Gavin Ortlund | Worth Standing Up For: Hearing a 4th-Century Witness for Justice and the Gospel
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- Опубликовано: 7 июл 2024
- Christians have always recognized that the gospel calls us to stand up for justice - as difficult and complicated as that can be. Gavin Ortlund of First Baptist Church of Ojai draws on Gregory of Nyssa's prophetic stand against slavery to help us see how we can stand up for justice in our own time.
Consider assigning in: History, Ethics, Culture, Pastoral Leadership, Theology
Talk delivered at Karam Forum 2021.
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Love we are using an Orthodox Catholic Saint as an example. Wonderful.
Powerful
💯 The true essence of Christianity, Love your God with all your heart mind and soul and Love your neighbour as yourself
Wow, I’m surprised at the prophetic nature of Gregory’s words! Especially in light of how God has always had a special heart for “the widow and the orphan” aka those who often experienced the most injustice, we can see that advocating for God’s justice is an eternal truth that we just can’t run away from. Love how God has recently been building such a peaceful and thoughtful space for Christians to discuss these harder issues, and I praise Him for doing a great job through Dr. Ortlund!
Very clear and compelling
A fantastic and truly edifying presentation from Dr Ortlund. This needs to be seen by many.
4:41 - Gregory of Nyssa’s total criticism of slavery
5:28 - Christianity in Nazi-Germany
6:32 - Gregory’s three points against slavery
7:16 - “Thirdly, Gregory says slavery violates not just our equality, not just our nature, it violates our dignity.”
8:51 - atrocities in the name of justice
9:23, 9:48 - does religion get in the way of justice?
9:53, 10:14 - progressive, Christian view of justice and Christianity
10:37 - conservative, Christian view of justice and Christianity
11:24 - Ortlund’s three points for addressing justice today:
- listen
- learn
- “lean in”
11:58 - “Somebody once said, ‘You’re not really listening until you are willing to be changed by what you hear.’”
12:59 - “Decide in advance that when we are in a context or when we have an occasion to speak or act on behalf of justice, we will not shrink back in fear.”
14:00 - Christ and the cross
14:14 - “We have a God who deeply cares about justice, so should we.”
Wow! What a huge topic to take on. I admire Gavin’s efforts but unfortunately I feel there are serious gaps. Let me clarify my point. He uses Gregory’s sermon on the topic. Gregory’s Scriptural jumping point is from Ecclesiastes and that is the basis of his exposition, reflection and application. Furthermore, he is dealing with the very universal reality of slavery in that historical context. The problem is not nuanced in his situation but very real.
But the discussion of “justice” in contemporary America is in such a hugely different cultural, political and ideological context, I find it difficult to use Gregory’s definitions and use of related terms to directly apply to the US currently. Moreover, I find that whereas Gavin repeatedly discussed the problem of inequality, I find that many Progressives, including evangelicals who have infused their theology and ideology using the term “inequity”. I think it would have been fairer to acknowledge the difference between these two terms when talking about a Christian response to injustice. Secondly, America is a Representative democracy under the rule of law enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The system of government in Gregory’s historical context was a hierarchical feudal system with a strictly stratified population that did not enjoy the freedoms that most Americans take for granted, including the Christian community in its many diverse expressions. Thirdly, knowing Gavin’s commitment to Sola Scriptura, i am curious as to why he didn’t use the Pauline and Petrine epistles which speak to the slavery-injustice issues and the local faith community response to those issues from an apostolic perspective? The social cultural context of the apostles was much more similar to Gregory’s than our modern situation. Last of all, it seems to me that Gavin perhaps unconsciously emits the essential and inherent Marxist ideological ethos of “class struggle” that Progressive evangelicals, from my observation, research and dialogues, incorporate into some belief systems that indicate to me that it is the secular elites in our culture that have penetrated the American evangelical community with presuppositions that do not line up with the orthodox historical faith. By not directly addressing these phenomena and their direct correlation; the issue of how the American or Western Church should react by being proponents of justice becomes a bit murky in my reflections of his presentation. I also want to say that as a student of Bonhoeffer as well (coming from my own Lutheran heritage); Bonhoeffer’s response to Nazi State fascism is a clear-cut demonstration of opposition on every level against the German State Lutheran/Reformed Church and the Nazi government. To find the kind of unjust policies of racism today in the US is a bit of wagging the dog.
In conclusion, despite my sense that there were many gaps in the presentation, I do appreciate Gavin specifically mentioning abortion and human smuggling from the conservative side. Abortion and infanticide were common in the history of the Roman Empire and as the empire became Christianised and impacted by the gospel, these horrific practices were addressed but not meaningfully dealt with until modern history in the West. Have these kinds of abusive and exploitive practices been obliterated in our different nations? No, I think not; but the different voices connected to the modern social abuses that were referred to by Gavin must be an ongoing part of the discussions of different Christian denominations. As to the important part of listening in genuine Christian dialogue over these issues, may I highly recommend the book entitled, “Tactics” by Gregory Koukl.
This appears to be a 14 min talk...It seems he could not do more than touch the tip of the iceberg on the topic.
One thing we need is dialogue and we cannot confuse what social justice means to the extreme left leaning liberal with the way they practiced social justice in Leviticus. Debts forgiven after 7 years, slaves to pay off debt, leaving 10% of a field unharvested for the poor. I like what Professor Steven Kotkin said, “opportunity needs to be equal but outcomes cannot be.” Shalom.
I've seen enough of Dr. Ortlund's videos to know he takes far more time w/ weighty topics when he has the leisure to do so. I'm sure he was allotted this time by a venue, and had to work w/in the confines of it.
Not one verse in the Bible advocates for ending the practice of owning another person. A possible exception can be found in the early chapters of Exodus where the Old Testament God intends to free his people from slavery in Egypt. This does not mean much, given that after being led out of Egypt the Jews were taught by God in great detail (Exodus 21) exactly how to keep Jewish slaves as indentured servants or chattel, depending on the circumstances. What is equally distressing to modern readers is that God gave the Jews explicit instructions in Leviticus 25:44-46 on the procedure for buying foreign slaves and keeping them and their children as chattel property for life. Also in the Torah, there is an example of God telling the Jews that they must keep the survivors of the Promised Land conquests as chattel slaves, especially the women (Deuteronomy 20:10-18, 21:10-11). A section in Isaiah 14:1-2 announces that the Jews are promised a future in which they will enslave all other people groups of the world. They “will possess the nations as male and female slaves in the Lord’s land”. The New Testament continues this trend of approved human subjugation with multiple stories by Jesus about slavery, including where he declares the relationship between God and humankind to be like the connection between earthly masters and slaves. He makes no criticism of slavery. He speaks as if the institution is normal and acceptable, even saying that God and human masters are justified in torturing disobedient slaves (Matthew 18:21-35). The writings of the apostles Paul and Peter include commanding slaves in five different books to obey their masters with reverence, fear, respect, sincerity, and love as if toward Christ, even when the slave owner is harsh. Slaves are to try and please their owners at all times, not just when being observed (Ephesians 6:5-6, Colossians 3:22, Titus 2:9-10, 1 Peter 2:18). The enslaved are directed to work even harder for Christian masters, since they are fellow believers. At the end of one of these instructive sections, Paul says: “Anyone who teaches something different is arrogant and lacks understanding….Their minds are corrupt, and they have turned their backs on the truth.” (1 Timothy 6:1-5a) Christians are “slaves of God”. (Romans 6:16-23)
All of the biblical passages mentioned in the last paragraph offer sturdy guardrails to follow when interpreting proclamations of general spiritual freedom such as in Galatians:
“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28 NIV)
The message: Be spiritually free, but remain in the physical situation you were in previously.
The bible worked w/in the confines of its time. Slavery was universally acceptable back then. What the bible did offer was a revolutionary idea about equality w/ all men before God, no matter their social status, incl. slave. It may not have given a specific command to end it, but certainly gave all the groundwork for mankind to realize it was wrong. This would be why Christian countries were the first to end it, and why non-Christian countries often still practice it.