From 17-19 June, this year’s Transforming the Mind Christian Postgraduate Conference took place in the usual, beautiful location of Ilam, Derbyshire. One of the main speakers was Andrew Fellows, the Director of Christian Heritage in Cambridge, who also spent many years working for L’Abri UK in Hampshire. During the conference, he gave two talks, which I will summarise here over the next few weeks (any misunderstandings of Andrew’s message are obviously my fault). We hope you will be blessed as you read them!
During the lifetime of the great theologian Augustine of Hippo (354-430), the Roman Empire was in decline, and Rome fell to the ‘barbarian’ Visigoths in 410 (Augustine wrote a thick volume, The city of God against the Pagans, to help his fellow Christians to come to terms with this). During our own time, we can see a similar trend at work. Europe is at an ‘Augustinian moment’, so to speak. Our culture has abandoned the Judaeo-Christian worldview and its values, and it is a legitimate question whether Europe can survive this loss. The question posed in Psalm 11:3, ‘When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?’ is very relevant for today.
One of the things we as Christian scholars can do, is to be ‘doorkeepers of civilisation’, by thinking great thoughts: high-level thoughts that are firmly rooted in our Christian worldview and values. The church should recognise the importance of this, and encourage and support her intellectuals and scholars. This calling, to provide a solid foundation for Christian living, is rooted in the two mandates that God’s people are given in the Bible.
The two mandates are the cultural mandate (Gen. 1:28, 2:15) and the mission mandate (Matt. 28:19-20, Mk 16:15). They are really two sides of the same coin: both are commands that show us the purpose of our life with an imperative behind them. At the same time, all humans function on two stages: the stage of nature, carried along by natural laws, and the stage of culture, the realm of the inner life, the mind, the will and intentionality.
In the cultural mandate, we are commanded to have dominion, to add dimensions to creation, to ‘open up’ creation using our culture-making abilities under Christ’s lordship. This is part of the glory of human beings, and one of the ways in which we image God and His creativity. In the mission mandate, we are commanded to go to the ends of the earth to bring people under Christ’s lordship.
To reach the fulfilment of the mission mandate, it must be linked to the cultural mandate: we are not saved out of creation, but we are restored to live out the cultural mandate. One of the main weaknesses of the contemporary church is that it often fails to link the two mandates in a fruitful way. As a result, the Biblical view of vocation is compromised. Every believer shares the same calling: we are called by God, to God and for God with all of our life (Rom. 11:36). Every secondary calling (to be say, a pastor, a scholar, a plumber or a stay-at-home-mum) under this is sanctified by the first calling, with no hierarchy of callings. Creation and redemption are not in opposition to each other. Instead, redemption restores us to be the servants and developers of creation that we were made to be. In the academic calling, the cultural mandate is highly concentrated, and it is therefore of the utmost importance that Christian scholars use their God-given gifts to bring restoration to this part of creation and culture, but we must also keep the mission mandate in view.
Next week, we will continue with the second part of the talk, which asks the question of how the two mandates are related to each other.
Audio files of Andrew’s talks will be posted soon on the website of Transforming the Mind, and you can find more of his talks on the website of Christian Heritage and the L’Abri ideas library (other resources on these pages also warmly recommended!).
- Evolution and epistemic humility - January 14, 2019
- Jesus, virtue and the university - September 4, 2017
- Welcome to the University of Babylon! - August 21, 2017
