A while back our town’s weekly newspaper ran a story about a speech delivered by a local business leader to our Chamber of Commerce. I was so offended by the account of his speech that I fired off a letter to the editor. The line that most upset me was the business leader’s comment that he finds it fulfilling to “wake up every day and try to knock the competition out.” I have not been to his store since. It troubles me to think that I am supporting that kind of business mentality. Surely we should expect more than a “survival of the fittest” rhetoric when our civic leaders gather to reflect on their callings. What we really need, I said in my letter, are leaders who wake up each day and ask how they can offer the kind of quality service and products that will not only draw customers to their stores, but will challenge their competitors to work for new standards of excellence. The capitalist system functions at its best when leaders exhibit the virtues of integrity, honesty, benevolence toward others, and a commitment to the common good.

I am no basher of the free market system. I get upset also when I hear social critics use the word “competition” as if competitiveness is evil in itself. I think that a healthy spirit of competition is something that can encourage human flourishing.

I once heard a sermon on the afterlife where the preacher said that he was sure he was going to be able to play golf in heaven. I’m not quite as confident as he was about that, but his example can be used to make an important theological point about competition. If the preacher were to explain himself by saying that he looked forward to a time in the heavenly realms when he could wipe out all of his golfing partners, I would wonder about his understanding of the heavenly state—and maybe even about his readiness to arrive there! But suppose, instead, he said that he hopes that in heaven he can continue to perfect his golf game and he looks forward to the opportunity to hone his golfing skills by competing with persons who can inspire him to new levels of golfing excellence .That strikes me as a legitimate rationale for a “holy” round of golf.

Business competition can also be a way of promoting human flourishing. We can provide products and services customers that can challenge our competitors to match wits with us by improving on what we have done. And we can look to our competitors for the same challenges.

Does that sound like an academic’s “ivory tower” pronouncement that ignores the practical realities of a competitive marketplace? Well, the truth is that the academic world also is a place where competition between “businesses” takes place. As someone who is responsible for a significant institutional “bottom line,” I know something about hard practical realities. I have to keep reminding myself that Fuller Seminary exists, not to beat out the competition, but to contribute to a larger enterprise of providing quality graduate level theological education. For all of us who have to engage in competition of various sorts, the goal of the day cannot be “the survival of the fittest,” but “the survival of the faithful.”

I get the impression that the folks over at the reformata.org blog do not like my
views. Here’s a hint: they refer to me as the president of “Fuller Theological Cesspool Seminary,” and they link me with other “spiritually spineless men” like Rick Warren and Billy Graham. At least they put me in some good company!

But I am somewhat chagrined by the folks whom they see me as betraying in my favorable comments about Roman Catholicism. The Reformata folks claim both John Calvin and Charles Haddon Spurgeon for their cause, and those two happen to be at the top of my personal list of theological and spiritual heroes.  Like Calvin and Spurgeon, I believe the Reformation of the sixteenth century was a much-needed spiritual and theological renewal and that the Catholic church from which the Reformers departed harbored much superstition and false teaching. But like them, I also believe that there was still a witness to the truth of the gospel in the Roman Catholicism of their day.

While Calvin saw the Catholic authorities as having done much to distort the proper patterns of the church’s life and mission, he nonetheless confessed that he could not bring himself to “deprive the papists of those traces of the church which the Lord willed should among them survive the destruction.” Thus “the Lord wonderfully preserves” within the Catholic church, he argues, “a remnant of his people, however woefully dispersed and scattered.” This remnant preserves “those marks whose effectiveness neither the devil’s wiles nor human depravity can destroy” (Institutes, Book IV, Chapter II, Sections 11 and 12).

Spurgeon took pretty much the same view. Here is an account of his visit to a Catholic service in Belgium, when he visited there with his wife in 1860:

In Brussels, I heard a good sermon in a Romish church. The place was crowded with people, many of them standing,    though they might have had a seat for a halfpenny or a farthing; and I stood, too; and the good priest — for I believe he is a good man, — preached the Lord Jesus with all his might. He spoke of the love of Christ, so that I, a very poor hand at the French language, could fully understand him, and my heart kept beating within me as he told of the beauties of Christ, and the preciousness of His blood, and of His power to save the chief of sinners. He did not say, ‘justification by faith,’ but he did say, ‘efficacy of the blood,’ which comes to very much the same thing. He did not tell us we were saved by grace, and not by our works; but he did say that all the works of men were less than nothing when brought into competition with the blood of Christ, and that the blood of Jesus alone could save. True, there were objectionable sentences, as naturally there must be in a discourse delivered under such circumstances; but I could have gone to the preacher, and have said to him, ‘Brother, you have spoken the truth;’ and if I had been handling the text, I must have treated it in the same way that he did, if I could have done it as well. I was pleased to find my own opinion verified, in his case, that there are, even in the apostate church, some who cleave unto the Lord, — some sparks of Heavenly fire that flicker amidst the rubbish of old superstition, some lights that are not blown out, even by the strong wind of Popery, but still cast a feeble gleam across the waters sufficient to guide the soul to the rock Christ Jesus.” (Quoted in Lewis Drummond, Spurgeon: Prince of Preachers, 343-344).

It was 102 years after Spurgeon heard that sermon that Pope John XXIII convened the Second Vatican Council. As a result of that council, many more biblically sound Catholic sermons are being preached these days on a regular basis. I think both John Calvin and Charles Spurgeon would be pleased!

I gave some talks on another campus recently, and someone observed to me that some of my best examples and quotations came from Catholic thinkers. I am well aware of the ways in which I have been learning about Christian faithfulness in recent years from non-evangelical Christians: Catholics especially, but also Eastern Orthodox thinkers and some mainline Protestants.

Evangelicals should not have allowed the latitudinarian Protestants to co-opt the label “ecumenical.” We too are—or at least we ought to be—a people who love the whole oikos, the entire household of the faithful. To be sure, we have been justifiably suspicious of the “organizational unity” endeavors of Christians who are fond of inclusivist councils and mergers. But that merely signals a commitment to a different style of ecumenism, one that emphasizes cooperation in common tasks, such as evangelism and mission. When we think of ecumenism in these terms, Billy Graham is one of the most important ecumenical leaders in the twentieth century!

In my present ways of thinking about the Christian life, the idea of mystery looms much larger than ever before. We evangelicals express a sense of mystery in our hymns, but that sense of awe before the mysteries of God’s grace has not always carried over into our theologizing. I have been learning much about mystery from Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Anglican writers.

But the very experience of learning from people whose traditions I have distrusted in the past has itself been an occasion of encountering the divine mysteries in new and exciting ways. The Holy Spirit continues his ministry of renewal in all sectors of the Body of Jesus Christ. As people who claim the power of that Spirit in our lives, we have no other choice but to discern and identify with his work of renewal wherever it is happening.

We evangelicals also have to learn some ecumenical lessons even closer to home, however. We must find new ways to live with diversity in our own midst. Roman Catholics decided long ago that encouraging diverse “orders” to pursue their unique callings and emphases is no real threat to consensus on the basics of Catholic identity. Evangelicalism also has diverse “orders,” and we must learn to appreciate this diversity as a sign of theological and spiritual health. This is turn will enable us better to appreciate the diversity that exists beyond our evangelical borders.

In all of that, however, I am convinced that we must keep our sense of evangelical identity alive. In distributing his gifts to the entire Body, the Spirit has graced the evangelical “orders” with unique sensitivities and memories that are crucial for the building up of the whole church for obedience. We are a people who have been blessed with a strong devotion to the authoritative Scriptures, and with a special burden for the lost. Evangelicals have a unique way of celebrating the gift of an authoritative Word, and of exercising the gift of pointing men and women to the Savior whose blood is the only power in the universe that can cleanse us of our unrighteousness. There has never been a more exciting, or a more urgent, time in the human drama for these gifts to be shared lovingly and widely. We have much to learn from others. I hope we are viewed as having some important things to contribute to the larger church as well.