What World?

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.  Romans 12:2  NASB

This world – Paul strictly instructs followers of the Messiah to resist conformity to the patterns of this world, but what world does he have in mind?  The Greco-Roman world?  The pagan world?  The anti-Jewish world?  If we don’t know what he means by aiṓn, we won’t know what we should resist.

Notice immediately that Paul does not use the Greek term cosmos, typically translated “world.”  Instead, he uses the Greek aiṓn, meaning “age” or “span of time.”  “In particular the word is used for the duration of the world.”^[1]  Paul is an apocalyptic thinker.  He believes that the end is coming soon with the return of the Messiah.  The current world system will cease to exist and the Messianic age will replace it.  With this in mind, and considering that the Messiah has not returned, we can elaborate Paul’s idea of aiṓn by noting the patterns of the last 2000 years.  Peter Leithart offers a telling critique:

Modernity refers to the civilization of the West since about 1500.  Culturally, modernity is characterized by “value pluralism,” which entails the privatization of religious institutions and religious claims.  Every individual and every group chooses its own shared values, and civil society is the arena where those values enter into combat.  Politically, modernity is shaped by “liberalism,” the political system dedicated to the one proposition that political systems must not be dedicated to one proposition.

Through its roots in the patristic period, Christianity in its more developed form is the Church’s adjustment of the gospel to modernity, and the Church’s consequent acceptance of the world’s definition of who we are and what we should be up to.  Christianity is biblical religion disemboweled and emasculated by (voluntary) intellectualization and/or privatization.

Christianity does not merely haphazardly embrace the values and practices of the modern world.  Worldliness in that sense has plagued the Church since Corinth and will be a temptation to the end of time.  Christianity is institutionalized worldliness, worldliness accepted in principle, worldliness not at the margins but at the center, worldliness built into the foundation.[2]

Modernity governs our way of life, but even before the Renaissance, the Greco-Roman paradigm held sway over virtually all of Western civilization.  That is our pattern of the world, the pattern of this pre-Messianic age.  And the religion of Christianity is as much a part of this pattern as nation states, economic exchange, and democracy.  Paul is arguing for the values of a kingdom unlike like anything the world has ever embraced, not then, not now; values that will only become the pattern of the age when the Messiah reigns.  Until then, we must be aware of the syncretism of our thoughts, of the origins of our ideas, and of the ubiquity of “value pluralism.”  Individuals may choose to live according to Paul’s view of the true kingdom even in this age, but they will stand out as rebels, strangers, or heretics.  However, the systems, the paradigms, will not change until there is a radical, apocalyptic shift in life itself.  Paul waited.  We wait.  And in the meanwhile, pay attention.

Topical Index:  aiṓn, age, world, pattern, modernity, values, Romans 12:2

^[1] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (p. 32). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.

[2] Peter Leithart, Against Christianity (Canon Press, 2003).