Video Transcript: Critical Grace Theory Grand Narrative

Henry - Welcome back to the Critical Grace Theory class. I suppose we should  probably step back a little bit and give some context to the whole thing. First,  probably is what is the working definition of Critical Grace Theory? And we  understand for the purpose of this class, Critical Grace Theory is the study of  biblical grace as applied to society and culture, and how it functions in the  personal lives of sinful humans, redeeming them.  

Steve - That's so good. Did you write that? Yeah. Read it again, but slow it  down.  

Henry - 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 for the message of Christianity. Yeah, so that's, you know, interesting. Over the weekend, one of the major networks on television had a pastor in  California talk about critical grace theory, and he had no definition. So it's really,  we have to get a clear, what is it. So that if someone asks us, what is it. 

Steve - So this little lecture is like a bonus,  

Henry - a little bonus lecture again. And it's also good to actually step back and  talk about what is the grand narrative of Christianity. Why is this so important?  And then we're going to talk about this book right here a little bit, 'The Madness  of Crowds,' which is a book that talks about a lot of these things and so I thought it would probably be good to step back a little bit. Now, one thing though, we're  going to do some quotes here. So you are going to read some narrative. We  want you to see the words. This is like, we kind of like to get the context it's  good, every word matters. And we will put this PowerPoint in the presentation if  you'd like to teach this, so you can share this with others. So, the Christian  grand narrative, what's that say? So we'll go ahead and read that.  

Steve - The biblical grand narrative begins this way: God, as revealed in the  Bible, created human beings 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.  

Henry - 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." I put the King James Version; I remember, as a  child, you know, like those early catechisms, when Christians and that was sort  of like, the foundation.

Steve - And, you know, it's been around a long time, that has been the grand  narrative of how we got here, what's going on? So we're going back to that. 

Henry - Well, one thing I find interesting is the Hebrew word for "Have  dominion," which is to be like a steward, a deacon. We talk a lot about this at  Christian Leaders Alliance, about we are deacons, ministers of the New  Covenant. But the first ministers were Adam and Eve as they were ministers of  the planet, to develop the planet. Pretty amazing and cool. 

Steve - Okay, 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. 

Henry - 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." Again, that grand language, from a grand narrative that  was in the King James Version, from the 17th century, and it's beautiful. 

Steve - The narrative continues. 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. 

Henry – That is interesting, the fallen, sinful default setting. 

Steve - And you know, I think this grand narrative is something we sense, right? Something's good, but something's wrong. I think that's the struggle for people,  even the people who don't believe in this grand narrative. Like in movies, I see  movies following this narrative all the time. The story starts out with some kind  of hopeful something, right? And then it all goes sour. 

Henry - The inciting incident. 

Steve - And then the rest of the movie is what do we do about that. Okay, 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 live 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. 

Henry - So, it's powerful. The narrative is that Jesus Christ came on Easter or on Christmas, incarnation, God with us. Died on the cross on Good Friday, rose  again from the dead, on Pentecost, pours out His Holy Spirit. Essentially, it's all  about the reclamation project from fall to humanity. That is the Christian grand  narrative, right? 

Steve – So good, problem, how do we solve the problem. And that's every story, Every story has been copying that grand narrative. 

Henry - So, in "The Madness of Crowds," Douglas Murray, who himself is an  atheist and a gay atheist, go figure. I wouldn't say that this is a person who  aligns themselves with our grand narrative—points out a few things that connect here. Does Christianity, under the grand narrative, however points out a few  things that we, sort of, connect here and accept. 

Steve – Is the Christian Grand Narrative under Attack?  

Henry - Does the grand narrative of Christianity have something to say in this  age of critical theory? So let's ask that question. Douglas Murray in his book, I  mentioned, Madness of Crowds, says that post-modernism killed all the grand  narratives, including religion. He points out that people in rich, developing  

nations are looking for something to make them grand. 

Steve - The explanations for our existence that used to be provided by religion  went first, the falling away from the 19th century onwards. Then, over the last  century, the secular hopes held out by all political ideologies began to follow  religion's wake. In the latter part of the 20th century, we entered the postmodern  era. An era which defined itself, and was defined by its suspicion towards all  grand narratives, including religion, Christianity. However, as all school children  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. 

Henry – I think we should talk a little bit about book. So, first of all is, what a  vacuum is? 

Steve - A vacuum is when you take the air out of something, like a bottle, and  you take the air out and now there's reverse pressure that something wants to  fill it because it wants to reinflate.

Henry - So, he's saying that postmodernism has picked apart all of the grand  narratives. In fact, here's an example, there used to be like patriotism, right?  That's a narrative, a grand narrative. But there's others as well, like the  traditional institution of marriage would be a grand narrative, or family, or  business, or how we do everything has a narrative historically associated with it. 

Steve: But the biggest narratives are, How did we get here? Why are we here?  Where is it all going? And who are we? What's our role? What's our future? All  those things have been obliterated. He's saying, You can destroy all, it's easy to  tear things down, but then something wants to take it's place. 

Henry - People in Western democracies today could not simply remain the first  people in recorded history to have 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 to get rich where we can and have whatever fun is on offer, was going to have to be answered by something. So he goes on  to say, a new religion. 

Steve - A new religion. The purpose, unknowingly in some people, deliberate in  others, is to embed a new metaphysics into our societies, a new religion if you  will.  

Henry - I find it interesting, Dr. Roy Clouser in our philosophy program talks  about that often that there's a religious motivation with every single system  without fail. 

Steve - So even an atheistic system that destroys the religious system now  becomes a new religion. There's nothing neutral; you can't just eliminate  religion. A new one will take its place. 

Henry – So it's Interesting, if there's going to be a new religion, let's use the  metaphor of the Trinity because in Christianity, we have the Father, Son, and  Holy Spirit. Murray talks about the Trinity, so you know he's not a Christian any  more. He uses our metaphor or our identity of God. This is what he says. 

Steve - The new trinity. Social justice is one part of the Trinity. Make everything a social justice concern. Who can be against social justice?  

Henry – Identity group politics, segment groups through critical conflict theory  and pit them off against each other. 

Steve - And intersectionality. Instead of building up, as the Holy Spirit does in 

Christianity, disruptively destroy historical structure and systems to develop a  “Marxist utopia” with a twist. 

Henry – OK, let's look at social justice. 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? You read through this book. What do you make of  this comment, are you against social justice? 

Steve – The new religions. They present themselves in terms that you look  foolish when you're arguing against them. And so you pick something like social  justice and then you stick all your new religion into it. Now its like, first you have  to argue against apple pie. You know, finally, get your point. But inside the apple  pie is razor blades, but it's hard to get to that. So it's very you know, it's sold like  the devil, right? I mean, that's what he did with Adam and Eve. He hides it, he  makes it subtle. Oh, you could be like, God, what are you talking about? This  isn't this isn't a bad thing, right? And he's very subtle at painting a new picture  that that, if we're not careful, we can easily get side-tracked. 

Henry - historically in Christianity, this occurred in the past. They call it social  gospel, social justice, Where? Where? Then the Bible was redefined by social  issues, and the gospel of grace, of salvation, of new life, of eternal life, was  replaced for doing good. It was a good thing feed the hungry, but if you make  Christianity only about feeding the hungry, you gutted out of Christianity its  essence. 

Steve- So again, it was hard to be critical of something that is helpful.  Henry - Are you against bringing water wells or feeding the hungry?  

Steve - But it reduced it all to squeezed, you know, the whole it was a partial  gospel, right?  

Henry - Elements of truth, not the whole truth. All right? 

Steve - Then we have the second part of the new Trinity, the incarnation of  identity politics. Identity Politics, meanwhile, has become the place where social  justice finds its causes. It atomizes society into different interest groups  according to sex or gender, race, sexual preference and more. It assumes that  such characteristics are the main or only relevant attributes of their old.  

Henry - well, how do you what do you take that to mean?

Steve - Well, everything has become identity politics, not not what's best for the  whole society, right? And not, you know your family or being part of a group like  the church, it's now reduced to these What's your gender? Like, gender is  important. Race is important, right? Wealthy or not, wealthy is what's important.  And all the things that used to make, you know, tell us who we are, you know,  like we're good friends, right? In part because we grew up from a culture,  religious culture. We have some connection to culture, Dutch culture but you  wouldn't really talk about that today. 

Henry - No, it's like that. I mean, we could a generation ago, you could kid  around if you do much. Everybody thought that was stupid. We didn't really  mean that, right? But even saying that today would be like, What are you saying  you're better than us? Yeah. So you know, we're going to be talking about critical race theory, and critical grace theory in comparison. And coming up, you're  going to see an interview with a leader from Rwanda, which their country really  focused on the racial divides in 20 1994 and in we'll see how some of this theory plays itself out, where you take God out in how he wants best for society, and  you elevate race as the only important thing, and it brought in Rwanda,  according To this leader, genocide of a million people in three months  

Steve - a lot is at stake here. Okay, third one is intersectionality.  

Henry - The least attractive sovereign 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 the vulnerability claimed in ourselves and  others, and then organize along whatever system of justice emerges from the  perpetually moving hierarchy which we uncover. It is a system that's just not  workable, but dementing making demands that are impossible toward ends that  are unachievable. But today, intersectionality has broken out from the Social  Science departments of 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 commitment to  diversity and in all major corporations and governments.  

Steve - Okay, so I remember, wow, I remember reading about this in this book,  and part of the problem he saw was, you know, there's race, there's gender,  there's wealth, there's disabilities, there's every all these different things that  make you marginalized and vulnerable to others who take advantage of you,  right? But how do you rank them, right? How do you how? Let's say, you know,  Does, does a person's color of their skin a stronger problem than their gender,  or is, you know, if you're missing a limb, does that put you in? What part? Where do you fit when? Because all these different groups are now vying for attention 

or for justice, right? But how do you get justice when you have one problem  versus another problem? And how do you rank these problems? Because so  many things that you know,  

Henry - the fallen, sinful humanity and creation groans. Christian narrative would say he also brings that these things are just really coming up the last 35 years.  So they're all new. So we're forcing solutions in the thing that have developed  over centuries and centuries, and now, all of a sudden, we are trying to fix  something, you know, in his book, he does talk like, for instance, the  transgender problem. So if you're in you see this in the news a lot recently,  where you could be born called, they call it cisgender, a female, and you're, you  know, working your whole life to run a track meet. This just came up, I think, in  Connecticut somewhere. And then then all of a sudden, the rights of the  individual trans woman who was born cis male, okay? And then, because of  identity, believe that he is now she, whose gets complicated, okay, and that now  there's a track meet, and now a genetic male body in a female identity wins the  race and obliviates or destroys. Female sports in the state right now, there is an  example where you say,  

Steve - here's to say that the person that got beat also had a handicap. So why  does one person's particular place where they're being discriminated against?  How does that affect someone else's who is also being discriminated or, you  know, redheads they show worldwide, are discriminated against. I was born a  redhead, Oh, yeah. And then, you know, so now you have that versus and then  you have short people or tall people, you know, on and on and on. How do you  right all these wrongs? Because one is one more.  

Henry - How could you begin social justice?  

Steve - But David, his point was, but how do you write some of these? Because  you don't even know which one's the worst thing you know when you're  comparing two things, right?  

Henry - And in ministry, these things are going to come up more and more and  more so. Syncretism, yeah, the danger of syncretism for ministry. Okay, so first  we're even talking about it. Yeah, let's talk about syncretism. So how do you see Syncretism?  

Steve - Well, syncretism was, you know, in some ways how the gospel spread.  Initially, it it spread to other countries. You know, way back in the third, fourth  century, it would go to a new I was in the Philippines for a year. And the  Philippines had a tribal culture animal and and then when the Catholic Church 

came in, they just, all they did is replace the coconut god, let's say, and put one  of the saints on there, right. And now the people are doing the exact same  dances, but instead of the coconut god  

Henry - Christianity is trying to many in Christianity are accommodating the  gospel narrative 

Steve - and then hoping that over time, more and more pieces of Christianity  will replace the old system, Right? But now we have Christianity, and the danger of syncretism is to accommodate the culture. We start, you know, doing things,  and then soon we get a half and half thing, right? So we marginalize the gospel  or present another. Worse, we present another gospel. 

Henry - It does not have the power to redeem the world. II Corinthians 10:4-5,  the weapons we fight are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they  have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish every argument, every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. We take care of  every thought and make it obedient to Christ. That sounds more like the  narrative of Christianity brings transformation to the world, right? We're not  trying to position Christianity at a place that's palatable to really a secular, post  modern worldview, right? So that's probably good. You see all this. One thing I  want you all to know, and we feel this way, is we get the brokenness of sin, that  we understand that it is frustrating, sad to have disabilities, or to see yourself not as others see you or you know, Sometimes Christianity can be positioned by  some as saying like, do you care about someone if they feel transgender in their identity? Do you care about someone who is feels experienced same sex do  you care about the issue of race and the gospel cares about it all and because,  but the gospel is transforming and but the gospel also gets that there's a  brokenness. How do you feel about the brokenness? Piece that the gospel sees that,  

Steve - well, the Gospel can accommodate all this brokenness in our culture,  and we don't have to reinvent another religion to do that. You know sometimes,  you know now, you know, historically, sometimes individual Christians or  sometimes whole groups of Christians can use the power of the church and  marginalize people and all those things. Again, it's the brokenness of sin, right?  So the reason that some of these new systems take hold is because there is sin. There is you know, churches are imperfect. Pastors are imperfect. People's  interpretation of the Bible is sometimes imperfect. But let's not throw out  Christianity and reinvent Christianity, because people still have sin, right? That's  the whole point of Christianity. Is everyone's a sinner in need of a Savior. We  can't let go that needing a savior, right? 

Henry - In fact, I'm happy that the Bible doesn't take the need of a Savior out of  the Old Testament, the story of David and his fall with Bathsheba and his family  the New Testament, and Peter denies Jesus three times. I mean, they could  have taken it out, but they leave it in there. So the Bible gives an honest,  transparent understanding that very broken people need a wonderful and  powerful Savior who died for their sins. We don't need to have a new gospel to  re explain things and then pick the Bible apart, because the Bible's transparent  about some of the weaknesses of humanity anyway. Well, I suppose this  probably should get on with the class now and really dig into grace the critical  Grace theory hang on because here we go.