Two images are important to keep in mind: a seesaw and a fully raised loaf of bread. A teeter-totter illustrates that when a child one side of the fulcrum rises, then necessarily the child on the other side drops. In the case of doctrine, additions made to one doctrinal element, occasion coequal excision in another area. Scripture involves a closed system. It strictly warns against adding or subtracting (Revelation 22:18-19).
The second image is that of the loaf of bread. When yeast is added to dough and fully kneaded into the lump, the resulting bread rises with consistent uniformity. Even so, “A little leaven leavens the whole lump” (Galatians 5:9). Doctrinal aberrations do not lay dormant or self-contained. They bourgeon to displace all areas of doctrine. Such is also the case with the Social Justice Movement (SJM), as shall be considered in this brief article.
Solomon reminded his readers “There is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). The spirit of Social Justice has been around a very long time. We begin with key doctrinal commitments central to the current debate, then we will move to congruent voices from the past.
On May 30, 2020, three authors published an article on The Gospel Coalition website to help pastors navigate issues in social justice. They are Jamaal Williams, Timothy Paul Jones, and Jarvis Williams. Their article was titled, “The Gospel and the Pursuit of Justice in Your City” (TGC). In its use of SJM specific terminology, this article identifies key doctrinal elements of the SJM.
Four of the SJM key concerns reveal the doctrinal downgrade demonstrated in this movement, the redefinition of (1) Sin, (2) the Atonement, (3) the Church, and (4) finally Mission.
Present Issues
First, SJM focuses on man-to-man, horizontal, or racial sin. Williams, Jones, and Williams addressed “societal injustice” as a heart issue to be addressed and alleviated in the SJM.
“With the gospel and God’s Word as our foundation, in the power of the Spirit, we can give our brothers and sisters in Christ the necessary spiritual resources and skills to advance God’s kingdom in a society marred by sin and to push back the darkness of the societal injustices all around us.” (TGC).
In the Bible, however, sin’s overwhelming concern lies with its primary victim, God. Sin is not primarily horizontal (man versus man), but it is overwhelmingly vertical (man versus God). So much so that King David wrote, “Against You, You only, have I sinned, And done this evil in Your sight” (Psalm 51:4).
Astonishingly, King David wrote these lines after he committed adultery with Bathsheba and killed her husband Uriah. Uriah carried the battle plans by which David conspired to kill Uriah. David colluded with his general Joab for Uriah to be struck down by the sword of the Ammonites. David carried this guilt until after Bathsheba bore him their conceived son. It took Nathan the prophet to confront David on his sin. As to the horizontal results of sin against God, Nathan foretold of King David’s household that “the sword shall never depart from your house” (2 Samuel 12:10).
How could David have prayed and written—under Holy Spirit inspiration—“Against You, You only. have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight”?
The vertical dimension of sin is so great, as noted in this Psalm, that it eclipses all horizontal dimensions to sin. Sin as open rebellion against God and His Law is so great, that the man-to-man dimensions of sin—overt and real as they are—have no stake in the matter.
Second, SJM redefines sin as the reconciliation of man to man. Because of its overwhelming focus is horizontal sin, SJM seeks out Bible passages that imply a man-to-man reconciliation as central to the atonement:
“This gospel also explains that Jesus died to reconcile sinners to God and to each other into one new humanity.”
Herein the SJM realigns the atonement as societal reconciliation into a “new humanity.” This salient quote brings up two multiform doctrinal elements: (1) What is meant by reconciling sinners “to each other”? And (2) What is meant by a “new humanity”? Do the reconciled sinners represent repentant believers, or do they represent an entirely reconciled society (in a utopian sense)? Does the “new humanity” refer to God’s blood-bought people in the true church, or is this a newly Christianized society living in obedience to Christ’s moral teachings?
Third, as inferred above, the SJM reinterprets commands given to Christ followers, and applies them to all members of society. This shift downgrades true church membership and raises up everyone in a given society to become a type of pseudo-church or a “kingdom of God” on earth. In addition, this system presupposes a universalism or universal salvation in which all of humanity has the ability to follow the moral teachings of Jesus.
Fourth, the SJM redirects the focus of the Great Commission. Williams, Jones, and Williams explained the church’s mission as including the restoration of creation.
“This gospel tells us that God through Christ’s death and resurrection promises to restore creation.”
The restoration of creation or the creation of a Christianized culture has long been a favorite chorus among socially minded Christians. Chuck Colson exemplified this same approach when he redefined the church’s primary job as being “creating culture.”
“Salvation does not consist simply of freedom from sin; salvation also means being restored to the task we were given in the beginning—the job of creating culture.” (How Now Shall We Live? [1999] 295-296).
Interestingly for Colson, he explained that the “job of creating culture” was not to be found on the pages of the New Testament. Colson went back to Genesis 1 and found his mandate in God’s blessing to Adam and Eve.
“When we turn to the New Testament, admittedly we do not find verses specifically commanding believers to be engaged in politics or the law or education or the arts. But we don’t need to, because the cultural mandate given to Adam still applies.” (ibid., 296).
Colson admitted that cultural reconstruction was not found in the New Testament (quite a concession). Looking beyond Christ’s Great Commission passages or any other New Testament teaching, Colson located his cultural mandate a priori in the first creation narrative.
Contemporaneous culturally oriented Christians redefine four important doctrines: sin, the atonement, the Church, and the mission given to the Church. Their voices echo hundreds of theologians and practitioners from the past.
Voices from the Past
For example, between 1907 and 1917 there came a major SJM wave across American Christendom. Two epicenters of this movement were the University of Chicago and Rochester Theological Seminary—both Baptist schools. Walter Rauschenbusch, longtime professor at Rochester Theological Seminary, described sin in this manner.
“Sin is not a private transaction between the sinner and God. Humanity always crowds the audience-room when God holds court. We must democratize the conception of God; then the definition of sin will become more realistic. … We rarely sin against God alone.” (Theology for the Social Gospel [1917], 60).
“Every personal act, however isolated it may seem, is connected with racial sin.” (ibid., 246).
Rauschenbusch’s predisposition to focus on the social mandates of Christianity led him to focus on sin as a man-to-man infraction. He ended by redefining all sin as racism.
When one’s definition of sin is changed—in like manner the purpose for the cross changes. It is no surprise that for Rauschenbusch the death of Christ was not at all substitutionary. Rather, Christ’s death exemplified that “we owe God the complete best in us”—just as did Jesus:
“In living his life and dying his death as he did, Jesus lived out, confirmed, and achieved his own personality. He did it for himself, as well as for God and humanity. There was no ‘merit’ in the medieval sense in it; nothing superfluous which he could hand over and credit to others to make up their defects. Just as we owe God the complete best that is in us, so Jesus too owed life and death to God.” (ibid., 260).
“These traditional theological explanations of the death of Christ have less biblical authority than we are accustomed to suppose. The fundamental terms and ideas—'satisfaction,’ ‘substitution,’ ‘imputation,’ ‘merit’—are post-biblical ideas, and are alien from the spirit of the gospel.” (ibid., 243).
Rauschenbusch was forced by consistency to change his approach to the atonement, even as he had redefined all sin as racism. For Rauschenbusch, Jesus’ life and death on the cross resulted in a “new humanity”—now following the example of Jesus:
“Therewith humanity began to be lifted to a new level of spiritual existence. To God, who sees the end enfolded in the beginning, this initiation of a new humanity was the guarantee of its potential perfection.” (ibid., 265).
Likewise, SJM terminology redirects our gaze to this utopian “new humanity.” It conflates the God’s redeemed people and unbelieving society, treating them with one brush stroke.
Shailer Mathews was Dean of the University of Chicago from 1908 to 1933. In his, The Social Gospel, explained the reason for his book.
“My purpose has been rather to set forth the social teachings of Jesus and his apostles as well as the social implications of the spiritual life. … The gospel, in its bearings upon the salvation of society, is something more than a new Decalogue.” (The Social Gospel [1910], 5).
In advancing “the salvation of society,” Mathews masterfully fused obedience to His social mandates with obedience to Jesus, thereby silencing any potential critics.
“Snap judgments and extemporaneously developed theories are less to be desired than convictions reached after the student has reasonably mastered the evidence in the case. But amid all differences of opinion, it should be borne in mind that among genuine Christians there can be no difference as to the fundamental conviction that the principles of Jesus must be put into our social life or they will be forever inoperative. No man should call him Lord who does not do the things which he commands.” (ibid., 6).
So, Mathews leveraged the moral teachings of Jesus (e.g. the “Sermon on the Mount”) and applied them the same to all of society. In doing so, he ignored the revealed audience of the Sermon on the Mount (Christ’s disciples, Matthew 5:1-2), the evangelistic purpose of the sermon (Matthew 5:20), and its chronological position as pre-resurrection teaching of Christ.
Adolf Harnack and Wilhelm Hermann went even farther, calling their hearers to “self-sacrifice and energy.” Harnack and Hermann affirmed the need for alleviating “the want and misery of our fellow countrymen … urging us to study and investigate the construction of social organism, to examine which ills are inevitable, and which may be remedied by a spirit of self-sacrifice and energy.” (Essays on the Social Gospel [1907], 88).
For Harnack and Hermann, the urgent need was not sinful rebellion against God, but human “want in misery.” Their remedy was Christian “self-sacrifice and energy” to alleviate these urgent social needs. Sin was redefined; the remedy for sin was redefined.
In his volume, Social Evangelism (1915), Harry F. Ward likewise redefined the task of evangelism, the focus of repentance, and Christian discipleship.
“The call to repentance opens the gospel of the Kingdom and the first social task of evangelism is to show men their social sins that they may turn from them and develop a social conscience.” (Social Evangelism, 95).
Ward’s indeterminate approach to the Kingdom of God redirected his evangelism mandate to helping people “develop a social conscience.”
These voices from the past do not differ markedly from contemporaneous voices calling churches to social repentance, racial reconciliation, and a new focus on social justice. A little leaven leavens the entire lump. It sounds good on the surface, but as Colson said, it lacks New Testament support.
When sin is no longer defined as overt acts of rebellion against the Law of God, something has changed. One end of the teeter-totter begins to drop. Meanwhile the horizontal elements of sin begin to rise. The modern SJM not only redefines sin, but they reshape the atonement, evangelism, salvation, the nature of the Church, and Christian discipleship. The SJM changes every major doctrine of the Christian Church.
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