Carson on social justice and the gospel
Monday, September 29, 2008 at 11:52PM D.A. Carson spoke last week on some trends within the church, including this one (via):
Don said that the Gospel plus caring for the poor was an inseparable couplet. He cautioned that if the gospel was merely assumed (and not clearly articulated), our passion for social justice would overshadow the gospel. While we are not intentionally exalting social concern over the gospel, people learn what we are excited about (gospel over caring for the poor). Carson warned, "Our passion must first be the gospel and not assume it to be understood." He continued, "We must be careful to keep the gospel central and not turn our responses to the gospel as the main target."
Not caring about social justice is perhaps proof that we haven't understood the gospel. The remedy, therefore, isn't social justice; it's to go back to the root cause and really understand the gospel.
Reader Comments (3)
Carson hits on the basic lesson of the late 19th century very nicely here. The fault of 19th century Protestant liberalism and the social gospel was not its impulse towards social justice, but exactly the unmooring of the enterprise from the centrality of the cross to which Carson refers. And the reason why we cannot separate the two is because justice and righteousness, the restoration and reconciliation of humanity to God and to one another, cannot be achieved apart from one another, and righteousness cannot be achieved apart from the cross of Christ.
I think the frustrating part in Carson's take on the Conversation for me is his inability to hear the nuance of the Emergent (Emergence if your Phylis Tickle) voice. Social righteousness/justice is the 'Good News'. Not exhaustively, but neither are 4 spiritual laws about where your 'soul' goes when you die. It is all part of the God/human story that is our hope. I think the 'liberal' piece is a distraction and a 'fear' tactic. Because there is a surge of voices saying the way we have 'defined gospel' is too narrow and rather unbiblical, doesn't mean we are going to loose the 'justification by faith piece' all together. It just means historic Chrirtianity demands we think broader than that. My question for Carson is how do we 'articulate the gospel'? Which part's do we include and which parts do we exclude...after all Matt, Mark, Luke & John draw attention to distinct parts of the Incarnation. For Bonhoeffer the gospel must be understood through a 'hermenutic of community'. For Yodor that is done in social sacrament... So what part of the gospel can't be assumed? Or do we have to start in Genesis and read people the entire story? Because unless you do that, aren't we leaving too much room for assumption?
Hey Trevor: I agree with a lot of what you say, and I suspect Carson would too on some of your points (although I can't speak for him): the gospel is more than 4 spiritual laws, and it has to be understood in light of the entire Biblical story. I agree that many have defined the gospel too narrowly. His part on liberalism is actually from a different point. I think I tend to agree with him though. As I said at the end, if we don't care about social justice, we've never really understood the gospel. But if we focus on the social dimensions of the gospel and ignore the personal dimensions - and some seem to heavily lean this way - then we have lost the gospel. Looking forward to lunch!