Outlined Transcript:
Part 1
Hi, everyone.
I received some good feedback from some of you after watching one of my videos a couple of videos ago. I talked about cultural Gnosticism, and that is actually not my term. It is not original to me. A few others use it as well.
I use the term intersectional Gnosticism in my books. In Ancient gospel, Brave New World, chapter three, I talk about cultural Gnosticism and intersectional Gnosticism, the idea that the more minority perspectives you have, the better you are able to understand Scripture.
This is the oppressed-versus-oppressor language, which is very typical of Marxism and cultural Marxism, and is very rampant throughout the academic world and the popular media world.
I talk about it specifically in chapter three of Ancient gospel, Brave New World. Or, if you want a more truncated version, more of a synopsis, there is my small book No Compromise: Guarding the Historic Faith Against Hyper-Contextualization.
That book distills a lot of the arguments in the first five chapters of Ancient gospel, Brave New World. The larger book is much more academic. No Compromise cuts out a lot of the footnotes and gives you the basic argument.
So if you want to look at the ideas of intersectional Gnosticism and cultural Gnosticism more in depth, you can read those.
In response to some of your emails, I decided to make another video just to flesh it out a little bit more.
A Muslim-Background Believer on Guilt
There is a Muslim-background believer who writes on Substack. I follow some of his stuff and read some of his articles. He is very smart. He is very good at explaining the inherent radical nature of Islam, that Islam is not primarily a religion of peace.
That is a misnomer used to make people in the West, especially Christians, let their guard down and not be on guard against the radical nature deeply embedded in Quranic Islam.
He has come out of that background. I do not know if the name he uses is his real name or just a pen name for security reasons, but he wrote something interesting a couple of months ago on his Substack that I thought would be worth reading to you and then making some comments along the way.
I printed the article out. I am going to read parts of it, skip over some parts, and make some comments based upon what I said in a previous video about the issue of guilt being the problem in the world.
It is not shame. It is not fear. It is not weakness.
All of those things are real problems, but they emerge out of our problem in Adam.
Guilt and Corruption in Adam
Our problem in Adam is twofold. It is guilt, or condemnation, and it is corruption. It is our bad nature.
In Adam, by condemnation, by guilt, we are unable to please God by loving God and loving others, thus following the law.
And in Adam, we also have a bad nature. Our nature is corrupt, so we always choose according to the prevailing inclination of our hearts, the strongest desire of our hearts.
If our hearts are deeply wicked, we always choose sinful things that are not meritorious, that are not pleasing, and that are not righteous.
That does not mean sinners can never do good things.
Sinners can throw their bodies on a grenade to save their comrades in a war. They can sing a beautiful song and bring people to tears. They can paint a beautiful picture. They can do their best to create, architecturally, a bridge that will last for generations.
Those are all good things, but they are not meritorious in that they are not truly meriting righteousness before God.
So the image of God is still intact in sinners, but it is stained. It is marred. By condemnation, we are unable, and by corruption, we are unwilling to please God through meriting righteousness.
The Honor-Shame Framework
So the issue is not shame.
There are a lot of people who use cultural Gnosticism thinking or intersectional Gnosticism thinking and say, “Well, we need to find out from that culture, whatever that culture is, what is the thing that they want to be saved from?”
There are a lot of Western missionaries, in their big-heartedness but in their naivete, who project upon, say, an Eastern culture.
I talked about that before.
They say, “Well, the Eastern culture is more like ancient biblical Near Eastern culture, and so we need to listen to them because they have the cultural key. They have the cultural encrypted code to get into the mind of the biblical writers, and we cannot understand the biblical writers from a Western point of view, from English, from anything downstream of Rome and Luther, and so on and so forth.
“We have to put on an Eastern mindset, and that is the key to truly unlock the meaning of Scripture.”
A lot of those people, especially missiologists and practitioner missionaries, will say, “We need to present the gospel as a gospel of honor and shame, that God satisfies our shame problem in that He takes away our shame and gives us honor.”
Then the question is: What is the instrumental cause of making that happen?
What is the switch that is flipped that makes that actually happen?
What do we need to do, in other words? What do we need to do to see that come about?
They will say, “Well, you need to do what honor-shame cultures do to receive honor.”
And that is loyalty, allegiance, fidelity, faithfulness.
Then the question is: How much?
How long?
How long do I need to be faithful to God? How much do I need to be faithful to God before I am truly honorable to Him, and then I am accepted into His family as one of His adopted sons and receive the honor of being a faithful son?
Well, that is the problem.
That is the Old Testament problem of works-based religion. They could never be faithful enough.
Faith Alone and the Faithfulness of Christ
That is the glory of the gospel in the New Testament, especially in books like Romans and Galatians, and other places throughout the New Testament.
But those two in particular show that we are free to receive the blessings of the new creation covenant in Christ through faith alone.
Faith alone. Sola fide.
It is not based upon our faithfulness.
It is based upon faithfulness, but upon the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, not the faithfulness of us.
Through faith, we receive what the faithfulness of Christ in keeping the law on our behalf achieved, and that is righteousness.
We receive it through faith alone.
We are transferred from a position, a status, of guilt, and we are credited, we are imputed, with the righteousness of Christ and treated as righteous.
We are truly sinners and simultaneously righteous.
We still struggle with sin. We are not perfect in this life. We will be someday, but we are not.
But God looks upon us in union with Christ, united to Christ, as having kept the law.
More Than “Just as if I Had Never Sinned”
You know the old adage that justification is “just as if I had never sinned.”
Well, that is not exactly right.
That is just innocence: just as if I had never sinned.
Justification is that and more.
Justification is more like “just as if I had done everything right.”
That is righteousness.
Righteousness is not equated with innocence.
Forgiveness grants us a kind of clean status. We are innocent. We are forgiven.
But the imputation of righteousness grants us a pleasing status.
We have done everything right in God’s eyes.
That is why guilt and righteousness, not guilt and innocence, are so important to understand as the determinative factor in the gospel system.
In penal substitutionary atonement, Christ absorbs the wrath of Almighty God for sinners, and then the great exchange happens so that the righteousness of Christ that He earned is credited to us, just as Adam’s unrighteousness was credited to us as his progeny.
So in Christ, as the new covenant children of God, the new covenant progeny, so to speak, we are credited with the last Adam’s righteousness rather than unrighteousness.
Trying to Redeem Ourselves
This article by this Muslim-background believer talks about what drives Muslims.
Notice that he does not emphasize shame like a lot of popular honor-shame writers emphasize.
He emphasizes something else, and I want you to listen to what he has to say.
Again, I am only reading parts, so I am going to be skipping around a little bit.
He writes:
“Let me tell you why a Muslim would drive his car into a crowd of innocent people. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Muslim or not. We as human beings carry guilt deep inside of us.
“We know we’re not good enough, and we spend our life trying to redeem ourselves through good deeds, doing enough.”
Notice the “enough-ness” language. This is very similar to what I talk about in the transcultural gospel.
He continues:
“We think that good enough-ness will make the suffocating guilt go away. Christianity offers a way out of guilt, a solution not based upon our works, but on Christ’s works.
“Salvation isn’t earned. It’s given. You accept that you can’t redeem yourself because Christ already did everything on your behalf. That means you’re free. Free to live, free to build, free to serve, free to love.
“Islam, on the other hand, doesn’t offer redemption. It weaponizes guilt. Instead of providing salvation, Allah exposes you, holds your sins over your head, and threatens you with hellfire and torture in the grave.
“The Quran is a book of threats. It bullies Muslims into obedience through fear, humiliation, and punishment.
“So what happens when a Muslim seeks redemption? They try to be better Muslims. They pray, they fast, they give to charity, they go on Hajj, they do everything Allah commands, but it never works. I know. I did it.
“No matter how much you pray, no matter how much you try, the guilt never goes away. Allah always demands more.
“Allah loves those who die fighting against the infidels. That’s not an opinion. It’s in the Quran. It’s in the Hadith, in every lesson taught to children.
“This is why Muslims, even the so-called ‘moderates,’ always hesitate to condemn terrorism, because they know jihad is required by Allah. They might not be willing to commit it themselves, but they cannot say it is wrong.
“So when a Muslim fails to reach peace through religious rituals, they have two choices: give up, stop being devout, and learn to live with the guilt, or commit to jihad, because that’s the only way to be true to yourself.
“The Quran commands, ‘Kill those who do not worship Allah or obey the Prophet.’
“So when a Muslim embraces this identity fully, killing infidels isn’t just justified, it’s actually joyful. It’s an act of saving yourself, obeying Allah, securing your eternity.”
Finally escaping the crushing weight of guilt.
This is why a Muslim can drive his car into a crowd of innocent people, because for the first time in his life, he finally believes he has done something worthy of redemption.
Part 2
The Problem Is Guilt
Now notice this.
This man, this Muslim-background believer, not once does he make shame the main problem.
He does indeed talk about fear.
He does indeed talk about humiliation, which is kind of code for shame.
So he touches on the general emotion of shame, but that is not the main problem.
The problem is guilt, and people know it.
So when missiologists and missionaries use cultural Gnosticism and think, “Well, we need to listen to the Eastern mindset. And, by the way, the Eastern mindset is honor-shame, so the gospel has to be retrofitted to fit and accommodate that mindset.
“After all, the gospel was birthed in an era in the ancient Near Eastern world of an honor-shame mindset. So really, we need to listen to the East to truly understand the Bible.”
Again, as I said a couple of videos back, it is such sloppy historical understanding.
Can We Really Know an “Eastern Mindset”?
First of all, how do we know what the original audience, the original recipients of the Old and New Testament letters and writings, thought?
How can we even know?
It is sheer speculation.
I would even argue that we, as 21st-century English speakers, would have a hard time getting into the minds of English speakers from the 18th, 17th, and 16th centuries.
A lot has changed in the last couple hundred years.
The whole worldview of Western English speakers has changed, though we can still read John Bunyan. We can still read William Tyndale, John Owen, Adoniram Judson, Jonathan Edwards.
But the English Western culture of today is far different than it was a couple of generations ago, let alone a couple hundred years ago.
So to speculate in these bizarre academic abstractions about how we just need to put on the Eastern mindset in order to understand the Bible is such a sloppy way of thinking.
The Historic Biblical gospel
And then the idea is that we have to somehow pull back our biblical gospel that we have inherited over the millennia through the history of the church, the apostolic teaching that has been recurrent throughout the history of the church.
This is not just something that started with Martin Luther and John Calvin.
It is something they recovered from the early church.
They highlighted the doctrines of substitutionary atonement, the doctrines of union with Christ, and the doctrines of justification through faith alone.
These were not new, novel teachings to the Reformers.
They recovered them from the early church, and the early church learned them from the apostles.
So this is such a silly, sloppy way of thinking about the Eastern mindset and the ancient Near Eastern mindset.
It is historical and theological and missiological malpractice, and those who propose those things unashamedly should indeed be ashamed.
Rightly Handling the Word of Truth
One thing that Paul says in 2 Timothy 2:15, I believe, is “Study” in the KJV.
In the ESV, “Do your best.”
In the NASB, “Be diligent to show yourself approved, an approved workman unto God who needs not be ashamed.”
How so?
Rightly handling, rightly dividing, rightly cutting the word of truth.
In other words, the people who should be ashamed are people who, first, do not study.
They do not do their best.
They are not earnest in rightly cutting the word of truth.
They add onto it.
They proclaim themselves, not Christ.
They use their own abstractions.
They use their own speculations.
One of the errors of Gnosticism is what is called speculation, using the academic abstractions of the university, the cool, casual, well-funded academic experience that does not have any fear of being called out for being ridiculous.
They are paid to come up with new ideas.
Many of the think tanks in these academic institutions live to come up with new ideas.
They get paid to come up with novel ideas, and they treat church history, historical theology, the Old Testament, and the New Testament like a wax nose.
They can turn it and twist it however they want.
It is shameful.
It is truly shameful.
A Response from an Indian Student
I want to close by reading an email that was sent to a fellow professor who gets these videos.
He shared the video I was referring to with one of his classes in India.
Here at ABTS, Asia Biblical Theological Seminary, we have satellite sites and satellite schools all around Southeast Asia, including South Asia and India.
We have a couple in Delhi, and many of our students are from Delhi.
He sent that video out to his students, and one of his students got back to him.
I know this student. I am only going to read part of the email, and I am not going to mention the student’s name.
This student wrote back to the professor and said:
“Thank you for sharing the video. I agree with what Dr. Burns has to say about Eastern culture. Eastern culture is not one culture. There are so many different cultures within one nation that it would be difficult to call it one Eastern culture.”
We have a saying in Hindi. She is Indian, so she speaks Hindi.
The English translation of the saying she writes here is:
“The taste of water changes every mile, and the language or dialect changes every four miles.”
In other words, throughout the country of India, water tastes different every mile, and the dialects and languages are different every few miles.
The saying is talking about how diverse India is.
She says:
“This saying highlights the vast difference in not just language and dialects, but the cultures as one travels within India. Culture changes so vastly within India that what is culturally appropriate in one region may become completely inappropriate in another region.
“For example, it is a common practice, almost honorable, for a girl to marry her maternal uncle in the cultures of the southern part of India, but this would be highly inappropriate in some cultures in the northern part of the country.”
She says:
“I also agree with Dr. Burns that the gospel is transcultural. One does not need to think in lines of Eastern culture to understand what Jesus Christ did for us and what the Holy Spirit is teaching us. There has not been even one thing in Eastern culture that has helped me understand the Bible better.”
The gospel Is Transcultural
I just think that is so affirming.
It confirms what I have heard from students over the last 15-plus years teaching in different countries, whether it is in countries in Africa, in Asia, parts of Eastern Europe, even all the way up into bush Alaska, and other countries as well where this conversation comes up a lot.
Again and again and again, the more people read the Bible, the more they practice the mind of Christ and are able to discern things spiritually.
They realize that their native culture, their Eastern culture, their majority-world culture, as we might call it, does not contribute to their right handling, their right cutting, of the word of truth.
It is the tools and the traditions that have been passed on through the ages that the Holy Spirit has been pleased to impress upon the teachers of every age.
The teachers are gifts of God to the church.
The pastors, teachers, evangelists, apostles, and prophets were and have been the gifts of God to the church through the ages.
Every age, the church needs a teacher.
The church needs an Ezra to give the sense of the law.
The church needs a Philip to open the scroll of Isaiah and explain Isaiah 53 to the Ethiopian eunuch, who sees it and can read it but does not understand the full sense of it.
That is what the Holy Spirit is pleased to use throughout the history of the church.
The Holy Spirit Has No Cultural Favorites
The Holy Spirit is not dependent upon maintaining some sort of Eastern culture in the world in order that we can rightly understand the ancient biblical backgrounds, as though they are one monolithic, completely connected tradition that has not changed in the last two, three, or four thousand years.
So my encouragement to you is: Read your Bible with the mind of Christ, asking God to give you eyes to see wonderful things in His law.
As Paul says to Timothy, “Think. Think hard. Think over the things that I’ve written you, and the Lord will give you understanding.”
That is the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
And the Holy Spirit has no favorites.
He does not prefer one culture over another.
That does not mean all cultures are equal. They are not.
Some are more wicked than others. Some are more approximately better than others.
But the point is that the Holy Spirit does not depend upon a cultural framework to help us rightly understand the Bible.
The Clarity of Scripture
The Bible has its own cultural framework and its biblical culture.
That is why we need to have our minds transformed by the washing of the Word and by putting on the mind of Christ again and again and again, day after day, by reading Scripture.
One of the doctrines of the Reformation was the perspicuity of Scripture, in other words, the clarity of Scripture.
Scripture is perspicuous.
It is clear, and it interprets itself.
My Hebrew professor in school would always say the best way to understand the Bible is to read it cover to cover over and over and over and over again, and God shows you the meaning.
The Bible interprets itself.
If you just immerse yourself, saturate yourself, marinate your mind in the Bible, the Holy Spirit, through the mind of Christ, will give you the sense of the text.