Russell Moore and Catacombs, Cathedrals, and the Kingdom

A great piece by Russell Moore on Catacombs, Cathedrals, and the Kingdom.

There’s a lot in church history that went wrong. The people who build the majestic cathedrals were sinners deserving of hell. So were the martyrs of the catacombs. So are we. Lots of bad decisions were made, and some of them persist. But the biblical story too was filled with sinful people making stupid decisions, and, in all that, God was working everything out toward the glory of Christ (Rom. 9:4-5). In the heroic episodes of the church’s story (Athanasius defeats Arius! Augustine turns back Pelagius! Bonheoffer stands down Hitler!) and in the awful parts (state churches and political preening and scandal after scandal), God is orchestrating a flow of the river of redemption, taking it from the hillsides of Judea through the bustling streets of Antioch right down to that place in Dubuque or Dubai or Buenos Aires or Little Rock, or wherever it was where you first heard the name of the Christ of God. Seeing oneself as a prophetic minority does not mean retreat, and it certainly does not mean victim status. It also does not confer faithfulness. Marginalization can strip away from us the besetting sins of a majoritarian viewpoint, but it can bring others as well. We must remember our smallness but also our connectedness to a global, and indeed cosmic, reality. The kingdom of God is vast and tiny, universal and exclusive. Our story is that of a little flock and of an army, awesome with banners. Our legacy is a Christianity of persecution and proliferation, of catacombs and cathedrals. If we see ourselves as only a minority, we will be tempted to isolation. If we see ourselves only as a kingdom, we will be tempted toward triumphalism. We are, instead, a church. We are a minority with a message and a mission.

Excerpt from his book: Onward: Engaging the Culture Without Losing the Gospel.