11 Questions with Justin Taylor
Aug. 15 2006
We love Justin Taylor for walking out humble orthodoxy with his unique blend of wisdom and humility. Justin is currently the ESV Bible Project Manager at Crossway and writes a blog called Between Two Worlds. We asked him 11 questions about Humble Orthodoxy and church trends...
Question #1: Can you give us your definition of Humble Orthodoxy and why we need it in the church today?
Justin Taylor: Well, let’s start with the negative. The first thing that should be said about “Humble Orthodoxy” is that it doesn’t mean this:
humility = orthodoxy
or
orthodoxy = humility
Being humble doesn’t mean you’re orthodox (i.e., have right beliefs), just as being orthodox doesn’t mean that you are necessary humble. In other words, the phrase is prescriptive (what should be) not descriptive (what is always the case). True humility should lead to orthodoxy, and orthodoxy should produce genuine humility. So “Humble Orthodoxy” looks more like this:
humility ⇒ orthodoxy
orthodoxy ⇒ humility
Practically it refers to the fact that one must be humble in order to receive orthodoxy, and one should be humble in discerning how to present orthodoxy. Humility and orthodoxy should be intimately wed--what God hath joined together, let no man rend asunder!
Question #2: How does Humble Orthodoxy apply when we’re evaluating new trends in the church?
JT: Before we can evaluate we need to listen and to understand. The proud (who sometimes are quite orthodox theologically!) don’t think this step is necessary. They see a new trend and quickly jump to the evaluation stage. But as Christians we are bound by the Golden Rule. We don’t like it when others respond to or critique us without first understanding; therefore, we should seek to treat others as we would want to be treated. This requires a deep humility--which includes an openness to being critiqued and to having our assumptions overturned or nuanced and a willingness to admit (when appropriate) that we don’t have enough information to make an informed decision.
But listening and understanding aren’t enough. Humble Orthodoxy insists on the language of “speaking the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15). Most of us are falling off one side of that horse or the other. We’re often loveless truth-speakers or truthless love-seekers. But the biblical model insists on both. So the other side of the equation is that we must resist the temptation--and it is indeed a temptation in this sea of pseudo-tolerance within which we swim--to have a sort of false humility that is always searching, always exploring, always dialoguing, always asking, but never concluding, never proclaiming, never coming to a knowledge of the truth (cf. 2 Tim. 3:7). We must insist that Truth exists, that He can be known, and that it is loving to speak of this One who graciously saved us and has spoken to us.
Question #3: What are some practical steps we can take to evaluate these new trends?
Justin Taylor: The first step, as I’ve suggested in the previous post, is to listen. It’s quite sad, really, that “listening” has taken on such wimpish connotations. We hear that word and we tend to conjure up images of Mr. Rogers leading a group therapy session while we sit cross-legged in a circle, holding hands and singing Kumbaya! But there’s nothing passive or pansy or prettified about the art and task of biblically informed listening. It’s serious, active, and aggressive. It’s hard work. It’s a battle to fight impatience and to take the time to really understand. It takes mental sweat to zero in on the author’s intended meaning. It’s encouraging to know that even the Apostle Peter found some of Paul’s writings “hard to understand” (2 Pet. 3:16). In his great book How to Read a Book Mortimer Alder wrote that you only have a right to criticize someone’s work when you restate their arguments in such a way that the author would say: “Yes, you’ve got it.” If you don’t do that, you’ve created a “straw man"--a flimsy representation of the real thing that you can whack away at. But if you want to win the war and not just the little battles, you have to fight against the real deal, and to do so requires a fair amount of work.
Related to good listening is asking good questions. Half the battle in genuine dialogue is discerning which questions need to be asked in order to yield more information. Fruitful illumination comes from asking the right questions, which requires good listening.
But listening and understanding will only take you so far. There are fantasy football nerds out there (you know who you are!) who perfectly understand an opposing team’s defense and yet would have all the bones in their neck broken if they actually tried to play just one down as a quarterback in the NFL! Understanding is essential, but it’s not enough--you also need to be equipped to bring skills and resources to the field.
What we need to develop is the ability to be mature thinkers. This is what Paul was getting at, I believe, in 1 Corinthians 14:20: “Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.” Sometimes well-intentioned believers will pooh-pooh conversation and subject matter that engages the mind because they insist we should have a “child-like faith.” Our trust and enthusiasm and singlemindedness toward Christ should indeed be like that of a child’s. But our thinking should be mature, like that of an adult’s.
In another place Paul calls us to mature thinking and also promises that God will help us to do so: “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.” We must remember that God is not far off, watching and waiting to see if we can conjure up enough wisdom to think through difficult things. As James 1:5 says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.” So an absolutely essential component to biblical discernment and evaluation is looking to God for help and illumination.
Question #4: We are committed to biblical truth. But some truths are primary and others are secondary. How do we tell the difference and why does it matter when we evaluate trends and movements?
JT: One model for thinking about this is to think of a web. Some truths are like strands that are on the periphery. Pull the strand out and the web doesn’t change all that much. But other truths are like the center pieces: pull them out and you’ll destroy the entire structure. Or if you want to change the imagery, think of the game Jenga. (Most readers probably know of this game where there are a number of small wooden blocks stacked in a tower.) Removing the top blocks is simple and it does nothing to the structure. But start to pull from the foundation and the entire thing soon crumbles to the floor.
Our goal should be to major on the majors, to keep the main things the main things. How do we know what those are? From God’s revelation to us in Scripture. We read and study with a goal to learning, submitting, and imitating. What are the primary truths that Scripture returns to again and again? What are the non-negotiables of the faith once-for-all given to the church (Jude 1:3)? What are those things such that, without them, you cut out the very heart of the faith? What are the things that made Jesus and the apostles truly upset?
We then contrast that with how the biblical writers treat what theologians call adiaphora (that is, things indifferent). A biblical example would be whether one can eat meat sacrificed to idols (see Romans 14). Paul is personally convinced that it’s fine to eat this meat, but it ultimately doesn’t matter whether one eat or drinks or abstains--as long as the decision is done in faith unto God’s glory and is permitted by God’s word. But mess with justification by faith and Paul gets livid. When we start to observe those sort of patterns, we start to see what ultimately matters in the mind and Word of God.
The reason this distinction applies to something like evaluating trends in the church like the emerging movement is that I don’t see a lot of wisdom in focusing on the non-essentials. Given the Age of the Blogosphere (read: Short Attention Span Theatre!) we only have so much time to convey our convictions. You can make thoughtful arguments in favor of pulpits, pews, and potlucks, and in place of stages, sofas, and Starbucks. But to adapt an illustration from John Owen, that’s like focusing on the pain in your pinkie when your entire body is diseased. Let’s keep the big things in view (the nature of God, the authority of his word, the truth of his gospel, etc.). Rupertus Melendius’s dictum is still worth remembering: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things, charity.”
Question #5: How do we evaluate what is true--we can’t know everything, so how can we really know anything for certain?
Justin Taylor: You’re right: we can’t know everything! A lot of people take that obvious fact and make the illogical jump from our lack of omniscience to our inability to be certain, which is required by neither Scripture nor logic.
The place to start is with what the Bible teaches, namely, that we can know some things with certainty. (A good place to start is with D. A. Carson’s list on p. 192f. of Becoming Conversant with Emerging Churches.) “That” questions are distinct from “why” statements. In other words, we can separate out the questions ”Is this the case?” from ”Why is that the case?” As an example, I believe God holds us responsible while simultaneously affirming His absolute sovereignty and our complete responsibility. Now unless your name is Jonathan Edwards, you’re probably going to get confused on this and have trouble sorting through the mystery and the complexities. But it’s important to remember that God holds you accountable for believing that He is 100% sovereign and you are 100% responsible, but not necessarily for understanding why--much less being able to explain why--that’s the case.
The same is true with regard to certainty and knowledge. If you believe in the Bible, then there’s no doubt that we can be said to truly know many things--that while our knowledge is never exhaustive, it can indeed be adequate. How that’s the case is analyzed by those who study knowledge (called epistemology). In my judgment, it’s more important to affirm that this is the case then to give complicated scenarios and definitions that explain exactly how this happens.
That’s not to say that epistemology is unimportant, only that obedience to biblical revelation is more important that offering epistemological explanations. The answer is that God has spoken--he is not silent and he does not stutter. His communication is clear and he intends for us to understand it rightly by using our minds in reliance upon His Spirit. It’s also important to remember that it’s not just me and my Bible, or just me and the Holy Spirit. We are to read the Bible, and to discern the truths contained therein, by reading it with the church, the communion of saints throughout the history of the Spirit’s work. Michael Horton has put this well:
“The best way to guard a true interpretation of Scripture, the Reformers insisted, was neither to naively embrace the infallibility of tradition, or the infallibility of the individual, but to recognize the communal interpretation of Scripture. The best way to ensure faithfulness to the text is to read it together, not only with the churches of our own time and place, but with the wider ‘communion of saints’ down through the age.”
Question #6: You’ve talked about “keeping the main things the main things” when evaluating trends. What are those main things?
JT: Some of the main things would be:
- the Trinity: three distinct, divine persons in one Godhead
- the fact that God is both absolute and personal
- that Jesus Christ is both God and man, two natures in one person
- that justification is by grace alone through faith alone on
- the basis of Christ’s righteousness alone
- that Scripture is authoritative, clear, necessary, and sufficient
Question #7: J. I. Packer says that “a half-truth masquerading as the whole truth becomes a complete untruth.” How does that relate to evaluating church trends?
JT: Isn’t that a great sentence? Packer has this great ability to say more in twelve words than most people can say in lengthy books!
Half-truths masquerading as whole truths is the modus operandi of the Evil One himself. Satan almost never tells a pure lie. It almost always has a grain of truth in it.
Doctrinal defection follows this pattern as well. It’s pieces of the puzzle claiming to represent the whole picture. In so doing, true and necessary pieces are left in the box, and the final outcome becomes distorted and offers only a partial representation.
So in evaluating new proposals and trends, we not only need to listen to what is being said, but we must also ask what is going unsaid.
Question #8: We’ve heard you talk about our need to “contextualize” our faith. What in the world does that mean?
JT: Contextualization is related to the fact that when everything comes to us embedded in context or a particular situation.. The first point to realize is that God himself has contextualized or accomodated his truth for us when it revealed it in the Scripture. He gave us his Word in human languages (primarily Hebrew and Greek). He gave it to a particular historical people (primarily the nation of Israel and the first-century church). He did it perfectly through the means of imperfect people (his prophets, priests, and kings).
One way to understand contextualization is seen from a simple illustration. Let’s imagine that I have two conversations today. In the morning, a theology professor and I are discussing the doctrine of the Trinity. We might talk about the precise definitions of and differences between divine essence and divine personhood; the roles of the economic vs. the immanent Trinity, the filoque controversy, etc. But that evening, my 3-year-old daughter asks me about how God can be both three and one. Now the conversations--in different contexts--shouldn’t be contradictory, but they’ll certainly be different (unless I want to put my daughter to sleep very quickly!) It’s the same message, communicated differently depending on the context and the audience. John Calvin taught that when God speaks to us he speaks as one lisping to little children--talking baby talk! Again, God is a Contextualizing God.
Paul describes his evangelistic methodology as follows: “To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law” (1 Cor. 9:20).
Question #9: Walking in a bookstore the other day we saw a book called “The Postmodern Bible.” Is the bible really postmodern? Or is it modern? Or what is it?
Justin Taylor: In a technical sense, it’s pre-modern. That is to say, there is a period of intellectual-social history called “modernism” (associated with the Enlightenment). Pre-modernism describes thought and life before this period. Post-modernism describes the world that comes after Modernism. So in that technical sense, since the Christian canon was solidified well before the Enlightenment, it’s pre-modern.
But in another sense--the sense in which you’re asking it, I think--biblical revelation transcends any intellectual period of human history. The Bible has some formal similiarites with so-called “premodern” tendencies (belief in the spiritual realm and spiritual explanations), with “modern” tenets (an emphasis on logic, order, a linear view of history), and postmodern trends (exploding the myth of neutrality, unveiling the sinful biases in our analysis, explaining ways in which power and authority can be destructive), etc. But I think it’s terribly reductionistic to prefix the Bible in this way and to seek to transform it to fit into the spirit of some cultural mileau.
Question #10: What is the emerging church? What are the positives? And what are things that concern you? And what is the difference between “emergent” and “emerging?”
JT: Broadly speaking, we can use the term “emerging churches” to describe any church that is seeking to incarnate and contextualize Christianity for a postmodern culture. That’s a really broad definition--so broad, in fact, that it includes folks who would quickly disavow the “emerging” label! Within that broad category would be a subset called “Emergent.” Emergent Village is an organization with a national coordinator in the U.S. (Tony Jones). Its proponents would say that this Emergent subset is more innovative and progressive and provocative in terms of theology and philosophy; its critics would say categorize it as being the more liberal wing of the movement. Most of these folks don’t believe in inerrancy and seek to minimze substitionary atonement (if they believe it at all). So it’s hard to see how these folks really fit under the broad evangelical label. (Which is why some of them have adopted the “post-evangelical” label.)
The positive side of this is that they are rightly discerning that “the times they are a-changin’!” They sometimes have good criticisms of the way in which the evangelical church has become overly slick, politicized, inauthentic, insular, etc. I appreciate their call for contextualization and some of the hard questions their asking.
My concerns mainly center around a functional insobordination to the authority of God’s word. They would vehemently protest such a characterization. But the fact remains that I believe Scripture clearly teaches some crucial doctrines (Trinitarianism, inerrancy, justification by faith alone; Christ as the only way to God; eternal punishment; sexual ethics) that some of the more liberal Emergent folks are questioning, obscuring, or denying.
Question #11: What resources do you recommend for understanding and evaluating trends in the church?
JT: The best advice I can give is to be careful not to get too caught up in trend-watching! C. S. Lewis is a great model for us in this. Lewis has been dead now for 44 years, and yet there is a virtual evangelical consensus that Lewis’s writings are extradordinarily relevant for our day and age. Yet Lewis could write to a correspondent and ask: “What is the point of keeping in touch with the contemporary scene? Why should one read authors one doesn’t like because they happen to be alive at the same time as oneself?”
When I was in college I read a very fair and insightful evaluation of Willow Creek Seeker Services by G.A. Pritchard. One of the points I recall him making is that Bill Hybels and company should have carefully studied and appropriated Augustine’s classic The City of God. At the time, I remember thinking (for some reason) that this seemed like unrealistic advice. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I think Dr. Pritchard is right. Reading older books--books that have stood the test of time, that get our head out of our own century and culture--have such a helpful effect in helping us to “understand the times.” Studying church history has the same effect. One quickly discovers that there’s nothing new under the sun, and can learn from the mistakes and the insights of those who have come before us.
That’s not to say I think we should abandon keeping up to some degree with the contemporary scene. (After all, if we spend our time only reading the older stuff, we won’t even know the things to which we should respond!)
I’d recommend looking to a couple of authors like David Wells and Os Guinness and reading everything they publish. Their writings aren’t gospel truth--their works need to be evaluated just like everyone else’s--but you will find in their writings a seriousness and insightfulness that will answer a lot of questions and a methodology that will help you think through the trends as they float across our radar screens.
In terms of the blogosphere, I’d commend friends like Albert Mohler, Tim Challies, Joe Carter, and the folks at Stand to Reason, and World Magazine who are seeking to model wise discernment.
Note: (1) There is one Paul, not multiple Pauls. Paul wasn’t manipulative or relativistic or wishy-washy or duplicitous. Here we have the testimony of the inspired apostle modeling New Testament ministry for us. (2) He knew not only his message but also his audience. (3) His ministry motivation was to win that audience. (4) His ministry looked different depending on the audience. That’s what biblical contextualization looks like. The main message remains the same, but we are called upon to apply and translate unchanging truth for changing audiences and situations.
Check out Justin Taylor’s message from Na 06 called “A New Kind of Christianity? A Look at the Emerging Church Movement” now available for free download here.