According to a story just released only 38% of those who downloaded Radiohead's new album paid anything for it.

This was the great "honesty box" experiment. Americans were the most generous paying about $8.00 per download while 62% of those who downloaded the album (I almost said "LP"!) paid nothing. It was an interesting experiment in market economics. They let the market set the price but they didn't suggest to the market what the price should be. Did 62% of those who downloaded the album actually think that it was worth nothing? If they would have paid something, were it required, but didn't pay anything because it was required, does that make them thieves of a sort?

As a Calvinist, I can't say I'm surprised. Would you pay if it wasn't necessary? Doesn't this whole experiment assume a basic goodness of human nature that history and revelation demonstrate not to exist?

On De Regnis Duobis.

So you think I'm kidding when I say that when people talk about a "distinctly Christian" way of doing p or q that they (so far as I've seen) never actually say what is distinctively Christian about how we Christians do proximate things? Read this response to the earlier post.

1. I might be wrong. This response (and see the extended comments) complains that I think this or that and that I'm incorrigible yaddah, yaddah. No, I'm not incorrigible, but what I see whenever I have this conversation is folks yelling instead making arguments. Increasing volume is not an argument. Complaining that I don't believe in a Christian interpretation of creation when that's what I was describing and defending illustrates the shrillness of this discussion. Folk are too attached to the idea that somehow, in a way they can't really say, they have a secret insight into the "Christian" way of doing p or q and if we take away that privilege that somehow we've diminished them or the faith. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

2. The title of the first post was a little misleading, but if one actually read what I wrote, I said that there is a difference between the Christian interpretation of p or q and talk about a distinctively Christian way of doing p or q. Read the response carefully. Does it (or the comments) ever answer the question: What does it meant to talk about a distinctively Christian way of baking, book binding, or street sweeping? No. Why not? Because there's no such thing. The post does say that a Christian would be concerned about how his food is grown. That's a "distinctively Christian" concern? I knew vegetarians and the lot well before I was a Christian! There's nothing distinctively Christian about being concerned about the effect of corporate farming etc. This criticism illustrates one of the problems in this discussion.

Try this analogy. Derke Bergsma always says something to the effect that, if a rabbi could have preached that sermon you've failed. It's not a distinctively Christian message. If a preacher tells a congregation how to be good or successful or happy or whatever, well, we can get that pretty much anywhere can't we? What's "Christian" about that? Yes, Christians have concerns about these things, but if that fact makes p or q "Christian" then everything is Christian and now we're back to the problem of the meaning of the word "Christian." If everything is "Christian" then nothing is really Christian at all is it?

This is a trick. It's a way to try to make the faith significant and/or relevant by attaching it to everything folks do. The faith doesn't need us to make it significant. I think the incarnation of God the Son, his resurrection and ascension take care of the significance of the faith very nicely.

The point of this post and the earlier is to say that if we do not have a robust doctrine of "common life" then we tend to lose the genuine distinctiveness of the Christian faith. To say things are "common" is not to say they are "evil" or "dirty" or anything of the sort. To say they are common is to say that they are created, human, natural. That's fine. That's the way God made the world. 

I am a card-carrying Van Tillian. There is no question whether the unbeliever is incoherent when he uses God's world and attempts to deny him at the same time, but I understand this touches theism not the Trinity or the incarnation etc. CVT was exactly right. The unbeliever who denies God is like the child sitting in her father's lap, who reaches up to slap daddy in the face. The child can only do that because she is being supported by her daddy. The unbeliever really is like a man of water, in water, climbing a ladder of water. That's all absolutely true. Unbelief is utterly foolish and irrational.

That doesn't answer the question, however, of whether there is a distinctly Christian way of doing proximate activity p or q.  The fact that CVT is right in his analysis of the plight of unbeliever doesn't license us to use the adjective "Christian" or the adverb "Christianly" to describe whatever we do.

3. This use of these adjective and adverb is a form of Narcissism: "I am a Christian. I am doing p or q. Ergo, I am doing Christian p or doing q Christianly." Non sequitur. It works if we use substitute the adjective and adverb human and humanly or creature and creaturely.

Yes, once more: things only work the way way they do because God is who he is. Yes, there is a distinctively theistic understanding of why things work as they do.

Is there a "Christian" world view? Well, it depends on what one means by world view. If it means that we live in a world bounded by the incarnation of God the Son, his obedience, death, and resurrection and impending (Derke Bergsma's word!) return, then yes. Is there a "Christian view" of everything? Well, as I say, the question is ambiguous. If that's code  for "theistic and biblical interpretation of reality," then yes, but that's not usually what folks say. 

Is reality authoritatively described by God's Word? Absolutely. Do humans get to interpret their existence autonomously? No. See above. God has spoken. That is the context in which we live. We don't get a "do-over." See Gen 2-3. Last time we tried that it went badly.

Confessing these things, however, doesn't elevate us from our status as fellow creatures who muddle through creation doing creaturely, proximate tasks (history or baking) with no distinctively Christian insights on how it ought to be done.

We really have to get over the idea that being redeemed by Christ sola gratia, sola fide, and, in response, having subjected ourselves sola gratia, to his revelation, that we know something about how to bake that the pagan doesn't know. Yes, we know why baking works and what it means, but special revelation and our fiath doesn't give us special insights into the act of baking. There's no such thing as "Christian" baking or baking "Christianly." 

What we know and what we need to share with our pagan co-worker is not the secret of "Christian" baking, it's the public truth of the law, which is embedded in creation (Rom 2) and the public truth of the gospel  to which the empty tomb and the Word of God testifies.

Is there there "Christian" math? Is there "Christian" politics? Is there "Christian" street paving? Is there "Christian" book binding? According to the reigning evangelical "world view" the answer is yes but I have my doubts.

When I read the claim that there is a distinctively "Christian" ways of doing x, what I usually find is not an argument demonstrating a distinctively Christian way of doing p or q but a distinctively Christian interpretation of p or q. That's a different thing. Street sweepers sweep. Book binders bind. Mathematicians do math. Despite the repeated claim that there is a distinctively Christian way of baking I have yet to see how exactly the Christian baker bakes in a distinctively Christian way. He makes his dough and puts in the oven in the same way the pagan does. Why? That's the way God created the world. The pagan and the Christian live in a common, created world.

The Christian and the pagan baker have different explanations as to why baking works the way it does. In the article linked above, this is certainly the case for most of the philosophers whom he quickly surveys and in the last case (Dewey), I would argue that he's (Dewey) not really talking about math or baking at all. Dewey was just being silly. If one puts one's finger in a pipe and calls it baking, well, one can do that but one will get hungry pretty quickly and sane folk will just ignore the silly "baker" after they tire of the YouTube video.

The Christian says that p or q works the way it does because God is and has so ordered creation. The pagan has an alternate explanation. Now we're down to ultimate issues, and that's necessarily theological and religious. When, however, we're talking about proximate matters, it's still not obvious that there's a distinctively Christian way of doing p or q.

Why does it matter? It matters because the repeated claim that there's a Christian way of doing p or q has several unhappy consequences. 1) It tends to give license to mediocrity: "It doesn't have to be good because it's Christian baking, it's a ministry...." 2) It cheapens the adjective "Christian." By describing activity p or q as "Christian" we water down (by inflation) its force of meaning in the concrete. What is Christian in this world is what Christ has instituted: the church, the ministry of Word, sacrament, and discipline. The Christian life is Christian. The Christian faith is Christian. What else? 3) It gives Christians the idea that they have some secret insight into p or q --which claim is very powerful and hard to resist-- but it borders on gnosticism. It's a sort of secret knowledge gained mystically that can't be described. It tends to make us look like a cult. "I'm a Christian baker." Oh really how's that? "I bake to the glory of the Lord." Great.  "Do you make bread?" "Sure I do." "Is does it rise like 'pagan' bread?" "Yes." "Does it taste like 'pagan' bread?" "Yes." "Well, then, how exactly is it 'Christian' bread?" "It's consecrated to the Lord?" "I thought only the bread of the Lord's Supper was consecrated to the Lord?" "Uh, the world is sacramental."

And this is Reformed how? I don't remember our theologians and confessions describing the whole world as sacramental. Seems to me that baptizing the whole world as sacred takes us in a rather different direction.

Didn't Paul say something about this in 1 Cor 8? The meat offered to idols isn't really "pagan" at all. If the host says, "This was offered to idols" we don't eat it because that would involve us in a false sacrament and idolatry. Otherwise, we can eat it. Why? Because "meat" isn't pagan or Christian. It's all created by God and good. It's what folk do with it that matters.

If we talk nonsense about "Christian" baking, paving, or bookbinding we reduce our credibility when it comes to the gospel. We make public, not gnostic, truth claims about the gospel. 

We need to think very carefully about this whole business of the adjective "Christian" or the adverb "Christianly." 

William Dembski a leading (evangelical) proponent of "intelligent design" has a fascinating blog which helps me keep up with some of the latest news in science relative to the ID controversy and other matters. Here's a provocative post today on Global Warming challenging the status quo.