Crisis, Opportunity, and The Christian Future

by James B. Jordan

We are witnessing the end of Western Civilization. The present crisis in our culture is the greatest since the first century. Many commentators on the present scene believe that the entire world is moving into a period of neo-tribalism. In this striking book, theologian James B. Jordan argues that this cultural change is part of God's ongoing plan for humanity, the plan by which the Holy Spirit grows God's daughter, humanity, into a bride for His Son. The present crisis provides a tremendous opportunity for the Christian Church to challenge and transform the world as never before. Here, Jordan points to how this can be done. While many view the present crisis with dismay, and are looking backwards to older traditions, Jordan argues that God is calling us forward, and that the Bible points the way.

Genres: Theology, Cultural, History, Biblical Studies, Nonfiction, Philosophy

62 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

James B. Jordan is a Calvinist theologian and author. He is director of Biblical Horizons ministries, a think tank in Niceville, Florida that publishes books, essays and other media dealing with Bible commentary, Biblical Theology, and liturgy.

Jordan was born in Athens, Georgia, and he attended the University of Georgia, where he received a B.A. in comparative literature and participated in Campus Crusade for Christ. He served as a military historian in the United States Air Force and attended Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi but ultimately earned an M.A. and Th.M. from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with a master's thesis on slavery in the Bible. In 1993, he received a D.Litt. from the Central School of Religion for his dissertation on the dietary laws of Moses. From 1980 to 1990 Jordan was an associate pastor of a Presbyterian church in Tyler, Texas.

Reviews

[Felipe Sabino · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Jordan sempre surpreende e nunca decepciona.

[Henri Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Main take away for me comes in the last chapter. Teach our children (and selves) the whole Bible and let it seep into every part of our being. Let’s get to memorizing more scripture than catechism!

[Fabrício Tavares De Moraes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uma interpretação profundamente influenciada por Rosenstock-Huessy da história da igreja e de sua ação no mundo. Jordan, à sua maneira, transmite o vigor retórico e poético característico de seu mestre.

[Becky Pliego · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! Really good! 🤯

[J. Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good stuff!

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jordan argues that there are three "fundamental eras" in human history, and that these eras help us understand our own times. There is the era of the Father, the era of the Son, and the age of the Spirit.

There are the three falls: Adam's fall in the garden (sin against the Father), Cain's fall in the land (sin against the Son/brother), and the fall of the Sethites in the world (sin against the Holy Spirit). The cycle repeats again in Genesis, with Abraham emphasizing God the Father, Jacob emphasizing the Son/brother, and then Joseph emphasizing the Holy Spirit.

This cycle then repeats in larger cycles, with the time from Moses to David being the priestly era, emphasizing God the Father. From David to Exile is the kingly era, with the emphasis again on the Son, and finally After the Exile as the prophetic age emphasizing the Holy Spirit.

This is all worked out in three "fundamental cultures":

1. The Age of Tribes
2. The Age of Nations (or Cities)
3. The Cosmopolitan Age

Jordan shows how each age and culture has its specific temptations and weaknesses, and how God "counters" these tendencies.

These three eras/cultures have been worked out in the two millenia since the incarnation. The first cycle goes from the Early Church to around 700 A.D. where councils worked out the "doctrine of God against all false gods"--this was the era of the Father.

The era of the Son was from the Medieval Church to the Reformation, which worked out the doctrine of the atonement.

The era of the Spirit was from the Protestant Church to today, which worked out the doctrine of the application of redemption.

Jordan argues that this last cycle of the Spirit has ended and a new one is beginning. This will be the first time the cycle has repeated since the incarnation. With the age of tribes repeating again--this time as "Neo-tribalism" the church must be ready to answer the questions that will naturally come.

In this "tribalistic" age, people will want an answer to the isolation and loneliness that comes with this age. The church must be ready to "put the communion table back where it belongs..." p. 54 The church "needs to recover enthusiastic singing." And "the church needs to recover a sense of place"--meaning a parish-like sense of community and identity. This must all be rooted in "total Bible saturation"--being "oriented toward God and His future." p. 55

Seeing the Bible and the ages of history in Trinitarian terms is interesting, and maybe correct, but I'm not fully persuaded yet. But his solutions to the crises of our age are certainly proper and right.

The book is too short for those unfamiliar with Jordan to fully appreciate, so I don't recommend this book to everyone. Familiar with Jordan and his work will help this volume be understood better.

[Jack W.]

A rash and punchy manifesto on the interpretive power of Scripture in history, and how we're at the beginning of a new cycle in human history. Jordan is certainly right about that last part, though his assumptions about how that should and will be addressed are interesting. I'm not sure what to rate it.

Edit: one of Jordan's best traits is his boomer-instilled confidence. While often noxious to those of our generation, it's a level of mental strength of mind that we later generations struggle to comprehend. How do you divide the complex workings of every civilization in world history? It's easy, just follow this Trinitarian formula.

While it might be easy to scorn this, there's a level of sincerity, honesty, and aspiration that we tend to lack. This is undoubtedly why the boomers have controlled our world for so long--they believe they have a right to it.

[Colby · Rating 3 out of 5]

James Jordan is like a power hitter in baseball. Sometimes he cranks it out of the part, and sometimes he whiffs widely. He does both in this book, often on the same page. This essay is, at times, energetic, empowering, frustrating, and misleading. It's a wild ride.

Would only recommend if you have some stable ground on which to view things: you have to have some perspective from which to take the fruits of his good labors and disregard the erroneous bits.

[David Jamison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think there’s something here. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but I want to keep exploring these ideas.

[Leandro Texeira · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fez-me ver a queda da civilização ocidental de forma positiva. De fato, estou chocado até agora. Acho que não vou conseguir dormir.

[Jason Twombly · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Crisis, Opportunity, and the Christian future," challenges the Christian to a life of "total Bible saturation." James B. Jordan, building on the ideas of Eugene Rosenstock-Huessy, categorizes history into three main Biblical eras. Like the men of Issachar, "If we understand how God guides the development of human history, we can begin to understand the therapies needed to correct the problems of our own time."

Jordan explains how history spirals through specific phases and illustrates them from Adam unto the present. God likes to move stuff and is therefore not static. "He is in the business of changing humanity into a fit Bride, and so God breaks down all attempts to freeze history."

He is the God Who makes all things new. He is the Spirit Who bursts the old wineskins, but Who is quenched when we venerate the past in a false and idolatrous manner.

There is a "Crisis of Civilization," a weakening of the bonds of Western Civilization. "The Spirit creates bonds," and the bonds are disintegrating rapidly. How can we communicate the Gospel to people today whose GOD IQ demands that we begin with the very basics? Jordan highlights the malady of our society, "People today live in isolation, rootlessness, anomie, loneliness, and with suicidal tendencies." So, what's the remedy?

People are longing for community. Something more than Facebook, more than the virtual. This is the Church's opportunity because, "The Church is the true form of the tribe." The Church is to be the place that promotes and practices communion, for, "We need to gather at a table for a real meal-like event." Restoration to enthusiastic singing also satisfies the sense of belonging.

The last chapter is my favorite. It's a call to a deeper saturation in Scripture. Opposing wicked human traditions, a fruitful future will come when, "we return to the Bible and become fanatically and ferociously and radically and fully saturated with it." But this saturation is not for a bigger brain, but for a succession of truth to be passed on to faithful men. This training, "must be accomplished in churches that have recovered the original "tribal" vision of the Church...a vision for the local community, not to be constantly harping on national ills."

Is the church offering a robust Gospel that meets humanity's deepest levels? "The church must offer wholistic life to a wholistic people." Our present crisis is a challenge to the Christian Church to be in step with, "God's ongoing plan for humanity, the plan by which the Holy Spirit grows God's daughter, humanity, into a fit bride for His Son."

If you have not read a James B. Jordan book, this smaller one is a great place to begin reading the Bible through new eyes.

[Chris Griffith · Rating 5 out of 5]

A concise, informative, and intriguing evaluation of where the church is in world history, the direction we are moving, and a vision of biblical praxis for the future.

[Jake Litwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good short read on Jordan’s thesis on the eras of history. For anyone brand new to Jordan, this is the book to start with to get introduced to what he is all about.

[Alex Lopez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Still unsure about bits and pieces, and it was too brief and often unsubstantiated to rate any higher in my books. But man, some of James Jordan's insights are just downright spooky.

[Caleb Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Jordan is always a worthwhile read, but I was not expecting this Crisis, Opportunity, and the Christian Future to be what it is. This book is perhaps one of the most important books for the 21st century Church that I've read, with probably only The Benedict Option (and the two are very different) being comparable in sheer usefulness for Christian reflection on the current time.

The book begins with an intriguing claim:

We are approaching a vast change in human history. Several large historical trends are coming to a point of change at the present time, and this provides a tremendous opportunity for Christians to lay the foundations for the culture and civilization of the next several thousand years. In this essay I want to summarize why this is so.

Of course, lots of social commentators and theologues and other types would agree that something unique is going down in the world today and that it will have large-scale ramifications for quite some time. But not so many speak positively of "tremendous opportunity" or think there is some specific way that Christians can seek to prepare the world for the next few millennia.

James Jordan is different on this point because he believes that he knows something special about history: its basic pattern. This is because of his theological commitment to the idea that God providentially works history into patterns and types, each stage different but similar to what came before. His study of Scripture leads him to believe that he understands the basic gist of these patterns, and that knowing helps us understand what we must do as the Church to lay a solid foundation for the years and centuries to come.

I will not seek here to explain the whole of Jordan's schema for history or defend specific points. Rather, I want to highlight the creatively biblical and plausible nature of it all. Jordan writes as someone who has truly given over his soul to the study of Scripture, and you can see that in his reflections on its narrative patterns.

To Jordan, history basically has three kinds of ages corresponding to the Triune God: there is an age of the Father, an age of the Son, and an age of the Spirit, and these three occur in cycles. An age of the Father is an age for laying foundations, writing the future, and creating new starts. It is associated with the tribal form of society, with the days of the patriarchs and the early church. An age of the Son is a time of brotherhood (for the Son is the Elder Brother of men), of human relations. It is associated with the bonding of tribes into kingdoms or states, and with stronger institutions. Finally, an age of the Spirit is age of bonding and matchmaking, as the Spirit is God the Matchmaker. This kind of age is associated with internationalism, cosmopolitanism, trade and travel, and the formation of all kinds of human bonds. Thus it is associated with the days of empires (Persia, Rome, etc.) and modern globalism.

How Jordan defends and explains all this is mostly beside the point that I found most helpful. He characterizes our modern age as a time of transition, the end of one cycle and the beginning of a new one. We are passing from an age of the Spirit slowly into an age of the Father as globalism and cosmopolitanism break down into neo-tribalism. People may not live in the literal tribes of the Bronze Age anymore, but more and more they form smaller tribal identities, whether based on race or sexuality or politics, in which they seek community as their national and international identities fall apart. This seems to me an accurate assessment.

What I found most helpful in the whole book is Jordan's prescription for the Church in such a time. The Church is called to be the true tribe, the good tribe which is protected by God's law from the evils tribalism tends to generate. The best part of tribal cultures is that they center around local community, shared festivity, the common table, and the common song. Jordan argues that the Church today must be proactive in becoming the model tribe, forming by Her close community, intimate love feasts, and cheerful signing of hymns and Psalms (especially Psalms) a healthy kind of Christian community on which the foundations of the coming ages of civilization may be built. If we do this, true worship will flourish and the seeds will be laid for a fruitful tree of Christian culture in the centuries to come. So the Gospel should come to people wandering broken in this neo-tribal age as this:

You are living in isolation, loneliness, despair, chaos, and bondage. But there is a New World! There is a New Creation! There is a New Kingdom! You can leave behind your old horrible life and come into the warmth of the Church. You can join us at the table and sing the psalms with us. You can come under the oversight of our elders, and be part of a new family.

This is the key, and I think the great genius of the book. He elaborates later:

The Church is the true form of the tribe. To meet this situation, the Church needs to put the communion table back where it belongs, in a place where the chairs or pews enable people to sit enthroned around it. No more going forward and kneeling at a rail! No more “assembly lines” of people walking past the elders down front! We need to gather at a table for a real meal-like event.

Second, the Church needs to recover enthusiastic singing. In this regard, the charismatic movement has been a preliminary, groping response to the felt-needs of lonely people. The charismatic type of church responds to the needs of people to feel drawn together and lifted up
around God. This sensation of being gathered, along with enthusiastic music and festivity, meets
the “tribal” needs of the human being.

Third, the Church needs to recover a sense of place. Protestant churches are ideological; we drive past twenty churches to get to the one we agree with. This cannot change overnight, of course, but more and more churches need to reach out into the communities right around them and become centers for the lonely and lost in their midst. In this way we shall gradually recover the “parish” concept of the Church, which is localistic and “tribal.”

Amen and amen.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this in conjunction with Augustine’s City of God and Rosenstock-Huessy’s Out of Revolution - which seems a little funny when you consider the size of those two important works and the size of this little tract - but, honestly, this little tract needs to be read, meditated on, discussed, and practiced by every church today. It could be read it in a day. Start with your church’s leadership - elders and deacons. Read it together. Discuss it. Consider it. Do it.

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 4 out of 5]

EDIT:

I am very critical of Jordan, but this is actually a decent pamphlet. He divides Church History into Trinitarian cycles along the lines of Priest, King, Prophet. The Patristic age was "priestly" (fleshing out the doctrine of God), the medieval age was kingly (I guess that makes sense, what with Christendom and all), and the Reformation age is prophetic (I suppose I see it).

It's neat and not a bad outline of history.

[Rafael Salazar · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fresh and simplified essay on Biblical history and its continuation in the church, leading up to the present crisis. Jordan enthusiastically concludes with a needed cry for Bible saturation. We will be better off to heed its call.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short and pithy work by Jordan.

Jordan offers a brief philosophy of history based on the Biblical history of Israel. History moves from a tribal stage to a kingdom/nation stage to an imperial/cosmopolitan stage. This is more or less the history of Israel and this is also how God continues to move history forward. Thus, as one stage begins to break down the next begins.

Jordan shows that at the time of Christ, Israel's history was set within a larger imperial/cosmopolitan setting (Rome at the time of Christ but this phase began with the rise of Assyria/Babylon/Persia/Greece 700 years earlier). Jordan claims that this imperial order was breaking down and the early church existed as a new "tribe" that called people out of the collapsing imperial order whose bonds no longer held together.

Jordan notes that the history of the church has followed a similar order (tribe, kingdom, empire) in the west. Moreover, we are now once again where the early church was, at the twilight of an imperial age and on the verge of a new tribal stage in history. Thus the church should respond to this crisis/opportunity by embodying what is good and true and beautify about tribal phases (community, authenticity, singing, ect.) while rejecting the besetting sins of the tribal phase (ancestry worship, nature worship, overly masculine, overly communal, overly horizontal).

While I have some qualms here and there, I think Jordan's diagnosis is right on the money.

Worth the short read.

[James Denard · Rating 4 out of 5]

The thesis may seem very out there, but what Jim sets forth is quite compelling. By applying typology not just to Biblical history but also to Church history after the first century, I think he brings out legitimate insights as to where we are now and where the Church is headed in the coming age. What struck me the most was Jim’s suggestion of how we present the Gospel in this age of rampant loneliness and isolation. The call to come into the Kingdom of Heaven and join the brotherhood of the redeemed would be a powerful message to our generation.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not at all persuaded by the idea of history tracking with the different persons of the Godhead. So many potential counternarratives could be spun. The conclusion about living a Bible saturated life is a good exhortation for any time in history.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

As with most of James Jordan's writings, most of this book sounds so speculative that I have no idea how to even figure out if he is right or not. It sure sounds good, though.

[Jonah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Timely and appropriate. A good, quick read on how the Western Church is to move forward in history.

[Kyle Grindberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helpful little book.

[Douglas Gates · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent.

[Christian Wermeskerch · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not usually a fan of Jordan's cultural exegesis. This book was a lot of what I don't read Jordan for, but contained quite a few golden nuggets in the end.

[William Schrecengost · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting. More of an essay than a book. Not sure how much I agree with him. I do think we're at a pivotal moment right now

[Grant Van Brimmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I believe Jordan is on to something here. I'm always intrigued by his trinitarian view of things. I think this essay is definitely helpful.

[Jerome Bushnell · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars. An enthusiastic reflection on what God has done in history, and a vision for what He is preparing His followers to do again.

[Piper · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book, first published in 1994, says what I’m reading elsewhere. It’s hard, but encouraging at the same time. Soli Deo Gloria.