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This entry is part of the Evangelical Outpost blog blog symposium. The symposium focuses on an article by David Gelernter in Commentary entitled Americanism and its Enemies.

A very brief summary of Gelernter’s thesis is that “Americanism” — a belief in that Americans are “morally superior, closer to God” — derives from the Puritans’ vision of a people set apart for devotion to God. The Puritan vision, in turn derived from Biblical imagery relating to the nation of Israel as God’s chosen people and of the blessings God would bestow on His people if they remained faithful to Him.

So far, so good. This is hardly a novel observation, although few serious historians, even serious conservative historians, would state the case so simplistically. Certainly the Puritans’ vision carried through to some extent into the founding of the colonies and later of our Republic, and even more certainly our political leaders have often used symbolism drawn from the Puritanical vision for rhetorical purposes. Of course, this is but one thread in an extraordinarily complex weave, and the “Americanist” impulse can hardly be reduced to this one thread. But the thread is there.

From this, Gelernter suggests “anti-Americanism” is a reaction against the underlying religiosity of Americanism. He notes that, “[i]n modern times, anti-Americanism is closely associated with anti-Christianism and anti-Semitism.” (Emphasis in original.) Here I think Gelernter’s thesis goes dangerously awry.

Gelernter’s thesis first goes astray because of its causal reductionism. It may well be true that many anti-Americanists are also anti-Christian and anti-Jewish. For a large segment of this population, however, this has nothing to do with anti-religious sentiments. Rather, it has everything to do with religion — the religion of radical Islamic fundamentalism. This glaring omission alone spins Gelernter’s thesis to a wisp.

For another large segment of the anti-American population, anti-religiosity and anti-Americanism go hand in hand because they are part of the zeitgeist of postmodern nihlism. They are in many ways “anti-Everything,” having given up any universal truths.

Yet, perhaps paradoxicaly, the answer to these anti-Everythings will not likely be found in a reassertion of confident, unquestioning, manly religiosity of the “W” variety. The forefathers of the anti-Everythings — among whom were the Deists who wrote our founding documents — established Reason as the ultimate foundation of Truth. When that foundation crumbled, they were left with nothing but the Cartesian cogito and the materialist assumptions of modern science. Many of them have abandoned Truth for “Preferences.” It is not “religion” per se that these children of the Enlightenment rage against; it is absolutism in any form.

What the anti-Everythings need, then, is not more propositional bravado, but more incarnational Truth. They don’t need to be told America is a “city on a Hill” towards which they must bow; they need to see Americans, particularly American Christians, “shine like stars in the universe as [we] hold out the word of life.” (Phil. 2:15-16.)

If the only problems with Gelernter’s thesis were these reductionistic tendencies, we might simply shrug and accept it for what it’s worth. But there is a mroe serious problem, perhaps the most serious problem possible — a problem of idolatry.

From the perspective of a religious American, it’s tempting to equate anti-American sentiment with “anti-Christ.” In my own dispensational Christian heritage, there were many who did this quite explicitly. I doubt Gelertner is aware of his kinship to the oddity of American Evangelicalism that is old-school dispensationalism. But whether one takes the dispensationalist’s view that anti-American literally equals “anti-Christ,” or follows Gelertner’s more subtle equation of anti-American equals anti-religious, the result is the same. To be anti-American is to be anti-God.

The problem with this way of thinking is that the lines between America and God, and between Church (the people of God) and Nation (all the people under a God-ordained government), lines that should be sharp and clear, become fuzzy. This can be convenient if one wishes to dismiss critics without much analysis, but it is antithetical to the Church’s prophetic mission. Indeed, it can become its own, perhaps more insidious form of “anti-Christ.” We do well to remember that the “beast” depicted in the apocalyptic imagery of Revelation comes not as an anti-religionist, but as one who coopts genuine prophetic faith.

So do we answer anti-Americanism by reasserting a Puritanical Americanism? I think not. We as Americans answer anti-Americanism by practicing, everywhere in the world, the principles of freedom, dignity and justice that we have historically proclaimed. We as American Christians do not so much answer anti-Americanism, but rather we incarnate the prophetic Word of God, representing in our lives and relationships the living Christ, who will judge all nations, including our own. Anything less betrays our heritage both as Americans and Christians.

I’ve been wrestling for a few days about how to write about the Tsunami. There’ve been some good efforts at gaining theological perspective on this tragedy, including, from the Reformed perspective, posts by A Physicist’s Perspective, John Piper, and from the “emerging” blogsphere, Jason Clark, as well as lots of good practical resources, including the collection on Christianity Today’s website.

There simply are no words or neat theological concepts that make sense of a tragedy like this. I like some of the reminders from my Reformed brothers that God is fully sovereign over even this circumstance. It happened within the scope of His plan, in accordance with His perfect justice, wisdom and love. In this regard, the tragedy is not “senseless” or “meaningless.” Each life lost, each family broken apart, each person whose home and livelihood was ruined, was and is held in God’s hands. This is true, and I cling to it.

Yet, in a way, it isn’t really enough. Though in faith I believe what I just wrote, it sounds sterile, and worse it feels sterile. In many ways it reads like — and perhaps is — something people say to make themselves feel better about a distant tragedy outside their own personal experience. If it had been my children swept away by the sea, these words would be no less true, but probably would offer far less immediate comfort.

Perhaps God’s heart for those of us not directly in the Tsunami’s wake is simply for us to empathize with the victims and survivors. We can intellectualize it, explain it in smart-sounding theological terms, but I wonder if what we most need to do is identify with it, allow its awfulness to sink in, drink up the darkness that sometimes characterizes the human condition. There are no explanations for it that will make sense to us, any more than there are explanations for any unexpected accident or illness. Life is short, and often hard, and ultimately our hope lies in the mystery of the crucified and risen Christ, in reasons beyond our questions, in answers beyond our reason.

“The early bird gets the worm, but the early worm gets eaten.”

Another entry in my ad hoc series on finding “the real thing”….

The other morning I was in the kitchen when I heard my 3-year-old son, who had just awakened, tromping down the stairs. I grabbed him at the bottom of the stairs in a big bear hug and he burried his face against my neck. There was a moment when I could feel his absolute trust, contentment, and joy in being wrapped up in his dad’s embrace. At that moment I knew I was completely fulfilling my calling in life for that moment. There was nothing else in that moment that I could have or should have been doing other than embracing my son. It struck me that it’s these simple relational things that, more often than not, are “the real thing” we seek so earnestly in our intellectual and spiritual journeys.

It also struck me that this was a picture of how God desires to relate to us. The beauty of that moment came not only from my willingness to embrace my son, but also from his delight and faith in me. He was content in my embrace because nothing in the world meant more to him than to be loved by me. And this is how is is meant to be between us and our heavenly father.

I’ve updated my RSS feed so it accurately slurps content from this site. Please update your feed reader links: http://www.davidopderbeck.com/indextgd.rdf

If you don’t do RSS yet, I’d encourge you to download a copy of Bottom Feeder, a free open source aggregator. It makes keeping up with your favorite blogs much easier.

As for content here, I’ve been reading voraciously — maybe obsessively — over the past month and have much to say. Partly because of time constraints and partly because I’m still working on what I want this site to be, however, I don’t anticipate a major post every day. I think I’ll shoot for the occasional “chatty” post interspersed maybe once a week or so with someting hopefully more meaty. If you tune in here regularly, please continue to do so, and drop me a line sometime.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been engaged in a discussion on The Ooze that has ranged from the nature of Hell, to the meaning and purpose of the atonement, to the nature of God. It began as an inquiry I posted, looking for some “emergent” perspectives on Hell. It became a debate on universalism vs. the “traditional” view of Hell. (The primary universalist proponent wasn’t really an “emergent” person, he charcterized himself as a modernist who no longer believes in a personal God).

Universalism seems completely untenable to me in light of scriptures such as Rev. 20:11-15. But the discussion challenged my complacency about what exactly the Bible says about Hell. Is Hell really a place where people will be burned alive forever, regardless of what kind of life they led?

This became an important question to me, and has led to something of a “dark night of the soul” I still find myself in this week. What is our God really like? Is He vindictive, inflicting unspeakable, unending punishments on billions of people who may die in poverty without ever hearing His name, with no sense of proportionality?

All of this also stirred up remembered feelings of fear and literal trembling, when as a young teenager I was exposed to old-time “fire and brimstone” preachers. And it made me recall exhortations to abandon “worldly” pursuits such as education and recreation for bare-knuckled evangelism. Is the grim “evangelistic headcount” ethos really correct after all?

As I studied the question (I read, among other things, Zondervan’s Four Views on Hell, a useful summary of four different views), I came to the conclusion that the Biblical imagery concerning Hell is not intended to be precisely descriptive. It speaks, for example, of Hell as a place of fire but also a place of “gloomy dungeons” (2 Peter 2:4) and as “darkness” (Matt. 25:41). Further, Jesus seems to suggest there are differing degress of punishment based on a person’s works (Mat. 11:21-24 and Luke 12:47-48). So, there seem to be internal scriptural reasons to conclude that the language about Hell as “fire” is not necessarily literal. My personal conviction is that we cannot know exactly what Hell will be like, and that it will not necessarily be the same experience for every lost person, but will be in proportion to the person’s works; yet for all it will be an unending separation from God’s blessings.

This eased my mental anguish a little. Whatever Hell is like, it is perfectly consistent with God’s pefect justice and perfect love. It isn’t arbitrary. No one will be there who has not rejected God and His gift of salvation. Yet, it’s still unspeakably awful. Doesn’t it still suggest we should reduce the faith to the barest bones of evangelism?

On this score, it was helpful for me to re-read J.I. Packer’s Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God. As Packer so plainly yet artfully notes, it is God who calls and saves people. The Holy Spirit is the instrumentality by which people are saved. Thus, we do not need to constantly feel as though we must “force” the issue with unbelieving friends and acquaintances. As we submit to God, and look for opportunities to explain the hope that is within us, we can be assured that we will be used in accordance with His plans to bring people into His Kingdom.

I was still left, though, with the question of God’s nature. Why would God create a world in which some — many — will face the anguish of being separated from Him forever? Here, a focus on the atonement was helpful. The substitutionary theory of the atonement — that Jesus bore God’s wrath for us on the cross — does not suggest some divide between a loving Jesus and a hateful God. Jesus is God. Thus, God himself, in the person of the Son, took the punishment of Hell, bore the force of His own wrath, for us. This is a mystery beyond all mysteries. God himself, in Christ, took my place! What greater confirmation of His goodness and love could there be?

Finally, the problem of reductionism yet looms. As I reflected and continue to reflect on this, it seems to me that the reality of Hell, and the real urgency of missions and evangelism, should not lead to reductionism about other important things such as art, education and recreation. God gave us the cross not merely to snatch us from the flames, but to build His Kingdom. We take part in that even now, and in a very real sense take part in His work of calling people to Himself, as we mirror the varied aspects of His image in us. And this is so in some sense even of human culture at large. Although the world is corrupt and at odds with God, nevertheless His image shows through in the power of great music, film and other art, in the grace of a young pitcher’s fastball, in the moral impulse of philanthropy and relief efforts, in the intellectual effort and rigor of scholarship. As we celebrate these things, and even enjoy them, we have the unique opportunity to show how they point to the creator who gave Himself to redeem the world.

What, then, of emergent and Hell? In my view, it’s a terrible mistake to marginalize Hell, or to suggest it’s an outdated doctrine leading to a wrong view of an angry God. As one of the characters in the Narnia Chronicles said of Aslan, “he’s not a tame lion.” Part of God’s majesty is that His character encompasses the perfection of justice and holiness as well as of love and mercy, without contradiction. Hell is part of the reality of free people relating to a Majestic God. We might be more careful in how we explain the scriptural imagery of Hell, but we cannot lose Hell and retain a meaningful faith.

I’ve been spending some time lately hanging out at The Ooze, which has been fun and fascinating. There seem to be two related by different strands in the “Emergent” movement. One is missiological: an effort to relate to the “heart language” of post-modern people. The other epistemological: an effort to reenvision theology in light of post-foundationalist epistemology.

The latter trend is the most interesting, but also the most dangerous. Christianity has always adapted to shifts in epistemology: from “authority” based, to “rationality” based, and now to post-foundationalism. The difficult trick is to treat epistemology as simply a tool for understanding truth, rather than an ideological fortress. This is true not only of “modernists” who cling to the notion that reason provides a universal foundation for truth claims, but also to post-foundationalists who reject anything “modernists” say because of their foundationalism. It’s fascinating to see this process in development at sites like The Ooze.

Following is a comment I posted on a thread at The Ooze concerning whether “postmodern Christian” is an oxymoron:

It seems to me that people on either side of this question usually are talking past each other because of different definitions of “postmodern.” Most conservative Christians who take the “no postmodern Christianity” line define “postmodern” as meaning a rejection of the concept of objective Truth coupled with a rejection of the concept of objective authority. With that understanding, they are correct. If you reject any notion of Truth existing outside your own perceptions, and you reject any notion of authority existing outside that which you create for yourself through your own perceptions, then you cannot say “Jesus is Lord.” If we glean nothing else from the Christian story as expressed in scripture, it must at least be that “Jesus is Lord” in a real way that doesn’t depend on whether I perceive or believe him to be Lord.

I gather that most in the emerging conversation wouldn’t accept that limited a definition of “postmodern.” It seems to me that in “A New Kind of Christian,” for example, McLaren uses “postmodern” to mean mostly a set of cultural attitudes — a skepticism towards sweeping “Truth” and “Authority” claims rooted in a strong sense of the limitations of human perception. With this definition, clearly one can be a “postmodern Christian.” Indeed, one could argue that “postmodern Christianity” in this sense is not something radically new, but rather represents an outgrowth of trends from the Protestant Reformation, Romanticism, German Higher Criticism, the Great Awakenings, and Evangelical reactions to Fundamentalism.

I suppose there are also many shades of meaning to “postmodern” between these two poles. In part because of this definitional confusion, I think I’m starting to lean toward the term “postcolonial” that some have started using. For me at least, much of the struggle is to examine the cultural assumptions that pervade my faith as an American Evangelical, without taking the extreme view that “faith” is nothing more than “culture.”

The New York Times today carries a fascinating article about a recently rediscovered Vivaldi work called Andromeda. The work was located by a violinist in an old Venetian orphanage where Vivaldi worked as a music teacher.

The violinist is an amatuer Vivaldi scholar, and developed some traditional evidence for the provenance of the manuscript. However, some of his most compelling evidence is the “feel” of the piece under his fingers as he plays through it. Having played and performed Vivaldi works many times, this violinist believes he has an intuitive sense for how Vivaldi pieces play.

Some traditional music scholars disagree. In particular, a leading academic Vivaldi scholar believes the work is an amalgam that contains only a very small contribution from Vivaldi. Perhaps not coincidentally, this same scholar had a copy of the same manuscript in his possession years before, and had summarily dismissed it.

The New York Times writer describes his own visit to the Venetian orphanage’s archives. Over two hundred years ago, the orhpanage was brimming with infants who had been left by abandoned mothers. Many mothers would leave broken pieces of religious pin-medallions with the babies, in the hope that they could some day reclaim their child with the matching half of the medallion. The Times writer had examined some of these medal pieces, and sensed the desperation of the mothers who left them, never to reclaim their child. He writes:

There are issues only scholarship can settle. But the boundaries of our knowledge are still limited enough to leave us mired in guesswork. And while scholars speak their guesses in the voice of reason, there’s something to be said for hte interpretive force of hands-on-experience: for the touch of a 200-year-old pin or the feel of a violinist’s fingers.

A lovely illustration, I think, of the limits of “objective” propositions, and the need for other ways of knowing to flesh out the Truth.

In an earlier post, expressing some frustration with the state of evangelicalism, I asked where to find the “real thing.” This morning I was humbled to receive an e-mail concerning some family acquaintances who had serious trouble with the birth of their new baby. The mother nearly died and the baby was born prematurely. In the e-mail, these folks were expressing heartfelt thanks to many people who had been praying for them, sending flowers, and offering assistance, including their friends, friends of friends, and others who hardly knew them. This, it struck me, is the “real thing.” It’s not so much the recovery the mom and baby are making — although that seems to be remarkable and perhaps even “miraculous” in a sense — it’s the way the Christian community, the Church with a capital “C”, rallied to their side.

If you’ve ever experienced that kind of love in a time of personal crisis — and I have, in a major health crisis of my own a few years ago — and if you’ve ever seen and felt God work to bring blessing through such a time — and I have — you know that all the problems and shortcomings of your local church (with a small “c”) and all of our theological debates pale in significance. That’s the “real thing.”