Out of Egypt:

C.S. Lewis and St. Bernard on human love (a follow-up)

After writing my post on Thomas Aquinas and the forms of love, I thought I should follow up with one of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis' The Four Loves, that, while not rigorous, expresses some key distinctions between types of human love:

Need-love cries to God from our poverty; Gift-love longs to serve, or even to suffer for, God; Appreciative love says: "We give thanks to thee for thy great glory."
Need-love says of a woman, "I cannot live without her"; Gift-love longs to give her happiness, comfort, protection - if possible, wealth; Appreciative love gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist even if not for him, will not be wholly dejected by losing her, would rather have it so than never to have seen her at all.

I would like to re-write the quote so that it would speak of a woman's love for a man also, but that is not easily done in this case.

It is interesting to note, however, that Lewis does not seem to speak of agape in this passage, since agape is, by nature, self-giving and works by its own power a change in the one who is loved.

With reference to human love for God, it is not surprising that Lewis does not mention agape, since God is, in His essence, impassible, and thus our love for Him cannot work a change in His nature. As it is written, "He has loved us with an everlasting love." Furthermore, God possesses all perfection in Himself, and thus has no need of any love which one could give Him. As Isaiah writes, "'Heaven is My throne and earth is My footstool. Where is the house that you will build Me? And where is place of My rest? For all those things My hand has made, and all those things exist,' says the Lord." As John Piper (and his teacher, Daniel Fuller) have said, it is because God delights completely, and is fully satisified, in Himself, that He is free to be gracious to us, both in the work of creation and redemption. To finish the quote from Isaiah: "'But on this one will who I look: On him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word.'" God, as the Psalmist writes, "Though the LORD is on high, yet He regards the lowly; but the proud He knows from afar."

With reference to human romantic love, I believe it is possible to speak of agape. Again, I would reference the analogy of the bridegroom which I quoted from Luther. Insofar as marriage is a mirror of God's love, it is possible to wish the other's good simply for their sake, and, by faithful expression of this love, to actually grant them good. Humans can only do so imperfectly, since we are inconstant in our affections, even the best of our actions have mixed motivations, and we have imperfect knowledge of what another's good would be. However, I believe I have felt at times the faintest breath of self-giving love for another, and I desire to do so more.

If I had more time, I would go on to fully describe the four degrees of human love for God which St. Bernard of Clairvaux defines in his On Loving God. As it is, I will leave you with only their names and a brief description of each: 1) When Man Loves Himself for His Own Sake (natural love before God's working in the soul, in which common grace and the civil order serves to curb our desires sufficiently that society may continue), 2) When Man Loves God for His Own Good (most love for God is of this kind, even (I would say) perhaps in some conversions), 3) When Man Loves God for God's Sake (described best earlier in the text, when St. Bernard says, "Lord, you are good to the soul which seeks You. What are you then to the soul which finds?"), and 4) When Man Loves Himself for the Sake of God.

This last is a mystic love for God, and it is rarely to be encountered in this life, though it will be the fullness of eternity. Paul wrote under its impulse when he said, "I have been crucified with Christ, such that I no longer live, but Christ lives in me."

St. Bernard describes this love as follows:

[S]ince Scripture says that God made everything for Himself (Prv. 16:4; Rv. 4:11) there will be a time when He will cause everything to conform to its Maker and be in harmony with Him. In the meantime, we must make this our desire: that as God Himself willing that everything should be for Himself, so we, too, will that nothing, not even ourselves, may be or have been except for Him, that is, according to His will, not ours...This is what we ask every day in prayer when we say, 'Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.' (Mt. 6:10)

But this love is a hard lesson for us to learn, and we will be on learning it until we die. Reformed preaching, with its focus on absolute goods, I fear has often led us to preach the good of the fourth degree of love, while deprecating the previous degrees. If we practiced discipleship and spiritual formation as we ought, or even as it was done by St. Bernard and his like, perhaps we would not fall so easily into this error, and thus shut up the Kingdom of God to those to whom God would wish it to be open. There is a reason why people often convert to Christianity in other branches of the church besides the Reformed one, and then later, as they grow deeper in the knowledge and (hopefully, the love) of God, join the Reformed church. Let us never be prideful in the experience of God's goodness, or the knowledge of God's character. In doing so, we sin against the example of Christ, who was not ashamed to minister to the earthly good of sinners, and thus to show that "His yoke is easy and His burden is light."

Thomas Aquinas, relative good, and the love of God

Thomas Aquinas may have been the greatest Christian moral philosopher.

Why do I say that? Here are just two passages (which I found while writing about the public school issue, but which were not the one I was looking for):

Now the good of man is of two kinds, absolute and relative. The good of man which is absolute is his final end, according to Ps. 73:28, "It is good for me to draw near unto God," together with all that is ordained to lead him to it...The good of man which is relative, and not absolute, is what is good for him at the present time, or what is good for him in certain circumstances. (Nature and Grace, Q. 114, Art. 10

We who are Calvinists are strong on absolute good - "What is the chief end of man?" But I appreciate the Lutheran doctrine of the two kingdoms, because it enables us to pursue relative goods with a clear conscience, knowing that in so doing we are fulfilling the commandment to love our neighbors.

In the interests of full disclosure, I must say that the parenthesis in my quote above is hiding Thomas' statement that absolute good is merited, since it is through "virtuous works" that "we are brought to eternal life." But a great moral philosopher is not necessarily a great theologian. If Thomas had a stronger doctrine of predestination, he would have been able to see that God's saving action does not have ultimate reference to virtuous works, though it would be unjust (and thus impossible) for God to grant eternal life to those whom He did not make righteous. God is the One who "calls the things that are not as those they were," in the words of the Apostle Paul, and thus creates virtue in us without reference to any prior disposition of virtue on our part.

That being said, Thomas approached the true doctrines of grace at points, such as in his discussion of divine love.

As the Philosopher says (Rhet. ii. 4), to love is to wish good to someone. Hence the movement of love has a twofold tendency: towards the good which a man wishes to someone - to himself or to another - and towards that [one] to [whom] he wishes some good. Accordingly, man has love of concupisicence [desire] towards the good that he wishes to another, and love of friendship, towards him to whom he wishes good.
Now the members of this division are related as primary and secondary: since that which is loved with the love of friendship is loved simply and for itself; whereas that which is loved with the concupiscence, is loved, not simply and for itself, but for something else. For just as that which has existence, is a being simply, while that which exists in another is a relative being; so, because good is convertible with being, the good, which itself has goodness, is good simply; but that which is another's good, is a relative good. Consequently the love with which a thing is loved, that it may have some good, is love simply; while the love, with which a thing is loved, that it may be another's good [or the good of the one who loves - ead] , is relative love... (Ethics I-II, 26, 4)

Now I believe the translation does us a disservice here because both concupiscence and desire are such loaded terms that is hard to think of a Christian moral philosopher called this kind of love a "relative good." But I believe that which Thomas is alluding to here is really the distinction between eros and agape which Anders Nygren describes in his book by that title. Eros, as the Greeks spoke of it, was not evil - in fact, it was the highest good to which humans could attain. The Neo-Platonic philosopher made it the very pathway to God. It was only with the coming of the Christian revelation - that "while we still sinners, Christ loved us" - that philosophers could put eros in its rightful place as a servant to agape.

For God, as I would say in light of Thomas' distinction here, is the perfect Friend, who loves us not for the good that we are in ourselves (in our fallen state) but for the good that we will become by His grace, that "we might be to the praise of His glory."

Martin Luther is particularly good on this point in his Treatise on Christian Liberty:

The third incomparable benefit of faith is that it unites the Soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom. By this mystery, as the Apostle teaches, Christ and the soul become one flesh [Eph. 5:31-32]. And if they are one flesh and there is between them a true marriage - indeed the most perfect of all marriages, since human marriages are but poor examples of this one true marriage - it follows that everything they have they hold in common, the good as well as the evil. Accordingly the believing soul can boast of and glory in whatever Christ has as though it were its own, and whatever the soul has Christ claims as his own. Let us compare these and we shall see inestimable benefits. Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation. The Soul is full of sins, death, and damnation. Now let faith come between them, and sins, death, and damnation will be Christ's, while grace, life, and salvation will be the soul's; for if Christ is a bridegroom, he must take upon himself the things which are his bride's and bestow upon her the things that are his. If he gives her his body and very self, how shall he not give her all that is his? And if he takes the body of the bride, how shall he not take all that is hers?

Thus we see that righteousness for Luther is not merely something external, which God by a "legal fiction" (in the sneering phrase used by some Catholics) deigns to see in believers (and thus tolerates their unrighteousness), but something which is living and active within the soul of the believer, by virtue of the believer's union with Christ. The courtroom analogy of the substitutionary atonement is necessary to show that salvation is unmerited (that God does not first constitute the soul as virtuous, and then love it, but, rather, the reverse). Yet the courtroom analogy is not a sufficient account of salvation (or even of the substitutionary atonement) in itself. We need more preaching of the bridegroom analogy - not just with reference to the Church as a whole, but with reference to individual believers. Only then will we come close to plumbing the depths of God's love, and do justice to God's character as the perfect Friend, who loves simply because He wishes us good, not because there is any good which we could possibly bestow upon Him. It is only in the person of Christ, being both perfect God and perfect man, that God has love of desire, since Christ endured the Cross for the sake of the "joy set before Him, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren."

And thus, in the wisdom of the divine economy, God is the ultimate example of both forms of love which Thomas describes. Insofar as He is divine, God's love is perfectly self-giving, since it is secondarily directed toward our glorification, and yet perfectly just, since it is primarily directed toward the highest good, which is His glory. Insofar as Christ is human, God's love is the perfect love of desire, since it is secondarily directed toward the highest of relative goods, the enjoyment of perfect communion with the saints ("that He might be the firstborn among many brethren"), and primarily directed toward the highest of absolute goods, the enjoyment of perfect communion with God ("that in all things He might have the pre-eminence", yet in the end "the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all").

Now to "the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see...be honor and everlasting power. Amen." (1 Tim. 6:15-16)

reconstructionism/theonomy: a fair-minded secular account

This is something I wouldn't have expected to find: a secular account of the origins of Christian Reconstructionism and its variants which isn't glaringly inaccurate, and which shows a surprising level of comprehension of theonomic epistemology.

Admittedly, it's from a self-proclaimed progressive watchdog group, but it's actually less scathing in tone than what I would write myself. Guess it's more important for me to try to distance myself from the theonomists.

I am particularly grateful that the authors recognize that theonomists aren't lurking behind Bush's shoulders - that, in fact, most of them would find Bush's statist ideology repugnant. The political landscape is far more complex than a simple opposition between Left and Right; both authoritarianism and libertarianism can make for strange bedfellows.

i repent of ever having supported Obama

When I said I supported Obama several months ago, I was not aware of this: Obama's opposition to the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, which even NARAL did not oppose.

I could never support a politician who would not oppose infanticide.

His logic speaks for itself:

... I just want to suggest... that this is probably not going to survive constitutional scrutiny. Number one, whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we're really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a - child, a nine-month-old - child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place.

I mean, it - it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute. For that purpose, I think it would probably be found unconstitutional. [Barack Obama - IL Senate floor on March 30, 2001]

There he is - so committed to "protecting a women's right to choose" that he sees a law intended to protect live births as the start of a dangerous slippery slope.

UPDATE: I just read Obama's Call to Renewal speech from earlier this year. While it is insightful in parts, and certainly nuanced, it doesn't say that he would actually be willing to moderate his position on abortion. It just says that he'll speak nicely about it. But when people are dying, I'm afraid that can't be enough.

the only Biblical command we succeeded in obeying

Genesis 1:28.

When humans were few in number and lacking in technological skill, the language of ruling over nature was appropriate. God's calling upon us now is different. If we are to rule over nature, we are to rule as Christ rules over the Church. "The one who is greatest must be servant of all." Otherwise, we are constructing a biotechnological Tower of Babel.

why i am a presbyterian

Hypnotist and skeptic Darren Brown demonstrates the power of the "instant conversion."

I went up to the front at a charismatic church once. They tried to push me over, but I wouldn't go. Guess I'm not as susceptible to hypnotic suggestion.

Some might say my faith is overly intellectual. But better that, I say, than for it to be indistinguishable from a magic act.

quoted in the new conspirators

"Christians will have nothing to say to the world if they can't learn to throw better parties." ~Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis

That's one of the things that keeps me coming back to CtK Dorchester. Not because our theology is Reformed, our services are in our good order, or that we have community ministry all figured out. Sound doctrine, faithful liturgy, and culturally sensitive ministry are all fine things, and such should be our goal - however, it would all seem hollow if we didn't have the joy of the Lord, and the joy of life together.

if i have learned anything this lent...

...it is that until you have been scandalized by the Cross, you have failed to grasp its meaning. Sometimes we who believe are the last to recognize the offense of the Cross. The whole Gospel narrative can become routine; the Cross merely a necessary stage on the way to resurrection. But Christ's suffering bears more sustained reflection than this.

This year, I am struck by how much more the Gospels stress the what than the why of Christ's death. As my confidence in knowing the one true atonement theory wanes, I find the concreteness of the Gospels comforting.

fresh discovery

I just read J.R. Caines' blog for the first time tonight. Some good thoughts there - particularly what he says about how Jesus confronted the "powers" during Holy Week.

We make the faith far too individualistic. Christianity is growing in the global South because they recognize Jesus has power over social structures, not merely individual sins.

ash wednesday approaches

As some of my regular readers may know, each year for Lent I try to add rather than to subtract. I heard a sermon once that said "If you are sinning, you shouldn't wait until Lent to stop. You should stop now." That sounded reasonable to me. And I was never good at coming up with arbitrary things to deny myself. Fasting is another matter, although I can't say that I've practiced it much in my life. I'm certainly still learning how to engage in spiritual discipline without falling victim to spiritual pride.

For Lent two years ago, I planned to read more Scripture, but I ended up falling into deep spiritual doubt instead. That was beneficial, however - at least it couldn't be turned into an intellectual exercise. Last year I tried to learn the Heidelberg Catechism. I read it, but I can't say I have much more than the first half of the first question committed to memory.

This year I'm not yet certain what I will do. I know that if there is anything lacking in my relation to God, it is a spirit of prayer. Yet I want to be specific in my commitment - that way, even if I do not follow through with it, at least I will know where I have failed.

when will i get the message?

It's not about my possessions, my skills, or my performance. It's about my relationship to a Person.

"As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!"

"Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her." (Luke 10:38-42)

I will always fall back into works and worry until I learn to sit at the feet of Christ. Being sick of my self-focused life is not enough; he must show me a better way.

a home for liturgy lovers

For all that I love simple church movements, I also love the spiritual depth of the traditional liturgy. If you're like me, you might enjoy exploring the Anglican liturgy, lectionary, and spirituality resources available at liturgy.co.nz. I think it will take me days to look at all the articles and reviews that are available....

do we believe in the grace of God?

I think often we don't. We may say we do, but we don't.

Why else do we run to streams that will not satisfy? It is not enough to know what wells are dry; without knowledge of an alternative, we will go to them again and again in desperation. We must experience God in order to deny sin.

"My soul will bless the Lord: His praise will continually be upon my lips."

waking thought

"Consider others better than yourself." Difficult as that is, it is more difficult still to recognize others as better than yourself. The one is magnanimity, a sign of your greatness. The other is simply admitting the truth.

a few more days till I start the one-year Bible plan

I realized tonight that the reading plan I picked up from the Barnabas Ministries table at the ILC starts on a Monday. So, to keep things simple, I have a few days left before I will begin.

It is harder for me to read the Bible now than when I was young. When I could approach it academically, I read it ritualistically. Now that I recognize it more deeply as God's voice, it troubles me.

I don't want to worship a God of my own making, who suits my own desires. And yet I don't want to read into the Scripture all that 2000 years' worth of commentators, sinners all, have read out of it. I want to find the truth as it was first given. And yet I recognize that our understanding of God always comes within and through community.

What is this Light, that delights to shine through fractured glass? Your longsuffering, O Lord, leads to repentance - or to despair, for those who struggle with Your silence. I am waiting for the Day.

"write the vision so that they may run who read it"

I have gone too long without regularly reading the Scriptures. Sometimes I feel a burning desire for the Word within me, and yet as the night passes, I find ways to avoid study, and, even more so, to avoid prayer. I trust in God, but do not speak with Him.

I have resolved to put an end to this cycle, using the best means I know how. I am going to attempt to read the Bible in a year, writing about each night's passage.

Experience has shown me that teaching is the best way to learn. May God bring me new insights as I seek to bring His message to others.

thought after reading luther on the sacraments

Circumcision is to baptism as conception is to birth.

i put my hope in no other

I have never put my hope in any other but in you,
    God of Israel
    who will be angry
    and yet become again gracious
    and who forgives all the sins of suffering man.
    Lord God,
    Creator of Heaven and Earth,
    look upon our lowliness.
             -Thomas Tallis, Spem in Alium

reminded of this in late fall darkness

It is hard sometimes to drag ourselves
back to the love of morning
after we've lain in the dark crying out
O God, save us from the horror . . . .

God has saved the world one more day
even with its leaden burden of human evil;
we wake to birdsong.
And if sunlight's gossamer lifts in its net
the weight of all that is solid,
our hearts, too, are lifted,
swung like laughing infants;

but on gray mornings,
all incident - our own hunger,
the dear tasks of continuance,
the footsteps before us in the earth's
beloved dust, leading the way - all,
is hard to love again
for we resent a summons
that disregards our sloth, and this
calls us, calls us.
     - Denise Levertov, "The Love of Morning"

Faith does not make the world comprehensible, but it makes it bearable. As I was saying to Bob the other week, internal conflict does not cease when you become a Christian. If anything, it becomes more intense, because, while resignation is appropriate for the Stoic, the Christian is called to something higher: faith that Christ has reconciled the world, and participation in the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:12-21).

When we wake in the night crying, "O God, save us from the horror," we must struggle with His silence. It is a fearful thing to be angry at the living God. And yet sometimes we must be angry, if we are to stay sane. When God appears as our enemy, and the horrors of the world surround, the only thing that keeps us faithful is the memory of Jacob, who wrestled with God and with man and prevailed (Gen. 32:22-32).

why did i call this blog "Out of Egypt"?

I have never been to Egypt, nor do I know as much about it as one might wish. When I named this blog, I was not thinking of a literal journey out of Egypt, but rather of the exodus from sin to freedom in Christ. No believer has yet arrived at perfection, but rather we press on to take hold of that for which Christ has taken hold of us (Phil. 3:12-14). We are still in the desert, rather than glory (Heb. 11:13-16). Yet it is sufficient to have Christ's presence as our cloud and pillar of fire, to have His Word as our manna, to have His Spirit as the water coming from the Rock, and to have His Cross as the sign on which we look for salvation (John 3:14-15).

We are bound for the Promised Land, but we aren't there yet. The "theology of glory" would have us enjoy the riches of Egypt - but we could not enjoy them purely until both we and they have been refined by fire. Then, at the Last Day, we may say to the Lord, "You let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and water; yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance" (Ps. 66:12).

thoughts on the mission of Christ

"I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed!"

And what is the baptism of Christ, if not a baptism into His death? For the word "baptism" means does not simply mean a washing from sin, but a full destruction of the "body of sin," even as the pre-Noahic world was destroyed by water. For we are not dirty, and in need of cleansing; we are dead, and must be buried and brought to life.

This is the sentence under which all humanity suffers. This is the sword, which brings division; the Word of power which breaks our hearts. This is the offense of the Gospel, and the foolishness of the Cross.

True knowledge of our depravity leaves no ground for boasting, whether in our virtue, our ethnic distinctives, our history, or our natural gifts. All these things must be passed as through fire, so that which is gold may remain.

The Word of the Lord comes to the prophet, and he is undone. We see this in the life of Moses, of Isaiah, of Jeremiah, of Ezekiel. The prophet does not stand apart from the community, rejoicing in its judgment; the prophet weeps over the sin of the people. The prophetic spirit of vindication is, "Let God be true, and every man a liar."

At times I have been distressed with anger, but rarely at the sins of the world. Rather, I have been distressed at the devilish pride which passes for spirituality in the realm of the Church. And I am left with no hope but to call on Christ the Word - the One in whom power and humility meet, who binds up the broken-hearted and strikes the rock of pride, the Prince of Peace who is our God at war.

I am fully convinced that if the Gospel was believed and proclaimed today with the clarity and vehemence that it was preached by Jonathan Edwards, or Samuel Rutherford, or Robert Murray M'Cheyne, or Martin Luther, then we would see revival such as we have never seen. It is the Church's pride in its own choice of Christ, in its own divine mission, that keeps it from knowing the riches which He offers to His elect.

We in the ostensibly evangelical church have confused sanctification with justification; we have confused proper righteousness with alien righteousness. We no longer believe that God alone is the author and perfecter of faith, because that leaves us no ground to boast. We need to acknowledge that, as Luther said, proper righteousness (our own righteousness) is ours only by virtue of that power by which God works in us as we make the alien righteousness of Christ our own. Merely believing the Word is not enough; outside of us, the Word is Law, and we stand condemned. The Word must enter into us, in that spiritual marriage of which both Calvin and St. Bernard of Clairvaux speak, giving us His account of righteousness as the holy Bridegroom sharing His wealth with the Bride.

Once we know that God is ours in Christ, we have no need to seek after anything else. In God we find the peace of creation rather than the restlessness of acquisition. As Meister Eckhardt says, "God is near us, but we are far from Him; He is within, we are without; He is at home, we are in the far country."

Lord, teach us to have a holy vehemence in our love for You, laying aside every weight of sin, every desire which is not stirred up by Your love for us, every fragment of self-image that does not measure up to how You see us in Christ. Let us be violent in one thing only: our desire to set up a Kingdom of peace - where all possess, and all freely give. May the strong exercise their strength on behalf of the weak, and may the weak not envy the strong, but, in serving them, serve their true Master. In the Spirit, let us judge all things, but let judgment begin at the house of God. In Christ's name, Amen.

Christians: if you only read one book this year...

Read Jim & Casper Go to Church. My roommate can tell you why.

I don't agree with all of Jim & Casper's observations. But if I only read books where I agreed with everything that was said, then I might as well not read books at all.

I agree with their main point, though: Jesus didn't come to this earth, live, die, and rise again so that we could have awesome church services. He came to reconcile us to God, and He has committed to us the ministry of reconciliation. So let's get out there and get started. The church service should be the fueling station for believers in their lives of service, not the rock concert that makes outsiders wish they could be as cool or as saved as we are.

Casper (the friendly atheist) had one profound question which could transform our lives if we let it: "Is this really what Jesus told you guys to do?" He is absolutely right that, though Christians often "do church" in similar ways, we are all over the map in regard to how we live out our faith. Sometimes it seems like our worship is not an expression of true faith, but a substitute for it, a pleasant routine.

At the end of Jim & Casper's journey, Jim asks: "What do you think about Christianity?" Casper's response is dead-on:

"I don't think I can answer that question because Christianity takes so many forms. It's like asking me, 'What do you think about people named Dave?' Each denomination, each church, each Christian basically has a version of Christianity."

So where did we go wrong? How can we all confess the Nicene Creed - that the God who made us is the very same God who became one of us, to bring us to Himself - and yet have such vastly different ideas of our mission in the world? Perhaps we need to recapture what orthodoxy means - for the word, simply translated means "right glory." Being orthodox is not about merely knowing the right things, or saying the right words, but about giving the proper glory to God. And how do we glorify God? I would point to the words of Christ Himself as He went out to death on the Cross:

"'Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him." We are called to live sacrificial lives; prosperity teaching or grasping after political power and influence have no place in the Church's witness. All that is a temptation of the Devil, just as it was when he showed Christ all the kingdoms of the earth. All that is the "theology of glory," which, impressive as it seems to us, will never finally last and will never win people to Christ. God's weakness is stronger than our strength, and His foolishness wiser than our wisdom. If we let our lives be shaped by the Cross, then we will see change in our churches and in our culture.

one of the more sensible things on gender i've read in a while

"...[S]setting up templates and saying this is what a man should be strikes me as an attempt to use a mist as a focal point. If you are a man and want to be “Biblically masculine” then here is what you must do.

Trust in Jesus and obey Him. Period.

You see, real men don’t waste a minute of their time or any portion of their energy worrying about their manliness. "

It's just like "whiteness." Since I have a good self-image (sometimes too good), I don't have to think about how great it is to be white. And insofar as I am leading, I don't have to worry about whether my leading is manly enough.

There are times to act, and times to be passive. The truest power is power under control.

And God is so masculine that we are all feminine before Him; yet He fights in order to nurture. It is good to rest under the shadow of His wings.

gender and the call to overseas missions (response in a blog discussion)

For context for the following, read Sarah Moermen's blog entry (& at least the last comment by A_A_Plewes). I was getting a little fired up here, but I believe these issues are worthy of further exploration, which I may do this weekend:

To A_A_Plewes:
Who is being "yanked" out of their "proper role" to go overseas? Sarah, because of her particular giftings, desires to serve in this way. Who are you to judge her motives?

There are reasons of prudential judgment why one might not want to go to the Congo as a single woman. But this is about discernment, not hard-and-fast rules. I would hope that the missions board would be willing to exercise flexibility, but at the same time I can appreciate them not wanting to put people at risk for victimization.

In a Muslim nation like Morocco, men would probably be better suited for missions than women. But that's not about proper roles, it's about cultural awareness - being "all things to all people," as Paul would say.

And why shouldn't a single man be "willing to structure his life around his wife's career goals"? Of course, no one should go to the Congo simply for the sake of marriage. If Sarah were being serious, rather than facetious, about wanting to find a husband so she can go overseas, she would be looking for someone who had giftings that would be suitable in another area of ministry. That way the two of them could compliment each other.

The callings of married and single people are different. I myself, though I am a man, will have to reassess my lifestyle in the city once, Lord willing, I have children. Not necessarily leave the city, but at least give my situation some thought. But, as Paul said, both unmarried men and women "care about the things of the Lord" - how they may be pleasing to Him (1 Cor. 7:32-35). That is our place. I believe that there are both single men and women who are called to be pleasing to Him in Africa. I can't speak about the Congo particularly; I can understand why there would be a concern about women being raped or otherwise exploited. My concern, however, is to defend the principle that single women are not in the same status as children. Rather, in most respects at least, they are in the same status as single men. Paul's contrast in 1 Cor. 7 between the reciprocal concern that married individuals have for each other and the focused vertical concern that single individuals have to be faithful to the Lord is illuminating here, I believe.

Was Amy Carmichael motivated by guilt and pity?

Though I strongly disagree with you, A_A_Plewes, especially with regard to singleness and gender, you raise issues worthy of discussion. There are many people out there who seek to motivate us by guilt and pity, and we need to watch out for such. I would like to discuss with you the role of the local vs. universal church further at some point, as it's something that has been on my heart lately.

the humbling of evangelicalism?

The Mystery Worshipper reports on New Life Church before and after Ted Haggard left. The first report seems to exemplify everything I find distasteful or flat out wrong with American evangelicalism, but the second report gives cause for hope. Hopefully, the Lord will not always have to use such dramatic means to teach humility.

I was talking with Bob the other night about Christian nationalism, and what it should look like in a world where the Great Commission is actually being realized: a world in which Christianity is no longer the property of the West. I am cautiously hopeful about the future - someday soon, American Christians may realize we are not the source of all missions efforts. Someday soon, we may realize that Christendom is dead, and bid good riddance to it.

But we can only renounce our "theology of glory"-like aspirations to power and respectability insofar as we have something to put in their place. Thankfully, God has not left us without a witness. The Christian community development movement offers to us an alternative model of church life, a model in which stewardship does not pertain simply to our money, but to our entire way of life.

What would change if we stopped being the church for the sake of the church and started being the church for the sake of the world?

These are the issues I believe we need to be talking about, and, by God's grace, these are the ones I plan to continue to raise. I'm wondering if I should start a small group to discuss them, with the aim of moving from theory to practice. I spend my days posting resources on community development to the UrbanMinistry.org wiki. So far, though, I haven't gotten much of a chance to read them, much less put them into practice.

I miss the after-school program. I miss service. May God grant me the strength to make a place for it in my life, even as I know He calls me to do.

moved by this

But God has chosen 
the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, 
and God has chosen
the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; 
and the base things of the world
and the things which are despised...
and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, 
that no flesh should glory in His presence.

But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, 
who became for us wisdom from God
and righteousness and sanctification and redemption
that, as it is written, "He who glories, 
let him glory in the LORD."

-1 Corinthians 1:27-31

what revival would not look like

Knowing that true revival is a work of repentance and renewal in which the Holy Spirit brings conviction of sin and awareness of God's holiness, here's what revival does not look like.

So sad that Christianity Today, a "magazine of evangelical conviction," did not cast a critical eye on these events at the Crystal Cathedral. Even sadder that Richard Mouw would be quoted in support of what had happened.

Evangelicalism is not what it used to be. But, despite all its faults, I realize I cannot run away into a confessionally Reformed enclave. I believe God still wants to renew evangelicals' and Pentecostals' focus on Christ, who "for the joy set before Him, endured the Cross, despising the shame." We must renounce everything that diminishes the scandal of the Cross - that is, the infinite cost of human sin. We must replace the cheap grace of "God loves you as you are" with the costly grace of "God died for you, so that He would make you like Himself." As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, "What has cost God dearly can never be cheap for us."

Baptism is not simply a response to a moving testimony, a way to rededicate your life to Christ. We are baptized into Christ's death, so that the life we live in the body by faith may no longer be ours, but His. We are baptized once, but live out our baptismal vows day by day.

why dr. elijah kim is in boston

"Cast your bread upon the waters, and it will return to you after many days."

I have to admit, as a Reformed person, Pentecostalism troubles me at times. But having heard Dr. Kim speak at the conference, I trust that, whatever other people from his tradition may believe, he knows that revival is a sovereign work of the Holy Spirit, bringing about repentance and changed lives, not something from a "fourth dimension" that we can tap into by our own will.

i remember this

Currently listening to: Reckoner

From the Leadership Session of the EGC's 2007 Intercultural Leadership Consultation: "Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, 'It is a dangerous thing for a preacher to experience success too early.' And that was my experience. So the Lord decided that my wife and I needed to go to school. We spent the next few years in the school of Baca, the valley of weeping."

From the Youth Ministry Session: "Teaching creates a space where obedience to truth is possible."

From the Going Deeper session on Social Justice: "The people of my generation are not looking for programs, but for role models."

our purposes vs. God's plan

"God often has to go to extreme measures, taking away our props, in order to get us off of our own glory-trail (thinking we’re “in control”) in order to give us the deeper happiness that he calls joy."

This seems to be a particularly appropriate quote considering some of the realizations that I've come to in the past few weeks. I've learned that God doesn't need to change your outward circumstances to shake you up; He has other ways of getting His message across.

FVers: your position on sola fide is unclear and problematic

Chris McCartney shows why.

The following quote is probably the key to his critique: "In the Covenant of Life, there was no monergistic act of God that guaranteed the reception of the blessings. If Adam had remained faithful to the Covenant, this would have been through the synergistic activity (which, like our sanctification, and like everything else that comes to pass, would have been forordained by God, but would also have involved Adam's genuine moral activity) by which Adam would have had the graciously promised blessings."

I've felt vaguely uneasy about the FV stance on the role of faith in Adam's pre-Fall relationship to God for some time, but couldn't articulate it so clearly. While I don't think that the FV are flaming heretics, their flashy claims to revise federal/covenant theology certainly haven't been a service to the Church.

Probably the saddest thing is that some of the statements of Rich Lusk, Steve Wilkins, James Jordan, and even Peter Leithart have helped to make N.T. Wright even more suspect within the Reformed world. And that is truly a tragedy, for, while the FVers are but a small faction within their tradition, N.T. Wright is one of the greatest contemporary Bible scholars, recognized as such by orthodox and unorthodox alike. If we ignore him because his statements contradict the WCF at a few points, we are placing ourselves even further on the road to irrelevance.

It may seem inconsistent to some that I'm harder on the FV than I am on Wright. But I think this makes perfect sense. After all, the FV proponents claim to be orthodox representations of the Reformed tradition, while also at times claim to be revising it. N.T. Wright is not part of the Reformed tradition, at least as that tradition is understood in America (OPC, PCA, etc.). His theological program has clearly defined ends - he wishes to overthrow Bultmannian existentialist readings of sola fide through use of the "New Perspective on Paul."

To condemn propositions from his writings in the same document which condemns FV teachings, as both the PCA and OPC have done, is a failure of discernment and of scholarship. Because of their different ecclesiastical status, Wright and the FVers affect American Reformed churches differently. As an outsider, Wright can be studied with profit by our church leaders, just as theologians like Alexander Schemann can be. By contrast, the FVers are insiders trying to change the rules of the game, at least subtly, by means of rhetoric.

If they were calling for a revision of the confession, I might be more willing to consider what they have to say. I too am uncomfortable with the way the sovereignty of God and the decrees seem to control the presentation of the material in the WCF, although I would revise the text in a more "Lutheran," rather than FV, direction. But if they want to keep the confession we have, while changing the way it is taught to the lay people (as Section V suggests), then I become deeply uneasy.

As I have said before, the PCA has treated FV proponents horribly, and the GA-approved statement is a shoddy piece of work - rehashed Southern Presbyterianism, rather than serious Biblical theology. The general failure of the PCA to critique its accretion of traditions is a profound problem, and once which will only become more damaging as time passes. However, the FV do not present a real alternative to the PCA's "preserve the status quo" stance. Their preference for rhetoric over "scholastic distinction" runs the risk of confusing things that should never be confused. If their statement actually makes Adam's faith in God before the Fall, in a condition of innocence, univocal with our faith in Christ as Redeemer, then they are promulgating a new form of predestinarian semi-Pelagianism, in which we are justified not by the imputed righteousness of Christ but by the works of righteousness which God has decreed that we perform.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux on the Word of God

"For who dare compare the sayings of men with what God is said to have said? The Word of God is living and effective (Heb 4:12). His voice is a voice of magnificence and power (Ps 28:4). "He spoke and they were made" (Ps 148:5). He said, "Let there be light, and there was light" (Gn 1:3). He said, "Be converted" (Ps. 89:3), and the sons of men have been converted. So the conversion of souls is clearly the work of the divine voice, not of any human voice. Even Simon son of John (Jn 21:15), called and appointed by the Lord to be a fisher of men, will toil in vain all night and catch nothing until he casts his net at the Lord's word. Then he can catch a vast multitude (Jn 21:15ff.; Mt 4:19).

Would that we, too, might cast our net at this word today and experience what is written, "Behold he will give his voice the sound of power" (Ps 67:34). If I lie (Jn 8:44), that is my own fault. It will perhaps be judged to be my own voice and not the voice of the Lord if I seek what is my own and not what is Jesus Christ's (Phil 2:21). For the rest, even if I speak of the righteousness of God (Ps 57:2) and seek God's glory (Jn 8:50, 5:44), I can hope that what I say will be effective only if he makes it so. I must ask him to make this voice of mine a voice of power.

I admonish you, therefore, to lift up the ears of your heart to hear this inner voice, so that you may strive to hear inwardly what is said to the outward man. For this is the voice of magnificence and power (Ps 28:4), rolling through the desert (Ps 28:8), revealing secrets, shaking souls free of sluggishness."

"I was not disobedient to the divine vision."

These words, from Paul's testimony before King Agrippa, came to mind tonight as I was thinking about what the Lord has been doing to direct the path of my life. Acts 26 - read the whole chapter.

Prophets - whether Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, or Paul - all have a call from the Lord, in which He gives them three things that are needful for their ministry: a profound sense of their own sin, a deep burden for the people to whom they will speak, and a firm conviction that the Spirit will give them the resources necessary to speak the Word of the Lord into those people's situation.

And, of course, in the New Covenant, all God's people are prophets (Num. 11:29). This doesn't mean that we condemn the world, as if they were being sent off into exile, but that we tell them how they can be redeemed from exile and reconciled in Christ.

sovereignty & responsibility

Thy people shall be willing
                 in the day of Thy power."

~~~~~~

Lord, in the dance,
I am pleased
that I should follow
and You should lead.

Your Spirit prompts my steps
and gives me grace with which to move.
My heart is caught up in Your pulse;
my need fulfilled within Your joy.

"God's word does not need any help"

Here's the kind of Bible I want - not as a substitute for my current Bible, but as a supplement:

A Bible with no chapter or verse divisions, no study helps, preferably in single column, thus with enough whitespace for me to write my own notes in the margin.

As for translation, I'm torn between the NKJV (which sounds better), the NASB (which is most "literal"), and the ESV (which uses good texts while sounding better than the NASB, but which is very conservative on women's roles). The RSV would be a good choice, except for its liberal interpretive decisions at several points.

Maybe if we had a Bible that was sort of like McLuhan Unbound - a bunch of separate little books (or pamphlets) kept together in a box. And, like McLuhan Unbound, they could be color-coded.

That would actually be a substantiative addition to the overcrowded Bible market.
So tell me: does something like that already exist?

[Post inspired in part by High Fructose Scripture at Out of Ur.]

before the night closes on my eyes

What I love about knowing Christ is that it is not the work of a moment, but of a life. Always when I think I know what it means to be justified, to leave off my idea of whom I am & accept God's declaration of me as a restored sinner, beloved son, I am struck once again with how little I know. Always I am struck by how much I still hold on to.

Lord, I would break myself
to let your grace fall like rain.

another thing I wish I had known....

The Shekhinah Presence of God is referenced using feminine pronouns.

James Jordan is surely right to view woman's role in the created order as that of glorification. However, the kind of glory we are talking about is not frills, not merely the icing on the cake, something we could as well do with. This glory is weight; it is both beautiful and terrifying. If we see an analogy between the role of woman and the that of the Holy Spirit, we must remember that the role of the Spirit is no small thing: for the Spirit glorifies the Son by taking what is His and giving it to God's people (John 16:14), convicting the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment (John 16:8).

In thinking of the glory of woman, I am reminded of C.S. Lewis' statement in That Hideous Strength: "The beauty of the female is the root of joy to the female as well as to the male, and it is no accident that the goddess of Love is older and stronger than the god."

Later: when I have time, I hope to write something about what I have been learning about the meaning of the word "helper" in Gen. 2, as it is in Hebrew.

the Reformed aren't the only people who believe in covenants, you know...

Fortuitously, I'm not the only one who's been thinking lately about covenant theology and the Jerusalem Council.

I don't believe the rise of Messianic Judaism in recent decades is an accident. While we Gentiles may fear that some of their formulations stray close to Judaizing, we can no longer ignore the question that they raise: What portions of the Law remain binding on Jews who come to faith in Christ? Is there a distinction between Jew and Gentile, not in the matter of how they are saved (for all are saved by faith in the Messiah), but in how they show this faith to the world?

I cannot believe that the Mosaic Law was given as a test or a trap, or as a hypothetical job description under a "Covenant of Works" which only the God-Man could fulfill. If it was such, then why was there provision made within the covenant for the forgiveness of sins? Of course, as the book of Hebrews states, that provision (through sacrifice) was proleptic, only effective because the Messiah would sacrifice Himself for His people - and for the whole world that would believe upon Him.

I find much to love in Martin Luther's thought - his insistence upon the merit of Christ alone as our righteousness, his firm distinction between the theology of glory and the theology of the Cross, his wonderful meditation on the "Freedom of a Christian." However, I recoil from his animosity toward the Mosaic Law, and toward the NT passages which seem to echo its spirit, like the book of James. It almost seems as if he plays God off against God - the unknown God of predestination vs. the God of the Gospel who is the justifier of all, the God of Mt. Sinai vs. the God of Calvary.

From the Jewish perspective, the Law is a gift, a sign of God's favor. It does not structure the lives of those who follow it simply in order to burden them, but to impart a kind of poetry to ordinary life. The attitude that all of life is worship was Jewish before it was Reformed.

Of course, the Law can become a burden, when it is abused. This is Paul's argument in Romans 10. That which is good, because it reveals the righteousness of God in the face of human sinfulness, can become evil when it is used to "establish one's own righteousness" (Romans 10:2). People created to be faithful servants believe themselves to be wage earners, and so lose their reward.

Paul never says the Mosaic Law is in itself sinful. On the contrary, he says it is righteous and good. In passages like that discussed above he shows the dynamic of human depravity by which one of God's good gifts (like the trees in the garden were one of His good gifts) can be used for evil, for exclusion and the furtherance of pride. And in other passages he, like the writer of Hebrews, shows that the Mosaic Law is incomplete. It serves a pedagogical function - it is, he says, "a tutor to lead us to Christ." And the typological manner in which it does so is clear.

We in the Reformed community believe that since the Mosaic Law serves a pedagogical function, it has ceased to be binding on us in the New Covenant. However, this becomes problematic the more we study the Mosaic Law, since close study of it shows that the moral, ceremonial, and civil are all interwoven together. We see this especially with regard to the Sabbath, and Christians throughout the ages have split churches over differences in observance of the fourth commandment.

To the Messianic Jews, the mitzvot (613 commands of the Torah, as explicated in the past 2000 years of Jewish tradition) are still binding, at least in part, on people who are Jewish by birth. I, as a Reformed person, react negatively to this contention as soon as I hear it. But now that I'm more aware of the distinction that Jewish tradition makes between Jew and Gentile, as with the concept of the Noahide laws, I am less certain of my stance. If they separated themselves from Gentiles on the grounds of ritual purity, then they would be guilty of Judaizing. But if they find the mitzvot to be helpful in their worship of God, a valuable part of "the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship" of which Paul speaks (Romans 9:4), then I want to be careful not to condemn them too quickly.

As more Jews come to a faith in Jesus as their Messiah, our thoughts must turn to Paul's outlining of redemptive history in Romans 10-11. "For if their rejection mean[t] the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?" (Rom. 11:15) I believe, as many have before me, that this age will end with the conversion of the Jews. If this is true, we need to make sure our covenant theology can handle the event.

I am waiting for the Day.

request as i head for sleep

...pray for the peace of the city, and those whom I know within it.

prayer, 9.1.07

Lord, I pray that You would make me
                  more mindful of You,
                  more thankful for Your mercy,
                  more grateful for Your provision.
    Let me learn grace: that what cost You dearly
                  can never be cheap to us.

I thank You that when we are faithful, you remain
                          faithful:
                     You cannot deny Yourself.
I thank You that Your Word is true,
                   Your mercies are new every morning,
                   You have provided us with everything
                     necessary for life and godliness.

I pray that I would learn to live within Your Word,
                   to rely upon Your grace,
                   to welcome Your Spirit in.
When I speak, let my words be leavened
                   with the Word of God.
Let me be humble in my knowledge
    and gentle in my judgment:
    slow to speak, and quick to listen.
Let me share my heart with others
    as You have Yours with me.

Lord, I pray that you would free me from
             all fear of Hell,
             all questioning of Your justice,
             all ingratitude in the face of providence.
Let me see You as You are:
    wholly just and wholly merciful.

Let me trust in the mystery of salvation - 
     that You call all sinners to repent,
        and yet are the author of repentance;
     that You have made sufficient pardon for all,
        and yet apply pardon to Your elect;
     that You ordain all things,
        but are not the author of evil.
And if, in my weakness, it is Your will
     that I should continue
        for a time yet with this lack of light,
      do not let my flesh use it as a barrier to fellowship,
and do not let Satan have reason to boast.

Give me strength for the day,
      that I may stand firm, even in loss,
      that I may speak a word in season to the needy,
      that I may be a comfort to the discouraged.

All things are Yours, Lord, and You give them freely;
teach me to hold my possessions rightly,
that I may represent You to the world.

Righteous Father! that the world may know You, come
     to us in Christ newly each day,
strengthen us in Your Spirit.

I am a stranger in this world; 
    help me teach people Your hope,
      Your promise of the world's remaking:
    And guide us into Your church,
    and bind us into one,
and bring our love to perfection.

I want change now; teach me Your patience,
to bear with the bruised reed,
    the mustard seed, the tiny cloud -
until we flourish in Your reign of grace.
I am waiting for the Day.
                            Amen.

scripture, 9.1.07

UPDATE: I originally wrote this entry on waking up in the middle of the night, and so made a hopeless hash of the pronouns. Hopefully, it makes more sense now.

This was both encouraging and convicting:

"'Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom;
Let not the mighty man glory in his might;
Nor let the rich man glory in his riches;
But let him who glories glory in this,
That he understands and knows Me,
That I am the Lord, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and 
righteousness in the earth.
For in these I delight,' says the Lord" 
     (Jeremiah 9:23-24)

"'Do not learn the way of the Gentiles;
Do not be dismayed by the signs of heaven,
For the Gentiles are dismayed at them.
For the customs of the peoples are futile...
A wooden idol is a worthless doctrine...
But the Lord God is the true God;
He is the living God and the everlasting King.
At His wrath the earth will tremble,
And the nations will not be able to endure His indignation.'"
      (Jer. 10:2-3a, 8, 10)

prayer

O God, Maker of breath and blood
And all Your gifts, to You I call - 
As You are called my Father,
so may I be Your son.

On earth as it is now in heaven,
in Your image work Your will:
Let Your reign be visible,
let our works now testify.

Provide for us all that is needful
for this day's labor alone.
We will not worry for tomorrow
knowing it comes from Your hand.

In our trials, do not leave us;
let the testing prove us strong.
Keep us separate from all evil
as we confront it with Your truth.
May we not fall to despair;
in Christ, we overcome the world.

Our Provider, You are holy - 
Your full contentment makes You gracious.
Let us give as we are given,
and forgive as we stand in Christ.
Grant that we may see Your glory;
seal us for the Day You come.

Being Evangelical - The Centrality of the Word, pt. V: Beginning the Dialogue

Not only the Church's task of interpretation, but also its task of proclamation, must be carried on in community. What I have said therefore, is not the end of discussion, but its beginning. Now I give the floor to my readers:

Where should we begin in teaching about the Bible - what stories, what truths, what persons, what promises, and what laws should every believer be familiar with in our society? Which of these should we use in our witnessing? Which of these are particularly relevant to encourage those of us called to ministry (of any kind)?

yesterday, i gave thanks for justification

Because, as Dr. Peter Leithart said once, justification means we don't have to fear the past. And, I would add, it also gives us hope for the future - knowing that we are already seated in the heavenly realms with Christ.

This has been the most difficult year of my life yet, in some ways. (Counting this year as having begun last May, when I graduated from college.) But I recognize that there is a special joy in being finally an adult, despite adulthood's challenges.

Sometimes lately my prayers feel like they've been hitting the ceiling, but today I've been encouraged by the knowledge that I am united to Christ - that my life is hidden with Christ, and that it is no longer I who live, but Christ in me. I need to remember that all the time; then perhaps my feeling of obligation toward God, as if He were a begrudging master, will turn into the delight of love.

We have more students - significantly more - and I struggle to find simple activities for them all to do that don't require much supervision or materials. I am continually thankful for people's prayers and sorry that I don't pray for others as frequently as I ought. I should say that my attitude toward my work (or service, as we are to call it) has changed greatly and I believed I have learned and grown a great deal during my time here. I don't feel upset anymore that I'm not doing what I thought I would be doing; I only wish I could do a better job at what I am called to be doing now.

That's why my greatest request is for more energy, more strength, more patience, and more grace (but especially more energy). Some people are energized by teaching, I think; I just feel drained. If I had known what I was getting myself into here, I never would have done it. Yet that's how the Lord's plan works - I don't think any of us would make the choices which we make did we know their immediate consequences. But to bring this post full circle, that's why we need to keep our faith in God's justification - the knowledge that He has already approved our works, as Ecclesiastes says - and so the "golden chain" will not be broken. He who has begun a good work will be faithful to complete it, and our labor is not vain in the Lord.

the error of paedocommunion occurs...

...because people have so greatly delayed catechization and admission to the Lord's Supper. Admission to "church membership," sadly, has become like a second sacrament of confirmation in many orthodox Presbyterian churches.

I agree with the advocates of paedocommunion that baptism is the sacrament of entrance into the church, incorporation into the mystical Body. However, I contest that all the baptized are to partake of the Lord's Supper by virtue of their baptism alone. The two sacraments are not identical; each has its own distinct properties. Whereas we do not act in our baptism, but are acted upon, the Lord's Supper has the property t
Ihat the Baptists would give to baptism - it is a public declaration of our faith, as well as a reception of Christ, enabling us to continue in His fellowship. As such, one must be able to give a profession of faith before admission to the Table.

This said, yet I do not want the nature of faith to be intellectualized. Even relatively young children should be able to make a credible profession of trust in Christ before the church and the elders. In this way they make the grace signified and offered in baptism their own. John Calvin thought this could be done at the age of ten - I believe that if the catechism was simple enough, and focused enough on the free grace of Christ as offered in the Gospel, than children younger than ten (I wouldn't want to set a particular age as the limit) would be able to do so as well.

Two final clarifications of my position: As to the exegetical question of how one reads 1 Cor. 11, I agree that the examination required is a matter of seeing whether one is in union with fellow believers, not the introspective scrutiny of one's worthiness into which it has often degenerated. Such introspection turns the Supper into a work of duty rather than of gladness, and changes its focus from God's act for us to our own moral state. From such, the paedocommunionists rightfully turn away. However, their proposed solution goes too far - Michael Horton, as quoted on this blog, presents a more balanced view.

Finally, I recognize that, in this fallen world, some - the mentally ill and handicapped - may never be able to make a public profession of their faith. They, if baptized, should not be excluded from the grace of the Lord's Table. However, efforts should be made to see that they profess faith to the best of their ability; often they are capable of confessing Christ more clearly than the educated, since they lack our ability to dissimulate. Though I would urge the Church to admit such people to table fellowship, I would not want this arrangement to be made the pretext for admitting infants generally, just as our faith that people (such as the thief on the Cross) can be saved without baptism in no way causes us to deny the sacrament's necessity in ordinary circumstances.

more on election

(A response to the comments on Xon's Eph. 1:4 discussion.)

So, to use your example, God's foreordaining of the time when you would marry your wife is an expression of His love for you - but it is in the realm of common grace, whereas His election of you to salvation is special grace. Furthermore, I might want to distinguish His decree that you would be saved from His decree of the manner in which you would be saved (the circumstances) - the former decree makes you a member of that body for whom Christ died (particular redemption - though you are not justified until the time at which you actually come to faith in Christ), while the latter decree is enacted through the agency of second causes (though the Spirit must be working within the preached Word, the sacraments, etc. for them to be made effectual to salvation).

My concern with all of this is that the doctrine of election, as confessionally formulated, has the purpose, not of rendering our system logically consistent, but of removing the possibility that we could boast it was something "in us" that caused us to be saved. Theoretically, you could believe that God foreordained everything and not believe in effectual calling or regenerating grace at all. You could believe that God had foreordained that some people would go to a church or be born in it, receive baptism, hear the Word, and in their own strength believe it. The doctrine of election needs to be distinguished from God's general decrees in order to make the proper distinction between the fourfold states of man, specifically the second and third states: the will's bondage before regeneration, and its freedom, though still struggling against the "body of sin", afterward. God foreordains the acts of all people in both states; however, people in the former state cannot transition on their own strength into the latter. They must have been individually elected to hear the Word and receive it gladly for that to happen.

on baptism, the forgiveness of sins, and related matters

Thanks for the comments on my FoC post. I am less uncomfortable with linking baptism and the forgiveness of sins than I am with linking to the renewal of the will. That isn't as "metaphysical," because it's about a change in God's attitude toward individuals rather than a change in their nature, like the freeing of the will would be.

Dr. Garver, your third paragraph is interesting to me - it shows how the Lutheran and Calvinist confessional systems have a different "flow" to them. We confess many of the same things, but since we lay the accent in different places, we end up with some significant points of disagreement. Justification and the removal of God's wrath is important, of course, but I don't see it as being what effects the change in the nature of the will. I believe Calvinist orthodoxy would say that the renewal of the will flows from union with Christ, as does justification itself.

Here's how I see baptism, at least right now:

it is an enacted Word, a proclamation of the Gospel, just as the Word preached is. As such, it proclaims the forgiveness of sins, but one must have faith in this proclamation. Apart from faith, neither the preached Word nor the sacraments are effective. Of course, one who knows that faith is a gift of God alone, seeking to be self-justified, could ask why God did not "automatically" give him or her faith at the time of baptism. But to ask this goes against the command of God, and the economy of salvation - for, as it says in the FoC Epitome under the head of Election, we are not to pry into the secret things of God. Though we are utterly dead in transgressions and sins, such that God must act upon us to be saved, He acts upon us in such a manner that we ourselves are acting, cooperating with grace temporally though not logically. Thus, we are called to have faith that the Word proclaimed in baptism (or in passages of the Gospel (in the Lutheran sense) such as Eph. 1:3-14) is true of us particularly - that we have an interest in Christ. If we fail in this faith, than we will be held culpable.

This, of course, is only possible because our inability to believe the Gospel is a sin like our inability to keep the Law; it is a sin of moral inability, not metaphysical inability. We cannot blame God for not exercising the invisible operations of the Spirit to such an extent that any individual is regenerated (in the Calvinistic, not the Lutheran sense). The spiritual blessings which such reprobate individuals receive simply by having been baptized and incorporated into the visible church should be enough to save them - since, outwardly, they have heard the same Word preached and received the same sacraments as the elect, who infallibly persevere.

It seems to me the dispute between Lutherans and Calvinists (and within Calvinist circles - as in the FV controversy) is not over whether God saves using means. We are all in agreement that He does. The dispute is over whether there is a different intra-personal phenomenological quality to the experience of the elect as opposed to the experience of those who will not finally be saved. I assume Lutherans, since they talk about people losing a true faith (and thus believe perseverance is not of the essence of true faith), believe that there is not.

FV proponents, such as Wilkins, come close to agreeing to this, it seems. I really question how they can sustain the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints in their system - at least as that doctrine is formulated in the Calvinistic confessions. I don't think that they believe it possible to have true assurance of salvation, since all the things to which they point people for assurance are things which both the elect and the non-elect within the church have in common.

I remain convinced that there is, at least for some of the elect, a phenomenological difference in their experience of Christ and of grace - that they have been given a true gift of assurance. This, of course, does not come apart from means - as the "enthusiasts" mentioned in the FoC would say - but it comes when the Spirit works through means in such a way that they are given a vision of the glory of Christ in the Gospel from which comes a firm conviction of their own interest in His redemption. This, I believe, is what someone like Edwards would say. However, it is important, as Ryle said at the end of his book on Holiness, to state that not all those who are truly saved have such assurance, nor, for reasons known only to God, will all of them have it in their lifetimes.

Thus, the border between the elect and the non-elect in the church is stark from God's perspective, but hazy from ours. This is what makes a "judgment of charity" necessary in our dealings with others, even if we can have full confidence in the words of the Gospel as they are directed toward ourselves. We are not called to judge other people's election - to make the church one of "visible saints" only.

I believe the classic Reformed view is the best way to preserve the tensions between God's economy of salvation, as made visible in the covenant (using the word in the sense most common in Scripture, not that of classical federal theology), and His hidden decrees (which still must be distinguished in kind - election is in Christ, and thus is a gracious act toward sinners, whereas He foreordains the reprobate to become such according to second causes).

The FV is salutary insofar as it stresses a side of the classic Reformed view which may be de-emphasized today. However, its proponents do so improperly, removing distinctions (Law/Gospel, the pre-Adamic covenant (not necessarily a covenant of works), Christ's merit, the visible/invisible church) which will ultimately prove necessary to preserve the graciousness of the Gospel.

The Lutherans, like the FV proponents, also lack distinctions present in classical Reformed theology. However, God be praised, their doctrine developed in such a way that the graciousness of the Gospel - as proclaimed by Luther - has been preserved. The cost for them has been that their system is in conflict with itself, as I said in the post below - what they say about Election contradicts in part what they say about Free Will. (This problem seems quite similar to that encountered by Augustinian groups within the Catholic tradition, such as the Jansenists. They want to preserve monergism, but also say that God is gracious to all in the church in the same manner.) I am more comfortable with the Lutheran system than I am with the FV; however, I find their statements at several points, intended to absolve God of all responsibility for the non-salvation of some, to undermine the doctrine of divine sovereignty.

one more theology post for the night

A response to this quote: (You may need the context)

3. Wilkens and his supporters argue that this is a both-and situation; what he is saying is true of church members who will not inherit glory, and what the Confession says of church members who will inherit glory is also true. I am arguing that it is in fact an either-or situation. When Paul wrote the Book of Ephesians, he spoke of election with reference either to those who are destined to glory only (the WCF position) or to all church members, regardless of their end. Surely we will all agree that in Eph. 1:4 (and similar passages), Paul is relating divine election to salvation, so Eph. 1:4 is not a use of election that belongs to a different doctrinal context. Either Paul is saying that those who are "saints" and "faithful in Christ" are chosen unto glory, or he is saying that church members are elected into the covenant, some to be saved through perseverance and others to be lost via apostasy. You cannot have it both ways, as if Eph. 1:4 is directed to two different kinds of readers. Is Eph. 1:4 is directed, as Wilkens says, to church members who enter into glory and to those who will not, or is written only with reference to true believers who can thus be assured of glory? This question yields two different doctrines of election. I maintain that the Westminster Standards teach one doctrine -- Paul is telling true believers that God elected them unto glory -- and Wilkens teaches another doctrine -- Paul is telling true and false believers that they are elected into covenant membership and privilege. We might go on to debate the correct interpretation of Eph. 1:4, but my point is that Wilkens' doctrine and the Confession's doctrine are fundamentally different. If one is correct, the other is in error, since Paul is making either one point or the other. As I indicated above, this is true not merely of Eph. 1:4, but of Paul's use of election throughout his epistles.

Well, in fact, I think the Apostle Paul writes his letters the same way you or I write them in ordinary life; he does not write them only to a select group out of the larger group he mentions in his greeting. He writes to them all, of facts that are generally true, but with one proviso - one which is in not true in general discourse, but which is implicit in all the language of Scripture. This is the condition of faith on the part of the hearer.

And this of course is a deep mystery for it is faith by which we are justified - such that, if you have faith (in the Biblical sense, which embraces the whole Christ, not merely His benefits), then you are elect...and yet it is that election which means you are able to have faith in the first place. However, one cannot know of God's election beforehand; one must have a vital encounter with the grace of God as revealed in the Gospel, and then it will become clear. As it says in the hymn, "I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew...that He was seeking me." That is the only way out of the infinite regress.

Again, it does not surprise me that it is so difficult for orthodoxy to be maintained on these points of doctrine. Just as in the realm of Christology, we are treading on the borders of the mysteries of God. Any attempt to "simplify" things either way (such as I believe I see in both the TR and FV approaches) will eventually lead to error.

I only hope that I'm representing the truth correctly myself, though I know I'm not yet able to express it clearly. Consider this my own effort to continue my theological education in public - though in my case, the endeavor is less dangerous, since I can't be thrown out of a church office for it.

UPDATE after the jump; I thought I needed to clarify my position from a few other angles.

Clarification One: (a response to Sarah F., who said she hadn't thought before about the context of the Apostle Paul's statement here, more specifically how there would be non-believers in the audience) I do think that he intended to teach about things that were [only] true for believers [in the ultimate sense], but he wasn't writing only to believers. The funny thing is, though, of course, the thing that makes the difference between believers and unbelievers is that believers, well, believe it when Paul writes such things to them and unbelievers don't, though they may seem to for a time. [Thus, we don't have to interpret this passage through the grid of either corporate election or the "judgment of charity." Like all Gospel statements, it describes things which are objectively true of those who believe in them but which are only believed by those who have been effectually called. The problem we see here is seen in all the Scripture passages where spiritual benefits are described - it just seems more acute in this case since those benefits are explicitly linked to election. But since election cannot be separated from the work of Christ (and, in fact, this passage states that election is "in Christ"), the problem is the same in any case.]

Clarification Two: (a response to the commenters on the post I linked above who thought that Eph. 1:4 was referring to "corporate election," (in which I do believe, but which I cannot believe is being taught in this passage) and, in fact, did not think it would be necessary to have any texts teaching individual election) I actually think it is a tremendously bad thing to view individual election to glory as a "good and necessary consequence" of divine sovereignty. After all, Catholics could regard election in such a way - they just would view it as working itself out in time through the means of the Catholic sacramental system.

The Reformation doctrine of election is of an election "in Christ," an election which can also be described as knowledge, in the Biblical sense. It is something intimate, something directed toward individuals since "before the foundation of the world" (as Eph. 1:4 (in the classical reading, which I believe to be correct) teaches.

I get deeply uncomfortable when people say that God predestines people to salvation in the same manner in which He foreordains all events. The latter does not have to be a gracious process at all - it generally employs only second causes, whereas the former is gracious from first to last, since that redemption which is decreed by the Father is effected by the Son and applied by the Spirit.

So, yes, it does matter how you read Eph. 1:4, and I think it is a confessional issue, though I wouldn't have argued it as Phillips did. But then again, I suppose I'm more "Lutheran" than the FV proponents who are generally supralapsarian, it seems.

Israel is Egypt

So lately Peter Leithart's been elaborating on how Israel is Egypt in at least some parts of the NT, and what this means for our interpretation of Luke's Gospel: i.e., "Out of Egypt I called my Son." I never thought of it this way before, but it makes sense. As he said in an earlier post, Egypt was in fact the place of safety for Jesus and his family, because national Israel was led at the time by one of the worthless shepherds of which Ezekiel speaks.

Furthermore, this usage of "Egypt" for Israel was perhaps not unique to Luke, since Paul also uses a foreign nation to represent national Israel in Galatians 4.

I imagine this identification of Israel with Egypt began after Christians were first excluded from Temple worship, and began to see the continuation of Temple practice as inconsistent with the finality of Christ's sacrifice (an understanding reflected in the details mentioned in the Gospel accounts of His death - i.e., the veil of the Temple being torn in two). In this light, Christ's death could be understood as an exodus (the word is, in fact, used in this way in th NT): an exodus not only from bondage to sin, as it is often individualistically understood within the Protestant tradition (particularly its revivalist elements), but an exodus from the types and shadows of Temple worship (which keep people under bondage to the elements - in the case, the recurring seasons (Gal. 4:3-5, 10) into the new Kingdom of God.

Of course, we shouldn't spiritualize this Kingdom:

it was understood by the early Christian to interpenetrate this world, to exist in tension between the already and the not-yet. It was, to a large part, constituted by the liturgical practice of the Church, which, it has been argued, owes a great deal to the symbolism of the Temple liturgy. The striking difference, however, is that the worship of the Church centers upon the Eucharist - upon participation in Christ's sacrifice, which is both final and effectual in a way that the OT sacrifices could not be. It is not only effectual for the remission of sins, but for the renewal of humanity - as Irenaeus said, it is the "medicine of immortality."

Of course, a persecuted church could understand the NT in a way which is hardly comprehensible to us here in the West (though our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world have often found it strikingly appropriate to their situation). They have no problem applying the perspective of the Book of Revelation to their situation - no problem seeing how it shows the Church continually being renewed and reconstituted through the Eucharistic affirmation of its eschatological hope, which is sustained in the midst of persecution. I would argue that only a church which has become comfortable in the present can read Revelation largely as a prediction of the future.

For us moderns, whose context is so different (so much better from a worldly perspective) than that of the early Christians, reading the NT in its 1st-century context is infinitely rewarding, but difficult. This is why we need people like Leithart and Wright, who use their scholarly expertise in the service of the orthodox Church. In this way, we take steps toward what I called recently "theology on the offensive" - using the insights of the historical-critical approach without its corrosive modernist skepticism.

Historical-critical approaches must be taken seriously by orthodox Christians not simply as an apologetic threat, but as a potential source of insight (once their arguments are recast in a context where the composition of the Biblical books is not simply a matter of individuals and their flawed judgment/will to power). To deny this is practically to deny the human authorship of the Bible, as if it came down from heaven fully formed. In fact, I am increasingly convinced that God intended the Bible to be "more than the sum of its parts": more than a collection of propositions which can be atomized, analyzed, and then systematized. The Scripture is a true Word of God, and is the ultimate ground for any true knowledge of God; however, it is not the Word of God in the same sense that Christ is the Word of God. We know of God what He has deemed it needful for us to know, and this He has revealed to us over time. The result is a heterogenous mixture of texts - to advance in understanding of them, and thus in understanding of God, is one of the Church's chief tasks until Christ returns. It is understandable if we can learn more from a contextual reading of the books of Scripture than we could learn from a simple word study on any given topic. I have a feeling it'll be a while before a systematic theology can be written that really does justice to the insights of Biblical theology. Of course, it is unfortunate that in Reformed circles, practically speaking, we need such a theology today - or all the people, like Leithart, who are willing to look at things "from below" (the perspective of Biblical theology) will get called heretics, and there will be calls to run them out of the confessional denominations.

A topic to return to: Paul's polemic against Second Temple Judaism, and how the different strata of the Pauline corpus (i.e. Galatians (which I think early) vs. Romans (late)) may show increasing subtlety in the Old Covenant/New Covenant contrast he draws. Also a further question - is the book of Hebrews earlier or later in apostolic thought than the contrast which is one of the primary foci of the book of Romans? Right now, I'd say earlier, although the author of Hebrews shows more awareness of Hellenistic Jewish thought than does Paul in his writings, and thus adds a different dimension to the picture.

reflections after reading "the secret message of Jesus"

I remember a conversation I had at the beginning of my time in Boston with Aaron from Azuza Pacific. At that time I laid out my expectation of greater doctrinal unity among Christians before Christ returns, and he questioned it, saying that action would come before we got everything figured out, if such a thing is even possible, or in God's will. And I argued back, quoting the passage about the Spirit guiding the Church into all truth, but now I think I see his point.

I sense that the next hundred years - if Christ does not return first - will be a time of necessary danger for our faith. Our foundations have already been shaken (since the 1700s, etc., etc.) Now I sense we're gathering for a countercharge, even as the world seems blackest. And I anticipate that the countercharge will make itself known in ethics and in Body life prior to any great doctrinal reconciliation. This movement will be from the bottom up, not the top down, and it'll be messy, even as the Reformation was. God willing, though, we live in a different age than the Reformers, and fellow Christians can dispute without bloodshed.

Perhaps Athanasius once again will save the world. I'm currently re-reading his On the Incarnation, and, as always, it's provoking me to rethink fundamentally how I understand the Faith.

I think his vision of reconciliation between God and humanity - his account of what Christ came to do - is deeper, broader, and richer than the typical account given in both Protestant and Catholic circles (and, I would guess, than the modern Orthodox account, despite their veneration of Athanasius as one of the chief saints. After all, all Christians claim to honor Jesus, yet we've done a fair amount to diminish the power of His teachings.)

Have we in the Church (all branches of it, though I speak mostly to Protestants, since I know them best, being one myself) unwittingly buried one of our greatest treasures - a reading of Paul's reading of what Christ came to accomplish that is more subtle and comprehensive in scope than the narrowly logical approach taken by Anselm? For Athanasius, like the Bible itself (as McLaren points out), deals mainly in images, but we Protestants have all too frequently thought with only one, and that one rationalized into a system of exchange.

I'm beginning to think that the judicial-economic metaphor Anselm developed, which has become nearly the only metaphor used by many Protestants today (such that many wouldn't even call it a metaphor, but rather the plain truth of what Christ did), is not the most important metaphor in the Bible, and not even the one on which the NT authors lay the most stress. Rather, I think the most important metaphor is the one expressed in such Pauline statements as "If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation." Behind justification lies union with Christ.

(Excursus: Union with Christ is unobservable, and is on the side of the 100% God - it is the outworking of regeneration, which God initiates. Justification comes with confession of sin and faith in Christ - the actions of the 100% man, which are inseparable from the 100% God. The two go together, even as do the natures of Christ or the divine/human character of Scripture - but, in all these areas, the divine element must be in the "first place" logically, even if chronologically and ontologically the two are simultaneous.)

What if the work of Christ is more importantly a work of renewal, restoration, reconciliation, and recreation than an abstracted quid pro quo?

Still, Anselm is not to be wholly rejected. His work is invaluable within its scope. It's just that our contemporary atonement theory was fleshed out largely within the polemic context of the Reformation, yet today the concerns and needs of the Church are different. We've won the battles of the Reformation, in a sense: yes, I know that the Catholics have never renounced Trent, but the Reformational confessions have been formulated and adopted by many Christians, and the ideas in them have even infiltrated Catholicism to a certain extent. (Thus, I have confidence that the Reformational solas can be preserved and can win the day even in the midst of the terminological rethinking that people like N.T. Wright - and the advent of Biblical theology - are forcing upon us. We can continue to articulate the truths of the Reformation, even if the language we have to do so in is different, and, as Wright would argue, truer to the language of the Bible, in its historical context.)

What the Reformers said was right and necessary in their day, but to preach the Gospel now exactly as they preached it then, is not to preach the Gospel in such a way that people now can hear it as "good news." In an age where people no longer have a conscious sense of God as a common cultural possession - much less a sense of God as righteous and terrible Judge - the burning question is not: "What must I do to be saved?" but rather "How do I find a love beyond myself?", or something similar. Our starting point with the modern pagans (those who have tried a form of Christianity, and found it wanting, and as such are the hardest to convert) must be much farther back than it was with the preachers of the 16-18^th centuries, the original "Evangelicals." A desire for reconciliation still exists, and will always exist, within the human heart, but the cultural conception of underlying reality having shifted, this reconciliation is no longer seen by most as a real possibility, and certainly is not viewed as being reconciliation with a personal God.

Even more so, the onus is not seen as being upon ourselves - that we have become aliens and strangers in the world because of our own selfishness and neglect of God. Rather, people seem to think that if the Divine exists, its obligation is to come to us at our beck-and-call. And since they think of Christ as having come for the very limited purpose (in their conception) of forgiving our sins (understood by them as our offenses against an arbitrary and outmoded moral code), they can't see Him as a manifestation of the Divine taking the first initiative and coming to us. Perhaps if they had read Athanasius, or the other Fathers, (or if we had done a better job of proclaiming the apostolic teaching) they would understand Christ's work more comprehensively as both the reconciliation of the world (a return to God's original purpose for creation) and a restoration of the Image of God in humanity (a return to His original purpose for us, as His delegated representatives in that creation).

"Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!"