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The Colson Files
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 By Chuck Colson|Published Date: August 23, 2010
The Legacy of Luther
This commentary, published November 10, 1997, on the occasion of the 514th birthday of Martin Luther, is as relevant today as ever.
Many Christians know little about Luther beyond the fact that he nailed his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg door and set off the Protestant Reformation. Luther’s insights, including his insistence on justification by faith alone—sola fide—divided the church for centuries. But today these same insights are making it possible for Protestants and Catholics to join forces to preserve the civilization Luther helped create.
Luther was, in many respects, the father of the German nation. When he translated the Bible into German, Luther standardized that language for the first time. He rallied German princes in his struggle against the corrupt Borgia papacy, and helped Germans to see themselves, for the first time, as part of a larger nation instead of a collection of petty principalities.
But Luther’s cultural significance went far beyond Germany’s borders. When he stood before the Diet of Worms and refused to recant his position on justification by faith, he uttered the famous words "Here I stand… I can do no other."
These words had profound theological significance—and they also created the foundation for the modern world: the idea of individuality, the individual standing before God.
Prior to Luther, identity was derived largely from membership in a group. Following Luther, the individual conscience reigned supreme. As historian Ken Jowitt writes, "one can hardly find a more poignant, courageous, blunt statement of individualism than ‘here I stand… I can do no other.’ "
But Luther’s most important contribution was his re-discovery of the doctrine of justification by faith—as Luther put it, that "faith alone makes righteous and fulfills the law." This "chief part of the gospel," Luther wrote, had been obscured by a penitential system that emphasized human effort at the expense of faith.
For nearly five centuries, the gulf between Catholics and Protestants has centered around the question, how are we justified before God? During the last 20 years or so, Catholic scholars, such as Peter Kreeft of Boston College, have begun to say, "Luther is right: We are justified by faith."
Four hundred and eighty years after he helped split the church, Luther’s insight into justification by faith is helping bring Christians back together. In 1994 some 40 evangelical and Catholic leaders, myself included, signed a statement called "Evangelicals and Catholics Together." The document calls on all Christians to work as allies against a common enemy.
Just this week, the signers of "Evangelicals and Catholics Together" are releasing a new statement that affirms what the Reformers meant by Sola Fide—justification by faith alone. The document is called "The Gift of Salvation," and it will surprise many.
Luther would have been proud to sign it. He has, in a sense, been vindicated. And he would be thrilled, five hundred years later, to see the church rally behind this bedrock Christian truth.
For more insight to this topic, get the book, Through the Year with Luther, by Martin Luther, from our online store. Or read the article, “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Gift of Salvation.”
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By Chuck Colson|Published Date: August 09, 2010
Absolutes without absolutism
It’s not as hard as you might think to stand for absolute truth with those who deny it. This BreakPoint commentary first appeared in June, 2001.
Have you ever tried to debate moral principles with someone who doesn't believe they exist? If you have, you know it's an exercise in frustration. In our anything-goes society, even mentioning that there might be such a thing as a moral absolute truth is a good way to get branded intolerant, anachronistic, and a killjoy. And the more frustrated we get with this state of affairs, the more likely we are to turn the stereotype into a self-fulfilling prophecy. That is, our frustration can easily turn into anger, and our anger can begin to look very much like the arrogance that we're already accused of harboring.
The goal that Christians need to strive for, argues scholar Art Lindsley of the C. S. Lewis Institute, is "absolutes without absolutism." In his excellent new book, True Truth: Defending Absolute Truth in a Relativistic World, Lindsley writes, "Just as a need to relate truth to all areas of life does not make us relativists, so believing that there are some moral absolutes does not make us absolutists. . . . Absolutism might be defined as being synonymous with a cluster of characteristics: arrogance, close-mindedness, intolerance, self-righteousness, bigotry, and the like." These are characteristics that many people already associate with Christianity, unfairly. And so these are the very characteristics that Christians need to work especially hard to avoid. After all, as Lindsley reminds us, the most fundamental doctrines of our faith -- our fallen state and our desperate need for a Savior -- are doctrines that make for humility, not pride.
But at the same time, we still need to be able to talk about absolutes. An explanation of the Christian worldview makes no sense without them. So how do we do it? Well, first remember that we can believe that there are absolutes -- that is, moral truth binding on us -- without being absolutists -- that is, closing our minds to other propositions.
And Lindsley suggests that one of the best ways is to turn the tables on relativists. For instance, we can point out the absolutism in their own thinking. As Lindsley writes, "Relativists consistently stand guilty of the philosophical sin of making exceptions to their own absolute rules." They claim that Christianity is a religion of intolerance, that Christians have committed abuses in the name of their faith, that Christians shouldn't impose their values on others, but leave them free to choose their own value systems. But where did they get their ideas of tolerance and justice -- of right and wrong in general -- if they genuinely don't believe in moral absolutes? Without such ideas, how can anyone formulate a meaningful system of values?
This kind of argument was effective with as brilliant a thinker as C. S. Lewis. Many years after his conversion, he wrote of his days as an atheist: "How had I got this idea of just and unjust? . . . A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line."
If we're patient and persistent, it's not as hard as it might seem to make a relativist begin to see the truth about the "straight line." But we must never forget exactly who and what we're defending. Jesus was the embodiment of absolute truth, but never an absolutist. And so as Art Lindsley puts it: "The defense of the Gospel is most effective when combined with the demeanor of Christ."
For more insight to this topic, get Art Lindsley’s book, True Truth, from our online store. Or read the article, “The Shape of Unbelief,” by T. M. Moore.
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No Stuffed Christians Here |
By Chuck Colson|Published Date: August 02, 2010
Living Faith in Society
In spite of the complaints and criticisms of many, Christianity has long been a force for good in human society. This BreakPoint commentary first appeared in September, 1992.
A few years ago, the Smithsonian museum put up a new display with Archie Bunker's overstuffed armchair, from the famous television sitcom. A symbol, perhaps, of the narrow-minded, reactionary viewpoint Archie Bunker was supposed to represent.
A lot of people think of Christianity in the same terms--as narrow and reactionary--and they wish they could relegate it to a display in the museum of human history.
But what people fail to see is that the Church, for all its faults, has been a highly positive force in society. Jesus's command to love the world has inspired a great outpouring of social and philanthropic work.
Take education. Many Ivy League universities, including Princeton and Harvard, were founded by Christians who believed in nurturing the life of the mind.
The earliest opponents of slavery in the United States were Quakers, who operated an underground railroad to Canada.
During the Civil War, the Christian Sanitation Commission cut the death rate in hospitals in half, by providing bandages and nursing care to the wounded.
The record of Christian charity is so impressive that even John Dewey, one of the founders of modern humanism, praised believers for their social conscience.
We still see the same thing today. A recent Gallup study called The Saints Among Us found that people who are just church-goers don't differ much from the rest of the population.
But people who are deeply and personally committed to Christian faith are, as the study puts it, "a breed apart." The statistics show that they are happier, more charitable, more ethical, more tolerant, and more likely to help the needy.
So despite what the secular elites may say, Christianity has been, and still is, a powerful force for good in Western culture.
And Bblical truth still provides the answers to our most vexing problems. Let me give one example. Government officials often come to us here at Prison Fellowship with questions about criminal-justice policies. One of our recommendations is that costly prison space be saved for truly dangerous offenders. Non-violent offenders ought to be sentenced to supervised work programs, using their salary to pay restitution to their victims. Compared to just throwing everyone behind bars, restitution is clearly cheaper and more effective in curbing repeat offenders.
I love it when the officials ask me where the idea came from. I usually ask them, do you have a Bible? Dust it off, I suggest, and read what God said to Moses on Mount Sinai. The concept of restitution comes straight out of Scripture.
So don't let anyone make you feel like your faith belongs in a museum, alongside Archie Bunker's chair. Christian love and Christian truth are an essential underpinning of society in modern America just as much as they ever were.
So keep that in mind over the next few months, when everyone's thoughts are turned to politics. Christians do have a civic duty to live out their faith in the public square. And the public square desperately needs the influence of biblical truth.
For a better understanding of the true nature of Christian faith, order the book, The Faith, by Charles Colson, from our online store. Or read the article, “Near Christianity,” by T. M. Moore
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By Chuck Colson|Published Date: July 26, 2010
Why do liberal scholars continue to get it wrong about Jesus? Because they refuse to accept the best source for information about Him. This BreakPoint commentary first appeared June 26, 2001.
Getting it wrong
Eight years ago, a former nun named Karen Armstrong wrote an unlikely bestseller called, A History of God. The book purported to tell readers how Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have "shaped and altered the conception of God." Now that book has been turned into a television show -- one that, like the book, manages to get some very important questions very wrong.
The Arts & Entertainment network's presentation of "A History of God" didn't feature a single evangelical or conservative Catholic scholar. Instead, viewers got the story of Christianity from people famous for their rejection of Christian orthodoxy -- people like Princeton's Elaine Pagels.
Viewers were told that the Christian belief in the divinity of Christ was something essentially invented by the fourth-century church. Viewers were assured that "Jesus never claimed to be God." Nor, for that matter, did St. Paul believe in Jesus' divinity.
This is not only contrary to traditional Christian teaching, it also runs contrary to a lot of contemporary scholarship -- especially the kind that approaches the subject matter with an open mind.
Take the statement "Jesus never claimed to be God." Even liberal scholars agree that Jesus called himself the "Son of Man." The phrase comes from Daniel 7 in which the prophet describes one come down from heaven, and who is given "authority, glory and sovereign power." His is an "everlasting dominion that will not pass away . . . " [7:14].
As scholars note, by the first century, the phrase had messianic, divine connotations -- overtones that Jesus would have been aware of when he used that expression. But Armstrong disregards this usage, and turns Jesus' use of the phrase into an expression of his own mortality.
This kind of disregard for the straightforward and the obvious is also at work in her claim that St. Paul didn't teach Jesus' divinity. In at least three of his epistles, Paul refers to what scholars call the "cosmic Christ." Scholars agree that the most famous of these passages, found in Philippians 2, is based on an ancient hymn -- one that predates the letter to the Philippians.
In other words, less than two decades after Jesus' resurrection, Christians all over the known world were already singing hymns about his divinity -- contrary to what the A&E TV viewers were told.
The exact definition of Jesus' relationship to the Father wasn't finalized until the fourth and fifth centuries. But this was simply a refinement of -- and not a departure from -- what the first-century Church believed about Jesus.
The best source
What programs like "A History of God" don't acknowledge is that the Scriptures remain the very best source for information about Jesus and the early church. Archeology and other scholarship haven't discredited this essential text; on the contrary, each new discovery has helped confirm its trustworthiness.
It's those who posit a Christianity other than what we read in the New Testament who are ignoring the evidence, and not the believers.
For more insight to this topic, get the book, The Faith, by Charles Colson, from our online store. Or read the article, “Imaging God,” by Patrick Henry Reardon. |
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By Chuck Colson|Published Date: July 12, 2010
On Loving God
Chuck points us to one of the great saints of the past in this BreakPoint commentary which first appeared in 2008.
Twenty years ago, California created a “Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem and Social Responsibility.” It quickly became the butt of jokes: Writer Anne Taylor Fleming called it a “parody . . . born in a hot tub.”
California was simply leading where the rest of the culture was headed: Americans consider “self-esteem” as essential for, well, everything. For many, promoting self-esteem is necessary to correct the negative self-image promoted by religion, especially Christianity.
They could not be more wrong: It is not fads or task forces; it is Christianity that teaches us how best to love ourselves.
No one communicated this truth better than Bernard of Clairvaux, the twelfth-century monk and theologian. Bernard’s treatise, On Loving God, is the topic of the latest installment in Ken Boa’s outstanding “Great Books Audio CD” series on Christian classics.
As Boa tells us, by the time he was in his thirties, Bernard’s advice was sought by both kings and popes. He founded 163 monasteries across Europe during his lifetime and is honored as the founder of the Cistercian order, better known as the Trappists.
However, Bernard’s greatest legacy is his writings. Like few before or since, Bernard articulated a Christian faith that spoke to the heart without neglecting the importance of right belief. He could describe the Christian’s relationship with God in rapturous and ecstatic terms but also hold believers accountable for deviations from orthodoxy.
This balance is as difficult in our times as it was in Bernard’s, which is why his classic writings still speak to us—none more so than On Loving God.
In Chapter 15, Bernard describes the “degrees” of love, beginning with what he calls the most carnal of love: loving ourselves for our own sake. This love is what the California task force has in mind when it speaks of “self-esteem.” It seeks after its own desires and needs only.
Bernard regards this love of self as natural but limited: There is more to love than self-gratification and self-fulfillment. If we stop at loving ourselves, an important part of us remains unfulfilled.
That leads to the second degree of love: loving God for our sake. We love God, not only because He is worthy of our love, but because it is in our interest to acknowledge our dependence on Him.
If this sounds familiar, it ought to: It is the way most Christians talk about God. God is the One who “meets our needs” and is the Source of meaning in our lives. We cannot live without His sustaining grace.
The third degree is loving God for God’s sake: when through prayer, “reading God’s Word,” and “obeying His commandments,” we come to know God and find “Him altogether lovely”—consuming for us.
While too few of us arrive at this state, there is even one more degree of love, what Bernard calls the “perfect condition”: loving ourselves for God’s sake. We see and love ourselves as God sees and loves us—the kind of love that led to the Cross.
Bernard confessed that this “perfect condition” was “beyond [his] powers,” and probably only experienced in heaven. This does not change the fact that the only self-esteem worth the name is what God offers us through Christ—something you will not find in any hot tub.
For more insight to this topic, get the book, Bernard of Clairvaux: Selected Works, edited by G. R. Evans, from our online store. Or read the article, “The Reformer Saint and the Saintly Reformer,” by W. Stanford Reid.
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By Chuck Colson|Published Date: June 28, 2010
Global Christianity
Chuck begins a new series on the nature of Christian faith and the state of the faith in the world.
In his book The Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntington predicts that demographics will decide the clash between Christianity and Islam. And, as he puts it, "in the long run . . . Muhammad wins out."
In this instance, Huntington is wrong. For the foreseeable future there will be many more Christians than Muslims in the world.
As Penn State professor Philip Jenkins writes in The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, predictions like Huntington's betray an ignorance of the explosive growth of Christianity outside of the West.
For instance, in 1900, there were approximately 10 million Christians in Africa. By 2000, there were 360 million. By 2025, conservative estimates see that number rising to 633 million. Those same estimates put the number of Christians in Latin America in 2025 at 640 million and in Asia at 460 million.
According to Jenkins, the percentage of the world's population that is, at least by name, Christian will be roughly the same in 2050 as it was in 1900. By the middle of this century, there will be 3 billion Christians in the world – one and a half times the number of Muslims. In fact, by 2050 there will be nearly as many Pentecostal Christians in the world as there are Muslims today.
But at that point, only one-fifth of the world's Christians will be non-Hispanic whites. The typical Christian will be a woman living in a Nigerian village or in a Brazilian shantytown.
And these changes will be more than demographic. Jenkins points out that those he calls "Southern Christians" – those living in Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia – are far more conservative, theologically and morally, than their counterparts in the West.
Thus, as Christianity becomes more Southern, it becomes more Biblically orthodox. While people like Bishop John Shelby Spong and Templeton Prize winner Arthur Peacock insist that Christianity must abandon its historic beliefs to survive, it is precisely these historic beliefs that attract our Southern brethren.
And that's why in Spong and Peacock's own Anglican Communion, African bishops are ordaining missionaries to re-convert the West.
This story of Christianity's explosive growth is one of the great untold stories of our time-a story that North American Christians need to hear.
It's a story that repudiates those who say that Christians must compromise their beliefs to remain relevant. The opposite is the case. Biblical orthodoxy is winning converts while churches that have lost their biblical moorings languish.
This shift of Christianity's "center of gravity" is also a reminder to Western Christians that we are not the whole show, and we have to start thinking differently about ourselves. We are part of a much larger community: the worldwide Church.
Finally, it's a sign that, no matter how bad things seem at home, God is at work throughout the world. Everywhere it's proclaimed, the Gospel is changing lives and societies.
For more insight to this topic, get the book, The Faith, by Charles Colson, from our online store. Or read the article, “Living in the Real World,” by Chuck Edwards.
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