We all expect the Spanish Inquisition to show up sooner or later in our discussions with atheists.  Does the presence of the Inquisition in Christian history discredit all of Christianity?  Does it render our past completely barbaric?

Here's a question that can help clarify the issues involved with the Inquisition objection:  Do you honor Thomas Edison for inventing the light bulb, or do you merely scoff at him for not inventing a computer?  Edison explored the same world we explore, and yet he only invented a light bulb.  Was he a colossal failure?  Absolutely not.  Data (in this case, the data of the physical world) takes time to work through, sort out, and apply.  Edison had a less than perfect understanding of the world, but he furthered the process of our knowledge and application of the facts of nature by one more step, moving us all towards a more precise understanding of the one reality of nature that has existed since the beginning.  Eventually scientific data would lead to computers, but that doesn't mean we can't appreciate the beauty and wonder of the invention of the light bulb in its own time.  And even though at the time of the light bulb's creation there were many other false ideas about how to apply the laws of nature (the use of leeches, for example), the false applications did not discredit science for all time.

Now move this same idea away from science and into the realm of morality and Christianity.  Like the unchanging laws of nature, we have the unchanging words of God in the Bible.  And as in the world of science, in the world of Christianity we've had to work out our knowledge and application of those unchanging words into our societies.  This takes time because human societies started off so far from the ideal--with many false ideas and without knowledge of some true ideas of application that hadn't yet occurred to them.  (For example, the idea that a pluralistic society could peacefully exist and not tear itself apart looks obvious to us now, but before the cultural situation made the discovery of this radically new idea possible, it was assumed that one must enforce unanimity for the good of the citizens, in order to survive.)

It's no surprise, then, that 500 years ago societies had only reached the moral equivalent of the light bulb and not the computer; but the problem was in the application, not in the data.  That is, as inevitably as an application of the facts of the physical world led to computers, so the ideas of the Bible have led to the free societies we now see in the West.  But one ought not be surprised by the amount of time it took the societies of the West to work through ideas based on biblical data any more than one is surprised by the thousands of years it took us to work through scientific ideas based on the observable data of nature.  Nor does it make any more sense to fault the unchanging Bible itself for those societies' slow pace than it does to fault the always-present laws of nature for our formerly rudimentary ideas about science.  The Bible and nature remained the same even if the implications had not yet been fully explored and rightly applied.  And, as with the light bulb, we ought to honor the steps that were made in creating better societies rather than merely degrade the people of the past for not creating the inventions and institutions we have today.

But why, we may then ask, when first creating the nation of Israel, did God not immediately demand that they live as we do today?  The answer might be similar to the reason why He didn't supply them with computers.  A computer would have been completely beyond their grasp.  In the same way, Israel had a difficult enough time adjusting their society to what God did give them explicitly at that time.  Some things, to be fully understood, accepted, and lived out, have to be reached on our own as we struggle over time, learning little by little.  Applications of ideas are discovered and then take time to permeate and transform a society.  This, in turn, lays the groundwork for discovering more applications.

What God did do is speak to Israel where they were.  He addressed the world as they knew it, and He set a foundation of ideas in place through the Old and New Testaments that would infect societies in such a way that the spread of those ideas would eventually lead us to where we are today.  He told us that we're all--men and women--created in His image (Gen 1:27) and equal in value before Him (Gal 3:28, Philemon).  We're not to kidnap people and sell them into slavery (Ex 21:16), we're not to punish people in a way that humiliates them (Deut 25:3), we're not to make converts by the sword (John 3:5-8, 18:36), the State is under God and the law (Deut 17:14-20), no one--rich or poor (Lev 19:15), native or foreigner (Num 15:15-16)--is to be favored when justice is dispensed, and the foundation goes on and on.

Unfortunately, just as the lack of good scientific instruments slowed the discovery and application of the laws of nature, our moral weaknesses--stubbornness, ignorance, biases, selfishness, and inherited false beliefs--have made the application of the Bible to our societies a difficult, slow process.  This is why the Inquisition, while condemnable, is not unexpected or surprising and so does not successfully argue against the truthfulness of Christianity.  And in fact, it gives further witness to the truthfulness of the Bible's central message of our desperate need for Jesus and the forgiveness He provides.

What I was describing is the way in which the evangelical world was reconstituted after the Second World War by people like Harold Ockenga, Carl Henry, Billy Graham, and John Stott and how it has declined in recent decades.  This kind of rhythm—renewal followed by decline, followed by renewal, followed by decline—is, in fact, the story of the Church.  In Scripture, we see this very rhythm working itself out in the Book of Judges. It is always important, though, for people to know where they are in such a cycle.  There is no time when the Church is perfect but there are times when it is better and others when it is worse.  My view is that in important ways we are leaving behind better days, even as being “born again” gains cultural acceptance and as megachurches become more numerous.  It is the deep sense of truth, the truth that God has given us in his Word, that defined the earlier evangelicals and this sense is now fading in comparison to the desire to be culturally relevant.  We should, of course, be engaging culture but not so that that culture defines who we are and what we want and how we go about our church business.  It is “sola Scriptura” not “sola cultura” ! The marketers are in danger of building the Church by cultural means because they have adopted from the business world all of the tricks of marketing that make corporations successful.  The emergents are in danger of building the Church by cultural means because they have allowed themselves to be infiltrated by a postmodern mood which imagines that knowing what is true is arrogant, that the way we make connections with Gen Xers. is by being so diffident that we are unsure how true Christianity really is or what its demands actually are.

Focusing on the problems with church marketing strategies, you note that, "The gospel cannot be a product which the church sells because there are no consumers for it.  When we find consumers we will find that what they are interested in buying, on their own terms, is not the gospel." If the marketers/seeker-sensitives are not "selling" the gospel, what is it that their consumers are actually buying?

What we seldom understand is that the modernized world in which we live has untold benefits but it also extracts from us deep, inward costs for having those benefits.  That is our paradox.  Never have we had so much --so many products, choices, opportunities, so much knowledge, instant communication, and long life (in 1900, people could anticipate on average 49 years of life in America but today it is in the early 80’s).  But, at the same time, the levels of anxiety have never been higher, or the levels of stress, and the incidents of depression have never been greater and we now have more kids who are more demoralized than ever before.  This is our paradox.  Never have we had so much and never have we had so little.  Living in the American consumer Paradise is....hard!  That is why when people come to church, their minds are full of all of these pressures, anxieties, worries, cares, distractions.  What they are looking for is inward relief, a moment’s therapy, some fun and lightness, some inspiration, a little break from the harshness of the workplace.  That is what they want from their churches.  And that is what the marketers are intent on giving them.

You claim, "There is a line which connects Marshall and Wright to Bell and McLaren.  It is that the authority of God functions separately from the written Scriptures… The common threads across this broad front are that Scripture cannot be fully authoritative at the level of its functioning in the life of the Church today.  We are, in fact, autonomous, freed from its language and constraints as we shape our own understanding, in our own way, in the postmodern world." One might argue that evangelicals have been doing this for some time. For example, many try to find guidance from God through "putting out fleeces", feeling a special peace about a decision, or waiting for some other sign. Would you say that the common thread also extends through these sorts of spiritual practices that appear to water down the authority of Scripture? How would you assess the role Scripture currently plays in the lives of most American evangelicals? 

We all find ourselves in the midst of a world which is sometimes baffling, confusing, and painful.  Like the psalmists of old, we often ask, “where is God in all of this?”  This experience, I suspect, is the common lot of those who know God because we are all being trained to walk by faith and not by sight.  We find this hard.  We want to be supported by evidence—interesting coincidences, miraculous escapes, compelling narratives—and so we do, indeed, often lean to our own understanding as you suggest.  However, this weakness, I believe, is of a different order from those who, in small or large ways, have undermined the full, working authority and truthfulness of Scripture.

You state, "It is important for us to remember that culture does not give the Church its agenda." Given the context of debates over our relationship to the culture, what ought our relationship to culture to be?

Culture is simply the public environment in which we live that has been brought about by the modernization of our world.  Our culture is defined by our urban concentrations, by our consumerism, the fact that technology is interwoven through our lives, by the massive bureaucratic  structures in our society which create its impersonal feel, by our loss of connections to place and family so that loneliness has become epidemic.  This is what explains why our music is as it is and why serious movies are exploring the themes which they are.  So, as in ourselves, so in society which is an extension of who we are, we must make a distinction between what is good from creation and what has been corrupted.  The N.T. understanding of worldliness is that it is everything in our culture which, however pleasant, makes sin look normal and righteousness look strange.  It takes discernment to be able to see what is good in culture and what is not.  The problem here is that discernment is essentially a moral ability and we are now raising a church generation which is simply adrift morally.  That is a fact which I have documented.

A significant criticism in your book is against the autonomous self that has come to define popular culture and even many churches. You argue that we have become self-centered as opposed to God-centered. Isn't there some degree, however, to which we should be aware of ourselves? Some of the great hymns emphasize our wretchedness and our gratitude toward God. How does a healthy view of self differ from the autonomous self?

Yes, we should be aware of ourselves and it is still true that the unexamined life is not worth living.  That, however, was not what I had in mind.  The “autonomous self” is what happens when we have little or no compelling reality outside of ourselves; we have no Scripture that summons us into the presence of God, no God who is indistinguishable from our needs and wants, no community that can help or correct us, no moral world in which right and wrong are enduringly true and out “there.”  There are millions of Americans like this and many are in evangelical churches.