Trouble at t’Mill
Tim Nichols recently posted concerning whether Christians should participate in martial arts that have a pagan background.[1] I suggested that postmillennialism naturally sees what can be salvaged from pagan cultures and “redeemed”, rather than writing it all off as corrupt, as many Christians do. His response was worth repeating:
“I agree that postmil ethics trend in that basic direction, but I believe the real crux in this case is taking the dominion mandate seriously. A premillennial view that misses the dominion mandate trends toward seeing everything as corrupted, a sort of neo-gnostic “everything pagans have touched is evil” idea, and miss the whole concept of growth into maturity.
Postmil guys, God love them, don’t have that problem; their parallel temptation is to miss the concept of growth into maturity, and try to ring in the kingdom by this time next week — a thing which has had disastrous consequences every time it’s been tried to date. Oddly, the two errors tend to produce the same result, the one by neglect and the other by violent backlash. Or maybe not “oddly.” Fail to relate biblically to the culture, and we lose the culture every time.”
[1] Should Christians Imitate Animals?
