Christianity in Crisis: A Personal Journey

By David Orton

Oct 17, 2016 |

Christianity in Crisis: A Personal Journey

October 17, 2016 by http://lifemessenger.org/?author=2 - - 50,000 Catholics and Protestants gathering for teaching and worship .

Media coverage of the event included Time Magazine. Bob Mumford and Ern Baxter were among the keynote speakers and convenors.

Both Bob and Ern were key influences in our development. While Bob’s impact on us was immeasurable through his teachings on the dealings of God, and while both of them were Reformed theologically (despite their Pentecostal backgrounds), Ern provided for us a strategic theological and visionary foundation. As an 18-year-old student he first taught us in our fledgling Bible School in Sydney and then in numerous conferences over the years, both in Australia and America. Having pastored the largest evangelical church in Vancouver, Canada, for 25 years, and serving as a key leader in the Healing Revival and then as a prophetic teacher in the Charismatic Renewal, Ern brought a unique blend of Reformed theology and charismatic experience. With a personal library of over 9,000 volumes he was an avid student of the Scriptures, theology, and church history, often referring to his commentaries as his close friends and confidantes. His public ministry brought together an unequalled eloquence with solid theology and a powerful prophetic grasp of the majesty of God and his world purpose. The burden Baxter carried for the Word and Spirit to be held in balance is one to which we are firmly committed. His vision for God’s government coming to earth through the ministry of the Word accompanied by the Holy Spirit’s manifest presence and power, demonstrated through the redeemed community, animates this ministry.

As for the Charismatic Renewal, nothing now needs to be said; history records its universal impact and acceptance. Nonetheless, the emphasis of the Shepherding Movement became highly controversial. Having stepped out of the movement in 1990 I have had over 25 years to evaluate. There is no question that there was authoritarianism and abuse of God’s people. I know, I was on the receiving end in significant proportions! Nonetheless, I remain grateful for the journey, the relationships, and the exposure to truth and revelation, but also for the lessons of negative preparation and deferred gratification. From a human perspective my ministry was curtailed for 10 years; but from God’s perspective it was meant for good; for greater fruitfulness, not only ministerially but more importantly, as a man of God in purity of motive and in character.

So, where did the Shepherding Movement go wrong?

In my judgement it was solid theologically and well served by its founders as genuine men of God, some of who were highly astute theologically. It was a sincere attempt to address an individualistic and consumerist church culture that had been moulded by worldly values and institutional systems, not to mention denominational sectarianism. While highly Reformed theologically it was Anabaptist ecclesiologically, identifying with the radical arm of the Reformation in its redefinition of the church as a separated believing community and thus espousing believer’s baptism and separation of church and state. As with many reforming movements it was thus more an error of emphasis rather than of theology. With independence and unaccountability manifestly a problem in the renewal a correction was needed. So far so good. But there was an over correction with the pendulum swinging toward control; but how did this happen?

While, in my experience, all the teaching on authority and accountability was qualified as relational and functional, to my knowledge the notion of ministerial “office” was never intentionally targeted and didactically dismantled—it is no where to be found in the New Testament; rather it was an intentional transfer of the notion of priestly office by several early church Fathers onto new covenant ministry to address the 2^nd century crisis of authority. In my view, after 1,800 years of entrenched tradition in this regard, the teaching of relational authority only builds on inherited mentalities and structures of authority based on official position. The mind of the larger church needed – and still needs – renewing on this issue. I unpack this in some measure in my book, http://lifemessenger.org/?page_id=741 - - Read more >>

In conclusion, the Shepherding Movement was a needed corrective and a genuine attempt to address status quo religion and self-serving church life. But to do so without regularly and systematically teaching how the Gospel deals with the sin problem is to set ourselves up for failure. This lack is endemic to the contemporary church and is at the root of our spiritual and cultural impotence.

Third, the Christian Reconstruction Movement pioneered by Rousas Rushdoony, undergirded by the apologetic of Cornelius Van Til – the influential teacher of Francis Schaeffer – intersected with our involvement in the Shepherding Movement. Rushdoony, Schaeffer, and Baxter were all theologically Calvinist and Reformed. As covenant theologians, the Reconstructionists underscored the continuity of God’s covenant purpose for mankind and the harmony between Law and Gospel; the law (including OT case and civil law) providing an objective ethical standard not only for the believer, but also for society and civil government.

Similarly, this movement was a prophetic corrective to the antinomianism of contemporary Christianity and culture, but also controversially resisted. Dispensational theologies (including Liberalism and Neo-orthodoxy), echoing the ancient heresy of Marcionism, had created a disjunction between OT and NT, and thus Law and Gospel. Hyper-grace teachings that flout the Bible’s objective ethical standards and the moral lassitude of the contemporary church have been the result. This theological allergy to God’s law was only accelerated by the West’s cultural milieu of Enlightenment humanism and existentialism. Through our ministry relationship to Ern Baxter we were exposed to the writings of Rousas Rushdoony, Greg Bahnsen, and Gary North et al. Bahnsen’s ground-breaking work, ‘Theonomy in Christian Ethics’, is both exegetically and theologically commanding and convincing. He shows that God’s moral government of the world is upheld by his law-word; that there is continuity between old and new covenants; and that God’s law is not only an objective ethical standard for the redeemed community, but also for the nations. Christ, rather than abrogating the law, has reinstated it in the new covenant; but now through the incarnation has perfected obedience to the Father and thus the righteous requirement of the law. The law was never intended by God as a means of justification, but rather sanctification. In Christ, the believer now has the ability to obey.

The misconstrued relationship of Law and Gospel has been injurious to the cause of Christ, compromising the church’s prophetic voice to society. It has robbed the church of the moral certainty to be light and leaven in the world.

Despite the claims of critics to the contrary, the movement, and Bahnsen in particular, were categorical in teaching that cultural change (reconstruction) does not come through political revolution, but gradually through supernatural regeneration, through the teaching of the Gospel.

In conclusion, undergirding our journey and all the above movements is the historic orthodox belief of the church concerning the divine inspiration, truthfulness, and authority of Scripture as God’s Word as it relates to all matters it addresses; not only concerning salvation but also all facts concerning the cosmos (creation, history etc.).

Allied with this high view of Scripture as the Word of God is the grammatico-historical interpretation of it (i.e. the normal laws of language and historical context) hand-in-glove with the principle of progressive revelation (i.e. a covenant hermeneutic: the NT is in the OT concealed and the OT is in the NT revealed) and the analogy of Scripture (i.e. Scripture must interpret scripture, and thus a doctrine can only consist of all the biblical data on that subject).

So, where to from here?

Current Issues

In light of this review, let me crystalize the current issues that we believe are ‘first principle’ issues that must be addressed for the advance of the Gospel and increase of the kingdom, particularly for the re-evangelisation and cultural transformation of the West:

• The current redefinition of the Bible’s “inerrancy” (without error) by certain neo-evangelicals that allows for errors in the original autographs (texts); it is a repeat of the “infallibility” conflict of a century ago between theological liberalism (higher criticism) and the historically orthodox view of the Bible; the downgrade of the Bible as God’s verbal communication to humankind was the first step in the 20^th century spiritual and cultural decline of the West.
• The misconstruing of the relationship between Law and Gospel for the lack of a covenant hermeneutic such that contemporary Christianity has become antinomian (i.e. anti-law; hyper-grace), and thus void of any objective ethical standard; resulting in the acceptance and/or promotion of homosexuality and its concomitant – same-sex marriage – as morally valid, or at least morally neutral.
• The defence of Christianity (evangelism) in an increasingly hostile environment must return to the two-fold apostolic message of the resurrection of Christ and of the kingdom of God; while evidences for these and for God’s existence are useful, these truths are transcendent (i.e. wholly independent of all physical laws and human reasoning) and must be proclaimed on the basis of biblical revelation and thus as absolute; this entails a confidence in the Holy Spirit to witness to truth in the hearts of men when the word is declared; this is the genius of presuppositional or transcendental apologetics as taught by Cornelius Van Til.
• The privatisation of faith and the exorcism of Christianity from the public square through the lack of a vision of Christ’s lordship over the totality of human existence and of God’s creation purpose; resulting in a myopic vision of the Great Commission focussed only on personal salvation, rather than the discipling of whole nations and cultures.
• The historic divorce between the Word and the Spirit—the theology of the former and the experience of the latter; this is reflected in the entrenched separation between the Evangelical/Reformed movement and the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement to the detriment of both and the larger Body of Christ; both must be fully recovered – and held in tension – for the Body of Christ to mature into the full stature of Christ.
• The confusion between the role and identity of Israel, the church, and the kingdom, again for the lack of a covenant hermeneutic, must be clarified so as to bring in the fullness of the Gentiles and thereby the re-inclusion of the Jews; this covenantal confusion has led to a neo-judaizing Zionist movement within the church, promoting a reversion to Sabbaths, Sacrifices and Temple; it is not only a reversion to a superseded administration but a diversion from the advance of God’s kingdom in history and in the nations.
• The contamination of the charismata (gifts of the Spirit) by certain elements within the contemporary “apostolic” and “prophetic” movements through unbridled ambition, self-aggrandizement, avarice, and huckstering—by making merchandise of God’s people and of the Gospel; this is particularly true of market-driven, celebrity, and platform focussed ministry models; wholesale repentance and dismantling of ministry empires is demanded for true change to occur.
• A consumerist church culture moulded by worldly values, institutional systems, and denominational sectarianism cries out for radical reformation (new apostolic movements are not exempt from this): God’s authority and humankind’s congenital rebellion demands authentic spiritual authority to be restored to the Body of Christ and thereby true catholicity (unity); primarily in God’s verbal communication to humankind and derivatively in those divinely called and qualified as apostles and teachers of that Word through both charisma and character; this reformation demands a recovery of the ‘Gospel of the Kingdom of God’ (Mtt 4:23; 24:14; Acts 1:3; 8:12; 19:8; 28:23, 31), a recovery of Christian initiation according to the ‘Peter Package’ (Acts 2:38), a recovery of the ‘First Principles’ of the doctrine of Christ (Hebrews 6:1-3), and a recovery of apostolic church life through ‘Covenant Community’ (Acts 2:42).

Conclusion

It is almost passé to say that Western Christianity and culture is in crisis, nonetheless, this is the reality as we negotiate our way into the 21^st century.

The 20^th century witnessed an unprecedented activity of the Holy Spirit in renewal and revivals, some with an extensive and global reach. Be-that-as-it-may we are still in crisis. Why? Because, in my view, of an underlying violation of the balanced tension between Word and Spirit.

At the creation the Spirit of God brooded over the turbulent chaos of matter, awaiting the Word—”Let there be…!” Only then was chaos transformed into cosmos. And so too, grounded in this seed principle, the New Creation in this climax of history awaits a declared Word through the corporate Christ, the church. Despite the great outpourings of the 20^th century we remain in ecclesial and cultural chaos. But what, you may ask, is the nature and content of the Word that we await?

The kingdom of God is in the Holy Spirit (Rom 14:17). God’s government does not come to the earth except by the Spirit. Nevertheless, God’s government – like every earthly government – has a Constitution by which it operates. This is the missing Word for which we await. It is the Law-Word of the King. The moral governor of the universe – the Lord Jesus Christ – seated at the right hand of the Father is that incarnate Word. And that Word is the Covenant that the triune-God has made with humankind. Incarnated in Christ and enscripturated in the Bible, the Covenant is the constitution of the kingdom—of God’s government of righteousness and peace to transform our chaos into his cosmos.

In closing, my appeal is for a return to the covenant God—to covenant fidelity through the power of the Gospel, to what Paul called “the obedience of faith”. This demands a rediscovery of a covenant theology in all its far-reaching implications for church and society, not as an abstraction, but as the concrete solution to the life and death struggle for the planet—for the kingdom of God to fully come. In summary, Jesus gave us the ethical conditions of the Covenant that will bring his government of righteousness and peace to the earth: “You shall love the Lord your God… and …your neighbour as yourself”.

Print friendly pdf:  http://lifemessenger.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Chr istianity-in-Crisis.pdf - - David has served as a teacher and ministry leader for over 40 years. He teaches with a measure of prophetic gravitas and as the founder of Lifemessenger carries a word of reformation, particularly for the Western church and culture.