“Christians in the first-century were a minority in a hostile world,” observed John Howard Yoder. A theologian and ethicist, Yoder believed that ancient Christianity’s minority status was radically different than the posture every Western Christian after Constantine would embrace. This historic standard is part of why the rapidly diminishing power of cultural Christianity in the U.S. has been so traumatic.

The Church, prior to Constantine, was defined by outward character and practice. Constantine effectively conscripted the West into Christianity—demanding they appear as Christian, or face brutal consequences for defiance. Because everyone essentially held the same external practices, the identity of a true Christian shifted inward, to the transformation of the heart and soul.

Over time the external signs of faith became less and less valued—until even the efficacy of an external sign was questioned. Yoder follows the logic of a modern Christian debating giving away all of his wealth:

What would happen if everyone did it? If everyone gave their wealth away what would we do for capital? If everyone loved their enemies who would ward off the Communists?

This argument could be met on other levels, but here our only point is to observe that such reasoning would have been preposterous in the early church and remains ludicrous wherever committed Christians accept realistically their minority status. For more fitting than “What if everybody did it” would be its inverse, “What if nobody else acted like a Christian, but we did?”

In many ways, the faithful Christians celebrated throughout history are the ones who defied Yoder’s calculated control of external works of faith. “Anyone who has read Eberhard Bethge’s Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography knows it is impossible to distinguish between Bonhoeffer’s life and work,” writes theologian Stanley Hauerwas:

Bonhoeffer’s work from beginning to end was the attempt to reclaim the visibility of the church as the necessary condition for the proclamation of the gospel in a world that no longer privileged Christianity.

Hauerwas notes that, not only was Bonhoeffer’s faith deeply integrated into his life, but, “Bonhoeffer’s life that was at once theological and political.” Quoting from The Cost of Discipleship, Hauerwas continues:

According to Bonhoeffer sanctification, properly understood, is the church’s politics. For sanctification is only possible within the visible church community. “That is the ‘political’ character of the church community. A merely personal sanctification which seeks to bypass this openly visible separation of the church-community from the world confuses the pious desires of the religious flesh with the sanctification of the church-community, which has been accomplished in Christ’s death and is being actualized by the seal of God.”

Bonhoeffer saw that the holiness of the church is necessary for the redemption of the world.

Though Bonhoeffer saw American theology as superficial, he has many followers currently echoing his ethos for Christian praxis. A New Yorker profile on the Southern Baptist ethicist Russell Moore noted, “he says that Christians in America must learn to think of themselves as a marginal community, struggling to survive in an increasingly hostile secular culture.”

Moore tends toward introspection, admonishing Southern Baptists to think first—and often—about their own sins. The denomination was formed, in 1845, by white Southerners who split off from a national Baptist movement that was growing increasingly intolerant of slavery. Moore sees in his theological ancestors a cowardly and catastrophic willingness to ignore the uncomfortable. “If you call people to repentance for drunkenness, or for adultery, or for any number of personal sins, but you don’t say anything about slaveholding or about lynching,” he says, “you’re just baptizing the status quo.”

Though leaders change and the appearances of majority diminish, the call and foundation of the Church remain. Hauerwas, again quoting Bonhoeffer, concludes:

The church names that community that lives in radical hope in a world without hope. To so live means the church cannot help but be different from the world. Such a difference is not an end in itself but “automatically follow[s] from an authentic proclamation of the gospel.”

Weekend Reading List

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Political Theology. Stanley Hauerwas for The University of Waterloo.
• The New Evangelical Moral Minority. Kelefa Sanneh for The New Yorker.
• A White Church No More. Russell Moore for The New York Times.
• The Priestly Kingdom (pp. 42-45, draft provided by Duke). John Howard Yoder in Christian Ethics.

Today’s Reading
Hosea 10 (Listen – 2:47)
Psalms 129-131 (Listen – 2:43)

This Weekend’s Readings
Hosea 11 (Listen – 1:53) Psalms 132-134 (Listen – 2:42)
Hosea 12 (Listen – 1:51) Psalms 135-136 (Listen – 4:23)

By William Cooper (fl. 1653)

Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! — Psalm 126.5

It is a very high privilege for a Christian to be conformed to Christ. To be conformists to Christ, is to be nonconformists to the world. But what conforms us more to Christ than the cross? Therefore give thanks for it. “That I may know the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.”

This is part of that excellent knowledge for which Paul accounted all other worldly privileges but dung. To this conformity in afflictions unto Christ we are predestinated. “If we suffer with him, we shall be glorified together.” It is this way that Christ entered into glory. “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?”

If we will enter with him, we must follow after him. How? By taking up his cross. The cross of Christ sweetens our sufferings in the bitterness of them—as that piece of wood sweetened the waters of Marah. Christ, like a good physician, first tasted the medicine that he gave his patient.

Never hope to go another way than the Captain of our salvation hath led us; for if we baulk his track, we are lost. Must we not then give thanks for affliction that conforms us to our Head?

The cross is a Christian’s banner, his honor, and the special favor of the Lord towards him—therefore be thankful for it. Let not this seem a riddle or paradox. “For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake.” This he accounts a peculiar gift of God to them, whereof but few in comparison do partake.

Mark what the apostle Peter says: “If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.” God’s Spirit manifests itself variously in several subjects; but in sufferers for Christ the very spirit and quintessence of glory seems to be extracted and poured on them.

Upon all these accounts, and many more such, we are to thank God for crosses and corrections, because the good of them doth flow from God’s goodness, not from their nature. The Lord can make the persecutors of his people instruments of good to his people: no thanks to them, but to him.

Today’s Reading
Hosea 9 (Listen – 2:52)
Psalms 126-128 (Listen – 1:58)

By Augustine of Hippo (354-430 C.E.)

To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens! — Psalm 123.1

We do not attribute the power of kingdoms and empires to anyone except the true God. It is He who gives happiness in the Kingdom of Heaven to the righteous. And it is He who gives kingly power on earth, both to the righteous and the unrighteous, as it pleases Him. His good pleasure is always just.

He is the one true God who never leaves the human race without justice and help. He gave a kingdom to the Romans, as He also did to the Assyrians—and even the Persians, who, as their own books testify, only worshipped two gods—to say nothing of the Hebrew people, who, as long as they were a kingdom, worshipped none save the true God.

The same One who gave to the Persians harvests gave power to Augustus and also to Nero. To avoid the necessity of going over all of those to whom He has enthroned: He who gave power to the Christian Constantine also gave it to the apostate Julian—whose gifted mind was deceived by a sacrilegious and detestable curiosity, stimulated by the love of power.

Are not all things ruled and governed by the one God as He pleases—and if His motives are hidden, are they therefore unjust?

For if you are awaiting an opportunity, not for liberty to speak the truth, but for license to revile, may you remember Cicero, who says concerning some, “Oh, wretched are those at liberty to sin!” Whoever deems himself happy because of license to revile, he would be far happier if that were not allowed at all.

The cause of the greatness of the Roman empire is neither fortuitous nor fatal. (Some call things fortuitous which have either no causes or causes which do not proceed from some intelligible order; others call that which happens independently of the will of God and man fatal.) In a word, human kingdoms are established by divine providence.

Now, against the sacrilegious and impious darings of reason, we assert both that God knows all things before they come to pass, and that we do by our free will whatsoever we know and feel to be done by us only because we will it.

God is supreme and true—He can never be believed to have left the kingdoms of men, their dominations and servitudes, outside of the laws of His providence.

*Abridged and adapted from The City of God.

Today’s Reading
Hosea 8 (Listen – 1:58)
Psalms 123-125 (Listen – 1:52)

Deliver me, O Lord, from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue. What shall be given to you, and what more shall be done to you, you deceitful tongue? — Psalm 120.2-3

In order to understand the true nature of a person’s heart, ancient Jews believed, you looked to his words. “Out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks,” Jesus observed. It was a belief widely held in the ancient world; centuries later the Babylonian Talmud imagined a conversation between God and a man’s words:

Said the Holy One, blessed be he, to the tongue, “All the parts of the human body stand upright, but you recline. All the parts of the human body are outside, but you are inside. Not only so, but I have set up as protection for you two walls, one of bone (teeth) and one of flesh (cheeks).”

Though the tongue may recline, it is rarely at rest. ”Lips are soft; but when they are ‘lying’ lips they suck away the life of character and are as murderous as razors,” Charles Haddon Spurgeon remarks:

Lips should never be red with the blood of honest men’s reputes, nor salved with malicious falsehoods. The faculty of speech becomes a curse when it is degraded into a mean weapon for smiting men behind their backs. Those who fawn and flatter, too, and all the while have enmity in their hearts, are horrible beings; they are the seed of the devil, and he works in them after his own deceptive nature.

The authors of Scripture react viscerally to malicious and deceptive words, Spurgeon explains, because they are the language of sin:

The Psalmist seems lost to suggest a fitting punishment. It is the worst of offenses—this detraction, calumny, and slander. Judgment sharp and crushing would be measured out to it if men were visited for their transgressions. But what punishment could be heavy enough?

And though Christ absorbed the eternal burden of sin, each broken action has repercussions in our daily lives. The Talmud compares the effects of gossip and hateful speech to one of the most destructive diseases of their day:

The Hebrew for the words “I will destroy” and “in perpetuity” are both derived from one and the same root. Hence… the punishment of destruction will take the form of [leprosy].

Leprosy results in a person’s total disconnection from their community. The outside rots because the inside is incurably ill. Yet the promise of Scripture is that—through Christ—all are healed, all are made new, all are redeemed.

*For Talmud references, see b. Arak. 3:5, II.4.B, D.

Today’s Reading
Hosea 7 (Listen – 2:19)
Psalms 120-122 (Listen – 2:12)

The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever. — Psalm 119.60

It is tempting when we read, in an English Bible, “the sum of your word” to picture a mathematical or financial metaphor. But the Hebrew word for sum—rosh—is more often translated with the English word beginning. To be fair, Bible translation is as much art as it is linguistics. Yet the significance of this word was not lost on ancient readers.

The psalmist, who wants his message to culminate with “every one of your righteous rules endures forever,” starts with, “the beginning of your word is truth.” The Babylonian Talmud observes:

The beginning but not the end? But [by] what comes at the end of your word—the truth of the beginning of your word is understood.

Could this be what Jesus was thinking of when Luke records:

[Jesus] said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

The beginning is understood through the end.

If Christianity were merely about the imitation of Christ, the Hebrew Scriptures would have no meaning. Yet the heart of the Christian faith flows from relationship with Christ—and building intimacy begins in the words Jesus say introduce the divine to the world.

Spiritual maturity grows the immature curiosity of, “what would Jesus do?” to, “how will Christ live through what I choose to do?” This question presupposes freedom in Christ and demands intimacy to answer. And so the Psalmist cries:

I rise before dawn and cry for help; I hope in your words. My eyes are awake before the watches of the night, that I may meditate on your promise. Hear my voice according to your steadfast love; O Lord, according to your justice give me life.

Here lies the Psalmist’s hope that, “everyone of your righteous rules endures forever.” The Talmud remarks:

Wherever the language, ‘command,’ is used, the sole purpose is to encourage obedience both at that time and for all generations.

The joy for God’s word expressed in Psalm 119 is found in the Psalmist’s faith in God’s goodness as expressed in his word. He is no longer cynical to commands because he has tasted the righteousness of God.

*For Talmud references, see b. Qidd. 1:7, II.9.B and 1:7, I.3.J.

Today’s Reading
Hosea 5-6 (Listen – 3:44)
Psalms 119.145-176 (Listen – 15:14)