MARK NOLL: Adding Cross to Crown

The text for learning what the cross and the crown aren't.

---

Adding Cross to Crown, subtitled “The Political Significance of Christ’s Passion,” can easily be dismissed as one of the most egregious wastes of wood pulp in the history of Christian publishing.

One has to wonder how the book ever saw the light of day. The three people who respond to Noll so completely refute his scholarship that anyone else would have had the manuscript burned. Wheaton probably places the typical publish-or-perish pressure on its professors, but that’s no excuse. This is garbage.

The book’s only redeeming value is the response by James Skillen. Skillen is a breath of fresh air in an otherwise dense morass of suffocating philosophical nonsense. You don’t have to read far to be offended by Noll’s obtuseness. Page 14:

The point is to heighten our sense of the ineluctably organic harmony among creation, judgment, redemption, and eschatological fulfillment. It is an appeal to seek the resplendent plenitude of Christ and his work, and so to err neither on the side of world-denying pietism or a redemption-denying immanentism.

Or this gem from page 19:

The leaven that this soteriological reality adds to the political lump is the reminder that however much God may be a supralapsarian, all human experience is infralapsarian.

Noll never got out of Seminary. This is the kind of talk we would joke about in the lunchroom. We had to learn the terms to pass the tests, but we knew better than to repeat them in public. Noll is stuck in a first-year Seminary fascination with big words. Their purpose is to present the speaker as a scholar, not to actually say anything.

But Noll has mastered the knack of saying nothing in small words too. On page 37 he warns against a danger in the pro-life movement of thinking that by saving babies we can save ourselves. In his words, we must be careful to “remember that we are pro-life because we are Christians and not Christians because we are pro-life.” The hollow advice of someone who has never been in the pro-life trenches. I worked for years in the pro-life movement. I was in the marches, I was on the board of directors, I was the director, I worked with Christians and non-Christians, Baptists and Presbyterians and Catholics and Pentecostals, pastors and priests, men and women and children... and no such thought ever crossed our minds. We were there to save babies, not ourselves.

There has never been a more unnecessary precaution uttered than Noll’s: “Be careful that you people who are actually doing something don’t ever do this thing that I have concocted out of nothing but scholarly vapor. Be careful to never think like someone who has no idea what he’s talking about.” No problem Mark: there’s no chance of anyone thinking like you.

Possibly the more appropriate warning would be for Noll to point out that Christians not involved in the pro-life movement should remember they are Christians.

You Can’t Get There From Here

On page 39, in a section entitled “The Particular and the Incarnation” (which by itself should alert us to read no further) Noll says:

Much of the best Christian thinking over the centuries on the nature of politics has tended to be theoretical, doctrinal, and aprioristic rather than practical, historical, and contingent.

We assume in this analysis that Noll has specifically excluded Christ and Paul from his list of Christian thinkers—“best” or otherwise. Jesus and Paul didn’t get involved in politics, so is doesn’t matter whether Christian thinking is “theoretical, doctrinal, and aprioristic” (he means based upon principles rather than experience) or “practical, historical, and contingent” (he means proven by sensory observation. I think.). You’re way off course either way.

Noll chose to write his book in a philosophical language instead of a theological language. What difference does it make? By discussing theology within a philosophical framework he restricted himself to using concepts designed specifically for discussing something different from Christianity, and I mean not just grammatically different, but organically different. You can’t discuss Christianity in the language of non- or anti-Christian belief systems: Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto, atheism, humanism, Communism, or capitalism. How can you explain God in polytheistic terms? Or resurrection in the language of a religion that believes in reincarnation? Or specifically in this case, the Christian’s role in the world through the lens of politics and capitalism: systems that people devote their lives to with no reference to God.

The language Noll uses betrays how he thinks about his subject. He actually thinks theology and philosophy are compatible. But the language you choose both propels you in a certain direction and establishes limits on what can be said. It is a category mistake to examine Christianity through a philosophical microscope. You will never see what’s really there. Or worse, you’ll see what’s not there! From the outset you have doomed your discussion, as Noll so painfully proves.

Paul made it clear in 1 Cor 2.1-2 that the gospel cannot be discussed philosophically:

When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

It is reckless to take a lesson learned 2000 years ago and so cavalierly toy with it, as if Paul made a casual decision, on some Thursday, to avoid using philosophy to present the gospel that day. There was a good reason Paul avoided “lofty words or wisdom”:

Since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. (1 Cor 1.21)

If God expressly designed a proclamation that would be rejected by philosophers as foolishness, how can we then take a seat as a philosopher in order to examine the word of God? If Paul, who lived in the heart of the Greek philosophical world, refused to discuss the gospel using their lofty words and so-called wisdom, how can we?!

So when we come to Noll’s thesis that modern-day Christi­anity’s role in the political arena has largely been crown-oriented, meaning that it seeks to bring about the kingdom of God through political involvement, we have to start asking some serious questions. Noll thinks Christian political activity should add back in some of its original proclamation of the gospel (the cross) because that is where every Christian movement has begun and it is only when it becomes successful that it departs from its original charter and moves more toward kingdom building.

Our first question must be, who says Christianity has a role in the political arena at all? Christ didn’t. Paul didn’t. Christ said to go and make disciples. You will find nothing in any of the commands or example of Christ—or anywhere else in the New Testament—that supports a politically-oriented discipleship. Does this mean a Christian is prevented from being in politics? No. Just don’t use Scripture to rubber-stamp your career choice. You’re outside the Christ-mandated role of the person who lives in obedience to the dictates of Scripture. Do what you want, but don’t claim to be crown-oriented, because you’re not. And please, please don’t sully the gospel by claiming to be cross-oriented! If you’re in politics you’re not cross-oriented; you’re self-oriented and there is no evidence God cares one whit what you’re doing. (Show me the hero of Hebrews 11 who was a politician.) So make your own decisions and don’t try to sanctify them by swaddling yourself in Scripture to give yourself a guilt-free career path.

If the Christian has no Christ-mandated place in politics, how can Noll look to the gospel for help on how it should be done? The answer is: he can’t. Mark, if you were interested in doing what Christ told you to do, you wouldn’t be off on a tangent using philosophy to attempt a recovery of a patently non-Christian work.

Worse, if the Christian has no Christ-mandated place in politics, how can Noll look to politics for help on how Christianity should be done? Why hasn’t it occurred to him that the reason he has to resort to philosophy in this discussion is because there’s no theology to support his view?

How can Noll so completely dismiss the clear demands of Christ on how disciples are to think and live, and instead head off in a direction that cannot be found in any of Christ’s teaching? How can any intelligent person claim that it is legitimate for a Christian to present the gospel in ways that not one author of Scripture did? Or to use an approach that Paul expressly labeled as being incompatible with the gospel? Especially when God designed the gospel to look foolish to people who think and talk like this.

Deserting the Battlefield

Noll says on page 37 that “there is a field of combat even more fundamental than the arena of public culture, that more fundamental field is the human heart where for every person, believer and unbeliever alike, the battle between God and self is fought every day.” A statement like this tells us one indisputable fact about Mark Noll: He has never seen a battlefield. The heart is not a more fundamental battlefield. It’s not a battlefield at all. Saying the heart is the more fundamental battlefield is the coward’s way of justifying his intention to never place himself at risk. Noll chooses the sterile intellectual battlefield where no one is injured and no sacrifices are required and calls it the true battlefield! It is a battlefield without misery, fear, or heroes. In our age of computer games, Noll thinks a joystick and a computer monitor actually put him in the fight.

When Noll calls the heart the more fundamental battlefield we know for certain he has no intention on ever joining the battle, and he will spend the rest of his life inventing reasons why intellectual elevation is all Christ asks. Noll is far too infatuated with his mind. Possibility a dose of humility is in order. Who’s smarter Mark: you or Christ?

Christ’s command was to go, not to deliberate. Noll would do well to consider that Scripture never depicts God as having the slightest interest in the battlefield of the human heart. When he turned Israel back into the wilderness to die he never once mentioned the battle in their heart: it was the battle in the Land that they turned from, and it was because of that cowardice that they were rejected.

Can anyone imagine God excusing the Israelites for rebelling at Kadesh because the more fundamental battle was going on in their hearts and he wanted them to win that one first?! Can anyone imagine a soldier on D-Day asking to be excused from the beach assault because he is still wrestling with the true battlefield, the battlefield in his heart?!

Noll has lost touch with reality. He actually imagines that the rest of the world operates on an intellectual level. On his intellectual level.

Noll has so thoroughly taken up the philo­sophical mindset that he has lost track of how God thinks. Does anyone really think that when Paul says “we have the mind of Christ” that it looks anything like Noll’s? Is there even the slightest similarity between Noll’s inventions and the sermons or parables of Christ? Are we allowed in our speech to have nothing in common with Christ? Or Peter? Or Paul? Or Luke? Or Stephen? Or John? Or anyone else who ever stepped onto the battlefield?

Jesus said, “Sell your possessions, give to the poor, then come and follow me.” How does a person do this in his heart? Is there any situation in Noll’s theology where Jesus’ words have any meaning? Is there a single issue of genuine faith that is accomplished by winning the battle with your heart?

What does Noll do with God telling Abraham to sacrifice his son? Was it good enough for him to just do it in his heart? Why did Hannah leave Samuel at the temple if God only required a sacrifice of the heart? Why did John go into the wilderness if he could have stayed home to do battle with his heart? Is there any hero of the faith in Hebrews 11 that supports Noll’s view?

In 1 Cor 15 Paul says that the most important facts of our faith are that Jesus really died, that he was really buried, that he was really raised, and that he really appeared to the disciples and more than 500 other witnesses. There is no room in Christianity for Noll’s “more fundamental field” of combat. If Christ thought like Noll we’d all still be in our sins.

Scripturally-Correct Politics

The following selection on page 81 from Skillen’s analysis is by far the best part of the book:

The way Noll puts cross and crown together is by trying to hold them in tension with one another. At several points he says or implies that forms of triumphalism are okay as long as they are balanced by an emphasis on the cross. Clearly, Noll does not want to abandon the “achievements gained by concentrating on creation and its restoration.” In fact, Christians who “exploit the God-given realities of created political potential” may be able to do it even better “by seasoning images of Christ’s ruling at the head of the saints over a restored creation with images of Christ’s suffering for the saints on the cross.”

It seems to me that Noll is too quick to place the cross of Christ in tension with a long-standing and admittedly mistaken appropriation of Christ’s crown. He should, instead, reject that mistake and seek to recover the full and proper content of God’s creating, judging, and redeeming purposes in Christ. In other words, Noll tries to use cross-language to fight misguided crown-language rather than to seek a recovery of the proper meaning and connection of both on biblical terms. Noll leaves standing the illegitimate tendency toward triumphalism and messianic self-righteousness and then wants to balance it by an opposite pole of self-abnegation and self-denial.

I would add to Skillen’s comments that Christ specifically said his kingdom is not of this world. If Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, then exactly what kingdom is it that Noll wants to restore to its proper role? It’s not Christ’s! Noll’s solution is to add the leaven of cross-centeredness to the lump of kingly rule (p. 15). Well, if the lump of kingly rule is expressly forbidden by Christ, then adding anything to it—cross or otherwise—is the wrong thing to do.

Noll has gone past ecumenism. Now all religions and non-religions lead to God! Noll believes it’s possible to bring in the kingdom of God through improving the world. He thinks the road to God leads through the world. When Christ tells us to strive to enter through the narrow door, can anyone interpret that narrow door to be the world?! When Jesus says that people will be unprepared for the coming of the Kingdom because they are “eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building” can anyone think that therefore “eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building” is the way to bring in the Kingdom? When Peter says, “we have left everything and followed you”, can anyone say that not leaving everything is a legitimate way to follow Christ as well?

Noll has no concept of the radical decision a non-Christian must make to become a Christian. It is quite literally a decision to become a traitor. Noll wants to make this easier. If the world is changed so that it’s not so hostile towards Christianity, then it will be easier to become a Christian. People won’t have to become traitors, they’ll just sort of ooze into the Kingdom; it will be the natural thing to do. What a great idea! How come no one else thought of this?

Someone did. That’s why God has forbidden it.

Noll’s solution is upside down. He has no sense. In a nutshell his plan is this: It’s asking too much for them to become traitors, so we’ll become traitors instead. Once everyone is friends we can all live together in a friendly, happy world.

What possible legitimacy is there to claim that the kingdom of God is to be brought in through political activity in the world’s affairs? If Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, how is the world any part of Christ’s kingdom? Are they not two mutually exclusive things? Has Noll never heard that friendship with the world is enmity toward God?

Does he really think that Christ’s intention is to establish his rule through a gradual influence of the established world political system? Where in Scripture is the directive to change the system from within? Is the only thing wrong with the world is that it needs a little cross-centered leavening? Has Noll never heard that the ultimate fate of this world is that it will be burned up? Is he saying that God intends to destroy his own kingdom? If the world’s political system needs only to be cleaned up it seems that God’s solution of setting it ablaze is a bit radical. Maybe God should wait. Given a little time, Noll could avert this whole ugly thing through some properly-directed Christian influence.

How has Noll so completely lost his way? Did Christ ever hint at bringing about the Kingdom of God through political activity? Is any part of the good news that salvation can be achieved through politics? Did Paul ever say or do anything that would legitimize such a concept? Is there anything in the entire New Testament that supports such a notion? Where does Noll get his scripturally-correct politics? How have his imaginations so swirled off into the thin-air stratosphere that he actually proposes a solution to this problem (if there is a problem) as leavening it with a little cross-centeredness? How unbelievably ludicrous!

Christianity 101

We end with a statement from Skillen on page 86 that is so completely obvious that one has to wonder how it never entered Noll’s mind-boggling mind:

Christ’s crown does not exist in tension with his cross.

So Mark, why did it never occur to you that whatever problem you have detected has no relation to Christ’s cross or Christ’s crown, but is the result of you heading in the wrong direction? The problem is not in the commission that Christ left for his Church; the problem is in your muddled attempt to wedge the wisdom of God into your philosophical framework. You have taken the wrong path and now announce to everyone you have discovered something wrong! Everything seems murky, confused. You see no way for it to work. So you invent a solution that involves moving everyone from the right path to yours! The problem certainly couldn’t be with you, could it?

Mark, stop it. Quit your job. You can’t be doing any good anyway. Take a solemn vow to never utter another philosophical word. Get away from the classroom. Sell your house, move to the Mississippi valley and do something worthwhile feeding the starving and sheltering the homeless. Do it. For us. For yourself. For Christ. Make a purse for yourself that will not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven.

Find out what the crown is.

Find out what the cross is.

And please, no more books. You’ve already done enough.