Why We Need Public Theology

‍Machen addressed the liberalism of his day, but he also had to address broader issues in what we call public theology. Public theology engages with the challenging moral, civic, and cultural issues the church faces in society. I’ve written recently about why we need to study and practice this in an article titled, “Why Public Theology?” But let me offer three reasons why we need biblically faithful public theology.

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       1. If we don’t practice public theology, the world will bully the church with unbiblical sexual ethics. Our culture is in the midst of a shift. There once was a pragmatic sexual revolution in the 1960s calling for tolerance of individual lifestyle choices. But now, two decades into the 21st century, there is an authoritarian insistence on the recognition and even celebration of unprecedented sexual expression. And if you resist, you face a totalitarian-like imposition of ostracism and silencing. This shift requires boldness for the church: the unabashed proclamation of the unchanging truth of God in his Word.

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       2. Public theology is the only thing that can stand against the shifting sands of psychology and harmful ideologies. Our culture is flooded by an unbelieving totalitarian regime. Our culture does not just seek conformity; it seeks the defeat, and even destruction of, any view that is inconsistent with its own. It wants the absolute embracing and celebration of its values and practices—or else.

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       What does that mean for us? Look around you. Taste has triumphed over truth; psychology has trumped propositions; gender is a matter of decision, not DNA; personal offense is now the higher authority—including at prestigious Ivy League Law Schools. Free speech and First Amendment rights are offensive to the new hegemony of self-gratification expressed preeminently through sexuality.

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       Where does this come from? It’s rooted in a dangerous and harmful ideology: Cultural Marxism. Cultural Marxism does not focus on the classic Marxist economic struggle. Rather, its concerns are the struggle over cultural values. And guess who its main enemies are? The church and the family. Without the family and the church, the state reigns supreme and seeks its ever-increasing growth as the only god a secular world can know.

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       3. Public theology aims at restoring our awareness of God-given identity. The Bible teaches that we are made in the image of God. Of the many things that means, one of them is that we are “disposed for communion with God,” in the words of Geerhardus Vos, a forerunner in Westminster’s tradition. But communion with God means living in a relationship governed by God’s authority, not our own. God tells us who we are. When we choose to define our own identity, we stand in opposition to our Creator. To affirm this puts us at odds with the entire LGBTQ+ agenda, which sees identity as self-created, psychological, and sexual—completely divorced from a relationship with the living and sovereign God.

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If we don’t proclaim the truth of God in the public square and apply it to all areas of life, a godless ideology will claim the territory for itself.

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       We truly need public theology. If we don’t proclaim the truth of God in the public square and apply it to all areas of life, a godless ideology will claim the territory for itself. At Westminster, we stand firmly on the truth of God’s Word and claim with Abraham Kuyper that there is no sphere of human life where God does not sovereignly declare, “I am Lord.”

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       To learn more about how we can engage with civil authorities biblically, I encourage you to read Dr. John Currie’s address, “Us and Them: Public Theology in the Breach.” And to glean biblical insight about how to respond to those who are attempting to marry Christianity and homosexuality, watch Dr. Dave Garner in this installment of 'Christian Answers to Hard Questions.'

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In Christ Our King,

Peter A. Lillback  |  President of Westminster Theological Seminary