Third Way: Back to the Future

Back to the Future (1985)

What is the “Third Way”?  The phrase feels new and fresh.  It is becoming increasingly popular today, challenging Christians to consider setting a new or third course of action—not a “middle” course of compromise—to influence culture.
But it is not in fact new at all.  It only seems new because we have forgotten when, how, and why it first emerged.  Christians living in the West have enjoyed power and privilege for so long that we have forgotten what life was like for Christians during the church’s early years.  Thus we tend to assume we are—and have always been—the “only way” in the West.  We want to keep it that way, too, which is becoming harder and harder to do.

How can we remain faithful Christians without compromising Christianity’s uniqueness and our integrity?
We have an example to follow.  But we have to skip over almost 2000 years of history to find it.  To move forward in gospel faithfulness, we have to go backwards first.  In short, back to the future.

Which is where I will begin.

The early Christian movement developed a reputation for living as a “New Race” or “Third Race” of people, which in my writing (Resilient Faith: How the Early Christian “Third Way” Changed the World) I refer to as a “New” or “Third Way.” The phrase first appeared in a 2nd-century document.  An unknown writer set out to explain what made Christianity unique, thus producing a “new” or “third” race of people.

As the writer explains, Roman religion was the “first way,” Judaism the “second way,” and Christianity, then only 100 years old, the “third way.”  Christianity was so different from the other two alternatives that the recipient of the letter, a Roman official, Diognetus, didn’t know how to classify it or what to make of it, which made him both curious and suspicious.
Representing the first way, Rome exhibited an amazing capacity to absorb new people and new religions into the empire, thus giving them cultural legitimacy. But there was a price to be paid for that acceptance.  New religions had to accommodate to the Roman way of life.

Embodying the second way, Jews resisted Rome.  But there was a price to be paid for that way, too.  Jews protected their distinctive belief system and way of life by isolating from culture, thus making entrance and membership prohibitively demanding.  Rome could therefore tolerate Judaism because it did not pose an ultimate threat.
Christians following a third way, neither accomodating to Rome or isolating from Rome.

Christians appeared to live like everyone else.  They spoke the local language, lived in local neighborhoods, wore local styles of clothing, ate local food, shopped in local markets, and followed local customs.  “For Christians cannot be distinguished from the rest of the human race by country or language or custom.  They do not live in cities of their own; they do not use a peculiar form of speech; they do not follow an eccentric manner of life.”  Christians blended in to Roman society quite seamlessly.
Yet they were different, too, following not simply a different religion but a different—and new—way of life.  “They live in their own countries, but only as aliens.  They have a share in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners.  Every foreign land is their fatherland, and yet for them every fatherland is a foreign land.”  They functioned as if they were a nation within a nation, culturally assimilated yet distinct at the same time.  They constituted a new race of people—hence the Third Way.
What made Christians different?  What was this Third Way?

Christians believed in the reality of another and greater kingdom over which God rules.  It was a spiritual kingdom—“not of this world,” but certainly over this world as superior and supreme, for this world’s redemption, and in this world as a force for ultimate and eternal good.

The Third Way was like a resistance movement, both subversive and peaceful, bearing witness to God’s coming kingdom.  It was so different and unique that it would not accommodate to Rome.  But it strived to influence and win Rome, too, and thus refused to isolate.  It was immersed in the culture but did not surrender to the culture.

Most of my readers are Americans.  For centuries Christians in America have enjoyed a great deal of cultural privilege and power.  Christianity has been the religion of the nation, its power and influence taken for granted.  Simply put, America was—and still is— Christian.  Such is no longer the case.  We all know it, too.

What do we do now?  Too many are following the first way, all too eager to accommodate to some fashionable movement to reclaim cultural privilege and power: wokeness on the left, Christian Nationalism on the right, consumer religion, prosperity gospel, self-help, and so much more.  This strategy will only accelerate the process of decline, and all the more so to the degree that it succeeds.

There is another way.  It is the Third Way.  Which will be the subject of this series of blogs.