2.2—Christendom & Modernity (16 min video)

Transcript

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In the second lecture, we’re going to call this Christendom and Modernity. And we’re going to define these two terms. Now, when I use the term Christendom, I actually often use it I use it for an entire year of my history curriculum that covers the early church, beginning with the Book of Acts, going all the way up to the Reformation.

So through that age we often call the Middle Age or the Medieval Age. But Christendom is really a bigger term than that, kind of like the way we defined West in the previous lecture. In fact, I want you to define Christendom as the kingdoms, the nations, the people groups, the families and individuals that serve Christ, both in word, meaning that they actually embrace the authority of the scriptures.

They actually see those as being the word of God, and also through deed. They actually believe that they’re supposed to apply the scriptures to what they actually do in life. Now let’s define the term modernity. actually comes from an old Latin word, like so many other words English language do, called “modernus.” And that itself comes from the word “modo,” which can mean “just now,” which can mean “only,” “presently.” It has something to do with a focus on the present, usually. Now this is curious because the word “modernus,” even though it defines modernity and makes us think of present and current things, this term has been used for so long. In fact, the early church used this exact same term. In fact, the early Christians saw themselves as a people of the future because they had this hope in a kingdom that went beyond whatever kingdom or whatever government or empire they found themselves under.

The medievals, the Renaissance and Reformation thinkers they often dealt with this term of modernist as well It of course applied to the present, but it also thought they also thought of the future in a certain sense as well They often saw themselves as moderns, but they saw themselves the kind of the analogy is often given they saw themselves as being like dwarfs on the top of Ancient Giants in other words they had such intense respect for the past such intense admiration for the great writers and the great works of the past that they saw their works no matter how marvelous they were As being just kind of imitations as being something like a dwarf on the shoulders of a giant Compared to what had been done in the past It really wasn’t until what we call now more modern times what I will define is roughly the 18th century or so as we’re talking about the 1700s and beyond that the whole term of began to be flipped around. Instead of it being seen as a focus on the present with this idea of a future hope that Christ was going to return, instead of it being a focus on the present where you looked back to the past for inspiration with great respect, it began to be changed quite a bit so that the future was seen as hopeful not because of the promises of Christ.

The future was seen as hopeful because it seems as if there was no limit to what man could do or especially what man could invent.

And so you see this theme throughout modernity where moderns began to see themselves as being the wisest people because after all they had technologies that the ancients did not have.

They had for example the telegraph machine which of course you may even have to think about what the telegraph machine is in case you’ve never seen one or never interacted with that. Or they had, of course, telephones when those came out. Or they had what we now have, say for example, cell phones and the internet. I mean, the truth of the matter is, is that your parents, in fact even myself when I was a kid, and I’m not that old, we grew up without cell phones and without the internet. It was just not a part of our life. But for someone of your age, you’re so used to having those technologies because they’ve been in existence for your entire life. that it’s probably a little bit difficult to imagine the world without those things. And so we often look back on people of the past and think, “Oh, they were kind of primitive because they did not have the technologies that we have. They did not have the inventions or the comforts that we have.” The sheer fact of the matter is that we often have no idea what their lives were like because we’re often so focused upon our own, and we often have this modern idea, which David Hall calls simply the arrogance of the modern, that our time is the best, and that it will only get better in terms of science and technology because we’re seeing that things are always being updated, things are always being improved. In fact, we live in the computer age, where things are regularly updated, where things are regularly improved, And we’ve just kind of come to accept that as being normal. And we’ve kind of come to accept it as being normal that we just update things on a regular basis. But that’s a very different view than how modernus or modernity was originally seen. But that view kind of explains how modernity was seen in more modern times. Another interesting thing about modernity in the more modern period that we’re going to be looking at is the way that it viewed religion. It no longer saw religion as kind of the whole of life, where you actually performed duty to a God because he made you and because that was natural to you through the marvelous work of grace.

Instead, religion kind of became a defined compartment or zone of life, something that actually had to be set aside in order to arrive at some kind of objective truth.

And so in modernity, we’re gonna see this kind of habit, this kind of shift in thinking from Christendom, where you began with the authority of the scriptures, and the culture of modernity tended to move towards the authority of things like data, of things like methods, of things like different systems, of things like different forms of control.

Or instead of even having a way of thinking or trusting in certain principles as seen throughout the scriptures, modernity often communicated meaning through great moralisms or through great quotes alone.

All of those things are very, very different from how modernity was originally seen by the church. But to give you kind of a simple construct, a chart of sorts, to kind of see the worldview of Christendom as it contrasts and compares to modernity, I’m going to go ahead and give you five different categories that I want to contrast. The first is the category of authority. In Christendom, properly understood, and of course Christendom continues to this day because Christendom really is the role of the church, the ultimate authority is God himself.

The question that’s always being asked is what has God actually said? It’s not asking as Satan asks in the Garden with Doubt, “Did God really say this?” It’s actually asking with belief, what has God actually said that we may actually follow him, not out of fear but out of love. Whereas the authority in modernity, in kind of this more recent understanding, is man himself. In fact, we’re going to see this whole movement in modernity towards what we now call secularism or humanism, where essentially man is the highest form that is out there.

Man is the most incredible thing that we know about, at least according to our current science or according to what’s on this planet. This is of course where people start talking about aliens and weird things like that. But the point is this, man becomes the final authority, so whatever man believes is true, that is seen as true. That’s why you get entire societies deciding what’s right from what is wrong based upon voting. The second category we’re going to take a look at is structure. structure that kind of moves along the gospel in Christendom, we could probably break this apart into further categories, but I’ll give you two basic structures. One would be the family, the other would be the church. It’s those two institutions that really pass on the gospel. Even if the family is not related by blood, you could have adoption, you could have friendships coming into this, you could have very natural, what we call organic relationships that built up, that built up by a common love of Christ himself.

But the point is this, the structure by which things are accomplished in Christendom is the family and then the church of which the family is a part of.

Whereas the structure by which things are accomplished under modernity, since man is the authority, it’s always force. It’s always using compulsion, whether it be compulsion of the law, whether it be the compulsion of armies, whether it be the compulsion of weaponry, whether it be the compulsion of simple pure pressure.

Modernity essentially uses some type of force to actually structure its worldview, which means that its structure is only ever as strong as its actual force.

The third category that I want you to write down is the category of ethics. In Christendom, ethics are rather simple. You have certain absolutes, such as the fact that that God is perfect, such as the fact that man is made in God’s image, such as the fact that man is completely fallen and therefore completely destitute and in need of Christ. Those are certain absolutes that actually determine our ethics and determine how we view right from wrong, they determine how we relate to other people, they determine how we make decisions.

In modernity, ethics are often relativistic. We could just use the word relativism here for our handy chart here as we describe Christendom from modernity. They’re relativistic in the sense that you kind of determine right from wrong based upon the time you live on or based upon the situation you find yourself in.

So it’s always kind of about your circumstances or it’s about people saying things like, “Well, I’m filming this right now and they’re 2015.” So you’ll hear people saying things like, “It’s 2015. We should have this figured out by now. The funny thing is that people have been saying that for years and years and years. I bet you that back in 1892 somebody said, for crying out loud, it’s 1892, we should have this solved by now. The funny thing is that that just gets really old because it dates yourself. So anyway, the whole point is this. In modernity, things are very relativistic. Right from wrong is based upon whatever a group of people in a certain area thinks is right from what is wrong at a given time, and that morphs and that changes and reverses throughout time.

The fourth category we’ll take a look at would be the category of justice. In Christendom, the whole concept of justice is that you move from the standards of scriptures. You take a look at the demands of scriptures, which they ask everything of us, and God actually wants the entirety of us. That’s why we actually need him to actually make that possible. But he He demands all of us and he demands that we actually live out things like justice, things like mercy, things like humility in our everyday affairs with the people we see all the time, as well as the people that we occasionally see or whoever that may be.

Whereas in modernity, the sense of justice is very different. The sense of justice in modernity is often about what we would call the greater good. idea that you decide to do what is just or what you decide to do what you think is just, that is, based upon whatever accomplishes the most amount of good for the most amount of people.

It’s one of the curious things about Christendom, one of the curious things about applying the scriptures, is that Christendom has always been interested in protecting minorities.

Now you’re gonna see Christians throughout time who exploited minorities. I mean that’s the whole story of American slavery was the exploitation of Africans in the slave trade. That was an exploitation of minorities. But the point is this, something that Lord Acton, the great historian of the early of the 19th century, pointed out. He said that you can actually measure the success of liberty and the success of Christendom, the word applied, based upon how equal, how much the rights are equal to the majority according to the minority.

Meaning, does the minority, are they actually treated well? Do they actually have the same rights and privileges as the majority? That’s always been a test for actual justice. And of course, you can take this and use it as a case study for when you look at our own culture and see how this may be applied and how it sometimes is not applied.

The fifth category would be the category of continuity. It’s interesting, in Christendom, because there’s this whole sense of hope, this whole sense of another world that’s beyond ourselves, that is beyond ourselves as well, the whole continuity would be two things. It would be, for one, grace, the fact that God actually provides full grace to us to actually get through life, to actually finish the course, as Paul points out.

And he also provides perseverance for us. He actually gives us the ability to see the race through. So the whole continuity in Christendom is actually living life faithfully, recognizing that when we sin, recognizing that when we fall, we see the actual despicable nature of that, we can actually confess that, we can actually surrender that to the cross, recognizing it’s been defeated. Whereas in modernity, it’s very interesting, the way that continuity goes on, the way that you actually try to pass on values is through a type of works righteousness.

In modernity and in all forms of humanism, you have to earn your own salvation. You have to be a good person. You have to do certain things because you want people to like you, or you want to be accepted, or you want to be seen as being on the right side of history, which just means in that context that you want to be seen as being on the right side of whatever is popular at the time.

It’s a very different way of living. It’s a way that produces anxiety. It’s a way that produces worry and so forth. It’s not the way of grace that recognizes that men are actually fallen and that men are actually called to something beyond themselves that requires a power beyond themselves.

Keep these things in mind as we take a look at modernity in this broad scope throughout the rest of this lesson and in future lessons.