THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING GOD

7/25/2019 THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING GOD

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WILLIAM CAREY INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING GOD:

PARALLELS BETWEEN THE DIMINISHING GOD OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

AND OF MODERN CHRISTIANITY

Dan Poenaru

Mentor: Stephen D. Morad

Module 1B Research Paper

March 2! 2"#"


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Getting humans to realize the true nature of God has already taken more than two

thousand years, and God is still not fully knownCITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033

"That's silly, honey. People just don't get smaller."CITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033

From the dawn of time man has struggled with the inherent greatness, otherworldliness,

and incomprehensiveness of God and as a result has perpetually attempted to reduce God to his

own size and to tame him. The simple, self-evident truth that God can neither be reduced to

human size nor tamed does not seem to be a lesson learned throughout history. As George

Bernard Shaw quipped, We learned from history that we learn nothing from history. This essay

will focus on the human tendency to reduce Gods nature and then fill in the gaps with various

man-made gods and other fillers. Thus the true universal God becomes a God of the gaps (vide

infra). We will attempt to expose this aberration in the Old Testament (OT) and then provide

further insights on it from an African Christian perspective. We will also briefly trace this

concept in other religions and finally examine it in our contemporary Western society.

CITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 (Loewen 2000, 108). This essay is based to a significant extent on

the ideas and concepts from The Bible in cross-cultural perspective, the magnumopus of

Christian missionary anthropologist Jacob Loewen (1922-2006).

CITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 Louise reassuring her shrinking husband, Scott in the 1957 science

fiction film The Amazing Shrinking Man (Arnold 1957). The title of this essay is a take on this

classic film, and the photo on the cover comes from it.


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Yahweh was identified as thepersonalGod of individual patriarchs CITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 , and

He was often still referred to with the genericEl orElohimCITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 .

The transition of Yahwehfrom a household God to the tribalGod of the Hebrews is best

reflected in the growing use of the expression God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of

Jacob after the book of Genesis (Ex 3:6, 3:15, 4:5). Yahweh no longer is just the personal God

of a patriarch, but is a shared deity of a group of people. This transition coincides with the events

of the exodus from Egypt, when the Hebrews must of necessity to assume their corporate identity

and ethos. In fact the same God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob instructs Moses to

introduce him to Pharaoh rather as the God of the Hebrews (Ex 3:18, 7:16, 9:13).

The next natural transition in the Hebrew concept of God occurs during the Sinai

wanderings: as the Hebrews travel, their God follows them thus effectively becoming a

territorialGod . The imagery of the pillar of cloud and fire which changed place as it was

followed by the Israelites through the desert (Ex 13:21, 14:24, 33:9-10) must have greatly

reinforced the concept of a territorial God. This in fact culminates in the conquest of the Holy

Land, with Yahwehsettling down in Jerusalem, on Mount Zion (Ps 9:11) thus effectively

identifying Jerusalem as his territory. This event was skillfully staged by King David by bring

CITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 This includes frequent designations of God as the God of

Abraham (Gen 24:12, 27, 42, 48) and God of Isaac (Gen 28:13).

CITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 The interplay between Yahweh andEl/Elohimin Genesis is

significant and likely represents the tension of transition between the household and the universal

God (Loewen 2000, 176-184).


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the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem (2Sam 6:1-15). Hence Jerusalem became not only the royal

city (city of David, 2Sam 5:7) but also the city of God (Ps 46:4). Yet before that final event the

years of wanderings were a time of protracted conflict between Yahweh and the territorial, tribal

gods of the Canaanites. The OT clearly presents the ensuing wars not just as wars between

people, but wars between their respective God/gods (Jud 11:21-24, 2Ki 19:22-23, 32-34).

The Canaan conquest highlighted not only the territorial nature of God, but exposed the

Hebrews to specialized gods. These were primarily the all-favorite Canaanite weather god

Baal and his consort goddess Asherah, specialized in agriculture and fertility,

respectivelyCITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 . And as the nomadic Hebrew pastoralists settled down and

became farmers, it is not surprising that they were strongly drawn to

syncretismCITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 and idolatry, keen to supplement Yahwehs military power

with the expertise of their new-found local gods. Yahweh remained their national, unique, God

who ensured victory in battles, but agriculture was not his forte. As Loewen sarcastically

remarks,

CITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 678(Baal) denotes both ownership and lordship, and the authority

of Baal was regarded as comparable to that of 9;67 6


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the Hebrews had doubts that Yahweh the God of their pastoral past, the God of

manna, quail, and water, the God who made a covenant with them in the desert really

knew enough about agriculture to provide them with the needed fertility while the Baals,

which were the gods of the territory into which Israel had moved, were also fertility gods

who specialized in agriculture. (Loewen 2000, 106)

The pull towards syncretism was fueled not only by the specialist skills required from

God, but also by the strong polytheistic environment surrounding the Hebrews. After all, through

Abraham they came from polytheistic Mesopotamia (McKay, et al. 2007, 8), Moses led them out

of polytheistic Egypt (Ruffle 1994, 71), and they ended up in polytheistic Canaan (Millard 1994,

64-67)! It is not surprising therefore that, despite the first three commandments (Ex 20:2-6) and

repeated prophetic outcry, the Israelites often regressed, if not to frank polytheism, at least to

henotheismCITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 (e.g. 1Ki 11:4-8) (Loewen 2000, 104).

The final transition from Yahwehas territorial God to universalGod was a difficult one,

and it is one which is sadly still not completed (vide infra). The difficulty lies in the 180 degrees

change in course it requires in ones understanding of God. The Hebrews after all were requested

to abandon the false gods (primarilyElCITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033

)of Canaan and embrace the true

God (Yahweh) how can Yahweh then also be the God of the other nations? As Loewen

eloquently states, The Hebrews were slow to learn that Yahweh is really Elohim, and that as

CITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 Henotheism: the worship of one god without denying the existence

of other gods (Merriam-Webster, Inc. 2003)

CITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 Elwas the main god in Canaan, the father of gods and humans.

Interestingly in relation to some Western images of God,Elis often represented as an old

ineffective man, bullied by his wife and children (Millard 1994, 66).


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such he is the God of all humanity (Loewen 2000, 102). To the tribal OT society, the

universality of God was not only counter-intuitive it was utterly unattractive because of its

significant practical consequences. In the first instance, it meant that Gods favor rested not only

on the Israelites, but that God had positive plans and desires for the goyimCITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 .

This reality is probably best illustrated by the story of Jonah the reluctant prophet: avoiding at

all costs the call to preach salvation to other nations, and finally dismayed when his preaching

actually brought that salvation (Jonah 1:1-3, 4:1-3). And yet the God of the OT and NT is

nothing less than the universal God of all nations, filled with the desire to be known by all

nationsCITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 .

Throughout the protracted process of moving his peoples understanding from a

household God to a tribal God, to a territorial God, and finally to a universal God, we see the true

Gods long-suffering persistence and passion for his people. Primarily through the

intermediate of his messengers the prophets, God continuously exposed idolatry, reprimanded

his people, and exhorted them to both a correct understanding (theology)and correct practice

(theopraxy). This pattern is literally ubiquitous throughout the OT, with the prophets repeated

CITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033((goyim simply means nations yet from early OT history

right up to the present day it has negative, pejorative connotations when referring to non-

Hebrews or non-Jews.

CITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 The Abrahamic covenant clearly spells out the missionary call of the universal God:

I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you;

I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse;

and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. Genesis 12:2-3 (NIV, emphasis mine)


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clarion call shuvu!CITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 sounded over and over again. Among the many texts,

Jeremiah 2 maybe captures this best:

Has a nation ever changed its gods? (Yet they are not gods at all.)But my people have exchanged their Glory for worthless idols.

Be appalled at this, O heavens, and shudder with great horror, declares the Lord.

My people have committed two sins:

They have forsaken me, the spring of living water,

and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold

waterCITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 .

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In many respects the contemporary African culture is closer to the OT than is the Western

culture (Loewen 2000, 134) therefore an attempt to trace the reduction and specialization of

God in Africa may provide useful insights into the issue under study.

CITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033

8 (Shuvu):lit. turn, a turning away fromsin and towards God.


Jeremiah 2:11-13, NIV


The basic violation, which according to the indictment has been repeated throughout the people's history sinceentering the land, is pinpointed in v. 11: changing gods." (Burnett 2004, 292-294)


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African religion is a complex admixture of beliefs, practices, and values (Mbiti 1991, 10).

It is a truly holistic system designed to cover all aspects of life. As Mbiti states, it has supplied

the answers to many of the problems of this life, even if these my not have been the right

answers in every case. African religion is an essential part of the way of life of each people. Its

influence covers all of life, from before the birth of a person to long after he has died. (Mbiti

1991, 15). Referring to the Zulus for an example of African religion, Lawson states, almost

every act that a Zulu performs is religious the way the Zulus live their lives is organized

religiously (Lawson 1993, 51).

The African worldview is intensely and holistically spiritual, with every facet of life

clearly under the influence of supernatural powers. This pervasiveness of the supernatural

generated a multitude of spiritual beings of varying power and influence. Many tribes experience

deity at two levels: a high-God who is personal, and lesser supernatural beings, spirits, fetishes

and ancestors (Loewen 2000, 88). Specialization among this pantheon is natural, and therefore

the monotheism easily cohabits with poly- (or heno-) theism. As Loewen describes it, one high

God has divided the work of running the world among a multitude of lesser manifestations

charged with attending to day-to-day affairs, but the high God remains fully in charge of the

whole (Loewen 2000, 93).

In the missionary Christian setting, this translates into the famed description of African

Christianity: one mile wide and one inch deep. The Christian God assumes the specialist

function of life after death and external behavior for purpose of identification: Christians are

defined by a narrow set of rules (no alcohol drinking, no smoking, Western-style clothes, church

attendance on Sundays, baptism, tithing, monogamous marriage, etc.). On the other side, many


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other affairs such as health, family, or power relationships are dealt with in traditional fashion

with the help of traditional healers and magicians. People who believe in specialized deities

usually add gods quite easily, including the biblical God whom they see as specialized in

preparing people for life after death (Loewen 2000, 92-93). Or, in Mbitis words, African

Christians take Christianity seriously, adding itto the religious insights which they inherited

from their forefathers (Mbiti 1991, 191, italics mine).

This worldview has led to a multitude of syncretic movements and institutions in Africa,

best represented by the loose grouping of the African Initiated ChurchesCITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 .

This includes the Ethiopian church movement (Lawson 1993, 54-56), the Aladura/Zionist

churches, and even the new Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches considered the third

response to the white cultural domination in the African church (Kalu 1998, 3). While indeed

the AIC movement may have been a reaction to Western missionary insensitivity to African

needs (as David Barrett postulated over 40 years ago (Barrett 1968, 97, 154, 184)), the causes of

the movement are predictably more complex, and certainly include theological concerns with the

Western Christian interpretation of the Bible. In the words of David Bosch (quoted by Marthinus

Daneel), western missionaries had brought a superficial, impoverished gospel" that "did not

even touch on many facets of the life or struggle of the African" (Daneel 1987, 77), particularly

in the key areas of sickness and healingCITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 . According to African theologian


The acronymAIChas been variously used to mean African Independent Church, African

Indigenous Church, African Initiated Church, and African Instituted Church (Anderson

2002, 167).



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Simon Maimela (quoted by Allan Anderson), the greatest attraction of AICs lay in their open

invitation to Africans to bring their anxieties about witches, sorcerers, bad luck, poverty, illness,

and other kinds of misfortune to the church leaders (Anderson 2001, 283). Or, again in Daneels

words,

The Independent Churches' real attraction for members and growth derive from their

original, creative attempts to relate the good news of the gospel in a meaningful and

symbolically intelligible way to the innermost needs of Africa. In doing so they are in a

process of and have to a large extent already succeeded in creating truly African havens

of belonging, (emphasis in original) (Daneel 1987, 101)

African deities are not only specialized, but are also territorial. One vivid example of this

is provided by Loewen from a personal communication (Loewen 2000, 90): during the building

of a hospital in Nigeria, a missionary led Bible studies and his workers soon all accepted Christ.

However when he visited them in their homes he found that they were still tending family deity

shrines. In their worldview, worshipping Owa the Christian God was appropriate at the hospital,

but not in their homes where the local god Ifa would get upset. Even morality can be territorial in

Africa: proscriptions on negative behavior (such as theft or killing) apply only to ones own

tribal group (Loewen 2000, 91).

When looking at African religion and its interaction with the Christian endeavor, it seems

that the missionary intention was to bring the distant High God of the Africans closer, by

offering the person of Jesus Christ. In the process however the recipient culture perceived this

close-up God to be just another lesser God, thus still needing an entire support team to

perform his task

The focus on healing naturally leads to the tendency of replacing the traditional witch doctors

with Jesus Christ and his stronger medicine, as in the Aladuramovement among the Yoruba

people of West Africa (Lawson 1993, 79-82).


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The reduction of God through specialization and the filling of the gaps by other means is

as prevalent as faith itself, and examples within other religious traditions are not difficult to find.

Both Mesopotamian and ancient Egyptian religion involved multiple gods of variable

importance and often great specialization (e.g. music, law, metal-working) (McKay, et al. 2007,

8). The Roman and Greek deities are also remarkable examples of divine specialization, with

named gods for hunting, agriculture, wine, and the like (McKay, et al. 2007, 102-104, 134),

(Smith 1994, 102). In Greek as well as Mesopotamian religion, gods were often

anthropomorphicCITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 - another way to reduce God to human size. Moreover, a

process of increasing secularization took place in Greece - suggestive of the later European

secularization (vide infra), with a marginalization of the gods as life in the Greek city-states

progressively moved from the acropolis with its temples to the agora(marketplace) in the

middle of thepolis(city)itself (Smith 1994, 96). Clyde Smith quotes Lewis Mumford (Mumford

1968) deftly personifying this secularizing process: a new god had captured the Acropolis, and

had, by an imperceptible passage, merged with the original deity (Smith 1994, 96).

While formal Islam is fiercely monotheistic, folk Islam contains a multitude of

specialized forces and beings, fulfilling every possible role and need in everyday life. In his book

The unseen face of Islam, Musk uncovers an entire hidden world of ancestor and evil spirits,

devils, angels,jinn,dead saints, and holy men all apparently invoked to help out in the daily


Anthropomorphic: described or thought of as having a human form or human attributes

anthropomorphic deities (Merriam-Webster, Inc. 2003)


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affairs of life whereAllahseems both distant and quiet.Formal theology might emphasize the

sovereignty of God, even in a sense which suggests determinism or fatalism. In practice,

however, Muslims spend their days and nights and hard-earned wages trying to find ways

and means of rewriting what is supposedly maktb(written) (Musk 2003, 96). The two

worlds, formal and folk, would be expected to be opposed to each other but in fact they happily

cohabit. The worldview of popular Islam [is] (for the most part) accepted, even nurtured, within

the embrace of the alternative, official worldview (Musk 2003, 203, italics mine). Here we have

a fascinating example of syncretism actually promoted by the dominant religious system and

this is likely to be encountered in other faiths as well. Unwilling host at times, orthodox religion

has usually yielded to the imagination and needs of the ordinary Muslims heart concerning an

object of devotion, a mediator with God, and a powerful answerer of prayer (Musk 2003, 211).

Could we replace Muslim in the preceding quotation with Christian, or Hindu?

Islam indeed is not alone in having yielded to the needs of ordinary [people].

Expressions of Christian syncretism are found not only on the African continent, but also in

Asia. How else can one interpret the Spirit Christology movement in India, with its claim that

Jesus is not only the giver but also the receiverof the Spirit (Heron 1983, 127)? This assertion,

ostensibly contextualizing Christianity for Indian spirituality, opens the gates wide to religious

universalismCITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 (Kim 206). Once again we see the natural tendency of man to

fashion gods based on his own needs, and to fill in any gaps perceived in mainline religion.


Universalism: a theological doctrine that all human beings will eventually be saved (Merriam-

Webster, Inc. 2003)


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Moreover, the societal demands of pluralism often lead to dangerous theological compromise,

not only in the West (vide infra) but also on the mission field.

C$&%3/$rar W%,%r& /%r,/%c(4%,

Our contemporary Western society has been variously called post-Christian, secular, and

post-modern, to name a few. Without any doubt the influence of Christianity in our culture has

diminished when compared to previous centuries. This trend is clearly multi-factorial and

significantly influenced by globalization and large socio-cultural shifts. In characteristic ways

however - which only validate the relevance of the Bible - contemporary Western Christianity

often presents the same diminishing, specialized God encountered in the OT and in Africa.

The expression God of the gaps (GOG) was dubbed to portray a God who has been

exclusively relegated to the miraculous, i.e. primarily in charge of unexplainable

phenomenaCITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 . The God of heavens and earth became aDeus ex

machinaCITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 , of sorts. Yet as science progresses and offers reasonable


The term God of the gaps is attributed to Henry Drummond, a 19thcentury evangelist lecturer

(Larson 2009, 14)


Deus ex machina(Latin): literally god from the machine, originally referred to a god

introduced by means of a crane in ancient Greek and Roman drama to decide the final outcome.

It is modernly applied to a person or thing that appears or is introduced suddenly and

unexpectedly and provides a contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty (Merriam-

Webster, Inc. 2003)


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mechanistic / naturalistic explanations for these phenomena, God gets smaller (Loewen 2000,

147). Dietrich Bonhoeffer exposed the fallacy of the God-of-the-gaps argument eloquently:

How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in

fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that isbound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore

continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we dont know;

God wants us to realize his presence, not in unsolved problems but in those that are

solved. (Bonhoeffer 1997, 311)

In fact the expression God of the gaps has been increasingly used in a pejorative sense,

for design arguments that are deemed unappealing or likely to be undone by scientific

advance. (Larson 2009, 15)

Despite this backlash and the obvious issues with the GOG argument, the debate has been

heated on both sides. Supporters of the GOG position remind us that the fallacies of the

argument do not preclude the existence of true gaps, unexplained phenomena in science which

will likely remain so. Laird Harris explains:

The expression, "God of the Gaps," contains a real truth. It is erroneous if it is taken tomean that God is not immanent in natural law but is only to be observed in mysteries

unexplained by law. No significant Christian group has believed this view. It is true,

however, if it be taken to emphasize that God is not only immanent in natural law but

also is active in the numerous phenomena associated with the supernatural and the

spiritual. There are gaps in a physical-chemical explanation of this world, and there

always will be. Because science has learned many marvelous secrets of nature, it cannot

be concluded that it can explain all phenomena. Meaning, soul, spirits, and life are

subjects incapable of physical-chemical explanation or formation. (Harris 1963)

Larson actually differentiates between apologetic arguments and a mature theological

understanding of God: The challenge for apologetics is to show the limitations of undirected

natural forces, without putting arbitrary limitations on the ways God might direct or supersede

those forces to produce what we observe. (Larson 2009, 20). He concludes that using multiple


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evidences of design in nature, with regular updates to accommodate new findings, can be a

sound and convincing approach to apologetics. (Larson 2009, 13)

While it is easy to attribute the contemporary divine reduction to the rise of science, the

attack on God likely started much earlier, through the humanist (both Greco-Roman rationalist

and Eastern spiritualist) influences which surfaced during the Renaissance and played a part in

the Reformation (Newbigin 1989, 1-2). Quoting Graf Reventlow (Graf Reventlow 1985),

Newbigin traces the ensuing process of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the

defense of the Christian faith was based on reasonableness (i.e. not contradicting the humanist

assumption), and hence moved through several successive tactical retreats (Newbigin 1989, 2).

Moreover, God diminishes today as the church is not only left behind its times, but has

actively abrogated its holistic and healing functions. Particularly within the reformed Protestant

tradition, by focusing on salvation and the winning of souls rather than the healing of entire

persons, the church readily defers the therapeutic functions to secular specialists or social

agencies (Loewen 2000, 147). This specialist God focused on eternal life is increasingly

irrelevant in a society earnestly looking for real answers to the problems of this life.

God doesnt only lose to science, medicine, psychology and social work he loses in

todays post-modernCITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 culture to an eclectic mix of Eastern and self-centered

spirituality, astrology, mysticism, to name a few. If there is no real truth then anything can be


Josh McDowell & Bob Hostetler offer the following definition of postmodernism: A

worldview characterized by the belief that truth doesnt exist in any objective sense but is created

rather than discovered. Truth is created by the specific culture and exists only in that culture.

Therefore, any system or statement that tries to communicate truth is a power play, an effort to

dominate other cultures. (McDowell and Hostetler 1998, 208)


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true, and these unlikely competitors win hands down as they offer alternative holistic worldviews

in a broken, disconnected society.

Add to this a modern (as opposed to post-modern) fear of the supernatural and strong

materialism within the churchCITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 , and we are truly left with a small God

Or, as Robinson sarcastically put it, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler but the last fading

smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat (Robinson 1963, 37-38).

It is not difficult to see therefore that the contemporary Western God is, once again, a

diminishing, specialized God. And, Loewen argues further that this God is also a tribal God

actively protecting the interests of the religious majority, fighting along us in our wars and

generally justifying our actions:

Politically, God is the God of our own nation, whichever nation that may be. God is

partisan, fighting on our side the right side! Our country is Gods country.

Religiously, God is made in the image of our particular biblical interpretation. We see our

own understanding of God as biblical; that of other Christians is not. (Loewen 2000, 222)

The result of all these factors becomes very clear as Loewen summarizes it, the

diminished, specialized, tribal God of modern Western Christianity thus leaves a great deal of

room in our lives for other gods to take over. Western Christians therefore happily worship gods

which are rivals to the God of the universe. We are idolaters. (Loewen 2000, 227)


Loewen pointedly states that, despite belief in the New Testament spiritual world filled with

the Holy Spirit, angels, demons, and Satan, most people experience no evil spirits and little, if

any, of the Spirit of God. In everyday life North American Christians are firmly rooted in, and

for all practical purposes are operating on, the premise of a material universe (Loewen 2000,

147).


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Besides alternative religious beliefs, the gaps left behind by the diminutive Western God

are also readily filled by the synergistic forces of materialism, wealth, entertainment, and

technology (Lane 1994, 392). At their extreme, these forces conspire towards what Newbigin

calls the myth of the secular society CITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 (Newbigin 1989, 211-221). But

Newbigin and others powerfully debunk this myth, asserting in the first place that modern

society is anything but secular. In the words of Rodney Stark, the evidence leads to the

conclusion that secularization will not usher in a post-religious era. Instead, it will repeatedly

lead to a resupply of vigorous otherworldly religious organizations by prompting revival (Stark

1985, 146). Moreover, the outcome of the quest for a secular society created instead a pagan

society, not a society devoid of public images but a society which worships gods which are not

God (Newbigin 1989, 220). In this secular society religious tolerance is the PC (politically

correct) buzzword, yet it is based on liberal agnosticism in other words, on the belief that

religious beliefs are really not very important. Religious views are tolerated in the West, Tony

Lane remarks, only as private opinions or as aspects of culture (Lane 1994, 392).

And yet the Christian response has been weak at best. The idea of a secular society has

been accepted by many Christians uncritically because it seemed to offer the church the

possibility of a peaceful coexistence with false gods, a comfortable concordat between Yahweh

and Baalim. But the promise is illusory. (Newbigin 1989, 220)


Newbigin posits that the secular society is a myth both in its technical, dictionary sense (an

unproven collective belief that is accepted uncritically to justify a social institution (Random

House Inc. 1999)) and in the popular sense of a mistaken belief. (Newbigin 1989, 211)


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What, then, is to be our response to all this? In the pointed words of Francis Schaeffer,

how should we then live? (Schaeffer 1983) It is so easy to give up hope, to accept that the

human perversion of the Almighty God through diminution, specialization and tribalism is

irreversible. How else can we justify that, several millennia later, we seem to be much in the

same place theologically with the Israelites in Canaan? Yet such fatalism is neither useful nor

appropriate for the followers of Jesus Christ.

In the first place, we must recognize that the very (apparent) weakness of Christianity

caused by its readiness to culturally assimilate in society is, in fact, a great strength. Such, for

instance, is the case of the hellenization of Christianity which, rather than being a form of

deplorable syncretism, was in fact key to its growth and spread of the gospel across cultures. As

Dodds writes, quoting Clement of Alexandria: if Christianity was to be more than a religion for

the uneducated it must come to terms with Greek philosophy and Greek science; simple-minded

Christians must no longer fear philosophy as children fear a scarecrow (Dodds 1097, 106).

Beyond hellenization, Christianity is remarkable for the relative ease with which it encounters

living cultures. It renders itself as a translatable religion, compatible with all cultures. It may be

imposed or resisted in its Western form, yet it is not uncongenial in any garb (Sanneh 2009, 56).

In fact it can aptly be stated that the cultural assimilation of Christianity is a successful example

of contextualization, a message clothed in culture (Winter 2006, 234-237).

In the critical strive to defend its monotheism, Christianity first aligned itself with

Judaism and Islam yet eventually parted ways, because of its acceptance of translation as the

original medium of its Scripture (Sanneh 2009, 42-43). Yet translation also opened it to secular


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and polytheistic influences, and to the need of cultural assimilation. Hence Christian mission not

only recognized God already at work in other cultures, but proclaimed a clear message of faith

and obedience as the defence against any syncretism and polytheism. As Sanneh summarizes it,

mission encouraged cultural self-affirmation while requiring moral self-transformation at the

same time. That was the stake and the risk, the com-promise and the promise (Sanneh 2009,

43).

Newbigin addresses the tough now what? question, prompting its readers to a radical

form of discipleship which is not only individual but societal. He brings us to the model of Jesus

Christ, whose

ministry entailed the calling of individual men and women to personal and costly

discipleship, but at the same time it challenged the principalities and powers, the ruler of

this world, and the cross was the price paid for that challenge...

The church is an entity which has outlasted many states, nations, and empires, and it will

outlast those that exist today. The Church can never settle down to being a voluntary

society concerned merely with private and domestic affairs. It is bound to challenge in

the name of the one Lord all the powers, ideologies, myths, assumptions and worldviews

which do not acknowledge him as Lord. (Newbigin 1989, 220-221)

Bonhoeffer postulates a similar Christian offensive as he addresses the issue of God-of

the-gaps andDeus ex machina:

Religious people speak of God when human knowledge... has come to an end, or when

human resources failin fact it is always the deus ex machina that they bring on to the

scene, either for the apparent solution of insoluble problems, or as strength in human

failure.... It always seems to me that we are trying anxiously in this way to reserve some

place for God; I should like to speak of God not on the boundaries but at the center, not inweakness but in strength; and therefore not in death and guilt but in man's life and

goodness. (Bonhoeffer 1997, 142)

Bonhoeffer goes beyond a limited attack on the reduction of God, offering in his Letters

and papers from prison the radical concepts of man come of age, religionless Christianity,


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and without God before God . Bube rightly interprets these in light of Bonhoeffers counter-

attack on the contemporary secular society: If all of man's life has been secularized, then God

must be related to that secularized life. (Bube 1971, 212) And, speaking of the Christian

position at Reformation with Luthers return from the cloister to the world, Bonhoeffer

concludes:

Now came the frontal assault. The only way to follow Jesus was by living in the world...

The conflict between the life of the Christian and the life of the world was thus thrown

into the sharpest possible relief. It was hand-to-hand conflict between the Christian and

the world. (Bonhoeffer 1995, 48)

Culturally the Christian community must find its right (and rightful) place within a

pluralistic, culturally relativistic society. Its position, according to Lamin Sanneh, should be

neither quarantine(isolation, a short-term measure) nor accommodation (which is plain

compromise), but ratherprophetic reform, in which moral objections against the lapses of

mainstream society are laid and the demand raised to change course (Sanneh 2009, 55).

Theologically and missiologically our stance in a pluralistic, secular society may need to

embrace what Van Engen called the evangelist (rather than pluralist, inclusivist, or exclusivist)

paradigm: an approach which escapes the classic inclusivist / exclusivist controversies by

focusing on the confession Jesus Christ is Lord (Van Engen 1999, 164-

167)CITATION Bon95 \p 45 \t \l 1033 .


Van Engen unpacks the classic confession of faith to derive the missiological implications of the

evangelist paradigm: faith-particularist, culturally pluralist, and ecclesiologically inclusivist

(Van Engen 1999, 165).


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This all calls for a radical, costlyCITATION Van99 \p 165 \l 1033 discipleship - which can only come

from a radical encounter with the very God whom we have repeatedly tried to reduce, specialize

and otherwise adulterate. Our path must of necessity be like that of the prophet Isaiah as he

received his own call to mission:

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted,

and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings:

With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two

they were flying. And they were calling to one another:

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.

At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled

with smoke.

Woe to me! I cried. I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a

people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.

Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with

tongs from the altar.With it he touched my mouth and said, See, this has touched your

lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?

And I said, Here am I. Send me! (Isa 6:1-8, NIV)

Are we ready, like Isaiah, to be sent out? God doesnt like to be called names which

degrade and lessen him. He cannot be reduced to a small, specialized, or tribal God. Lets go out

there and tell this world who He really is.

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,

In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,

Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,

Almighty, victorious, Thy great name we praise. (Chalmers Smith 1986, 25)

CITATION Van99 \p 165 \l 1033

grace is costlybecause it calls us to follow, and it is gracebecause it calls us to followJesus

Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only

true life. (Bonhoeffer 1995, 45)


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C$&c+',($&

The OT shows a pervasive tendency for Gods people to reduce their own God and view

him as specialized in only some areas. They also repeatedly revert from the understanding of the

universal Yahweh to a tribal, territorial God. This aberration is also identified in African faith

and Christianity, as well as in other religious traditions. Finally, the same unfortunate process is

encountered in contemporary Western Christianity, as a complex retreat in a pluralist, secularist

post-modern society. A re-capture of the true nature of God is essential in order to reclaim

Christianitys proper role in society, ...so that you may become blameless and pure, children of

God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the

universe as you hold outthe word of life. (Philippians 2:15-16, NIV)


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R%@%r%&c%, c(%)

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