The Christian community today is confronted by an increasingly critical situation. The crisis is reflected not merely in declining church membership, waning interest in Christian education, general apathy on the part of the young people, and fruitless theological dispute, but comes to the fore especially in the apparent failure to recognize the real enemy: the steadily waxing power of secularism. An effective disguise and subtle diversive tactics make the enemy dangerous indeed. The peril of an unsuspected secularism facing the Christian community today demands the kind of decisive, united action of which the church of Jesus Christ seems no longer capable. Consequently, the future looks very dark. One wonders and worries. Perhaps Christianity has run its course in the West. Perhaps a dying western democratic Christianity will give way to a flourishing, vigorous Christian church in Asia and Africa.
The greatest threat to the Christian community is not communism. Nor is it the appalling immorality in our own land. ]t is not the rising divorce rate and misuse of alcohol and drugs that threaten to undo the church. Not even a liberal neo-orthodoxy constitutes the biggest danger. Instead, it is the insidious spirit of secularism that spells death for the Christian church. And note well: this spirit of secularism is not synonymous with immorality and “worldliness”! It is not the kind of secularism that is so glibly referred to when the topic of conversation shifts to the ethical practices of certain labor leaders and politicians! These are merely some of the disguises skillfully employed by the real enemy. This most dangerous foe turns out to be a secularism which preaches that Christianity is mere morality, that to be a Christian in the areas of politics, business, learning, science and technology means simply to behave honestly, to refrain from profanity and strong drink, to treat the neighbor kindly and to invite him to church. That these areas of politics, learning, science, and so on, themselves need to be reformed and brought under the Kingship of Jesus Christ is a matter from which this kind of secularism cleverly distracts the Christian eye. This is the kind of secularism that took root more than 600 years ago and has succeeded in eradicating the Christian witness from practically all areas of life. The process of secularization has been so successful that today the power of the Gospel is effectively confined and relegated to a small area within churchwalls. Christianity has been compressed to a mere matter of private concern. Meanwhile, practically the entire scientific enterprise, the world of politics and labor as well as education have fallen prey to the increasingly intolerant spirit of secularism, a humanistic, neutralistic secularism, a secularism which keeps the Christian community’s attention diverted to mere matters of morality, while it blatantly continues to place man on the throne of God.
The American scientific enterprise has so effectively and completely come under the control of humanistic secularism that Christians quite unashamedly and unwittingly join in the chorus of praise to the glory of autonomous man. Only then do Christians become disturbed when an astronaut’s profanity is heard from the other side of the moon. Hardly anywhere is there concern about the fact that Jesus Christ is not the King of kings in the world of science and technology. As a matter of fact, the term “Christian technology” strikes most of us as odd and unreal. How can technology be Christian? The difficulty of this question demonstrates the smashing victory that secularism has scored in the scientific arena.
In politics the situation is not much better. Here again, the Christian community seems concerned only about the moral conduct of individuals. The inner course and direction of the political process remains untouched by the Gospel. Isolated Christian politicians attempt to stem the tide towards an accelerating apostasy, but accomplish little more than the introduction of a brief prayer at breakfast sessions. The possibility of united Christian political action is generally regarded as an impractical whim. Actually, by far the majority of Christians in North America have not even heard of such a possibility. Unquestionably, secularism has an exclusive, powerful grip on politics. All that Christianity can do at the present is to exert some superficial moral influence.
We do not need to spend much time describing the state of American education. The universities are bastions of humanism. God and his Word have been banned from the public schools. And where in this great “Christian” nation of ours do we find one Single really Christian university?
The humanistic secularism that has gained control of all areas of public life and has forced Christianity to retreat to a small area of private religion is now preparing for the final onslaught: the church itself. The symptoms are ominous: death-of-God theologians, Harvey Cox’s Secular City, lack of vigor and relevance in the church, and dead orthodoxy. To this list we must hasten to add the apparent unwillingness to seek out and root out secularism in many of our own institutions of Christian education. Is the education in our Christian schools really God-centered education, or is it in reality secularistic education with some Bible texts attached? Suppose we removed chapel exercises, opening and closing prayer, Bible stories and Bible courses from our schools, how much distinctively Christian education would there be left? Or again, is Christian education merely a matter of a Christian teacher standing in front of covenant children—a combination automatically producing Christian instruction? The mere fact that these questions can be legitimately asked after years and years of Christian education on this continent demonstrates the extent that we are gripped in the strangle hold of secularism. This state of affairs, however, is not surprising. For twentieth-century Christian education is rooted in the historical development of western civilization. That development includes a centuries-long process of secularization.
When the Gospel burst upon the scene nearly 2000 years ago, it faced a hostile, pagan world. Although it initially turned that world upside down, Christianity soon became infected and contaminated by Greek ways of thinking. Even Augustine, though we revere his valiant battles on behalf of the church of Jesus Christ, succumbed to the spirit of Neo-platonism. He recognized, however, especially towards the end of his life, that pagan ways of thinking are incompatible with the radical1 character of the Gospel. Nevertheless, as the Catholic Church grew into a monolithic institution, the pagan philosophy of Plato and Aristotle became more and more firmly entrenched in Christian thought. In other words, Christianity was accommodated to paganism; two mutually exclusive principles were artificially united.
One of the most ingenious theologians of the Middle Ages was Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). This dean of Scholasticism managed to produce such an artful synthesis of Christianity and Greek philosophy that the effects of his work are still felt in reformed theology today.
Thomas denied that the Fall rendered man totally depraved. Instead, he claimed that Fall merely weakened man’s nature. When man fell, Thomas declared, he merely lost what might be called a “spiritual,” supernatural part; what remained was a weakened—not fallen—natural part of rational humanity. A “natural light of reason” continued to illuminate this weakened humanity in essentially unabated fashion. Through the grace dispensed by the Church, the spiritual, supernatural part is restored, and man is complete again. Since the essence of every man is his natural rationality, said Thomas Aquinas, echoing the Greeks, it is clear that Reason is the common characteristic that unites mankind. What separates the Christian from the pagan is his supernatural faith. With respect to Reason, all men are pretty well alike. Sin, faith, and grace are not really relevant to the “natural light of reason.” Hence, Thomas concluded, we simply take the philosophy of Aristotle one of the most “reasonable” systems produced by the “natural light of reason”—and we use it to describe the “natural/rational man” in his “natural” life of society, law, science, and so on. About the “supernatural” part—well, the supernatural revelation in the Bible tells us about faith and grace, theology, and other such “spiritual” matters.
Observe carefully what Thomas is doing. He is constructing a two-story man. Sin affects the top story only; it removes it. The bottom story remains essentially intact. Faith is a matter of the supernatural man, reason is the determining characteristic of the natural man. The top story is a theological product, whereas the bottom part is simply a pagan Greek construction. The Scriptures—and this is the crucial point—are relevant only to the supernatural, spiritual component, the so-called life of faith; the “natural light of reason” takes care of the rest. The power of the inscripturated Word is thus limited to spiritual and moral, so-called religious matters only.
Right here we find the root of modern secularism. Right here we find the spawning grounds of endless grief for the Christian community. For the Thomistic, scholastic view bequeathed to modern history a split-reality consisting of (1) a spiritual realm of super-nature and grace, faith, the Bible, theology, the church, and Christian virtues, and (2) a realm of the natural light of reason, philosophy, the state and society, science, and law.
A growing humanism was quick to make use of the inherent possibilities. It recognized that, assuming the split-world of Thomas, there was no reason to believe that the two realms of grace and nature were intrinsically connected. William of Ockham, a late medieval critic of Scholasticism, had already demonstrated that, 10brically speaking, there was no such connection at all. As a matter of fact, the two realms were artificially held together by the edictive power of the Church. Once that power was broken, the area of “nature,” i.e., philosophy, science, the stale, and so on, could go it alone.
Ironically, given the distorted medieval situation in which the instituted Church ruled everything, the initial process of secularization was a step in the right direction. Indeed, the Reformation itself was instrumental in breaking the strangle hold of the Church. The Church, as the dispenser of grace and thus of a higher order, had assumed the role of sole divine power over all “natural things.” Secularization, the process of withdrawing from the “sacred” power of the Church, attempted to correct that faulty state of affairs. However, since the Church claimed to have copyright to the Scriptures—both Church and Bible belonged to the supernatural realm of grace, remember—the withdrawal from the authority of the Church implied the withdrawal from the authority of the Word of God. Consequently, secularization turned into the monster of secularism. Together with the Church and the Bible, the other inhabitants of the scholastic world of supernatural grace were systematically eliminated from an increasingly autonomous realm of natural reason. That realm of nature and reason eventually grew into a mighty bulwark of humanism and secularism in which Christianity played more and more a marginal role.
The Reformation created some powerful shockwaves throughout the process of secularization. God’s sovereignty over all of life -the “natural” world included -was dynamically reasserted. The era of an all-powerful Roman Catholic Church came to an end. Yet, in spite of its vigor, the Reformation could not stem the tide of secularism. The humanistic Rationalism of the 17th and 18th centuries proved too strong. Even the scholasticism that tenaciously clung to Reformed theology could not be entirely eliminated.
As the centuries rolled by, humanistic secularism continued to tighten its grip upon western civilization. More and more the Christian religion—originally the Thomistic realm of grace -was forced to take a back seat. Christianity, church, religion, the Bible, all these were fast becoming individually private matters. The forces of humanism and secularism consolidated into an impregnable fortress of apostasy. One sphere after the other fell victim to the relentless powers of unbelief. The Gospel ceased to be a directive force in the development of the western world.
Today in our society Christianity is still tolerated—as long as it is kept within church walls or the privacy of the individual home, or as long as it concerns itself with superficial matters of morality only. Christianity is permitted to preach a gospel of saving the individual soul. Christianity is permitted to brush a “religious” color upon society. Even Christian education is allowed to flourish, as long as it continues to call itself private education. But a desperately needed antithetical united Christian witness in politics, labor, technology, and the business world the secularistic humanism of our age will ruthlessly attempt to stamp out. The principal reason for the continued existence of “religious freedom” is that Christianity is content to withdraw from the public arena and operate on a private, personal basis. Should the Christian witness really exert itself and touch the secular world in its heart, the antithesis would appear at once with fire and sword.
In such a world with such a heritage twentieth-century Christian education finds itself. The need of this late hour is to reflect communally; what is the state of present Christian education in elementary school, junior high, high school, and in our colleges and seminaries? Why is it that so many of our graduates go out into society and are not heard from again? What has happened to so many brilliant students who exhibited prime qualities of leadership? Why is it that there exists among our teachers so little understanding of the relationship between the Bible and learning? How come there is so Iitt1e concern among our teachers to teach their courses in an integrally Christian manner? Why is the communal interaction of faculty members so often limited to a purely social level?
These difficult questions arc urgently calling for answers. The enemy is within our ranks. A deceptive secularism has us by the throat and threatens to undo us. The antithesis between Cod-centered learning and the apostate mind is becoming increasingly blurred. A complacent Christian community continues to be easily deluded into thinking that education is Christian as long as the teacher is Christian and as long as Bible courses are taught. Meanwhile the majority of the courses that prepare the student to assume his responsibility in the world remains thoroughly secular. The result is that our institutions graduate split-personalities: young men and women who have learned to be honest and good and virtuous—but whose thought patterns are secular. These graduates are Christians, yes, but in the Thomistic, scholastic sense. They maintain a high level of “spiritual” life, but have not understood that the Word of God demands a radical reformation of all areas of human endeavor. The individualistic secularism in our education prevents these graduates from understanding that Christianity is a communal affair outside the church walls as well as within. Thanks to the effects of a rugged American pragmatic individualism our institutions fail to produce young men and women who have seen that the battle is against spirits, movements, and against the community of unbelief.
The hour indeed is late. Our church membership is declining. Interest in Christian education is waning. There is general apathy on the part of our young people. Apparently fruitless theological debate continues. Most serious of all, the enemy is wit11in our ranks, within our own Christian schools. Shall we continue to pamper him?
Few will dispute that the education of our children and young people will be instrumental in determining the future of the Christian community. The magnitude of our responsibility is incalculable. Unless, with the grace of God, we succeed in producing strong leaders and men who, like Abraham Kuyper, have begun to understand the sweep and majesty of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, unless we succeed in training men who have begun to understand the power of an apostate secularism and who dare to attack boldly, we shall wither and die. Slowly but surely, and insidiously, the spirit of secularism nibbles away at the foundations of a moralistic Christianity until the decaying pietistic structure collapses.
(To be continued)
l. Radical: from Latin radix = root; radical means: going to the roots, i.e., the heart of the matter.
John Van Dyk is instructor – department of philosophy, Dort College, Sioux Center.
The greatest threat to the Christian community is not communism. Nor is it the appalling immorality in our own land. ]t is not the rising divorce rate and misuse of alcohol and drugs that threaten to undo the church. Not even a liberal neo-orthodoxy constitutes the biggest danger. Instead, it is the insidious spirit of secularism that spells death for the Christian church. And note well: this spirit of secularism is not synonymous with immorality and “worldliness”! It is not the kind of secularism that is so glibly referred to when the topic of conversation shifts to the ethical practices of certain labor leaders and politicians! These are merely some of the disguises skillfully employed by the real enemy. This most dangerous foe turns out to be a secularism which preaches that Christianity is mere morality, that to be a Christian in the areas of politics, business, learning, science and technology means simply to behave honestly, to refrain from profanity and strong drink, to treat the neighbor kindly and to invite him to church. That these areas of politics, learning, science, and so on, themselves need to be reformed and brought under the Kingship of Jesus Christ is a matter from which this kind of secularism cleverly distracts the Christian eye. This is the kind of secularism that took root more than 600 years ago and has succeeded in eradicating the Christian witness from practically all areas of life. The process of secularization has been so successful that today the power of the Gospel is effectively confined and relegated to a small area within churchwalls. Christianity has been compressed to a mere matter of private concern. Meanwhile, practically the entire scientific enterprise, the world of politics and labor as well as education have fallen prey to the increasingly intolerant spirit of secularism, a humanistic, neutralistic secularism, a secularism which keeps the Christian community’s attention diverted to mere matters of morality, while it blatantly continues to place man on the throne of God.
The American scientific enterprise has so effectively and completely come under the control of humanistic secularism that Christians quite unashamedly and unwittingly join in the chorus of praise to the glory of autonomous man. Only then do Christians become disturbed when an astronaut’s profanity is heard from the other side of the moon. Hardly anywhere is there concern about the fact that Jesus Christ is not the King of kings in the world of science and technology. As a matter of fact, the term “Christian technology” strikes most of us as odd and unreal. How can technology be Christian? The difficulty of this question demonstrates the smashing victory that secularism has scored in the scientific arena.
In politics the situation is not much better. Here again, the Christian community seems concerned only about the moral conduct of individuals. The inner course and direction of the political process remains untouched by the Gospel. Isolated Christian politicians attempt to stem the tide towards an accelerating apostasy, but accomplish little more than the introduction of a brief prayer at breakfast sessions. The possibility of united Christian political action is generally regarded as an impractical whim. Actually, by far the majority of Christians in North America have not even heard of such a possibility. Unquestionably, secularism has an exclusive, powerful grip on politics. All that Christianity can do at the present is to exert some superficial moral influence.
We do not need to spend much time describing the state of American education. The universities are bastions of humanism. God and his Word have been banned from the public schools. And where in this great “Christian” nation of ours do we find one Single really Christian university?
The humanistic secularism that has gained control of all areas of public life and has forced Christianity to retreat to a small area of private religion is now preparing for the final onslaught: the church itself. The symptoms are ominous: death-of-God theologians, Harvey Cox’s Secular City, lack of vigor and relevance in the church, and dead orthodoxy. To this list we must hasten to add the apparent unwillingness to seek out and root out secularism in many of our own institutions of Christian education. Is the education in our Christian schools really God-centered education, or is it in reality secularistic education with some Bible texts attached? Suppose we removed chapel exercises, opening and closing prayer, Bible stories and Bible courses from our schools, how much distinctively Christian education would there be left? Or again, is Christian education merely a matter of a Christian teacher standing in front of covenant children—a combination automatically producing Christian instruction? The mere fact that these questions can be legitimately asked after years and years of Christian education on this continent demonstrates the extent that we are gripped in the strangle hold of secularism. This state of affairs, however, is not surprising. For twentieth-century Christian education is rooted in the historical development of western civilization. That development includes a centuries-long process of secularization.
When the Gospel burst upon the scene nearly 2000 years ago, it faced a hostile, pagan world. Although it initially turned that world upside down, Christianity soon became infected and contaminated by Greek ways of thinking. Even Augustine, though we revere his valiant battles on behalf of the church of Jesus Christ, succumbed to the spirit of Neo-platonism. He recognized, however, especially towards the end of his life, that pagan ways of thinking are incompatible with the radical1 character of the Gospel. Nevertheless, as the Catholic Church grew into a monolithic institution, the pagan philosophy of Plato and Aristotle became more and more firmly entrenched in Christian thought. In other words, Christianity was accommodated to paganism; two mutually exclusive principles were artificially united.
One of the most ingenious theologians of the Middle Ages was Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). This dean of Scholasticism managed to produce such an artful synthesis of Christianity and Greek philosophy that the effects of his work are still felt in reformed theology today.
Thomas denied that the Fall rendered man totally depraved. Instead, he claimed that Fall merely weakened man’s nature. When man fell, Thomas declared, he merely lost what might be called a “spiritual,” supernatural part; what remained was a weakened—not fallen—natural part of rational humanity. A “natural light of reason” continued to illuminate this weakened humanity in essentially unabated fashion. Through the grace dispensed by the Church, the spiritual, supernatural part is restored, and man is complete again. Since the essence of every man is his natural rationality, said Thomas Aquinas, echoing the Greeks, it is clear that Reason is the common characteristic that unites mankind. What separates the Christian from the pagan is his supernatural faith. With respect to Reason, all men are pretty well alike. Sin, faith, and grace are not really relevant to the “natural light of reason.” Hence, Thomas concluded, we simply take the philosophy of Aristotle one of the most “reasonable” systems produced by the “natural light of reason”—and we use it to describe the “natural/rational man” in his “natural” life of society, law, science, and so on. About the “supernatural” part—well, the supernatural revelation in the Bible tells us about faith and grace, theology, and other such “spiritual” matters.
Observe carefully what Thomas is doing. He is constructing a two-story man. Sin affects the top story only; it removes it. The bottom story remains essentially intact. Faith is a matter of the supernatural man, reason is the determining characteristic of the natural man. The top story is a theological product, whereas the bottom part is simply a pagan Greek construction. The Scriptures—and this is the crucial point—are relevant only to the supernatural, spiritual component, the so-called life of faith; the “natural light of reason” takes care of the rest. The power of the inscripturated Word is thus limited to spiritual and moral, so-called religious matters only.
Right here we find the root of modern secularism. Right here we find the spawning grounds of endless grief for the Christian community. For the Thomistic, scholastic view bequeathed to modern history a split-reality consisting of (1) a spiritual realm of super-nature and grace, faith, the Bible, theology, the church, and Christian virtues, and (2) a realm of the natural light of reason, philosophy, the state and society, science, and law.
A growing humanism was quick to make use of the inherent possibilities. It recognized that, assuming the split-world of Thomas, there was no reason to believe that the two realms of grace and nature were intrinsically connected. William of Ockham, a late medieval critic of Scholasticism, had already demonstrated that, 10brically speaking, there was no such connection at all. As a matter of fact, the two realms were artificially held together by the edictive power of the Church. Once that power was broken, the area of “nature,” i.e., philosophy, science, the stale, and so on, could go it alone.
Ironically, given the distorted medieval situation in which the instituted Church ruled everything, the initial process of secularization was a step in the right direction. Indeed, the Reformation itself was instrumental in breaking the strangle hold of the Church. The Church, as the dispenser of grace and thus of a higher order, had assumed the role of sole divine power over all “natural things.” Secularization, the process of withdrawing from the “sacred” power of the Church, attempted to correct that faulty state of affairs. However, since the Church claimed to have copyright to the Scriptures—both Church and Bible belonged to the supernatural realm of grace, remember—the withdrawal from the authority of the Church implied the withdrawal from the authority of the Word of God. Consequently, secularization turned into the monster of secularism. Together with the Church and the Bible, the other inhabitants of the scholastic world of supernatural grace were systematically eliminated from an increasingly autonomous realm of natural reason. That realm of nature and reason eventually grew into a mighty bulwark of humanism and secularism in which Christianity played more and more a marginal role.
The Reformation created some powerful shockwaves throughout the process of secularization. God’s sovereignty over all of life -the “natural” world included -was dynamically reasserted. The era of an all-powerful Roman Catholic Church came to an end. Yet, in spite of its vigor, the Reformation could not stem the tide of secularism. The humanistic Rationalism of the 17th and 18th centuries proved too strong. Even the scholasticism that tenaciously clung to Reformed theology could not be entirely eliminated.
As the centuries rolled by, humanistic secularism continued to tighten its grip upon western civilization. More and more the Christian religion—originally the Thomistic realm of grace -was forced to take a back seat. Christianity, church, religion, the Bible, all these were fast becoming individually private matters. The forces of humanism and secularism consolidated into an impregnable fortress of apostasy. One sphere after the other fell victim to the relentless powers of unbelief. The Gospel ceased to be a directive force in the development of the western world.
Today in our society Christianity is still tolerated—as long as it is kept within church walls or the privacy of the individual home, or as long as it concerns itself with superficial matters of morality only. Christianity is permitted to preach a gospel of saving the individual soul. Christianity is permitted to brush a “religious” color upon society. Even Christian education is allowed to flourish, as long as it continues to call itself private education. But a desperately needed antithetical united Christian witness in politics, labor, technology, and the business world the secularistic humanism of our age will ruthlessly attempt to stamp out. The principal reason for the continued existence of “religious freedom” is that Christianity is content to withdraw from the public arena and operate on a private, personal basis. Should the Christian witness really exert itself and touch the secular world in its heart, the antithesis would appear at once with fire and sword.
In such a world with such a heritage twentieth-century Christian education finds itself. The need of this late hour is to reflect communally; what is the state of present Christian education in elementary school, junior high, high school, and in our colleges and seminaries? Why is it that so many of our graduates go out into society and are not heard from again? What has happened to so many brilliant students who exhibited prime qualities of leadership? Why is it that there exists among our teachers so little understanding of the relationship between the Bible and learning? How come there is so Iitt1e concern among our teachers to teach their courses in an integrally Christian manner? Why is the communal interaction of faculty members so often limited to a purely social level?
These difficult questions arc urgently calling for answers. The enemy is within our ranks. A deceptive secularism has us by the throat and threatens to undo us. The antithesis between Cod-centered learning and the apostate mind is becoming increasingly blurred. A complacent Christian community continues to be easily deluded into thinking that education is Christian as long as the teacher is Christian and as long as Bible courses are taught. Meanwhile the majority of the courses that prepare the student to assume his responsibility in the world remains thoroughly secular. The result is that our institutions graduate split-personalities: young men and women who have learned to be honest and good and virtuous—but whose thought patterns are secular. These graduates are Christians, yes, but in the Thomistic, scholastic sense. They maintain a high level of “spiritual” life, but have not understood that the Word of God demands a radical reformation of all areas of human endeavor. The individualistic secularism in our education prevents these graduates from understanding that Christianity is a communal affair outside the church walls as well as within. Thanks to the effects of a rugged American pragmatic individualism our institutions fail to produce young men and women who have seen that the battle is against spirits, movements, and against the community of unbelief.
The hour indeed is late. Our church membership is declining. Interest in Christian education is waning. There is general apathy on the part of our young people. Apparently fruitless theological debate continues. Most serious of all, the enemy is wit11in our ranks, within our own Christian schools. Shall we continue to pamper him?
Few will dispute that the education of our children and young people will be instrumental in determining the future of the Christian community. The magnitude of our responsibility is incalculable. Unless, with the grace of God, we succeed in producing strong leaders and men who, like Abraham Kuyper, have begun to understand the sweep and majesty of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, unless we succeed in training men who have begun to understand the power of an apostate secularism and who dare to attack boldly, we shall wither and die. Slowly but surely, and insidiously, the spirit of secularism nibbles away at the foundations of a moralistic Christianity until the decaying pietistic structure collapses.
(To be continued)
l. Radical: from Latin radix = root; radical means: going to the roots, i.e., the heart of the matter.
John Van Dyk is instructor – department of philosophy, Dort College, Sioux Center.