Critical Grace Theory Grand Narrative Slides

Critical Theories

Henry Reyenga and Steve Elzinga

Critical Grace Theory: 

Critical Grace Theory is the study of how Biblical grace is applied to society and culture and how it functions in the personal lives of sinful humans redeemed through the message of Christianity.

Christian Grand Narrative

The Biblical grand narrative begins this way.  God, as revealed in the Bible, created humans as Image bearers, male and female. In Genesis 2, He told them to be fruitful and populate the earth. He told them to be the development ministers of the planet (subdue the earth).

Genesis 1:28    And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. KJV

God gave humans the freedom to either align themselves with God or not. They could eat of two trees. One meant an alignment with God and the other meant they would go their own way.

Genesis 2:16-17   And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:  But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. KJV

The Biblical grand narrative depicts that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were tempted by a rebellious fallen angel, Satan, through the form of a serpent. He said, ”You will not surely die, but you will be like God knowing good and evil." Adam and Eve went that way. That is the default setting for human society even today.

As the narrative of the Bible unfolds through the pages of the Old Testament and into the New Testament, Christians believe that God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to restore the broken relationship with God. Jesus paid for our sins and through his resurrection gives us new life. Now we are taught to lives new lives of faith, hope, and love. The broken relationship with humanity is restored, and God has given us the Holy Spirit.  We are free to love God and our neighbor as ourselves. We are called to still be stewards of our planet, while we share the gospel of restoration and salvation.

Does the grand narrative of Christianity have something to say in this age of critical theory? Douglas Murray in his book, Madness of Crowds, says that post-modernism killed all the grand narratives including religion. He points out that people in rich developed nations are looking for something to make grand!

The explanations for our existence that used to be provided by religion went first, falling away from the nineteenth century onwards. Then over the last century the secular hopes held out by all political ideologies began to follow in religion’s wake. In the latter part of the twentieth century, we entered the postmodern era. An era which defined itself, and was defined, by its suspicion towards all grand narratives. However, as all schoolchildren learn, nature abhors a vacuum, and into the postmodern vacuum new ideas began to creep, with the intention of providing explanations and meanings of their own.

Murray, Douglas. The Madness of Crowds (p. 1). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.

A New Narrative

People in wealthy Western democracies today could not simply remain the first people in recorded history to have absolutely no explanation for what we are doing here, and no story to give life purpose. Whatever else they lacked, the grand narratives of the past at least gave life meaning. The question of what exactly we are meant to do now – other than get rich where we can and have whatever fun is on offer – was going to have to be answered by something.

Murray, Douglas. The Madness of Crowds (pp. 1-2). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition).

The purpose – unknowing in some people, deliberate in others – is to embed a new metaphysics into our societies: a new religion, if you will. 

Murray, Douglas. The Madness of Crowds (p. 2). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.

To date ‘social justice’ has run the furthest because it sounds – and in some versions is – attractive. Even the term itself is set up to be anti-oppositional. ‘You’re opposed to social justice? What do you want, social injustice?’

Murray, Douglas. The Madness of Crowds (pp. 2-3). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.

‘The least attractive-sounding of this trinity is the concept of ‘intersectionality’. This is the invitation to spend the rest of our lives attempting to work out each and every identity and vulnerability claim in ourselves and others and then organize along whichever system of justice emerges from the perpetually moving hierarchy which we uncover. It is a system that is not just unworkable but dementing, making demands that are impossible towards ends that are unachievable. But today intersectionality has broken out from the social science departments of the liberal arts colleges from which it originated. It is now taken seriously by a generation of young people and – as we shall see – has become embedded via employment law (specifically through a ‘commitment to diversity’) in all the major corporations and governments. 

Murray, Douglas. The Madness of Crowds (p. 3). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition

It does not have the power to redeem the world.

2 Corinthians 10:4-5    The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.