thaddeus m. maharaj: on mission as the church in exile · fringes. beach provides examples from...

Thaddeus M. Maharaj: On Mission as the Church in Exile

There is often a commonly unfortunate imposed dichotomy between the terms

“theology” and “mission.” The consequence has been that missiologists have tended towards

pragmatism, focusing on techniques and models for evangelizing the unreached, while

theologians have worked without an awareness of issues such as contextualization and

globalization.1 However, if we want to be a truly missional and biblical church, the two must

come together and work in harmony—with theology informing practice and ample

consideration given to the specific challenges of our cultural contexts to Gospel ministry in

the twenty-first century. This is especially true in the context we find ourselves in today as

the church in the West which is increasingly being pushed to the margins and losing its

influence or being misrepresented within the culture. What does it mean to be on mission as

the Church in exile?

This article will briefly explore some of the factors influencing our cultural context,

the biblical basis for mission and analyse some approaches to mission critiquing some of the

weaknesses in current trends. It will focus primarily on the necessity for theology, practice

of mission and the evangelistic message to be shaped by the Word, but delivered in a

contextualized form to facilitate understanding. Although ‘mission’ encompasses much more

than just evangelism, here, significant emphasis will be spent on Evangelicalism’s problems

with compromise, the need for bold proclamation and learning from history. I will also

briefly look at the Reformation with regards to our methodology for proclaiming the Gospel

1 Hwang, “Review of The Mission of God’s People,” 176. For further reading see, Christopher J. H. Wright. The

Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010.


and confronting the culture with a presuppositional apologetic which seeks to be faithful to

Biblical truth but also engage dynamically with the world at large.2

The Culture We Find Ourselves In

Postmodernism has broadly affected and shaped our culture in the developed West.

It generates a feeling of homelessness because it rejects any universal narrative that makes

sense of a common foundation. This is

due to Postmodernism being primarily a

deconstructive movement that was

born out of a reaction to modernism

which produced not a new order, but

rather a new ‘disorder.’3 Combined with

many other forces of influence such as

the affluence of Western societies,

secularization and the impact of atheism on academia, the pressures from science and a

general movement away from traditional family structures and values, this has produced a

significant move away from faith in the secularized West. The Reformers and Puritans saw

education as a means of preparing the mind to receive the revelation of God.4 However, with

the secularization of education in conjunction with a general apathy towards critical thinking

and the study of history, the modern millennial’s mind no longer has been prepared for a

ready reception of the Gospel message.

The church has not been unaffected by this trend either. Modern evangelicals often

suffer with the same problems of ignorance of Church History and basic doctrines.5 What

once could have been taken for granted—familiarity with Christian terminology, concepts of

truth and virtue—no longer can be assumed but must also be established first. I remember

not too long ago watching a video on YouTube where some atheists were commenting on

Christian beliefs, but their understanding of Christianity was far from anything that

resembled biblical Christianity. Instead it was some sort of weird caricature which pop-

media and culture have manufactured, and it seems like many have gobbled up whole—

accepting it as true. It is essential for the minister of the gospel to be trained to faithfully

exegete Scripture and also master the skill of human exegesis—to communicate the Gospel

2 I concede that this is not going to be an adequate treatment of any of these topics given the space here. 3 Beach, Church in Exile, 22. 4 For more on this see Ozment, When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe; Pitkin, “The Heritage of

the Lord”; Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning and also Dr. Riemer Faber’s short article on Martin Luther and

Reformed Education available online at http://www.spindleworks.com/library/rfaber/luther_edu.htm 5 For an excellent discussion of this problem in Evangelicalism see Blamires, The Christian Mind; Guinness, Fit

Bodies, Fat Minds and especially Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.

http://www.spindleworks.com/library/rfaber/luther_edu.htm


in understandable terms to his audience. However, uncritical or radical contextualization

which distorts the gospel into a syncretistic message is not the answer.6 The work of Gospel

proclamation, now more than ever must seek to communicate clearly to a post-Christian

culture and also be coupled with apologetic necessity to both educate and combat contrary

philosophies, in order to ‘till the land’ before the seed can take root—both inside and outside

the church. We must realize that today for a lot of people, what they ‘think’ Christianity is,

may be far removed from the truth.

Current Trends

At the current rate, assuming no other changes,

those of no specific faith ties will likely outnumber

Christians in North America by 2042. Surveys and stats by

Reginald Bibby show that in only twenty-five years, Canada

has become a radically different place religiously,

especially among the younger generation which points to

this only being the beginning of the shift.7 However, there

is now a new factor introduced in the recent developments

of an increase in Muslim refugee immigration to North

America which will undoubtedly also have its impact in the years to come. The new reality is

that the church is no longer fully integrated into culture but now functions in a framework

which precludes any of its cultural authority. “Unless the church is educated so that it can fully

comprehend the reality of its situation, people will not sense the urgency for change or the need

to embrace the motif of exile as a time for renaissance.”8 Undoubtedly the church needs to be

educated about the shifting times, however, perhaps a call to remember and go back to its

roots is equally appropriate.

A Church in Exile

Dr. Beach’s book The Church in Exile, provides a helpful model for thinking about our

new state of affairs as the Church in exile, using the motif of exile found in the Bible to help

think about how the Church can be faithful to her mission in this new context from the

fringes. Beach provides examples from biblical figures such as Esther, Daniel, Jonah, Jesus

and 1 Peter to see how we can think about exile biblically and learn from these how to be

able to do effective Gospel contextualization yet remain faithful to our mission as God’s

6 Oberlin, “Review of The Gospel in Human Contexts” 374. See for further reading, Hiebert. The Gospel in Human

Contexts. 7 Beach, The Church in Exile, 35-36. 8 Beach, The Church in Exile, 143.


people.9 This sort of searching of the scriptures for wisdom to respond to our situation is

vital. However, exile is not necessarily a

‘new context’ to the Church in general,

but has been the common experience of

the Church throughout history and in

many other places in the world. The

‘newness’ of this experience is only fresh

to Western audiences who have

previously enjoyed the blessings of the

influence of Christendom on their

societies. The fact is that for a large

majority of Christians throughout the

world, and throughout the ages,

persecution and being on the fringes of

society was the norm! There is also a

great wealth of wisdom to be found in

both a study of Church history, such as

the persecuted Early Church, as well as the life of the persecuted and marginalized church in

other parts of the globe.10

Defining ‘Mission’ and some misconceptions

Some scholarly discussion of how exactly we define mission has tended towards

agnosticism regarding the possibility of an agreed meaning and makes a virtue out of

ambiguity, with ‘mission’ becoming a term constantly seeking meaning.11 It seems that

sometimes scholars only succeed in creating more confusion! One approach is identified as

missio Dei, that all Christian mission is God’s and humans engage as co-workers with God (1

Thes. 3:2).12 A second more narrow definition is that which “encompasses everything that

Jesus sends his people into the world to do” and restricts mission to the church’s action in the

world.13 A third even narrower approach limits it to what is termed as ‘social action,’ also

9 See chapters 2 to 7 in Beach, The Church in Exile, 49-136 for an excellent exploration of these examples. 10 See Canfield, The Early Persecutions of the Christians, for a good study of the persecutions in the early church. 11 Ferdinando, “Mission: A Problem of Definition,” 47-48. For example, Bosch argues “that the Bible itself does not

offer a single mission theology but several, and he distinguishes the approaches of Jesus, Matthew, Luke-Acts, and

Paul. Consequently, he suggests that it is impossible to construct a single biblical theology of mission on which to

base contemporary practice.” For further reading see Bosch, Witness to the World, 9. 12 Ferdinando, “Mission: A Problem of Definition,” 49. However, in contemporary missiological debate, the term

identifies mission as everything God wills to do in the world, whether through the church or outside it—implying that

non-Christians may be positively involved in God’s mission without knowing it—this entails a potential

marginalisation of the role of the church as not being the unique human vehicle of the missio Dei. 13 Kirk, “Missiology,” 434; Ferdinando, “Mission: A Problem of Definition,” 50.


sometimes called social justice causes (Gal. 2:10), along with proclamation and making

disciples.14 However, this call to make disciples is essential to whatever discussion of the

Church’s mission, not just in terms of evangelistic outreach but also internal ministry.

Many modern approaches to mission focus more so on models of ‘decisionism’ which

may have arisen more out of the Evangelical Awakening and Camp Revivals than a biblical

understanding of Gospel ministry. No where in the Bible do we see Jesus or the apostles

preach a “make a decision and accept Christ into your heart” type of Gospel. We need to study

the apostolic Gospel which they preached and

model our own Gospel proclamation on this! Our

mandate is not simply to make converts—eliciting

decisions—but rather to make disciples (Matt.

28:19-20). Equally, some have chiefly understood

mission as primarily a cross-cultural enterprise,

failing to rightly value their local activity in their

present context as ‘mission’ also. In the haste to get

to ‘the real full-fledged mission to the foreign field,

like Paul’ we tend to see the first part of the local

mission in Jerusalem and Judea as just a stumbling

around, groping for mission.15 Furthermore, some

erroneous perceptions of Pauline mission risk

seeing him as a peripatetic preacher who moved

quickly from place to place making converts.

However, in reality he remained in places establishing churches and discipling people to

communicate “the whole will of God” (Acts 20:27), following up with letters of instruction and

encouragement even after his departure.16 It is important for us to remember in any

discussion of mission, we must be building a culture of discipleship—both making disciples

and being discipled—as had been the tradition in the church throughout the centuries and

especially in the Early Church and confessional traditions.

For a truly biblical understanding of mission in the full counsel of scripture, we must

look to the rich resonance of OT sources in the NT images of the church as a missional people

in the tradition of Israel.17 “Fundamentally, our mission (if it is biblically informed and

validated) means our committed participation as God’s people, at God’s invitation and

command, in God’s own mission within the history of the world for the redemption of God’s

creation.”18 It is what the people of God are taken up into—the work that God is doing for the

14 Ferdinando, “Mission: A Problem of Definition,” 52. 15 Legrand, Unity and Plurality: Mission in the Bible, 103; Goheen, A Light to the Nations, 122. 16 Ferdinando, “Mission: A Problem of Definition,” 54. 17 Goheen, A Light to the Nations, 23. 18 Wright, The Mission of God, 22–23.


sake of the world in His long-term purpose of renewing creation.19 “God’s mission involves

God’s people living in God’s way in the sight of the nations,” just as Israel was to display and

embody in its communal life God’s original intention and eschatological goal for humanity.20

This understanding fits well with what Beach proposes as a model for the Church in exile

today living in the midst of a culture which is alien or hostile to it.

Mission: A Bigger Picture

If mission is only understood as geographical expansion, then mission doesn’t begin

until either Peter crosses cultural boundaries to Cornelius (Acts 10) or Paul is commissioned

(Acts 13). However, in light of the OT, mission is the role of God’s people to live in contrast

to the surrounding nations and thus mission begins not in Acts but the beginning of the

biblical story.21 So mission is not just about going to some foreign third world country!

Mission is therefore primarily more about being than about going or doing—it is about being

a distinctive, countercultural community among the nations.22 The purpose of God’s people

is stated concisely in the Westminster Shorter Catechism that, “Man’s chief end is to glorify

God, and to enjoy him forever.”23 Markus Barth rightly defines it as our purpose as a people

created, gathered, enlightened, commissioned,

sustained and equipped to live to the praise of

God’s glory publicly—“to manifest the glory of

God before the watching eyes of the nations.”24

This also means that we cannot have a sort of

scandalous dualism between word and deed—

deeds of mercy and justice divorced from words

as well as gospel words void of deeds are both

patently false (James 2:14-6).25

The tendency within certain branches of

Evangelicalism, especially within the emergent

church movement, to reduce mission to what

has been coined as the social justice gospel fails

utterly in this regard. Likewise, a compartmentalization of Christian witness only to certain

19 Goheen, A Light to the Nations, 25. 20 Wright, The Mission of God, 470; Goheen, A Light to the Nations, 25. 21 Goheen, A Light to the Nations, 122. 22 Peskett, The Message of Mission, 123. 23 CRTA, Westminster Shorter Catechism, no pages. Q.1. Online:

http://www.reformed.org/documents/wsc/index.html?_top=http://www.reformed.org/documents/WSC.html 24 Barth, The Broken Wall, 171, 182; Goheen, A Light to the Nations, 25. See also Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad:

The Supremacy of God in Missions. 25 Goheen, A Light to the Nations, 215.

http://www.reformed.org/documents/wsc/index.html?_top=http://www.reformed.org/documents/WSC.html


spheres of life fails to acknowledge Christ’s universal lordship over all— “witness defines the

people of God in the entirety of their lives—all of life is witness!”26 The proclamation of the

Kingdom must be brought to bear to and over all of creation and every sphere of life, and so

the church’s involvement in culture is part of the redemption of all things to Christ—

business, the arts, sciences, law, politics, and every other arena of life and every strata of

society. To do anything less and retreat to the private sector is to do what the early church

refused to do and what the Bible forbids us to do—it is to deny the kingship of Christ over

all.27 Therefore, mission is not just the job of the pastor or fulltime missionary, but the

responsibility of everyone who would claim the name of Christ. This is obviously a very vast

and broad spectrum to address comprehensively, so focus will next be given specifically to

the aspect of proactive proclamation of the exclusivity of the Gospel in culture of high

pressure to compromise—recognizing that this is only one aspect of mission in the bigger

sense.

A Fearless Gospel

Spurgeon once said that the Gospel of Jesus Christ

is a fearless gospel and the reverse of what is called

‘modern charity’ which tries to induce persons to withhold

a part of what they believe and thus silence the testimony

of all Christians in points where they differ. He said,

“…hold everything which you see to be in God’s Word

with a tighter grasp, and do not give up even the

little pieces of truth. At the same time, let that

Sectarianism which makes you hate another man

because he does not see with you—let that be far

from you! but never consent to that unholy league

and covenant which seems to be rife throughout our

country, which would put a padlock on the mouth of

every man and send us all about as if we were dumb:

which says to me, ‘You must not speak against the errors of such a Church,’ and to

another, ‘You must not reply.’ We cannot but speak! If we did not, the stones in the street

might cry out against us. That kind of charity is unknown to the gospel.”28

26 Goheen, A Light to the Nations, 128. See also Bauckham, Bible and Mission, 99. 27 Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks, 102. 28 Spurgeon, Spurgeon Commentary: Philippians, 43–44.


Dr. Beach, commenting on Daniel as a model of life in exile, says that “our calling is to

demonstrate a distinctly Christian character and unashamedly confess our attachment to

Jesus... In the book of Daniel, there is nothing subtle about Jewish holiness”—in fact it is often

the very source of their troubles.29 In a culture which is ever increasingly hostile to the

Christian message, we must be fearless! However, the temptation for the people of God

experiencing exile has always been toward compromise to avoid persecutions from

oppressive forces in power—this is why God raised up prophetic voices to remind them of

the demand to uncompromising faithfulness to YHWH. The message of the Cross was and is

and will continue to be an offense and foolishness to the world (1 Cor. 1:18; cf. Gal. 5:11), but

much of today’s progressive evangelism techniques primarily seek how to lessen that

offense—often at any expense to the fidelity of the message.30 (Not that this gives us license

to be jerks either in how we present the truth!)

The Struggle with Compromise

Traditional theology understood the proclamation of the Good News of redemption

exclusively through the Cross and resurrection of Christ, however new views try to redefine

it in terms of humanization and social liberation.31 Predictably, the ministry such churches

assume is no longer of expounding

scriptural truth but rather devoting

energies to breaking down barriers to

human progress toward peace and justice—

the minister ceases to proclaim a definite

message and instead becomes a nurturer of

‘ecumenism’ and ‘openness.’32 A recent

example of this compromise for the sake of ecumenism has been the controversy which was

fanned by the story of Wheaton College professor, Dr. Hawkins, around whether or not

Christians and Muslims worship the same God.33 (They don’t btw—see footnotes)

29 Beach, The Church in Exile, 87. 30 See Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks, 50-52 for more about the incomprehensibility of the gospel message by

the wisdom of this world and the necessity of a paradigm shift in the understanding of a person to receive the

message. 31 Bloesch, The Church: Sacraments, Worship, Ministry, Mission, 32. 32 Bloesch, The Church: Sacraments, Worship, Ministry, Mission, 33. 33 A breakdown of the story with some interesting statistics can be found at Weber, “Wheaton College, Larycia

Hawkins to ‘Part Ways,’” online. The Roman Catholic response has been to embrace Islam as worshipping the same

God as Christianity, see Beckwith, “Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?”—which some

evangelicals had become sympathetic to. Interestingly, this has been the position of the RC church since at least

Vatican II, see Vatican, “Nostra Aetate,” article 3. However, good rebuttals have been provided by apologists such

as at RZIM, see Qureshi, “Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?” (Links in bibliography)


Another strand reflects the influence of the New Age movement in which the church’s

mission is spiritualized and privatized—the focus is no longer the reign of justice on earth

through the kingdom of God but rather the transformation of ‘religious consciousness.’ It is

a call to turn inward to find peace which changes the church into a society of seekers for

‘enlightenment’ instead of redemption.34 Furthermore, with the influence of the shift in

perspective on truth claims by postmodernism, apologetics becomes no longer about

demonstrating the superiority of the Christian worldview as objectively true but striving to

attain a consensus that allows a more comprehensive religious vision based on a new re-

definition of ‘tolerance’ and ‘acceptance’ where all religious claims to truth are affirmed as

equally valid.35 Alister McGrath sharply critiques this as an “arrogant imposition of political

correctness” that “glosses over the patently obvious fact that the world religions” significantly

differ.36

By seeking to remain ‘relevant’ through compromising doctrinal distinctives, the

church will end up becoming all the more

irrelevant as it simply fades into the

religious milieu of pluralism. The message

of Christianity is exclusive but with an

inclusive goal to reconcile all peoples to the

one true God.37 This is not however to

negate the value of lifestyle witness or

charity and social justice in evangelism, but

to say it must be kept in proper

perspective. The Great Commission is

clear—“teaching them to obey all that I

have commanded you”—so proclamation

must be involved. No one expects their neighbours to say, “look at the contentment and joy

with which he mows his lawn or she pulls weeds in their flower beds. I must meet their God!”38

Something must be said, for how can they believe and call upon Him whom they have not

heard (Rom. 10:14)? We must recognize that the goal of evangelism and mission is not

merely social order but spiritual rebirth—social reformation has its genesis in personal

transformation.39

34 Bloesch, The Church: Sacraments, Worship, Ministry, Mission, 33–34. 35 Bloesch, The Church: Sacraments, Worship, Ministry, Mission, 33, 237. Gandhi is quoted to have said that “all the

great religions are fundamentally equal” and S. Radhakrishnan says that “it is all a question of taste and temperatment.” 36 McGrath, “The Challenge of Pluralism for the Contemporary Christian Church,” 1:241. 37 Bloesch, The Church: Sacraments, Worship, Ministry, Mission, 239–240. 38 Baucham, The Ever-Loving Truth, 85-86. 39 Bloesch, The Church: Sacraments, Worship, Ministry, Mission, 248.


The Need for a Confessing Church

Although the evangelical movement has admirably resisted these new trends,

especially in the developed West, it is starting to betray a subtle accommodation to a form of

moralistic therapeutic deism which reduces salvation to psychic wholeness and moralistic

behaviour.40 The need today however in our present climate of exile is not a therapeutic,

pluralistic or political church, but rather a confessing church which will “boldly confess the

claims of Christ in the face of the heresies and heterodoxies of our age.”41 However it has

become taboo in many circles for ministers to talk about the wretchedness of sin, the

depravity of man, or the wrath of God. These departures from gospel truths ultimately betray

a misplaced understanding of the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, and the source of

salvation.

We are not able through our own cleverness to formulate a salvation apart from what

Christ has provided. We are not dispensers of grace, free to redefine the message as we see

needed, but merely ambassadors and heralds of grace as we live a life of costly discipleship

pointing others to the One alone who saves.42 Approaches to evangelism which mistakenly

assume that the person apart from Christ and the work of God’s Spirit in their lives seeks or

wants the true God (1 Cor. 2:14; Eph. 2:1-3; Rom. 3:11, 8:7-8) end up compromising the very

thing which is the only power unto salvation (Rom. 1:16). In our zeal to fulfill Christian

mission, we must not abandon the Christian Gospel nor the necessity of the Spirit’s work of

regeneration.

Learning from History

The Protestant Reformation saw one of the

biggest revivals of Gospel preaching and evangelism in

history. There is much profit to be gained from a return

to study the Reformers who sought to recover the

biblical Gospel through a return to the original sources

and study of the writings of the Early Church. Although

Evangelicalism historically sprouted from the Protestant

40 Bloesch, The Church: Sacraments, Worship, Ministry, Mission, 180-181. “Moralism is preaching the law without

the gospel so that our hearers are told what to do in order to ensure for themselves a place in God’s kingdom rather

than what God has already done for us and the whole world in Jesus Christ. Sometimes the gospel is made into a

new law: it is no longer the divine promise but the divine commandment.” 41 Bloesch, The Church: Sacraments, Worship, Ministry, Mission, 34–35. See also Bonhoeffer, No Rusty Swords, 335

who said, “There can only be a church as a Confessing Church, i.e., as a church which confesses itself to be for its

Lord and against his enemies. A church without a confession or free from one is not a church, but a sect, and makes

itself master of the Bible and the Word of God.” 42 Bloesch, The Church: Sacraments, Worship, Ministry, Mission, 55.


Reformation, today many streams of it have lost or fallen away from those distinctives which

once spurred the movement. Reformed theology shows the necessity of a Presuppositional

approach to apologetics rather than the popular Evidentialist approach which tends to, as

C.S. Lewis coined it, put “God in the docks.”43 As Kuyper said, “The psychiater, who treats the

maniac, cannot render his method of treatment dependent upon the judgment of his patient.

Equally little can you attribute this right of judgment over the special principium to the natural

principium.”44 God is the necessary prerequisite for all foundation of knowledge and

knowing, likewise faith also precedes all genuine understanding since without it, fallen

humanity is spiritually blind and has no proper understanding whereby to judge.45

Presuppositional Apologetics

Some object to presuppositional methodology that it is not ‘open-minded’ enough—

however, we must recognize that no one is neutral from the outset and all people have

presuppositions for weighing and interpreting facts. This

approach seeks to question and show the presuppositions

and assumptions of the other’s foundational worldview as

self-vitiating.46 Such an approach is thus more robust, as it

gets down to the root cause underlying unbelief, is faithful to

a biblical understanding of the effect of the Fall on human

reason and uncompromising on the authority of God’s

revelation, while also being able to use all the ‘evidences’ of

typical modern apologetics. We also see a historic basis in the

Early Church Fathers for this methodology in writers like

Justin Martyr (100-165 CE), Origen (c. 184-254 CE) and

Augustine (354-430 CE), among others.47 Augustine wrote

that, “understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, do not

seek to understand in order to believe, but believe that thou

43 Lewis, God in the Dock, 244; Bahnsen, Presuppositional Apologetics, 7. 44 Kuyper, Principles of Sacred Theology, 381. 45 Bahnsen, Presuppositional Apologetics, 10. This is not to say that the unsaved have absolutely no reasoning capacity

or logical perception—only that the Fall has compromised that ability to clearly see truth, and that the unregenerate

suppresses the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1). See also Van Til, “My Credo,” 11. Van Til’s work in

presuppositional or covenantal apologetics was incredibly influential and highly recommended for further study. See

also Oliphint, Covenantal Apologetics, 37. 46 Bahnsen, Presuppositional Apologetics, 14–16, 23. Bahnsen’s book does a great job of thoroughly addressing the

methodology and challenges to presuppositional apologetics. For a basic introduction to presuppositional apologetics,

Baucham, Expository Apologetics, is a great popular level work. 47 On Justin Martyr, see Chadwick, Justin Martyr’s Defence of Christianity, 275-297. On Origen, see Trigg, Origen:

The Bible and Philosophy in the Third Century; Hauck, “They Saw What They Saw” 239-249. For further reading

see Grant, Greek Apologists of the Second Century. For a great article on the history of apologetics, see

https://bible.org/seriespage/3-brief-history-apologetics

https://bible.org/seriespage/3-brief-history-apologetics


mayest understand”48 At the same time though, Augustine didn’t think our faith a groundless

one, he said “they are much deceived, who think that we believe in Christ without any proofs

concerning Christ.”49

**For a great introduction to Presuppositional Apologetics check out two books: Expository

Apologetics: Answering Objections with the Power of the Word and The Ever-Loving Truth: Can

Faith Thrive in a Post-Christian Culture? by Voddie Baucham Jr. And for a more in depth look

at it, check out: Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended by Greg L. Bahnsen and

Covenantal Apologetics: Principles and Practice in Defense of Our Faith by K. Scott Oliphint.**

The Sufficiency of Scripture

All of this comes back to what was essentially the crux of the Reformation—the belief

in Sola Scriptura—one which many Evangelicals today still

hold to, or at least assent to, but sometimes do not adequately

follow through all the implications which that confession

would logically entail. It is not as easy as ‘just read the Bible

and do what it says’ though, as many different denominations

have their own hermeneutical approaches to interpretation

of scripture—however, this is the level where

presuppositions must be challenged. The loss of thoroughly

working out the implications of Sola Scriptura in every area of

ministry—and thus mission—affects how we practice, share

and live out our Christian faith. Without this sort of a critical

assessment of our basic presuppositions, instead of doing

God’s work, God’s way, we may end up trying to build a prosperous earthly kingdom with

secular tools and despite apparent success, end up as David Wells put it, “living in a fool’s

paradise.”50 Boyce’s words on this point are sharp, but perhaps needed,

“…many evangelicals have abandoned the Bible all the same simply because they do not

think it is adequate for the challenges we face today. They do not think it is sufficient for

winning people to Christ in this age, so they turn to felt-need sermons or entertainment

or ‘signs and wonders’ instead. They do not think the Bible is sufficient for achieving

Christian growth, so they turn to therapy groups or Christian counselling. They do not

think it is sufficient for making God’s will known, so they look for external signs or

48 Augustine, “Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel according to St. John,” 184. St. Anslem (1033-1109CE) likewise

said, “For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I

believe, --that unless I believed, I should not understand.” 49 Augustine, “Concerning Faith of Things Not See,” 339. 50 Wells, No Place for Truth, 68.


revelations. They do not think it is adequate for changing our society, so they establish

evangelical lobby groups in Washington and work to elect “Christian” congressmen,

senators, presidents, and other officials.”51

Conclusions

In conclusion, after assessing the cultural context which we find ourselves today

where Christianity is increasingly being pushed to the fringes and the temptations to

compromise are ever increasing, we must seriously re-evaluate our methodological

approach to Christian mission in this new ‘exilic’ reality. There is a fine line between Gospel

contextualization and compromise which must be carefully discerned. Our faith should

always be shaped by the Word, guided by the Spirit and thoroughly dependent on God to do

for us that which we cannot do for ourselves. The return to scripture as the source and rule

of faith which shapes all of our ministry practice and belief is important in navigating this

‘new’ paradigm shift. However, a study of history also would prove to be incredibly

enlightening as this is not the only time or context that the church has been pushed to the

margins.

This sort of base will radically change the way we think about evangelism and

engaging in apologetics with our culture. We should not be afraid to challenge and question

our presuppositions by adopting an ethos similar to the Reformers who challenged the

dominating ideologies of the time by seeking to be faithfully submitted to the scriptures and

aligned to the faith once and for all delivered to the saints. Christianity throughout the

centuries has flourished under persecution and hardships, showing the true resilience of our

faith, and often these very trials have served to refine the Church. So while we do not look

forward to marginalization and the potential of increased persecution, we can rest assured

that God is in control and He uses all these things for His good purposes.

51 Boice, Whatever Happened to The Gospel of Grace, 24.


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