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Find some books!By Campbell Markham
Many Christians in the West feel more and more like foreigners in their own land.
Our community finds our beliefs about marriage and sex and family as fragrant as ammonia; that our desire to join with like-minded people for the Christian education of our children reeks of apartheid; and that our passion to protect unborn life is invasively “creepy.”
Christian social convictions are not just different, nor even just wrong. They stink.
Some Christians counter-attack with the hope of recapturing formal control and influence over centres of power like the academy or government. So get your God Bless the USA Donald Trump-endorsed King James Bible for only $59.99.
Other Christians collapse into the foetal position; or at least into societal disengagement of any kind other than strictly Word evangelism.
The first group, like Israel in Numbers, presume to go where the Lord has not called them (Numbers 14:44-45). The second, like an anti-Daniel praying with the windows shut, or like a tongue-tied watchman, take cover when they should be seen and heard.
Both stand outside of Reformed-evangelistic civics of the past five centuries. And neither position, as Boice explains, is biblical.
There are some encouraging signs. The puerile arguments of the noughties New Atheists, the self-styled “Brights”, the “Four Horsemen” (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, and Harris), are now an embarrassment to the cause. Thoughtful agnostics like Jordan Peterson and Tom Holland are making people think again about the truth and value of Christianity. But for the moment the world is a bit hostile. No one in the West is suffering like Christians in Nigeria or China, but it is still a bit fraught and threatening.
This is where Two Cities, Two Loves: Christian Responsibility in a Crumbling Culture comes in.
James Montgomery Boice (1938 – 2000), pastor of the historic Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia from 1968 until his death, was the author of some fifty books and Bible commentaries. He served also as Chairman of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy from 1977 until its dischargement in 1988. He wrote and taught from the evangelical-Reformed position.
Two Cities, Two Loves was first published in 1996 and was recently lightly edited and updated for republication.
As the title implies, Boice’s book stands in the tradition of Augustine’s City of God, along with, for example, Abraham Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism (1898), Francis Schaeffer’s How Should We Then Live? (1976), and Christopher Watkin’s excellent Biblical Critical Theory (2023). It recognises two realms of existence: the Kingdom of God which is committed to Christ’s mission and rule; and the Kingdom of the World which, although under Christ’s sovereign governance, stands against Christ’s mission and rule.
At its heart, Boice argues against competing paradigms of engagement with these disparate kingdoms. It rejects, on the one hand, the Reconstructionist’s enterprise of subsuming the Kingdom of this World under the Kingdom of God by taking control of earthly power structures. It stands similarly against Erastian paradigms which posit the church as a more-or-less subservient arm of the secular power. And Boice rejects, on the other hand, the Anabaptist’s intentional withdrawal from the Kingdom of the World.
In Part One, “The Biblical Basis of the Two Cities”, Boice walks the reader through an exposition of some key biblical texts that establish these two competing realms: the seed of the serpent and Cain versus the seed of the woman and Seth; Abraham versus the passing temptations of this world; Enoch versus Nimrod; Nahum versus Ninevah; Jerusalem versus Babylon; and the exiles versus the power and religion of Babylon and Persia. Though Boice’s expositions are conservative and Reformed, and most of this material can be found in standard Reformed-Evangelical commentaries, he often finds a fresh interpretational insight.
In every case Boice shows from Scripture how God’s people must vigorously engage the world in which they live and seek to be a blessing to it, but must never compromise with or succumb to the world’s values. Indeed, by being faithful with the small things big victories can be won. But not without cost:
‘If we practice our religion on the reservation and do not attempt to bring it out into the real world, the world will tolerate us. But if we determine to take a stand on any important issue on the grounds of genuine religious principle, the fury of our secular society will break all bounds.’
In Part Two Boice applies these principles to Christian life in the late-twentieth century. His insights are not dated and his approach will be familiar to any reader of Tim Keller. Christians must never dream of taking over the power structures of the world, (Boice was writing soon after the collapse of the Christian Right in the 1980s,) nor must they seclude themselves from the world like monks or Mennonites. They must instead aim to live biblical, prayerful, authentic, godly, courageous, and joyful lives of service within the world; in a way that will bring great blessing to their cities and communities:
‘We are to mingle with and get to know non-Christians, to make friends with them, and to enter into their lives in such a way that we begin to infect them with the Gospel, rather than their infecting us with their outlook.’
Boice recounts numerous practical ways in which churches can engage with their communities, including establishing high-quality schools. Presence always shines out – Christians must live near and with their communities. They must speak and act and be noticed, the more the better.
It is all good material, but the footnotes show that large sections were coopted from other of Boice’s books. It is more a solid compendium than a polished gem.
If you want a thought-provoking introduction as to how Christians should approach the challenges of faith and life in a hostile world then Two Cities, Two Loves is definitely a good place to start.
Originally published in the AP magazine : https://ap.org.au/2024/04/11/book-review-two-cities-two-loves/