there was an appeal to the conservative wing of the church with the use of biblical words biblical language biblical ideas without necessarily any commitment whatsoever to stand for those things when they were elected into office and I think some Christians realize their fingers have been a little burned and they've actually been manipulated by the political process that's a second kind of example yep that's a very good example Jesse Jackson I don't know where he stands personally with regard to Christian faith but he knows very well that the black community still has far more acquaintance with the biblical message than most of the white community does there's much more respect for the Bible there's much more respect for the person of Christ in the black community than there is let's say in the white middle class for example or in the white working class a far greater respect still and the he is that he knows that by using that language he is able to have a tremendously powerful effect on his heroes now whether he's committed to it or not that's another question but he's a clever politician president Nixon used to do the same thing looking at the opposite end of the political spectrum he was constantly talking about prayer about God about his word about Christ and whatever and if you look at his own personal convictions they don't seem to be particularly Christian and I think he would acknowledge that but he didn't hesitate to use that in his speeches to appeal to people now there are lots of examples like this and I know we're treading on dangerous ground here even mentioning any of these examples but let me suggest another of a completely different kind a supermarkets use the name of Jesus all the time when it comes to Christmas to make you buy things you go into any supermarket in the six week leading up to Christmas or the month leading up to Christmas and you will hear Christmas carols being soothingly played over the loudspeaker and their purpose is to get you into a festive mood to spend more money makes you feel good you hear about this good message this encouraging message and and so you go and buy money you're encouraged to buy so that you can give to people too and of course giving is a very good thing but there is no doubt whatsoever that those carols and you see they're not usually the most wonderful renderings of the biblical message and music they're usually the most sentimental possible renderings which are most soothing and most sort of they fit into the background and they work their way into your subconscious and they affect you I'm not big cynical this is a reality I mean that's marketing reality in the society in which we live the name of Jesus is used to make you buy things it may be new used to get you to accept a numerality it's the name of Jesus is used by the metropolitan community church to encourage people to be homosexual that's that is the homosexual church which claims to be evangelical and their Jesus's name is used as the one who accepted everybody he accepts us too we had an interesting personal example of this one of my boys had run into somebody somewhere when he was at one evening and he didn't know this guy and then we kept getting telephone calls and this fellow every day he was another teenager and he was always asking to speak to to one of my two eldest sons and wanting to get together with him they didn't know him at all and eventually he acknowledged on the phone that he was homosexual and that's why he was getting in contact with them quite an alarming thing for you as a parent some of you will have to deal with this later on and so one of my sons replied when he said this he said well we are Christians we don't believe that homosexuality is right and he replied oh no of course it's fine so I go to a church which says that the Jesus accepts everybody no matter what they do and of course he went to the metropolitan community church and really it's fine you don't have to be worried about that that's really just fine at that point my 17 year old didn't know quite what it is we just put the phone down you know Jesus's name the biblical language is used as a banner for all kinds of different political and social and moral and even commercial uses in our society and the way it works is not necessarily because of the content that is created but because of the symbolic power of the name still in this culture a third consequence or a third element of this kind of approach to Christianity is that it is a faith which has no contact with what Schaefer calls the cosmos that is the universe or science and no contact with history thinking of Francis Young's illustration again of the trivial and the tragic she would put science and history down in the level of the trivial areas of reason and faith up here in a completely different realm so it is a faith which has no contact with the cosmos that is the universe universe which science studies or with history a fourth consequence is that faith is set over against reason in fact if you read north neo orthodox theologians they seem to delight in opposing faith and reason that the more irrational the faith is the greater the faith is that the great virtue of faith is that it's unreasonable what is so unbiblical is then turned into a virtue into a value so that faith and reason are set totally against each other precisely because I have no reasons my faith is even greater I don't ever speak that way and you hear Christians real Christians speaking that way sometime sometimes the Bible never speaks that way that faith is somehow increased in its value the less reason you have it's not what that is not what scripture says at all at all it isn't opposed to reason in any kind of way and it doesn't become more precious the more irrational it is it's a really perverted way of thinking Biblically anyone have a question there I thought I saw a hand okay then fifthly another element of this these aren't so much consequences all of them they're partly consequences but also elements of this kind of approach to Christianity is dialectical thinking that is the truth and falsehood are not opposed to each other
that truth and its opposite which isn't falsehood but another kind of truth work together to form another truth a new truth we'll look at this more later in terms of thinking about dialectical thinking
but an inevitable consequence of this kind of approach to Christianity is to say that what really matters is the sincerity of people rather than the truth to which they are committed so all religions will be seen to have truth religions may make completely opposing statements and opposing claims if you look at Christianity in Islam for example at several fundamental points they're in complete opposition let's say with regard to the person of Christ the one acknowledges him acknowledges him as the second person the Trinity as God the other rejects that completely
but in existential Christianity one doesn't talk about the falsehood of other religions in fact there's a very interesting statement in the myth of God incarnate it says the only religion which is now unacceptable in the 20th century is evangelical Christianity which claims to be the only truth that is the one religion which is completely unacceptable to claim to have the only truth all religions are good all religions are parts to God all religions have truth except us that's what he's saying in that statement and the way he dismisses it is not by any attention to the actual claims of evangelical Christianity but by saying it's provincial it's provincial because and it's tribal he says it makes God the God of the Christian West as opposed to the God of Hinduism or the God of Buddhism or the God of Islam or the God of Shintoism or whatever it happens to be or the God of Confucianism that we must believe in a God who is the God of everybody and everything it's provincial to deny it so of course you get an implicit usually an explicit universalism that really everybody is saved that everybody has the truth you see this spelled out very clearly in the documents of Vatican cancel too where all religions are regarded as having part of the truth and everybody is really a Christian underneath now before we move on does anyone have any questions here if we think about some of these fundamental elements of existential theology here that's a very good question what should we do when we are faced with the fact that the name of Jesus Christ is used as a banner by people with all sorts of radically differing positions even by people selling things what do we do do we have to change our language and not refer to him at all well we obviously can't stop preferring to him what we have got to learn to do though it's a very good question is to be careful and very carefully define what we mean when we use his name or when we speak about the cross or whatever because we really need to know that these things don't communicate to people any longer that whether we use the language of the cross which is very precious to us whether we speak about Christ and his virgin birth or whatever that most people who hear us don't hear what we mean by those things so we have to find creative ways to express what we think which will actually get through that barrier I think that's the first thing it makes it it challenges us to really think carefully about how we express ourselves so that when we're preaching or we're talking to people individually we're always defining what we say over against the misunderstandings I think the second thing is that we must avoid the temptation to use Jesus name as a banner for our causes even if they're right causes so I would say for example that you know if we have some issue which we're committed to we mustn't just get people's interest by flaunting the name of Christ in there but we must make sure the issue is really presented let's say if we're thinking about the pro life issue but as we stand up and speak about this issue it's quite right for us to say we are we are followers of Christ or were Christians for life as obviously there's nothing wrong with that however I would say that whenever we speak we must make it quite clear why we are for life that human life begins a conception that human beings have real value because they're made by God we're not just bits of developed flotsam and jetsam in the universe not just animals we are persons made in the image of God and to spell out what that means and that we whenever we have any kind of public possibility which we ought to be seeking to speak about the abortion should we must deal with the real issues rather than just saying and using words from the other side as as kind of banner words as well there's just a load of secular humanists and radical feminists who are against life it doesn't help anybody to speak like that we have just used words as banners either to attract people or to repel them and sadly there's very little real discussion going on by Christians and what we need to do is to actually communicate what we think and why we think it because there are increasingly people you see there are some people who will say because we use the name of Christ that attracts them but the great majority of people it doesn't attract them any longer
and so it communicates some of the wrong things to them for them it means being obscurantist and out of touch with the times and against concern for the individual person and against letting the individual have control over their right and ledge life and legislating morality for everybody else those are all the connotations they come to our use of our names and our words and we are not going to win that particular issue until we convince people that human life is valuable
and therefore deserves the protection of the law and our banners won't convince them of that you actually haven't won a discussion you haven't won an argument you haven't changed a person's mind you have simply made those who already agree with you encouraged and comforted by the banner and those who don't agree with you have rejected you because of the banner you haven't advanced one jot and what we have what we have to learn to do is to really communicate through the banner beyond the banner so I'd say we have we have two dangers the one is not communicating to people at all let's be to find ourselves the second is to avoid using our words as a banner ourselves because that's equally illegitimate any other questions there before we go on that's a good question the question is throughout American history there have been a series of great awakenings do I think there is still the possibility for for such a great change in American society yes I do I think my prayer and my hope is that that we have a real possibility for an awakening in this generation that's certainly what I long for for for this society and I believe it's possible and obviously that's up to God so it's not a question I can say this is what is or is not going to happen but I think unless the church understands where it is it can't happen until we realize that that we have to communicate in a new way we are just simply missing people but actually I think our culture here is ripe for a great awakening I think there is a growing awareness all around us in our society of the moral and spiritual bankruptcy of this culture there was a very fine article by Cal Thomas in the post-ispatchum two weeks ago in which he spoke about the way in the beginning of this century we're around 1900 1902 the politicians of that time were just filled with corruption and just was self-serving feathering their own nests and so on and he paralleled that to today in the present budget talks and the disgraceful way which Congress in particular deals with so many issues where there are so many pork barrel projects which people are just pouring money into the money of the taxpayers without any concern whatsoever for any kind of proper accounting people just simply concerned for for for re-election for themselves making enormous amounts of money out of the whole electoral system and he said that's the way it was in 1900 1902 we had a Congress then and sent it like many of our congressmen and senators today and then he asked why well the reason is because that's what this culture deserves right now because that's the way the people are that they have no sense of responsibility either that most people are only out for themselves and then he says it was in that context that the last great awakening really occurred in the early part of this century between 1902 and 1906 and that time when people became sick of their own sin and their own selfishness and corruption and he was then saying and you know that's what we need today what we certainly do but I believe I see a growing number of people in our culture who realize that we're spiritually and morally bankrupt and I think that's one of the reasons for the growth of the new age movement but a lot of that is because the church is not saying the right things in the right way if we were it would be the church that would be growing not the new age movement but I think it is really possible so I'm not a pessimist at all I don't think we're in a situation where the church is necessarily going to shrink and shrink and shrink I think in England it's really turned around there has been a turning of the tide there've been several books like that with that kind of title and that's just within the last five or six years where live churches everywhere have started growing and not just in ones and twos but substantially I don't think that's happening here yet I somebody showed me some statistics the other day from the PCA and the PCA is supposed to be the fastest growing denomination in the United States at the present time but when you actually look at the figures we're not growing very fast just means nobody else is hardly growing at all you know the Kirk of the Hills here in St. Louis was in the in the less of the top 15 of PCA churches in this nation in terms of its growth in the last year and that's wonderful because it's by no means one of the biggest churches it has some genuine outreach to non-christians who were actually genuinely being converted but many of the churches that are much bigger than that have much less number of new Christians coming in and as I've said before I think in this class much of the growth we have at the moment is from disenchanted liberals and disenchanted Brahmin Catholics in most of our churches that is when most of the growth is coming or people moving from other evangelical churches there is only a handful of people who were genuinely completely non-christian totally outside the church who are being genuinely converted and coming into the church there are some and the Kirk him is put is a good example of that because they've had a substantial number of converts in this last year and one can thank God in particular for the ministry of John Atkins there because that's the great passion of his heart and he's very gifted at reaching out to people but it's unusual I would say there are just the signs that to use a biblical image it's like a cloud no bigger than a man's hand at the moment that where there is a church like that and individuals in that church who really see this as important and who know how to communicate to non-christians that there is beginning to be a real growth of people turning to the gospel but I think that there is a flood of people out there I think the field really in America is white to the harvest if we were to actually proclaim the gospel in a way which communicated to people rather than using our religious words as banners which people don't understand and don't respond to yeah I think that's a good point I'd like to read that he mentioned Christ mentioned Megatrends 2000 which is predicting that there's going to be a dramatic kind of spiritual growth in the United States by the year 2000 both on the one hand of a sort of contentless religious experience which is really what the new ages a largely contentless spirituality and on the other hand a growth of fundamentalism because of people's need for a sense of authority and that the churches in the middle are going to disappear well I think that's true and it's already happening that the liberal churches are losing numbers dramatically all over the place they have been for 10 years and it's going to happen much faster and the people from within them will either come to evangelical faith and some of them do and you see this I know in our churches here in St. Louis the substantial number of people who've moved from liberal churches into evangelical churches in the recent past the Catholic Church is losing people in dramatic numbers too that's partly hidden by the tremendous influx of Hispanic people so there's a constant influx of of of Hispanic Catholics which bolster the numbers but in actual fact Catholic churches are declining dramatically in numbers everywhere in this country apart from in those communities where there are masses of Hispanic people coming in but but those churches which are not committed to God's word are losing people everywhere because they are not seen to have a message which either speaks the truth to people which answers their needs or provides them a basis to live in this modern society the new age offers a spirituality which makes absolutely no demands on people but gives them the illusion of religious comfort but makes no demands whatsoever in terms of personal discipleship personal commitment radical obedience and that is certainly going to grow the new age is not a phenomenon which is here just temporarily it's here for a long time because it's the alternative people are sick to death of materialism not of not of comfortable practical monetary materialism everybody loves that still but it's not sufficient by itself and they realize they need something else and the new age offers them a lovely combination of being able to still be a yuppie or a dink or whatever and have spirituality at the same time and you know that that is going to grow everywhere more and more with all the things that will go on it and it will it will lead to a tremendous increase in in spiritualism in occult practice in explicit satanism and so on because when people become open to spirituality without content and without form and without limits then the door is opened for a tremendous influx of evil precisely because there is no understanding of good and evil of the righteousness of God and the judgment due to sin so that openness to spirituality can can in like the the story that Jesus tells can lead to things being worse than they were before being possessed by seven devils instead of one instead of the one devil of practical materialism if we want to use that image people will be possessed some of them by real devils through their openness to any kind of spirituality in the new age but I think there is a tremendous door here for for Christianity and we must be aware that there for genuine Christianity we must be aware that people are desperately in need of an authority they're in need of a moral authority a moral a moral foundation a moral anchor on which to hold their lives and the lives of their children but we must be sure when we communicate the gospel to them but we don't communicate it simply as something which is going to give them that without communicating the real message of Christianity that we're talking about truth which will require radical allegiance by this person and a radical change of the way they think and and sadly I think with any evangelicalism whether in the more fundamentalist part of it or the less fundamentalist part of it at the moment we are still in the position of using our words and using our church life and our worship and our faith as a kind of banner which tracks people and gives an authority but without really challenging them in terms of who they are and where their hearts are actually committed so that we have churches with lots of people who are actually deeply secular people both in terms of their practical lifestyle a practical materialism and their moral values and at the same time deeply secular in the sense in terms of the way they actually really think and I think this is the danger we face because if we don't really challenge people what we are communicating is another form of semantic mysticism and people now think their lives have meaning they now think they've got moral values but you can actually tell whether they're genuinely converted if in fact their life changes and their lifestyle changes and they no longer idolaters basically that's what it comes down to and we really do need to be aware that without careful communication even if we're using saying all the right things if we don't say them in the right way we are just offering to people and other contents religious experience and we must be very careful not to do that we must stop that we're going over time here