Faith: April 2023 Archives

A recent tweet from Jeremy Tate, founder and CEO of the Classic Learning Test (CLT):

Classical education is fundamental an educational [sic] it what it means to be fully human. It is not a politically conservative alternative to the already politically hijacked mainstream education. Instead, it is an education in timeless texts with the aim of cultivating universally agreed on virtues (justice, temperance, fortitude, prudence, kindness, generosity, self-discipline, diligence, honesty, etc). Anyone who argues that other people groups have a completely different moral code is just being silly. You cannot find any culture or society anywhere that values lying, stealing, cheating, betrayal, harshness, impatience, cowardice, etc.

My thoughts immediately went to the book Peace Child, missionary Don Richardson's first-hand account of taking the gospel to the cannibalistic Sawi people of western New Guinea (also known as West Papua or Irian Jaya). The Sawi highly valued betrayal and cheating. I wrote about the book many years ago, when I had been reading it to my 8-year-old as a bedtime story.

The book begins with stories of Sawi intrigue that took place prior to the Richardsons' arrival, illustrating the value the culture held for treachery -- "fattening with friendship for the slaughter." You might invite an enemy to your home, feed him and treat him with honor for weeks or months before springing the trap on your trusting victim. You have him over for dinner... and then have him for dinner....

...Richardson feels he has enough of the language to attempt to explain the story of Jesus to a group of Sawi men. He is shocked to find that they see Judas as the hero of the story and Jesus as his dupe -- the ultimate example of fattening with friendship for the slaughter. The realization causes Richardson to feel hopeless that he could find a way to communicate the gospel to this culture. But he prays and God provides in a surprising way, and that's the rest of the story....

When progressives hear conservatives condemning multiculturalism, they wrongly assume that conservatives wish to eradicate other cultures, other languages, other folk customs and force conformity to bland Anglo-Saxon suburbia. In fact, conservative Christians may be doing more than anyone else to preserve dying languages and musical traditions, through the work of groups like Wycliffe Bible Translators. The practice of the evangelical mission community is to translate the gospel into the "heart language" of every people group and, as they come to faith in Christ, to express their faith in their own music.

Richardson's account of the Sawi way of life allows us to draw an important distinction. Multiculturalism insists that we suspend all value judgment of another culture, and so we must not condemn the cannibalistic treachery of the Sawi -- live and let live. A Bible-believing Christian would say instead that there are aspects of a culture which are morally neutral, aspects which are positive, and aspects which are -- let's not mince words -- evil, aspects which disfigure the imago Dei borne by every human of every tribe, tongue, and nation. While every culture in this fallen world has negative elements, some cultures have a built-in engine for reform and improvement, while others may only shed negative elements under outside encouragement or pressure, and so we ought to reject a false moral equivalence between cultures.

One could argue that our own modern western culture values and rewards "lying, stealing, cheating, betrayal, harshness, impatience, cowardice, etc." above the cardinal virtues and other values that Tate lists. The Great Books tradition elevates the literature of the West because of the distinctive western values, rooted in Jerusalem and Athens, that built a great civilization. These values can be found in non-Western cultures to a greater or lesser extent, what C. S. Lewis, in The Abolition of Man, calls the Tao, but nowhere else in the same proportions. If the Tao is the common heritage of all mankind, a law written on our hearts, clearly many human societies have abandoned entire segments of it. A culture that admires treachery will not be capable of the mutual trust required for great endeavors.

MORE: Don Richardson recalls his early encounters with the Sawi, with this amusing anecdote from his efforts to document their language:

The first order of business was to learn the language without any book, teacher or translator. He started by pointing at things hoping someone would tell him the word. But every time he pointed at different objects, they always said, "redig." Eventually, he realized "redig" means "finger." The Sawi don't point with fingers; they point by puckering and aiming their lips.

A 1972 short film based on Peace Child, featuring the Richadrsons and the Sawi:

Here are a couple of useful resources that I recently encountered, one very old, one new, in support of the view that Christian baptism is for those only who are able to profess belief in Jesus Christ and is to be administered by immersion, which is the meaning of the Greek word baptizein, which is transliterated as "to baptize" in most English language translations of the New Testament. The issue is near and dear to my heart for the sake of the Baptists who suffered persecution (including drowning) because of their insistence on affirming the clear teaching of Scripture against human tradition and because of the ongoing insistence by evangelical Presbyterians to divide with their fellow evangelical Christians the unbiblical, divisive, and misleading practice of infant baptism (paedobaptism).

From 1668 to 1704, Benjamin Keach was pastor of the Baptist congregation at Horsleydown, Southwark, across the Thames from the City of London. (In 1861, this congregation built Metropolitan Tabernacle under the pastorate of Charles Spurgeon and has ever since been known by that name.) In 1688, Keach produced a book called Gold Refin'd or Baptism in Its Primitive Purity, setting forth the scriptural doctrine of baptism and rebutting other views. Here is a direct link to the PDF.

GOLD REFIN'D;
OR,
Baptism in its Primitive Purity.
Proving Baptism in Water an Holy Institution of Jesus Christ, and to continue in the Church to the End of the World.
WHEREIN
It is clearly evinced, That Baptizo, or Baptism, is not Aspersion or Sprinkling, or pouring a little Water upon the Face, or any other part of the Body: But that it is Immersion, or dipping the whole Body, &c.
Also that Believers are only the true Subjects (and not Infants) of that holy Sacrament.
Likewise Mr. Smythies Arguments for Infant-Baptism in his late Book, entitled, The Non-Communicant, (and all other Objections) fully answered.

The linked version of the book was formatted by Simon Wartanian, who describes himself as a "software engineer" and "theology nerd." Wartanian modernized scripture references, changed Roman numerals to Arabic, and made some other typographical modifications to accommodate modern readers, e.g., quotation marks around Bible quotations, inline Scripture references. He provides a table of contents with the original headings and those he has added for clarity, and one may click a table of contents entry and be taken directly to the section of the document. His main website includes his A Layman's Systematic and Biblical Exposition of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, and his posts page has his reviews of new books and his ongoing efforts to transcribe and format public domain theological texts for modern readers. Wartanian offers a Koine Greek verb parsing chart for identifying the tense and voice of a verb.

But back to Gold Refin'd: The book begins with a letter from Keach and explaining why he felt the need to write this book and outlining its argument. The book is divided into 14 sections, with the first rebutting the idea that water baptism is no longer to be performed. The next four sections prove that immersion is the proper mode of baptism from the meaning of the Greek word, the practice in the New Testament and early church, from the spiritual and metaphorical significance attached to it in Scripture, and by the metaphorical use of the word in Scripture. Seven chapters address the proper subjects of baptism, first proving that believers only are to be baptized and then rebutting arguments in support of infant baptism. Here are the 14 chapter headings: