Sometime around the year A.D. 30, in the Roman province of Palestine, an obscure Jewish carpenter named Jesus of Nazareth began to teach publicly and to proclaim the coming of a 'Kingdom of God.' For centuries, the Jewish people had expected the appearance of a promised deliverer known as the Messiah --a figure who would restore their ancient dignity, and free their sacred homeland from all evil and despair. In the minds of many, Jesus appeared to be this Messiah. Surrounded by a core group of twelve disciples, Jesus began to attract a massive following from among the common people of Galilee and Judea, who eventually praised him as their Messiah and King. However, Jesus also had many enemies in Jerusalem. The Sanhedrin, a governing senate composed of the leading Jewish priests and Pharisees, conspired to put Jesus to death.
 
With the aid of Judas Iscariot, a member of Jesus' own inner circle, the Sanhedrin succeeded in arresting Jesus, handing him over to the Roman secular authorities on unsubstantiated charges of treason against Rome. Although Jesus consistently maintained that his Kingdom was a heavenly and spiritual one, the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate, faced with the possibility of a riot, ordered that Jesus be taken outside the city and crucified as a common criminal.

The heart of literary criticism is the notion of rhetoric. Rhetoric, simply, is the ability to communicate effectively through  the written and spoken word. Written and spoken are the crucial concepts of understanding rhetoric. One can send a photograph of a thing or CD with music describing the thing, or paint a picture of the thing and communicate well enough. But this is not rhetoric. Rhetoric is a discipline that demands that the reader dutifully follow laws of grammar, logic, and communication to explain and to describe the thing.

Quality rhetoric is important and necessary. It seems to me, and to the Greeks, that a democracy demands a responsible, well considered rhetoric. It is absolutely necessary that we participate in legitimate conversation about important issues.

Gordon Conwell Seminary professor David Wells in God in the Wasteland argues that evangelical Christians who believe in a personal relationship with God and non-Christians who do not have both drunk from the trough of modernity. We have both embraced a sort of existential faith instead of a confessional faith. If it feels good, do it and believe it. Unless evangelicals participate in serious apologetics, God will be "weightless."

The rise of relativism has had disastrous results. The British historian Philip Johnson laments "the great vacuum" that has been filled with totalitarian regimes and fascile thinking. Rhetoric ferrets out truth. If there is no truth, can there be any sense of authority? And can a society survive if there is no authority? Without a legitimate, honest, well-considered rhetoric, will history be reduced to the "pleasure principle"? Literary Criticism, at least in the area of the written classics, forces us to dance with reality.

In some ways the American Evangelical Christianity's loss of rhetorical skills--and I think rhetoric is akin to apologetics--has presaged disaster in many arenas. Without rhetoric Christians have no tools to engage modern culture. In some ways we have lost the mainline denominations to neo-orthodoxy and we have lost the university to liberals. Where is the 21st century Jonathan Edwards? C. S. Lewis?

Good thinking, good talking may redeem the Church from both the Overzealous and the Skeptic. Rhetorical skills may help us regain the intellectual and spiritual high ground we so grievously surrendered without a fight (Alister McGrath, Evangelicalism and the Future of Christianity). George Marsden in The Soul of the American University and Leslie Newbigen in Foolishness to the Greeks both conclude that we Christians have conceded much of American culture to modernism by our inability to merge thought and communication in a cogency and inspiration that persuades the modernist culture.

Without the main tool to do battle--rhetoric--Evangelicals allow orthodoxy to be sacrificed on the altar of relativism.

By Dr. James Stobaugh
President, For Such a Time as This Ministries http://forsuchatimeasthis.com/