It is when people receive the benefits of socio-political order and recognize their accountability to the natural law that they are best prepared for the message of salvation from the law.
Great article. One difficulty seems to come in your last paragraph, where the penultimate and the ultimate are ordered. It seems to imply evangelism only after a sufficiently prepared social order. I don’t think this is what you mean, but it may be worth exploring how evangelism can find its place despite the social order. Maybe this involves a 3 worlds framework like Aaron Wren has posited. I.e. the 3 worlds are the penultimate context for the same ultimate end. The ultimate end has a different flavor depending on the “world”.
Andrew, good question - I did sort of slip that in at the end. I do think evangelism requires preparation. Clearly, we can't always have a social order that recognizes the natural law. Though we can have that in more local contexts. Certain segments of society are more willing to acknowledge the validity of Christian moral claims, and thereby to see the need for redemption.
But I think preparation must and can take place through personal interaction and building of relationships with people, as well as ideologically, through people accepting certain philosophical claims that are preparatory to Christianity. I see this in the IDW space, where many recognize that a purely secular world is one that is meaningless. Jordan Peterson has not accepted orthodox Christianity, but his followers often do, for example. Stoicism is another example, as people come to recognize the need for discipline and control over the passions. That prepares the way for a doctrine of sin and the need for sanctification and forgiveness.
I also think the need for preparation gives many Christians jobs to do. We don't all need to be evangelists. Many of us need to do good works to make the social order stronger and more reflective of the natural law. That should be viewed as activity that has its own penultimate purposes and significance, but that also ultimately serves the salvation of people, who are thereby better prepared to receive the gospel. I hope that helps!
I read 1 Timothy 2:1-4 exactly as you. There are a few things I could add.
From an unpublished piece on Political Theology
I wish that I had made a practice of keeping printed or electronic copies of everything I read long ago. For I read decades ago that Baptists in the middle American colonies complained that the outbreak of the Revolutionary War had cut short a local revival. Nevertheless, it is historically evident that the Revolution devastated, at least at a formal ecclesiastical level, the spiritual landscape of America.
This makes perfect logic. Wars and rumors of wars have a habit of diverting minds from the Holy to more prosaic and immediate concerns and this with a less than a gracious mindset.
The point at which the influence of Christianity upon Europe began to wane was marked by the Thirty Years War (1618–48), the culmination of other ongoing sectarian struggles and strife (i.e., French Wars of Religion (1562–1598); Eighty Years’ War in the Netherlands, (1568–1648); English Civil War (1642–1651)). Even during the armistices between Catholic Spain and Holland’s Calvinists, Calvinists exploited the external peace to oppress, expel, and kill those with Arminian beliefs within their jurisdiction, the most famous of these being Hugo Grotius.
As George Whitefield often declared, God works through (instrumental) means. Thus, if there are conflicts, let alone conflicts in which self-identifying Christians are even participants, it is not reasonable to expect that outside interlocutors will find Christianity all that attractive.
Great article. One difficulty seems to come in your last paragraph, where the penultimate and the ultimate are ordered. It seems to imply evangelism only after a sufficiently prepared social order. I don’t think this is what you mean, but it may be worth exploring how evangelism can find its place despite the social order. Maybe this involves a 3 worlds framework like Aaron Wren has posited. I.e. the 3 worlds are the penultimate context for the same ultimate end. The ultimate end has a different flavor depending on the “world”.
Just a few quick notes. Thanks for writing!
Andrew, good question - I did sort of slip that in at the end. I do think evangelism requires preparation. Clearly, we can't always have a social order that recognizes the natural law. Though we can have that in more local contexts. Certain segments of society are more willing to acknowledge the validity of Christian moral claims, and thereby to see the need for redemption.
But I think preparation must and can take place through personal interaction and building of relationships with people, as well as ideologically, through people accepting certain philosophical claims that are preparatory to Christianity. I see this in the IDW space, where many recognize that a purely secular world is one that is meaningless. Jordan Peterson has not accepted orthodox Christianity, but his followers often do, for example. Stoicism is another example, as people come to recognize the need for discipline and control over the passions. That prepares the way for a doctrine of sin and the need for sanctification and forgiveness.
I also think the need for preparation gives many Christians jobs to do. We don't all need to be evangelists. Many of us need to do good works to make the social order stronger and more reflective of the natural law. That should be viewed as activity that has its own penultimate purposes and significance, but that also ultimately serves the salvation of people, who are thereby better prepared to receive the gospel. I hope that helps!
I read 1 Timothy 2:1-4 exactly as you. There are a few things I could add.
From an unpublished piece on Political Theology
I wish that I had made a practice of keeping printed or electronic copies of everything I read long ago. For I read decades ago that Baptists in the middle American colonies complained that the outbreak of the Revolutionary War had cut short a local revival. Nevertheless, it is historically evident that the Revolution devastated, at least at a formal ecclesiastical level, the spiritual landscape of America.
This makes perfect logic. Wars and rumors of wars have a habit of diverting minds from the Holy to more prosaic and immediate concerns and this with a less than a gracious mindset.
The point at which the influence of Christianity upon Europe began to wane was marked by the Thirty Years War (1618–48), the culmination of other ongoing sectarian struggles and strife (i.e., French Wars of Religion (1562–1598); Eighty Years’ War in the Netherlands, (1568–1648); English Civil War (1642–1651)). Even during the armistices between Catholic Spain and Holland’s Calvinists, Calvinists exploited the external peace to oppress, expel, and kill those with Arminian beliefs within their jurisdiction, the most famous of these being Hugo Grotius.
As George Whitefield often declared, God works through (instrumental) means. Thus, if there are conflicts, let alone conflicts in which self-identifying Christians are even participants, it is not reasonable to expect that outside interlocutors will find Christianity all that attractive.