Contents

I Acknowledgments

II Foreword to the Second Edition

III Foreword to the First Edition

Author’s Introduction

0.1 Epochal Turning Points

0.2 Autobiographical Apologia

0.3 Back to the Future

0.4 Puritans Old and New

0.5 The New Puritanism Within the Context of Pluralism

0.6 The Challenge of the Emergent Church

0.7 Authentic Pluralism

0.8 The Missio Dei

Part I The Mission of God: Studies in a Biblical Perspective

Chapter 1 In Understanding be Men:

The Crisis of our Age and the Recovery of the Gospel

1.1 The Lost Word

1.2 A Puritan Response

1.3 Puritanism – Alive and Kicking?

1.4 Who were the Puritans?

1.5 A Cromwellian Case in Point

1.6 Puritanism and the Missio Dei

1.7 Puritans and the Present

1.8 The Cultural Mandate

Chapter 2 In Him all Things Hold Together:

The Dangers of Dualism

2.1 Authority and Duality

2.2 The Consequences of Duality

2.3 Faulty Eschatology: Old Errors, New Outfit

2.4. Theological Amnesia: Recovering our Cultural Memory

2.5 Divorcing the Word: The Artificial Separation of Old and NEW tESTAMENTS

2.5.1 Christ and the Law

2.5.2 Paul and the Law

2.6 The Augustinian and Calvinistic Traditions

Chapter 3 Known unto the Lord are all His Works:

A Christian Vision of History and the Western World

3.1 Books and Barbarians

3.2 Historiography

3.3 The Bible and History: The Christian Perspective

3.4 Competing Views of History

3.5 History and politics

3.6 Western History and Culture

3.7 Law, History and Political Life

3.8 Conclusions: God’s Victory in History

Chapter 4 No Name Under Heaven:

The Religion of Statism and the Significance of Chalcedon

4.1 The Significance of the Challenge

4.2 Chalcedon and the Priciple of Liberty

4.3 Statism and Contemporary Missiology

Chapter 5 I saw Satan Fall: Utopia. The Counterfeit Kingdom of God

5.1 Kingdom and Utopia.

5.2 The Utopian Imperative

5.3 A New Doctrine of God: The Unity of the Utopian Godhead

5.3.1 Justice

5.3.2 Love

5.4 The Omnipotence of the Utopian Godhead

5.5 Posthuman Omnipotence

5.6 The Wrath of Man

5.7 The Omniscience of the Godhead

5.8 Babel is Broken

5.9 A Religious Worldview

Chapter 6 You Shall Not Pervert Justice:

Relating Evangelism, Justice and the Kingdom

6.1 Evangelism and the Kingdom of God

6.2 Evangelism, the Church, and the Pursuit of Justice

6.3 Defining Justice and the Social Theory of the Kingdom

6.4 Bosch and Brueggemann: Banishment of the Law

6.5 Generous Justice?

6.6 Charity, Justice and the State

6.7 Means and Motive in the Struggle for Justice

6.8 Eucharisttic Faith or Environmentalism

Chapter 7 Strange Fire: Understanding Jubilee and Atonement

7.1 Land, Liberty and Economics

7.2 Debt, Atonement and Jubilee

7.3 Strange Fire

7.4 Service and Stewardship

Chapter 8 Sit at My Right Hand:

Law, Theocracy and Contemporary Relevance

8.1 History, Continuity and Relevance

8.2 An Instituting Consideration of the Relevance of Law

8.3 The Source of Law: Nature or God

8.4 The New Puritan Perspective

8.5 Theocracy and the Kingdom of God

8.6 Slander, Fallacy and False Charges

8.7 The Slow Development of Tyranny

8.8 Law, Sanctification and Theocracy

Chapter 9 God’s Servant for Your Good:

Understanding Crime and Punishment

9.1 Whose Law and Dominion?

9.2 Cheap Grace, Costly Law

9.3 The Christian Mind

9.4 Reformers, Puritans and Penology

9.5 Foundations of Biblical Penology

9.6 Guidelines for Interpreting Specifics in the Law

Principle and Practice

9.7 Law as a Value-processing System

9.8 Controversial Areas of Biblical Penology: Offenses Against the family

9.9 Homosexuality and the Family

9.10 Abandoning the Law: The Failure of Modern Penology

9.11 Conclusions and Clarifications

9.11.1 Limits of Law

9.11.2 The End of Biblical Law

Part II The Reign of God

Chapter 10 The Highway to Zion: Christ and Culture

10.1 Christianity versus the Imperial Cult

10.2 What is Culture?

10.3 Culture as prejudice

10.4 Cult and Culture

10.5 Culture and the Fall

10.6 Cultural Cowardice

10.7 An Absent Christ – an Abandoned Culture

10.8 The Culture of Christ

Chapter 11 Fill the Earth and Subdue it: Faith, Family and Revolution

11.1 The Social Revolution

11.2 The Sexual Revolution

11.3 The Family and the Basic Powers in Society

Chapter 12 Let My Children Go: The Christian Mandate to Educate

12.1 Education: A Christian Heritage and Calling

12.2 Education: A Religious Function

12.3 The Myth of Neutrality: the Purpose of Education

12.4 The Battle for the Mind and the Future

12.5 The Myth of Neutrality: the Content of Education

12.6 The Curriculum of Christ

Chapter 13 Defence and Confirmation of the Gospel: The Reign of God and Apologetics for the Twenty-First Century

13.1 What is Apologetics?

13.2 Van Til: the Thomas Aquinas of Protestantism

13.3 Approaches to Apologetics

13.4 The Story of Postmodernity

13.5 Theological and Philosophical Implications for Apologetics

13.6 Responding to the post of Modernity

13.7 Methodological Implications

Chapter 14 Men of Athens: Evangelism in Pluralistic Age

14.1 Should we Evangelize?

14.2 Interfaith Thinking

14.3 The Challenge of Pluralism

14.4 The Challenge of Inclusivism

14.5 The Response of Exclusivism

14.6 The Missional Approaches of Peter and Paul: The Audience

14.6.1 The Audience

14.6.2 The Messenger

14.7 Message and Method: Paul in Athens

14.8 Peter and Cornelius

Chapter 15 I will Build My Church: The Missio Ecclesiae

15.1 The Mission of the Church

15.2 The New Puritanism and the Church

15.3 No Compromise

15.4 Idolatry – The Root of Resistance

15.5 Divine Jealousy

15.6 The Nature of Idolatry

15.7 Going the Way of Balaam

15.8 The Hopeless World

15.9 The Covenant of Hope

Appendix 1

Rushdoony, Racism and the Holocaust

Appendix 2

Billy Graham, Evangelism and the Evangelical Tradition:

A Reformed Analysis

Notes

Bibliography

This is a work of practical theology and cultural philosophy, demonstrating the religious nature of all human actions and institutions. In The Mission of God, Joe Boot examines the historic biblical perspective on everyday cultural matters, demonstrating the abiding validity and authority of the whole word of God for every area of life.

He writes in the introduction, "What is the calling of God's covenant people in history? What is the kingdom of God and how does it manifest itself? What does the reign of God look like and how are we to discern God working? What is the relationship between faith and public morality and policy? What should be the relationship between church and state? Is religious pluralism a biblically compatible and workable theology of state? Does the church have a future in history? Are Christians called to transform cultures? In short, what is the mission of God and what part do we have to play? These questions have become increasingly pertinent for the church today, especially in the Western world, because it is widely recognized that Western civilization is facing an epochal turning point."

The Mission of God is an exhortation to rediscover and return to a robust biblical faith in the lordship of Christ for every area of life.