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>> At the Lausanne Congress the first Lausanne Congress in 1974, Francis Schaeffer gave a
talk, later published under the title Two Contents, Two Realities. Let me quote from
what Shaffer called the two contents. The first content is sound doctrine. Shaeffer
said, ‘Christianity is a specific body of truth. It is a system and we must not be ashamed
of the word system. There is truth and we must hold that truth.’
The second content is honest answer to honest questions. Shaeffer said, ‘Christianity
is truth, truth that God has told us and if it is truth, it can answer questions.’
Truth and answers, that’s the focus of this presentation.
Half a year ago it was the first of April, a day when we, at least in Europe, have official
permission to fool people. This year’s best prank came from an on-line gaming store called
Game Station. In the site’s terms and conditions which you have to confirm that you have read
and understand before you placing an order they had buried an immortal soul clause. It
read like this: ‘by placing an order via this website on the first day of the fourth
month of the year 2010 anno domini, you agree to grant us a nontransferable option to claim
for now and forever more your immortal soul. Should we wish to exercise this option, you
agree to surrender your immortal soul and any claim you may have on it within five working
days of receiving written notification from Game Station.’ The company even included
a hyper linked option, which said ‘click here to nullify your soul transfer’ and
they rewarded astute shoppers with a coupon worth 5 British pounds. But only 12% of the
buyers noticed this, 88% of that day’s transaction included human souls, 7,500 human souls. We
Europeans, it seems to me, have in a similar careless way sold our souls and dispersed
our rich inheritance. Europe has become the prodigal son. Like Asia Minor and North Africa,
win parts of the world with thriving churches, Europe has denied the Gospel and replaced
it with other convictions, preeminently, secularism.
I have four main points; the first is the European lesson. Of course there’s many
different kinds of Europe. The Roman Catholic south, the Greek Orthodox east, the Protestant
north, you have the divide between the east and west in the former Communist countries,
but there’s still enough things to bind us together to make it meaningful to talk
of one continent: Europe. And in order to understand a dramatic change for the church
in Europe, we need to understand some of the historical background. There is cause and
effect. The secularization of Europe has not come just out of the blue.
Simplifying to the extreme there are two root systems of ideas in Europe with both goes
back to antiquity. Humanism with its roots in Athens; and Christianity with its roots
in Jerusalem. Let’s begin with Christianity.
Christianity. Starting with Jesus of Nazareth where God is gloriously revealed. The belief
in Jesus spread throughout the Roman Empire and became the dominant faith from the fourth
century onward. And then the church grew but gradually also much of the Gospel was lost
or at least confused with other ideas and rediscovered. And we had times of reformation.
And we had strong revivals. And a hundred years ago we had a seemingly strong church
in Europe.
And yet, at the beginning of this century, the Christian faith has so to speak lost in
Europe. Why is that? Why with this history are we struggling on my continent?
The answer is to a large degree to be found in the other root system of Europe. That is
humanism. Putting man at the center of everything and making him the measure of all things.
An idea that was promoted by Protagoras and other Greek philosophers. It was rediscovered
during the Renaissance in the 15th century and became the central idea during the Enlightenment
in the 18th century and onwards. The Enlightenment was at the start mainly a perspective represented
by artists, the intellectual elite of Europe. It affected science and academia which at
that time affected just a few or a small portion of the people. But gradually the Enlightenment
perspective has taken over much of our culture and today both science and academia affect
everyone. And Europe has become a secular culture.
One very interesting thing here is science. Of course science in one sense has its roots
amongst the Greek philosophers but modern science with its empirical investigation into
the actual state of affairs has mainly Christian roots. When modern science grew in the 15th
century and onward, it had basically Christian motivation. We are called to understand God’s
world, to think God’s thoughts after him. But as time went by and more and more in nature
were understood, which of course is not the problem for Christianity; science was hijacked
and turned against its mother. And today it – it’s often looked upon science as if
it has established the Enlightenment perspective.
The resulting situation at the beginning of the 21st century is that Europe is a cut flower
who has lost its root in the truth. Europe has become a deeply secular culture where
God is absent in the public domain and where the underlying world view very often is naturalism.
Please note that secularism in Europe is not a skepticism of a few individuals who challenge
the norm. Rather, it has become the norm. It’s viewed as a positive liberation from
superstition and from religious power play which held people in bondage in previous generations.
Most importantly, secularism is not seen as a world-view in itself on the same level as
Christianity and therefore a competitor to Christianity but as the natural and neutral
starting point which should be shared by all reasonable persons. And then of course after
that you are free to add certain subjective things like Jesus or Buddha or something else
to your life. This is what Philosopher Charles Taylor has called exclusive secularism. A
secularism determined to exclude all transcendent reference points from cultural, social and
political life.
The lesson for the global church to learn is this: do not ignore the secular outlook
at the stage when it only affects a small portion of the population. And everything
still seems all right for the church. Today secularism dominates science, academia and
media which in so many ways influences the whole world.
How could this happen? How could Enlightenment thinking take over in Europe? Part of the
answer is the faulty responses given by the church. One response was compromise. Many
Christian theologians and leader felt compelled to adjust their theology to the Enlightenment
philosophy. They seemed to think that the scientific method demanded they acceptance
of Enlightenment as if the scientific findings meant that God was out of the picture. So
in order to be seen as intellectually honest, they started to deny miracles and revelation
and the supernatural. This is of course the liberal theology that has intoxicated the
European churches so deeply.
An example, a hundred years ago one of the most influential thinkers was the German sociologist
and theologian Ernst Troeltsch. He said this, “We are no longer in the business of fixing
permanent dogmas from an inspired Bible. Instead we formulate teaching which express the essence
of Christian piety.” In other words, he goes not from theology to practice, but he
goes from Christian piety and practice and from that he formulates what is theology.
By becoming infected with Enlightenment thinking, the church has become her own grave digger.
Or to change the metaphor, the church has been hijacked by secular philosophies and
its offspring, liberal theology.
The other response, the other faulty response was withdrawal. It came from more Bible-believing
people who did not want to accept the Enlightenment challenge. They wanted to hold onto the whole
Gospel but they wanted to do it withdrawal from culture, from academia and from science.
This is the more pietistic and later charismatic attitude. Don’t misunderstand me, there’s
so much to welcome and admire in pietistic and charismatic theology, but there has been
a dangerous weakness in its isolation from culture and in the neglect of the intellectual
challenges. There’s been too little teaching on the worldly level of Christianity. There’s
too often been a separation between mind and heart and between mind and the Holy Spirit
and the result is that the church has forfeited the intellectual challenge.
Europe has a long history based on the Christian faith. But claiming it’s not possible to
believe that Christianity’s true, Europe has turned away. Europe was first lost for
the Gospel in the areas of ideas. If Europe is going to be won for the Gospel once again,
it must be won also, not only but also in the area of ideas, because that’s the point
of departure.