Downstream from Jesus

I’m a theology and history nerd. At any given point, I’m usually bouncing between a theology book and a history book, while listening to another history audio-book. Looking at my Goodreads, the last time I read a fiction book was nearly three years ago—it was a parody of the Pilgrim’s Progress written by the Babylon Bee’s Joel Berry and Kyle Mann, so, even then, it was kind of theology. Currently, I’m (re)reading Geerhardus Vos’s Biblical Theology, Richard Hofstadter’s Social Darwinism in American Thought, and listening to John G. Turner’s biography of Brigham Young. On paper, you would think that I’m exactly the type of person to sign on to the following statement from Professor Scott R. Swain of Reformed Theological Seminary Orlando:

It’s not as if I disagree with the statement; from what I’ve seen from him, I also think Swain is a solid theologian. I’m certainly not a Kantian or Nietzschean; there can be no absolute ethics without revelation from the Creator, and those ethics should certainly inform our politics. I feel a bit bad singling out Swain here, but I think these types of one-liners are sadly emblematic of the public engagement coming out of conservative seminaries—there’s just too much emphasis placed on political theology and too little on what I’ll call interpersonal theology. It’s increasingly difficult to find theologians who give significant effort to discussing applied theology beyond some sort of political application. Perhaps, in this respect, I should have chosen to pick on Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s Andrew T. Walker, who, ever since he got tenure last year, has used his social media account and the pages of WORLD, which he is the editor of, to promote all sorts of ridiculously aggressive political opinions, usually straw-manning and disparaging those who disagree with him.

Yet, there’s something about this sentence from Swain that rings incredibly hollow to me, and that makes it stick in my craw. It bothers me that I couldn’t find anybody that gave any push-back or even a “Yes, but…” So, here I am.

Ethics is downstream from theology, but theology is not the source of the river, it’s a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. A person can have all the correct, conservative theology and doctrine in the world, and espouse all of the universally accepted theologically conservative ethics, and yet, in his daily life, be a wholly unethical person. A person can take all the “correct” ethical principles known to man, and then twist them for unethical political ends. Not only is that possible, I argue that a theology that gives far more emphasis to institutional ends than interpersonal ends sets itself up to do exactly that. If Andrew T. Walker and I sat in a room and listed out each other’s core theological, doctrinal and ethical principles, I doubt we’d find much disagreement, though I consistently find his application of those principles to be ethically reprehensible.

All of the theology books in the world mean nothing if your application doesn’t make you look, at least a little, like a Jesus Movement hippy. The entire Western world could go to pot—we could all be trapped in a secular dystopian hellscape—and there would still be people in our lives in need of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Those people would still need to see Him in us. When push comes to shove, that’s the most important theological constant, which means it’s the most important ethical constant. Why is it so difficult to find conservative theologians who, in their public writings, give that constant the gravitas it’s due?