Just So Many Millions of Ghosts

First, a recap of a basic argument against postmodernity. For all the talk about being in a postmodern era, the basic infrastructure of modernity (liberal democracy with its neutral public square) is retained. In the seminar room called modernity, some who call themselves postmodernists have come to believe that they can change the room they are in simply by changing the subject of conversation in that room.

But no era can be rightly called postmodern unless the central ideal of the secular and neutral public square is challenged. The radical Muslims are challenging it, but the so-called postmodernists most emphatically are not. Frightened by the specter of Sharia law, postmodernists scurry right back to the easy and mutual tolerances of John Stuart Mill. This is not postmodern; it is modernity on stilts.

In the meantime, Leithart isn’t having any.

“Modern ethics, further, especially in America, is an effort to speak to issues of right or wrong without mentioning God, or at least without mentioning any specific god. Ethics, in other words, operates completely within the confinements of liberal order, which attempts to cleanse the public realm (including the realm of ethical debate) of particular theological claims. Ethic is an effort to find a language for obligation without reference to Jesus. Clearly, Paul could not begin to countenance such a project” (AC, p. 100).

In other words, generic ethics are idolatrous. The problem with godless ethics is that they are godless. If Paul could not countenance such a thing, neither may we. The privatization of faith has led to the point where personal “ethical” choices are thought to be like designer labels — wear this if you want, and, if you don’t want, don’t wear it. Suit yourself.

“Christians fall into ethics only if they have already embraced Christianity, only if they believe that Christian faith and morals are private and individual. If we are to be against Christianity, we must also be against ethics” (p. 101).

If Christian faith and morals are private and individual, Leithart argues, then we have fallen into a trap. But individual applications are different from individualism. Of course Christian faith and morals extend to individuals, and pertain to them, but the point being made here is that faith and morals are not grounded in (and limited to) the atomistic individual of modernity. Neither are faith and morals grounded in (or limited to) the atomistic individual of postmodernity.

Jesus Christ is the Lawgiver for the nations. He is the king of kings. He tells us what is right and what is wrong, and He tells us this corporately. His apostles were told to go and disciple the nations. Promulgate this Word, He said, in every town you come to. Announce it at the city centers. Proclaim it in the public square. Tell the kings of men that they must kiss the Son, lest He be angry and they perish in the way.

How we in the Church took these marching orders and turned them into having the “joy, joy, joy, down in my heart” is a long and tragic story. It is the story of modernity flooding into the Church. It is the story that explains how a country with tens of millions of evangelical Christians in it can be virtually untouched by their presence. When it comes to certain issues, we are just so many millions of ghosts.

But if the words of Jesus are not authoritative in the city square, then they are authoritative nowhere else. And if they are authoritative nowhere else, then your own personal Jesus is just an emotional doll you can talk to for personal comfort.

We worship and serve the God of Israel. And “His city now is not a preserve of the city of yesterday but an anticipation of the city of tomorrow” (p. 102). God has promised us what is going to happen to the nations of men. All the families of the earth will turn and serve the Lord. We were commissioned to tell them this, and, in the telling, proclaim it as inexorable good news. Pluralism is therefore idolatry. Christian accommodation with pluralism is dangerous compromise. We cannot snap our fingers and make pluralism go away, but we can constantly recognize it as the enemy, and as no friend at all. For Christians, principled pluralism has to be considered as the ultimate oxymoron. Instead of this surrender to modernity, we must undertake to live as Christians, citizens of the new and inevitable city being established here, and to do so in a way that subverts the standing and current values of the unbelieving city. Nietzsche recognized that this is what the apostle Paul was up to (pp. 108-109) — “transvaluating all values.” Would he think the same thing about what we are currently doing? Ha. Again I say, ha.

Leithart recognizes that in order to be true ethics, ethics must be public, which means in turn that they are a matter of law.

“Culture and character and common life are, in short, founded on prohibition, and this is true for every culture. What was interdicted may become permissible, but the new ‘permissiveness’ generates prohibitions of its own. (Note the intolerance for Christian morality in our nation today.) Political revolutions are little more than glorified palace coups. Real revolutions are changes in patterns of moral demands. Cultural change is a change in ‘law'” (pp. 113-114).

Modernity replaced the medieval order in exactly this way.

“The ‘post-Christian’ West can be seen as the product of the revolutionary changes in law that followed from a revolutionary change in priesthood” (p. 115).

And it follows that there will be no Christian postmodernity until there is a change in the priesthood again, and a consequent change in the law. Although Leithart doesn’t use the phrase theonomic postmillennialism, the concept is certainly there, and it is central to his argument in this crucial book.

“Pastors have lost any sense that they are overseers of a new city and that they therefore have responsibilities for governance” (p. 116).

I run a risk here. Leithart has written an earthshaking book, and it is explosive in its own right, without any help from me. Consequently, I don’t want to try to play Huxley to his Darwin. But I have seen more than a few people who are trying to mute or ignore or twist what Leithart is actually arguing for here, I think because they cannot answer him. “I see it now, Mr. Galileo! You must be actually arguing for geocentrism, only with a new vocabulary!”

But for those who have followed the argument, pastors must remember that they are pastors because they have been charged by Christ to lead the meek into their inheritance, which is the earth.