Peter Hastie: Tertullian once posed the question, “What does Jerusalem have to do with Athens?”, implying that there is a deep divide between biblical and non-Christian worldviews. Do you agree?
Bruce Winter: Yes, I do. Tertullian was a brilliant apologist who lived at the end of the second century. He believed that there was a great ideological divide that separated Christian and non-Christian culture in the Roman Empire. At its very root was the clash between the imperial view that a man becomes a god when he becomes the emperor, and the Christian view that God became man in the person of Jesus Christ.
Tertullian’s statement reflects the distinction that he saw between the non-Christian academy, symbolized by Athens, and the Christian worldview as represented by Jerusalem. More than any of the other great apologists of the early church, he saw the true nature of this conflict. He saw that there was a great divide between the two views, particularly in the area of anthropology, because the Romans had no place for sin. The Christian faith, on the other hand, saw man as being afflicted with sin, a spiritual condition that only God can cure. Tertullian believed that it was impossible for Christians to identify with Roman culture if they had to deny the reality of sin. I believe that’s what lay behind his thinking.
PH: What are the main ideas within Australia at present which have the greatest influence on our values and behaviour?
BW: Firstly, I think Australians are strongly influenced at the moment by religious pluralism. This is the idea that all religions are essentially the same and that they are all leading us in the same direction. As a result of our immigration policies, we now have a lot of religious diversity. We meet many fine Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims, and we find it easy to assume that no one religion is privileged against the rest. I think one of the most common ideas in Australia today is the belief that all religions are the same.
The other main idea that seems to command some allegiance is that of ‘hedonism’, or what Walter Lippman once referred to as “the unhappy pursuit of happiness”. The Women’s Weekly is a glossy presentation of this point of view: “I want happiness. I want comfort. I want security. I want whatever I desire.” And so the pursuit of happiness is a very strong undercurrent in our culture. I think this helps to explain the popularity of the Dalai Lama. He was recently in Australia, and he tapped into this vein of longing by running a series of seminars on the question of happiness. They were hugely popular.
PH: What role do the media have in disseminating worldviews?
BW: The media is enormously influential in spreading ideas and stimulating people’s desires. It is the vehicle for picking up the underlying views in the community and then reinforcing them in a mass market. In many cases, it actually progresses those views. For instance, in the 1920s, those involved in motivational research discovered that two of the strongest motivations for people are need and greed. The advertising industry was able to exploit this research, which has had a powerful effect on the media. From then on, advertisers have played upon these basic motivations. The thrust of advertising is now “This will meet your needs; this will satisfy your desires”. It is a very powerful, impressionistic view.
You can see how influential this advertising is by the way that it helps to form ideas of body image—especially amongst young men. Don’t you find it interesting that David Beckham and the Gucci guy can pose in their underwear with no hair on their chest? I suppose you realize that they shave it off? They want to have the ‘Greek god’ look. The surprising thing is that when I go to the beach these days, I have discovered that lots of young men seem to gone through the same evolutionary state: their hair seems to have disappeared as well.
PH: It’s happening with legs too, isn’t it?
BW: Yes, that’s right. It’s amazing that this fad has caught on throughout the world. It’s just another example of the media’s power to communicate and reinforce popular worldviews. The media is not simply selling a product; it’s selling a way of life. You can see this quite clearly in the way that advertisers try to persuade us today. Whereas once they tried to convince us to buy products on their merits, nowadays they use sex or images of wealth and success to sell their goods. Advertising for cars always seems to have a pretty girl alongside the vehicle. It’s all about lifestyle; media is the instrument that promotes these images.
One of the dangers of the media is that so much of its influence takes place at a subliminal level. Many of its values are conveyed in images that quietly wash over people’s minds and convince them that they are seeing reality. Often Christians absorb these values unthinkingly, and begin to regress spiritually. They think that they have to have this or that if they are going to enjoy life. It’s all a lie. I think Christians have to be far more critical of the subtle attempts by advertisers to shape their lives and buying habits. I taught my children to understand what advertisers are trying to do and to poke fun at their efforts. I also pointed out to them how advertisers are trying to promote a thoroughly non-Christian worldview. When I am watching TV, I often turn the advertisements off, and I am also quite selective in the programs that I watch. One of the most insidious dangers Christians face today is that we spend so much time exposing ourselves to the media and so little time reading the Bible.
PH: Do you think the internet is having a similar effect on Christians?
BW: Yes, I think it’s even worse with the internet. The internet suggests that everything is within our reach. Its unspoken message is that you can see or have anything that you want. The problem here is that the internet can breed an attitude that is very self-focused and exploitive of others. People who are hooked on the internet tend to screen out other people and their needs.
PH: How are Christians being affected by contemporary worldviews?
BW: 30 years ago, the favourite text amongst Christians was John 3:16. However, in a recent poll, the most quoted text was Matthew 7:1: “Judge not, that you be not judged”. I think that tells us something. Modern Australian culture says you mustn’t judge, and now Christians are following the world by claiming this text as their basis for remaining dumb about the culture. It seems astonishing to me because John 3:16 is about the gospel and its challenge to the world’s ideas of salvation. The gospel implies a judgement on all the false ideas of the age. Yet Christians are following non-Christian society by refusing to make these judgements. In addition, they are appealing to a biblical text to do it. It’s quite extraordinary!
PH: Are you saying that Christians have capitulated to the modern age by refusing to distinguish between truth and error?
BW: Yes, I am. Furthermore, they are misapplying the text “Judge not, that you be not judged” in doing so. The reality is that Christians are meant to “destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God” (2 Cor 10:5). Nowhere does the Bible say that believers are meant to keep quiet when people challenge the notion of truth and say that there is no difference between right and wrong.
Sadly, the church today has imbibed a playboy theology that goes back to Greek philosophical heathenism. The central idea of this Greek view was that our aim in life is to pursue happiness. Many Christians have bought into this idea. They want to serve God, but they also want to be happy. This creates a problem for them because they have no place for pain or suffering in their experience.
The problem of making happiness your goal—especially if you are a Christian—is that you make yourself vulnerable to playboy theology. Christian young people who follow this line are putting themselves on the same trajectory as the young playboys and playgirls in the first century who said, “Everything is permitted for me; I can do what I like”. As far as they were concerned, life was about enjoying oneself and being happy.
People forget that God’s plan for us Christians also includes trouble and persecution. If our aim is only to have a pain-free and happy life, then we will fall away from Christ when we experience adversity. In the parable of the sower and the seed, one of the stumbling blocks that trips people up is their desire for happiness. When they don’t get it, they “immediately [fall] away” (Matt 13:21). Too many Christians fall into this category today. The problem is that we have influential preachers like Benny Hinn and Joel Osteen who throw together a few biblical texts and tie them to a secular worldview that makes Christians feel that God is under obligation to make us happy. But the Bible never promises a life that is free of trouble and suffering.
PH: If Christians are to become a realistic counter-cultural force, how important is it to deconstruct contemporary worldviews?
BW: It’s crucial. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 that our task is to pull down every argument and pretension that sets itself up contrary to the knowledge of God:
For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.
Our aim is to bring every thought captive to Christ. Paul uses an image based on the Roman army’s method of waging war. Imagine an ancient city under attack with the enemy hiding behind the protection of high city walls. The Roman method of penetrating the city consisted of bringing a large battering ram to the walls, and then repeatedly pounding them until the stones were dislodged and the whole thing collapsed. Once the wall came down, the people were defenceless; they had to surrender and kneel before the victorious general. Paul says that what Romans did in capturing a city is analogous to what Christians have to do in countering the false ideas of the age.
The problem today is that too few preachers challenge the false ideas of our culture. Unless preachers undermine the credibility of these belief systems, they still hold sway over believers. It’s a little bit like trying to run a computer with a new operating system if you haven’t already deleted the old one. The computer won’t work because it is trying to run on incompatible systems. You must first delete the old system.
Paul makes it clear that the task of a preacher is to deconstruct the errors of the age as well as to instruct believers on how to live the Christian life. As a preacher, I need to do both. This means that when I prepare to preach to a congregation, I need to ask myself, “What ideas do I have to demolish that have been programmed into our thinking by this modern age?” I need to be able to answer that question before I move on to think about how the congregation can be reprogrammed to do God’s will through the renewing of their minds.
PH: Is there a link between the upsurge in worldliness in the church and the failure of ministers to deconstruct the false ideas of the age?
BW: Yes, there definitely is. One of the reasons why the impact of the gospel seems to be so slight is that many Christians have been thoroughly programmed by the ideas of the modern age. The problem here is that while those ideas remain unchallenged, they exercise an ongoing influence in their lives. This explains why Paul tackles the problem in Romans 12-15 by deconstructing Roman cultural norms and contrasting them with the will of God. Paul’s point is that we must deconstruct before we can reconstruct. Preachers must constantly ask themselves the question, “What ideas are still held by the congregation which prevent them from fully embracing God’s will, as outlined in Scripture?” The only way that we can get a thorough response to the gospel is to, firstly, dismantle those ideas and demonstrate their falsity, and secondly, show how people can reconstruct their lives in obedience to Christ.
PH: Does the New Testament have any suggestions as to how Christians can most effectively deconstruct opposing worldviews? For example, does Paul’s address to the Athenians in Acts 17 provide such a model, or does it represent a failed experiment?
BW: Paul’s address to the Athenians was not a failure in evangelism. On the contrary, it was very helpful because it gives us several keys to getting our message across to unbelievers.
Firstly, Paul connects with his audience by finding a common point of reference. In ancient Greece, the members of the Areopagus were charged with the official function of admitting new deities into the pantheon of gods. So Paul had to prove that the God of Scripture existed. This explains why he began his speech by saying, “This God who exists, but whom you confess not to know, I am going to explain to you”. Paul’s approach on this occasion shows how he made a clever connection with the authorities in the ancient world, who were charged with giving official recognition to the deities in their culture. However, in doing so, he corrects their misunderstanding about God—namely, that he lives in man-made temples and relies on us in giving him feast days.
Secondly, he shows that he is conversant with their Stoic and Epicurean worldviews, and he relates some of the shared elements in these systems with truths that we find in the Old Testament. Some of the argument resonates, and some of it doesn’t, but at least he demonstrates that he is able to converse with their world.
The next step in his address demonstrates that, judged by their own standards, they have failed to understand God properly and have compromised their religious beliefs. While not all of them believed in the imperial cult, they had nevertheless said, “Look, even if we don’t believe in it, let’s just do it without being superstitious about it”. Paul’s approach is designed to convict them of hypocrisy and then confront them with God’s universal call to repentance in the light of his promised judgement.
Paul then explains the gospel to them as an amnesty that they need to accept immediately. One of the religious beliefs of the Areopagus Council was that when a man dies, the earth drinks up his blood. They did not believe in a bodily resurrection. However, Paul announces that the resurrection is proof of this day of judgement. That is why some laugh. Nevertheless, a senior member of the Council takes Paul seriously and is converted, along with a few others.
So Paul’s presentation of the gospel in Athens did not fail. I think we learn from his attempt that if we want to communicate with non-Christians, then we need to understand how to establish entry points into their thinking. We need to work hard to correct misconceptions and establish some agreed positions before we move on to announce the coming judgement, and the pressing need to repent and accept God’s amnesty in the gospel. Acts 17 provides a good model to inform our own preaching in a non-Christian context.
PH: What happens within the church when we don’t engage with modern worldviews and deconstruct them?
BW: We become culture Christians. It’s sad that by the time the empire actually became Christian, all that the Romans had to do was to push all of the statues out of the temples so that they became basilicas or Christian places in which to worship. It wasn’t a big transition for pagans. The distinctions for Christians and non-Christians were blurred because most Christians had absorbed the culture and become culture Christians.
I know from the years I worked in Asia that absorbing the culture uncritically was the great danger facing the church. If you don’t think critically about the culture in which you live, then it will simply permeate the thinking of Christians, and so you will have believers who think and act no differently from pagans. The danger we face today is that the media is shaping Christianity so that in a variety of ways, Christians no longer appear to be different from non-Christians—particularly in moral areas and work attitudes.
PH: What is the place of entertainment in the Christian life? Does non-Christian entertainment have a subliminal effect on us?
BW: The early Christians faced this question just as we do. Entertainment in their day involved the Roman spectacles, chariot races, gladiatorial fights and those sorts of things. Some of these activities encouraged a perverse interest in violence and sex, so in that sense, they were unhelpful to a Christian’s growth. Should a Christian be aware of what is going on in the wider culture in terms of entertainment? I don’t think we can be ignorant of it. However, what most people are unaware of is that many of these forms of entertainment have a subliminal effect on our thinking. This means that we need to be very selective about what we choose to entertain us. It’s easy to stumble if you simply want to be amused and suspend your critical faculties. I may sound like a bit of a killjoy, but I think it’s important to be evaluating films as we watch them. Too many Christians fail to do this, and stumble. If you suspend your critical faculties, it’s possible to assimilate all sorts of ungodly ideas and behaviour.
PH: How do first-century worldviews and culture pose a threat to the church’s understanding of leadership?
BW: Well, during the first century—particularly during the reign of Claudius—philosophers took a back seat and charismatic orators came to the fore. A cult of personality developed where people became celebrities or megastars because of their grand style of oratory. The movement towards celebrity actually spread like wildfire throughout the region.
People paid to go and hear these orators. Everyone looked up to them. What they said wasn’t as important as their style. Their rise to prominence was a triumph of style over substance. People felt that they had to look like them, dress like them, walk like them, talk like them, and they became a model of leadership. Their students were called ‘disciples’, just like the followers of Jesus. The problem was that their followers began to copy them. So a mark of leadership during this period was that you had to have bodily presence and be able to entertain a crowd.
If you are familiar with what is said about some of Paul’s personal features, you will know that he didn’t match the qualifications for leadership in this period. For a start, he looked a bit of a ‘weed’. His critics claimed that he lacked a sense of physical presence, and his speech was unimpressive. We think he may also have had bowed legs and a hook nose. He certainly didn’t look like one of the Greek gods.
Incidentally, this probably explains why people in Corinth liked his letters but didn’t want him to come back and be the minister of their church. In the space of only about 10 years, the Corinthians brought this Trojan horse of celebrity leadership into the heart of their congregation. In other words, it only took a few years for the church to absorb these false ideas.
PH: What were some of the specific ways that Christian leadership was squeezed into the mould of first-century thought, and what was Paul’s response to it?
BW: Well, you had to follow your leader. The Christian message, on the other hand, is that someone invited us to follow him. So there is only one person you can follow, and that is Christ.
Paul had to deal with this issue in Corinth. The Christians in Corinth placed a great deal of emphasis on ministers being ‘leaders’ and ‘leaders’ having followers. However, Paul says their focus on secular styles of leadership is idolatrous and worldly (1 Cor 1). In chapter 3, he asks, “What then is Apollos? What is Paul?” (v. 5). In doing this, he deconstructs the whole cult of leadership in the first century. First-century ideas of secular leadership had invaded the church and corrupted the idea of Christian pastoral work.
The same has happened today. It’s interesting that the term ‘leadership’ has only really come into the vocabulary of the church since the 1980s. Prior to that, the church didn’t have leaders; we had ministers and elders—people whose task was service. So all of the words of the New Testament are about serving, about functioning and about what you do, but not about creating a following. Paul says that to create a personal following is idolatrous: “I didn’t die on the cross”, he says, “You weren’t baptized by me”. Paul was appalled that celebrity leadership was having an influence in the church.
PH: Do you see models of secular leadership as a threat to the church’s mission, and if so what sort of specific trends in secular leadership come to mind?
BW: Yes, I think the secularizing of Christian leadership is a huge threat to the church’s mission. We can trace the growth of this Christian leadership model to one influential American theological seminary in the early 1980s. I was visiting at the time when they said they wanted to run a course in Christian leadership. They decided they would adopt any secular model of leadership that worked. This explains why they adopted the MBA manuals in teaching leadership. Lots of seminaries in the USA went down the same path. Christians now often talk about Christian leadership in MBA jargon. They see church as a business: it’s the corporate model with a CEO at the top.
The whole thing has spread like cane toads in Queensland. The result is that it has changed the way we think about ministry. All anyone ever talks about now is ‘leadership’. Actually, there is only one person who is referred to as a leader in the New Testament, and that is Jesus. He is the only leader.
In my opinion, the influence of MBA-style training in ministry has had a devastating effect on the church. It has wrongly accentuated the personality of the preacher and has created a cult of ‘follower-ship’. And this is something Paul forbids in 1 Corinthians 1.
PH: Is this misunderstanding of leadership affecting seminaries too?
BW: Yes, it is. I know a young man who is a tall, well-built person of striking appearance. He was invited to join the faculty of a well-known seminary. When he went there, they said to him, “You look like the sort of person we are looking for!” He was appalled at their emphasis on his appearance and personality. However, this is nothing new. People were fascinated by appearance in the first century too. If you wanted to be a leader, then you had to pump iron and pull the hair off your chest, arms and legs so you looked like a Greek god.
Unfortunately, there are some similarities with the first century emerging today in the qualities that our churches are looking for in leaders. This model from an earlier age, which focused on celebrity, is now what people want in Christian ministers. If you don’t fit this bill, then you are easily ruled out. I see this happening often in mainstream denominations. Of course, it’s okay if you have a sense of humour and people think you are funny. People in the ancient world knew how to make people laugh and cry, and they played on their feelings. That’s what made you say, at the end of their address, “What a great orator”. However, when a Christian minister ends his address, people should say, “What a great God!” I now have a policy in our college that I won’t allow people to use the term ‘leadership’, because I want to drum the ideas of celebrity and privilege out of people’s thinking altogether.
PH: So what do you use?
BW: Well, I talk about ministers or servants. That is what we are being trained to be. We ‘serve’ and ‘teach’. Using these terms helps us to focus on our functions. I don’t use the word ‘leader’ because it is loaded with all sorts of wrong ideas in today’s world. We need to become biblical fundamentalists in our use of terms to describe church office; otherwise, if we use the MBA jargon we will bring a Trojan horse into the church.
PH: Did Paul ever call on his disciples to follow him?
BW: No, he never said, “Follow me”. However, he did say, “Imitate me”. The imitation Paul desires is for us to join him at the end of the queue of an ancient triumphal procession where prisoners were paraded as the off-scouring of the earth. There was no joy in being in this spot; it was a death sentence.
Paul is not interested in ‘cool’ or ‘funky’ leaders. He never tells us to follow individuals in the New Testament, only to follow Christ. ‘Imitate’ is the right word, but we are not meant to imitate how Paul walked and talked; we are meant to imitate him in his suffering and service for Christ (1 Cor 4:13, 16).
PH: What do you think about this idea of ‘spiritual direction’, where people place themselves under the authority of another who monitors them? Is it wise?
BW: Peter, to be honest, it’s not worth half a squirt of goat’s milk! It’s very dangerous because it can easily lead to manipulation and control. Paul says that people are to be taught the word so that they can perform the works “which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph 2:10). Ministry is about building up individuals in the word so that they can fulfil God’s purpose for their lives. I think carving people off into some mentoring program is fraught with dangers. God never intended us to become clones of so-called ‘leaders’.
PH: How does the church best address these issues of the secularization of its leadership?
BW: We need to get back to the real meaning of the Bible on these matters. We are too culturally blinkered. The Bible has a very clear, functional approach to leadership; it’s not hierarchical. I also think that ministers need to teach their congregations very clearly that they are not following us.
PH: Are there other ways that the world is invading the church?
BW: Yes, it comes to the surface when we are thinking about the worship of God. I sometimes wonder whether some people believe that God needs a hearing aid. We have lots of loud and thumping music that is not conducive to singing the word in our hearts. I went away recently on a weekend camp. It was interesting that people said, “Wasn’t it good because we could hear each other singing”. Nothing moved me more in the 20 years I had in Cambridge than to hear my brothers around me singing to Christ. What I found so encouraging was that I could hear the words so clearly. Unfortunately, it’s often the case that our words are drowned out by the excessive amplification. 1 Corinthians 12 says that what is important in a church service is that we strive for the ‘common good’. We need to make our music serve the ministry of the word.
PH: So you are saying that a church service should be about reading the Bible, singing the Bible and listening to the Bible?
BW: Yes, that’s right. This is a Reformation principle, and it doesn’t have to be done in a dull way. It annoys me when people don’t read the Bible in church as though it is the word of God. John Chrysostom once said that “when the emperor sends his edict to us, everyone stands and listens in hushed tones; but when God speaks to us, it is even more solemn”.
One further thing: we need use the Psalms more in our services. I think the Psalms express in a very clear way the kind of words and thoughts that we need to use in the praise of God.
PH: Can you explain how modern culture is affecting Christian attitudes to sexual roles in the church today?
BW: When a young man got the toga virilis in first-century Rome, he said, “Everything is permitted for me. I am grown up now, and I am an adult; I am the captain of my ship. I can do whatever I want.” There are Christians today who have the same attitude. This explains why Paul gives reasons why Christians must not fornicate in 1 Corinthians 6:9-21. Some of the men in the church in Corinth were trying to rationalize a promiscuous, playboy lifestyle. Paul forbade it, and gives eight reasons and three commands as to why Christians mustn’t do that. We need to do the same today. Only authoritative teaching prevents a slide into immorality.
PH: Is the idea of the liberated woman as depicted in the series of Sex and the City really a new idea, or was there an ancient equivalent in the first century?
BW: Yes, there certainly was an ancient equivalent. She was called the ‘new woman’, and Augustus legislated against this movement. The philosophical schools also opposed it, as did the early church. It was a very powerful and influential movement, much as it is today. We see its influence from the prenuptial agreements of the first century, where the wife had to promise to sleep at home and not to wander around and bring disgrace to the family’s name by sexual immorality. The prenuptial agreements give you an insight into what was really going on during the period, as does the criminal legislation of the time, which made adultery a criminal offence for the first time in Roman law. Until then, it had been resolved within the family.
PH: Was this problem of the new woman a particular problem for the Christian church?
BW: Yes, the church was quietly infiltrated by many of them. We see signs of this when wives removed their veils in church. Paul deals with this problem in 1 Corinthians 11. Wives were deliberately removing their veils when they stood up to pray and prophesy. The veil was a sign of their marriage; it was the first-century equivalent of a wedding ring. Removing the veil was a sign that she didn’t want people to know that she was married.
The problem with women removing the veil was that it sent off precisely the wrong signal. It gave the impression that they were living promiscuously or that they no longer wanted to be married. In the first century, you had to remove your marriage veil if you were a convicted adulteress; you weren’t allowed to wear it again. So that was a big issue that the Corinthians had to struggle with.
Also, there was problem in the way women dressed. If a woman wore gold, pearls and braided hair, this was the standard dress of a high-class prostitute of the first century. The characteristic of the married woman was modesty. However, the new woman didn’t want to have babies because of the stretch marks they caused, so she used abortion or dangerous contraceptives. But a modest and loving and holy woman would not abort a baby. That provides the setting of 1 Timothy 2. The important point is that modesty is the characteristic of the way married Christian women dress. We need a return to modesty for women today.
PH: What are some of the problems that you see we need to address in the church today as a result of the rise of the new woman?
BW: One of the glaring problems today is the issue of modest dress. Current clothing fashions, especially for young people, dictate a style that is far from modest. I think especially some women are quite unaware of how immodest their dress can be. Furthermore, I am not sure that they realize the extent of the problem that immodest attire can cause for men.
I don’t want to be misunderstood in my comments about modesty. I am not suggesting that women in our churches should look dowdy or frumpish—as though they have come from a bygone age. I wouldn’t want them to look as though they belong to an Amish community. But neither should they dress in a way that is unnecessarily suggestive.
Reproduced with kind permission from Australian Presbyterian, August 2008.
