Foolishness to the Greeks

1. Modern Western Culture: A Missionary Problem of Public Atheism and Private Faith

In great areas of Asia, Africa, and Oceania, the church grows steadily and even spectacularly. But in the areas dominated by modern Western culture (whether in its capitalist or socialist political expression) the church is shrinking and the gospel appears to fall on deaf ears.

A unique challenge. Modern Western culture, a global phenomenon originating in Europe and North America, presents a unique and formidable missionary problem. Unlike traditional cultures where the gospel often finds fertile ground, this pervasive culture proves remarkably resistant, leading to shrinking churches and widespread indifference. This resistance stems from its inherent structure, which often co-opts and neutralizes the gospel's transformative power.

Plausibility structures. Sociologist Peter Berger notes that modern Western culture, unlike premodern societies, lacks a universally acknowledged "plausibility structure" for ultimate beliefs, forcing individuals into a "heretical imperative" of personal choice. However, this culture does possess a dominant plausibility structure: the public world of "facts" versus the private realm of "values." The gospel, with its claims of universal truth, is relegated to the private sphere of personal opinion, effectively silencing its challenge to public life.

Gladstone's prophecy. This retreat of Christianity into the private sector, accepting its role as merely one "option" among many, mirrors W. E. Gladstone's prophetic warning. He foresaw a time when Christian faith, treated as "one among many co-equal pensioners of a government," would lose its "God-given hold upon objective reality." The result is not a neutral secular society, but a pagan one, born from the rejection of Christianity and thus far more resistant to the gospel than any pre-Christian paganism.

2. The Enlightenment's Legacy: A World Without Purpose, Divided by Fact and Value

The eighteenth century transferred the holy city from another world to this.

Collective conversion. The Enlightenment marked a profound "collective conversion" in Western thought, ushering in an age of reason, scientific mastery, and human autonomy. Central to this new vision was the methodological elimination of teleology—the idea of purpose—from the understanding of nature, replacing it with a Newtonian model of cause and effect. This shift profoundly reshaped society, leading to the division of labor, the rise of the market economy, and the growth of cities.

Fissure in consciousness. This elimination of purpose created a deep fissure in modern Western consciousness, manifesting as the dichotomy between the public world of "facts" and the private world of "values." Facts, understood scientifically, are objective and value-free, while values are subjective, personal choices. This separation means there is no logical bridge from "is" (scientific observation) to "ought" (moral judgment), leaving moral authority without a public, objective foundation.

Earthly paradise. The Enlightenment also fostered a doctrine of progress, envisioning a "heavenly city" built on earth through human reason and science, replacing the biblical hope of a divine kingdom. This earthly eschatology, combined with the nation-state as the guarantor of infinite "rights" to happiness, has led to totalitarian ideologies that sacrifice the living for a planned future, and a consumerist society where the pursuit of happiness becomes a frantic, anxious quest.

3. The Gospel's Challenge: A Radical Conversion Beyond the Hermeneutical Circle

The relationship between these two situations can in no way be described in terms of the hermeneutical circle.

Desacralized faith. Modern scholarship, applying scientific tools, has largely desacralized the Bible and the Church, treating them as objects of study within the "unbroken network of cause and effect" that governs all history and human experience. This approach, while offering new insights, often reduces the gospel to something "accounted for" by our culture, preventing it from posing a genuine challenge to our worldview. Attempts to adapt the gospel, from Schleiermacher's focus on inner experience to Bultmann's demythologization, often reinforce this privatization, making faith a psychological state rather than a claim about objective reality.

A chasm, not a circle. While the hermeneutical circle describes how our pre-understanding shapes our reading and can be reshaped by the text, it is insufficient for the gospel's encounter with culture. Scripture often speaks of a radical discontinuity between human wisdom and divine revelation, implying a "chasm" rather than a mere circle. The Johannine Gospel, for instance, portrays an absolute contradiction between the world's inability to grasp Jesus and his being the source of all truth, a boundary defined by "death and rebirth."

Paradigm shift. The modern scientific worldview functions as a dominant plausibility structure, making the biblical account of reality seem irrational. A genuine missionary encounter, therefore, requires a "paradigm shift"—a radical conversion of the mind, heart, and will. This shift, while not logically derivable from the existing worldview, offers a wider rationality that embraces and reinterprets the insights of modern culture, allowing the resurrection of Jesus to be understood not as a psychological event, but as a fact that redefines all history.

4. Science and Faith: Reclaiming Purpose in a Rational Yet Contingent Universe

The necessary precondition for the birth of science as we know it is, it would seem, the diffusion through society of the belief that the universe is both rational and contingent.

Laplace's shadow. Despite revolutionary changes in modern physics, the popular understanding of reality remains largely shaped by the Newtonian, Laplacean vision: a mechanical universe explained solely by cause and effect, without reference to God. This "methodological atheism" of science, while historically fruitful, has led to the delusion that understanding the smallest components explains the whole, suppressing the "tacit dimension" of knowledge and leading to conceptual absurdities when applied universally.

Biblical foundation for science. Paradoxically, the dynamic, self-developing science of the modern era arose not from ancient Greek or Eastern metaphysics (which saw the universe as rational but necessary), but from the biblical vision of a world that is both rational and contingent.

• Rational: As the creation of God, who is light and not darkness.
• Contingent: As God's creation, not an emanation, possessing a measure of autonomy.
  This dual belief provides the faith that sustains scientific inquiry, allowing for meticulous observation and experimentation without assuming inherent necessity.

Purpose in all things. Moving up the hierarchy of explanation—from physics to chemistry, mechanics, biology, and human understanding—reveals that each level conditions but does not fully explain the higher. Reductionism fails because understanding requires recognizing purpose. The Christian testimony, rooted in the Incarnation and Trinity, offers a wider rationality where God's purpose is the ultimate explanation for a world both rational and contingent. This perspective allows science to serve humanity, acknowledging purpose even in evolution, and protecting culture from the irrational fanaticism born of total skepticism.

5. Politics and Justice: Christ's Kingship Over All Life, Not Just Private Morals

The church can never accept the thesis that the central shrine of public life is empty, in other words, that there has been no public revelation before the eyes of all the world of the purpose for which all things and all peoples have been created and which all governments must serve.

Beyond the private sphere. The claim that the church should avoid politics aligns with the post-Enlightenment division of life into public facts and private values, and a non-biblical dichotomy of soul and body. However, the Bible presents a unified human being, always in relationship, and God's Torah (law) governs all aspects of life—personal, familial, and national. Jesus' message of the Kingdom of God is a public truth for all nations, not a private spiritual option.

Augustine's legacy. Augustine's City of God provided a framework for Christians as "resident aliens" in the earthly city, actively seeking its good order and justice, even while acknowledging its rule by self-love. This vision shaped Christendom for a millennium, asserting that love creates justice and that without justice, there is no commonwealth. The church's historical acceptance of political responsibility, despite its corruptions, was an act of faithfulness to this comprehensive vision of God's rule.

Challenging modern ideologies. Both capitalism and socialism, products of the Enlightenment, are ultimately atheist in their public philosophy. Capitalism, driven by covetousness (which Paul equated with idolatry), assumes self-interest leads to general well-being, creating limitless growth, vast inequality, and environmental destruction—a "cancer" in human society. Socialism, while aiming for equality, often sacrifices freedom and relies on utopian ideals. The church must challenge these common, yet false, axioms by proclaiming Christ's kingship over all life, affirming that the "central shrine" of public life cannot remain empty, and that true human fulfillment lies in relatedness and mutual responsibility, not abstract freedom or equality.

6. Eschatology: Healing the Public/Private Split Through the Hope of God's Kingdom

It is death that drives in this wedge and splits our vision of the future in two.

Reclaiming the future. A true understanding of eschatology—the doctrine of the last things—is essential for the church's missionary encounter. The Enlightenment's vision of human progress towards a perfect earthly city, and Marxism's apocalyptic classless society, both marginalize the individual, making them expendable means to a distant future. This leads to a split between personal destiny (immortal soul) and world history, reinforcing the public/private dichotomy.

Death's dividing power. It is the reality of death, the ultimate horizon of human experience, that creates this fatal split. Death, understood biblically as the "wages of sin," signifies that nothing in our lives is fit for God's perfect kingdom. This truth, however, is overcome by Christ's resurrection, which provides a sign and foretaste of total victory. Through union with Christ, we follow a path that goes through death to life, allowing us to commit fully to "secular" work, knowing it is offered to God and will find its place in the holy city.

Realistic hope. This eschatological faith heals the public/private split, enabling Christians to be politically realistic without cynicism and sensitive to love without sentimentality. It rejects fanaticism that equates political achievements with God's kingdom, and piety that opts out of the struggle for justice. Instead, it inspires tireless work for the best possible political alternatives, viewing public acts as "acted prayer" for God's reign, grounded in the confidence that God's ultimate purpose will prevail.

7. True Freedom: A Paradoxical Gift Found in Serving the True Master

From the point of view of the Enlightenment, the biblical idea of freedom is paradoxical—a freedom of the one who serves the true master.

Enlightenment's gift and paradox. The Enlightenment's greatest gift is the recognition of freedom of thought and conscience, a right the church must now champion, acknowledging its past failures to do so. However, this freedom, when divorced from ultimate truth, can lead to indifference or fanaticism. True tolerance is not neutrality but a commitment to truth that allows for dissent, recognizing that God himself provides space for free allegiance.

Sin and authority. The church, though entrusted with truth, is a body of sinful people prone to turning truth into ideology. God often uses the state to bring the church to repentance. Therefore, a Christian state, if it were to exist, would need to acknowledge Christian faith as true while deliberately securing full freedom for those of other views, avoiding both historical suppression and modern pluralistic neutrality (which often masks its own ideology).

Serving the true master. From a biblical perspective, human beings are never autonomous; liberation is always a change of allegiance from a false dominion to the true. The freedom celebrated by the Enlightenment, the "freedom to make one's own decision about what is good," is seen as the serpent's offer in Eden, leading to slavery to sin. True freedom is a gift of grace, received in freedom, from the one who is truly Lord. The church's witness must proclaim this paradoxical truth: that perfect freedom is found in belonging wholly to Christ.

8. Declericalized Theology: Empowering Lay Christians for Public Witness

We need a multitude of places where this kind of lay theology can be nourished.

Theological disconnect. A significant challenge for the church is the "declericalization" of theology, where it has become the exclusive domain of professional clergy and scholars, detached from the daily realities of secular life. This creates a disconnect, as lay Christians, deeply involved in public affairs, often perceive theology as an arcane pursuit, while clerical pronouncements on political or economic matters lack weight due to their perceived distance from practical experience.

Teilhard's challenge. Teilhard de Chardin highlighted this problem, noting that non-Christian scientists might view their Christian colleagues as not "ultimately serious" about their scientific work, believing their ultimate concerns lie "beyond science." This perception stems from a traditional Christian emphasis on otherworldly piety over engagement with the world, leading to a theology that struggles to speak meaningfully to the complexities of scientific, economic, or political life.

Empowering lay witness. A genuine missionary encounter requires fostering a robust, lay theology. This means creating opportunities within congregations for laypeople to integrate their faith with their weekday work, seeking gospel illumination for their secular duties. This approach, akin to the Dutch concept of "sphere sovereignty" (where each societal sphere is directly responsible to God, not the church), empowers Christians to be agents of God's kingship in all areas of public life, making the church a servant rather than a mistress.

9. Denominationalism's Failure: A Surrender to Secularization, Not the Biblical Church

The exponents of the denominational principle acknowledge that a denomination does not and cannot claim to be a church or the church in any biblical sense.

Moral failure. Richard Niebuhr famously called denominationalism "the moral failure of Christianity." While often defended as a voluntary association of "like-hearted and like-minded individuals" for specific objectives, denominationalism inherently surrenders any claim to be "the church" in the New Testament sense—a visible, local manifestation of God's congregation. Instead, it views the true church as invisible, with denominations as mere partial expressions.

Privatization of religion. Sociologists of religion widely observe that denominationalism is a religious manifestation of secularization, reflecting the privatization of faith in post-Enlightenment culture. By defining religion as a private affair where individuals choose their ultimate meanings, denominations become shelters for shared private opinions. This structure inherently incapacitates them from confronting the state and society with the gospel's claim to public truth, as they do not claim to be more than associations of individuals.

Restoring the Catholic Church. A truly ecumenical movement, aiming to witness to Christ's lordship over the entire inhabited world (oikoumene), cannot be a federation of denominations. It must instead seek to "restore the face of the Catholic Church"—a visible, unified body that transcends local and cultural divisions. Local ecumenical projects, where separated churches unite for a coherent witness in a specific place, offer a hopeful direction for overcoming the internal surrender to secular ideology that denominationalism represents.

10. Global Church: Mutual Correction Through Diverse Cultural Perspectives

We need the witness of the whole ecumenical family if we are to be authentic witnesses of Christ to our own culture.

Beyond cultural blindness. Our vision of Jesus and the gospel is inevitably shaped by our own culture. To overcome this inherent cultural blindness and achieve an authentic witness, the Western church urgently needs the perspective of Christians from other cultures. Asian and African believers, having received the gospel from Western missionaries, are now articulating their faith within their own cultural contexts, offering crucial correctives to Western syncretism and limited understandings of Christ.

The World Council of Churches. The World Council of Churches, once celebrated as a triumph of Western missionary success, is now often viewed with suspicion in the West precisely because it facilitates this mutual correction. Theologies emerging from the younger churches challenge Western certainties, forcing a re-evaluation of culturally conditioned perceptions of the gospel. This "campaign of abuse" against the WCC, though uncomfortable, signals that the "sharp sword of the word of God is piercing our complacence."

Multidirectional mission. The foreign missionary is not a temporary but an abiding necessity for the church's life, provided mission becomes multidirectional—all churches both sending and receiving. This continuous exchange ensures that the word of God, spoken in every tongue, is never fully domesticated in any single culture. It allows the church to grow in its comprehension of Christ's greatness, recognizing that "we need all the saints" to grasp the fullness of his reality.

11. Courageous Witness: Proclaiming Unprovable Truth in a Skeptical Age

All understanding of reality involves a commitment, a venture of faith.

Beyond impersonal facts. Modern scientific culture champions an ideal of impersonal knowledge, where "facts" are self-evident, value-free, and beyond doubt, contrasting sharply with subjective opinions or beliefs. However, this worldview itself rests on unquestioned assumptions. Every attempt to understand reality, including scientific inquiry, ultimately involves a "commitment, a venture of faith," as no belief can be doubted except on the basis of another.

A new starting point. The gospel is not a set of beliefs derived from empirical observation, nor can its truth be "proved" by the axioms of modern society. Instead, it is the announcement of a name and a fact—Jesus Christ—that offers a new starting point for understanding and coping with all experience. Accepting this means a "radical conversion," a turning around to face a different direction, becoming a dissenter against the prevailing cultural currents.

Humble boldness. The church must embrace a humble boldness: humble in acknowledging its own continuous learning and need to heed diverse human experience, yet bold in bearing witness to Christ as the sole King and Head of the human race. The ultimate "demonstration" or "proof" of this truth awaits the end of history. Until then, the church's task is steadfast witness and patient hope, rooted in the conviction that its faith, though unprovable by secular axioms, provides the very foundation for a rational and contingent world.

12. Community of Praise: The Source of Boldness and Joy in Missionary Encounter

This is what makes the church a place of joy, of praise, of surprises, and of laughter—a place where there is a foretaste of the endless surprises of heaven.

Supernatural radiance. The humble boldness and expectant patience required for the church's missionary encounter are not products of human heroism but the spontaneous overflow of a "community of praise." This praise emanates from the supernatural reality of God—the superabundant richness of the Triune God's being, where love is eternally given and enjoyed. It is the overflow of this divine love, through the Holy Spirit, into the life of the believing community.

A foretaste of heaven. This radiant community, marked by joy, surprises, and laughter, becomes a visible sign to the world, a "foretaste of the endless surprises of heaven." Examples like Pentecostals and Russian Orthodox, despite their differences, share a life centered in "praise that is literally 'out of this world' and is by that very fact able to speak to this world." This supernatural reality draws people out of the "grey wastelands of a secularized and disenchanted world."

Easter's new rationality. The Easter event—the empty tomb and the risen Lord—is the "despair of a certain kind of rationalism" but the "starting point for a new rationality." It breaks the molds that imprison God within a fallen world's rationalism, opening up the possibility of living hopefully in a world without hope. This new rationality is grounded in the perpetual praise of a God who not only creates order from chaos but also continually breaks through fixed orders to create "ever-new situations of surprise and joy."

Last updated: January 19, 2026