Skip to main content

A Brief Contrast between the Gospel in Paul's Letter to the Romans and Critical Theory

Introduction

Consider four distinctions between the Gospel in Paul's Letter to the Romans and the basic views of Critical Theory.

The Gospel and Humanity

    Scripture: 'All'

Fundamental to an understanding of the Gospel is that all divisions of humanity are in the same situation, whether with respect to their plight or their salvation.

Romans 3.23 (ESV): 'all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God....'

Romans 1.16 (ESV): the Gospel is 'the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.'

    Critical Theory: 'Two Groups'

Critical theory divides the world into two groups: the privileged and the victims.  Those who have must have because they were privileged, not because they earned it.  Those who do not have must not have because they are victims.  

The Gospel and Justice

     Scripture:

Justice is impartially giving all people what they deserve.

Romans 2.11-13: 'For God shows no partiality.  12 For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all    who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.'

    Critical Theory:

Injustice is systemic.  The privileged have unjustly acquired what they they do not deserve, and the victims do not have what they justly deserve.  Justice must be partial, giving those in the class of victimhood preferences over those in the class of privileged oppressors.

The Gospel and Mercy

    Scripture:

Mercy is giving people what they do not deserve.

Romans 11.32 (ESV): For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.

    Critical Theory:

Social justice is taking what the privileged have away from them and giving it to the victims, or the descendants of the victims.  Those with privileged identities are oppressors.  They deserve only to be cancelled.  There is no place for mercy for them.  Giving victims what they deserve is not mercy but social justice.

The Gospel and Grace

    Scripture:

Grace is giving people mercy because justice is served.

Romans 5.8 (ESV): ‘but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.’

Romans 6.23 (ESV): 'For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.'

    Critical Theory:

Grace is injustice. There must be no grace.  The privileged oppressors are forever unjust by virtue of their identity groups.  They must not be given grace.  Victims are forever deserving reparations.  What they take from others, they deserve.  The cross is a symbol of injustice, not grace.

Conclusion

Such is the challenge of proclaiming the Gospel in the West.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

‘For freedom Christ has set us free’: The Gospel of Paul versus the Custodial Oversight of the Law and Human Philosophies

  Introduction The culmination of Paul’s argument in Galatians, and particularly from 3.1-4.31, is: ‘ For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery’ (Galatians 5.1). This essay seeks to understand Paul’s opposition to a continuing custodial role for the Law and a use of human philosophies to deal with sinful passions and desires.   His arguments against these are found in Galatians and Colossians.   By focussing on the problem of the Law and of philosophy, we can better understand Paul’s theology.   He believed that the Gospel was the only way to deal with sin not simply in terms of our actions but more basically in terms of our sinful desires and passions of the flesh. The task ahead is to understand several large-scale matters in Paul’s theology, those having to do with a right understanding of the human plight and a right understanding of God’s solution.   So much Protestant theology has articulated...
Post a Comment
Read more

Alasdair MacIntyre and Tradition Enquiry

Alasdair MacIntyre's subject is philosophical ethics, and he is best known for his critique of ethics understood as the application of general, universal principles.  He has reintroduced the importance of virtue ethics, along with the role of narrative and community in defining the virtues.  His focus on these things—narrative, community, virtue—combine to form an approach to enquiry which he calls ‘tradition enquiry.’ [1] MacIntyre characterises ethical thinking in the West in our day as ethics that has lost an understanding of the virtues, even if virtues like ‘justice’ are often under discussion.  Greek philosophical ethics, and ethics through to the Enlightenment, focussed ethics on virtue and began with questions of character: 'Who should we be?', rather than questions of action, 'What shall we do?'  Contemporary ethics has focused on the latter question alone, with the magisterial traditions of deontological ('What rules govern our actions?') and tel...
Post a Comment
Read more

The New Virtues of a Failing Culture

  An insanity has fallen upon the West, like a witch’s spell.   We have lived with it long enough to know it, understand it, but not long enough to resist it, to undo it.   The very stewards of the truth that would remove it have left their posts.   They have succumbed to its whispers, become its servants.   It has infected the very air and crept along the ground like a mist until it is within us and all about us.   We utter its precepts like schoolchildren taught their lines. Its power lies in its claims of virtuosity, distorted goodness.   If presented as the vices that they are, they would be rejected.   These virtues are proclaimed from the pulpits and painted on banners or made into flags.   They are established in our schools, colleges, universities, and seminaries.   They are the hallucinogen making our own cultural suicide bearable, even desirable.   They are virtues, but disordered, or they are the excess or deficiency of...
Post a Comment
Read more