paleoevangelical

What are the 10 most important events in Church history?

2012-01-31T17:24:00.000-06:00

What made this difficult (aside from my general ignorance) is how to deal with historical events that profoundly shaped Church history, but aren't distinctly Christian (Gutenberg's printing press, destruction of the Spanish Armada, invention of Twitter...). Another question is how to deal with major events that fall within the scope of the "Church," but had relatively little impact on the trajectory of the gospel. The Great Schism strikes me as the prime example.

I decided to narrow my list to explicitly Church-related events that affected the trajectory of the evangelical faith. And I'm not cheating off someone else's list (except for Wiki's help on dates), so I probably brain cramped and left out something big. Oh, and I'm starting with the close of the canon. Here goes...

Constantine's Edict of Milan legalizes Christianity (313)
Council of Nicea articulates biblical Christology (325)
Conversion of Augustine (387)
Publication of Luther's "95 Theses" (1517)
Conrad Grebel ("re-")baptizes George Blaurock in Zwingli's Zürich (1525)
Publication of Luther's German translation of the Bible (1534)
Council of Trent formalizes the RCC's rejection of the Reformation doctrine of justification (1547)
Publication of Calvin's Institutes (definitive Latin edition, 1559)
Separation of church/state and freedom of religion in Rhode Island (1637)
William Carey initiates the modern missions movement (1792)

Obviously, there's a big gap in the middle, and nothing from the past two+ centuries, though the next five that I left out would shift that a bit. It's probably difficult at this point to evaluate any event from the 20th century objectively, but which do you think is most likely to be included by a 23rd century evangelical historian?

What are the 10 most important events in the Bible?

2012-01-26T14:04:00.000-06:00

I've tossed that question out in a couple different pastoral contexts over the course of the last few months as an introduction to discussions of biblical theology. Obviously, one of the first questions you have to answer is, "What makes one event more important than another?"

The way I've chosen to answer that, at this point anyway, is that some events have broader implications on or stronger interrelationships with the rest of the Bible than others. Some events are also more pivotal in the development of God's purposes and with mankind.

So just for fun, here are my top ten (chronological order), with limited explanation. I'll save the supporting arguments for when y'all start shooting back.

Creation
Fall
Flood
Establishment and reiteration of the Abrahamic Covenant
Exodus
Establishment of the Davidic Covenant
Incarnation of Christ
Death and resurrection of Christ (I realize I'm cheating pretty badly here so I don't have to cut elsewhere.)
Pentecost
Second coming/final judgment/New Heavens & New Earth (Cheating again, though it wouldn't be quite so egregious if I were Amillennial.)

For what it's worth, the next five or so after these strike me seem fairly clear, but after that it gets quite a bit more fuzzy. Feel free to post your own list and make the case for why you'd include something I omitted.

America's Unique Climate for Exotic, Poisonous Hybrids of Christianity with Other Gods

2012-01-20T21:43:00.000-06:00

I just started reading a fun little book by Os Guinness, The Gravedigger File. I assume I must've heard about it in this interview (which is worth a listen just for Guinness' unedited comments on Franky Schaeffer), but I haven't reviewed it to confirm.

This is a fiction work—sort of a cross between something by Lewis and just about anything by Wells (start here or here). The basic idea is that Christianity has dug its own grave by contributing to the rise of secularization, which will ultimately doom the church. Or so the "Deputy Director of the Central Security Council" believes, as expressed in a series of memos to the newly-designated director of the Los Angeles Bureau.

It's outstandingly quotable—a Twitter treasure trove. But the passage that's most stuck out to me is a bit longer than 140 characters. (Apologies in advance for the dreadful length.) Outlining strategies to raise America's level of secularization to that achieved in Europe, the CSC deputy director writes:

Certainly we have already cooled the spiritual temperature in Europe to an Arctic level where only the hardiest of believers can survive, and then only by huddling together in their spiritual igloos. ("Always winter, never Christmas," as one of their agents laments.) But, as you will soon discover [when you begin your post in Los Angeles], the steamy, equatorial spiritual heat of the United States has its advantages—not least in allowing us to cultivate exotic, poisonous hybrids which would thrive in no other climate.

If we tried to list them all, how much time could we spend?

Christianity Today Is Making More and More Sense.

2012-01-20T10:16:00.000-06:00

Though some of these articles don't quite go far enough, and I wouldn't associate myself with everything that actually is said, I thought these observations were worth some attention:

A Spanish Service Is Not Enough: It's Time to Feed the 'Hellenized Latinos':

The church's mission is to preach the gospel to all people. It is not to preserve the language and cultural preferences of any generation, whether foreign or native born. As God's missionary people, we have been sent into the world just as Jesus Christ was sent into the world by the Father (John 20:21). We cannot allow our ethnocentrism to blind us to the prisons of disobedience evident in every culture, including our own.

How the Physical Form of a Bible Shapes Us:

Will this digital revolution cement the decline of family spirituality that was once fostered by the family Bible? God knows.

This article caught my eye because I'd just had this conversation with a couple guys from church. To me, there's an inevitable trade-off between proliferation and evanescence. Bibles and even theological libraries are now in countless places they'd have never gone before—or only with great difficulty—from cockpits to Cuba. But will the Millennials be able to distinguish the Word of God from some yayhoo's blog? God knows. But this we also know: The Church advances, and God wins.

Why Last Saturday's Political Conclave of Evangelical Leaders Was Dangerous:

When evangelicals are confined to a partisan kennel, it is easy to think we are exercising real power. In fact we are, to use the old Soviet phrase, serving as "useful idiots."

The Trouble with Ed Young's Rooftop Sexperiment:

In short, if there were more talk about sex elsewhere in the church, perhaps in the privacy of our communities and classrooms, we might get away with a good deal less of it from our pulpits and our publishing houses. Until then, the message will continue to get drowned out amidst the bombardment of infotainment that our evangelical world suffers from. In other words, if the message is not getting through, we might think about changing the messenger and method. Otherwise, the sensationalistic path of least resistance inevitably comes to the fore.

I want to say one thing quickly, since the article doesn't really say enough. I'd like to hear what generations of faithful believers living before the age of 2,500 square foot, 4-bedroom single-family homes would say about the preposterous notion that a healthy marriage is contingent on a dynamic sex life.

Clothing Matters: What We Wear to Church:

But all of the above should at least warn us away from the glib assumption that God does not care about what we wear to church; or that what I choose to wear for worship doesn't matter; or that how I dress for church is a purely personal affair; or that my own convenience and comfort are all that need concern me. The truth is, one of the ways we express ourselves as human beings is by the way we dress. Wittingly or unwittingly, our clothing gives us away. God certainly does not need this expression to know our hearts. But as for the rest of us, we do indeed look on the outward appearance, even when peering into our own mirrors. In this way the clothes we choose for church may have things to tell us about our hearts that God already knows, but that we need to hear.

Now, just to prove I'm not going all squishy, let me just ask something: Do any of CT's ten most redeeming films of 2011 actually depict biblical redemption, or merely moral transformation rooted in unusual resolve? (I haven't seen any of them.) I'm guessing maybe "Courageous," but I'll let y'all fill me in. In any case, I get the fact that redemption has multiple meanings in our vernacular, but in our headlong rush to embrace the arts, let's not define down foundational elements of the gospel. Perhaps a Christian publication might skew toward the distinctly Christian meaning.

Sequential Expository Preaching and the Holiday Calendar

2012-01-16T14:52:00.003-06:00

Lots of expositional preachers depart from their normal practice of preaching through books of the Bible around Christmas and Easter, and maybe a few other times of year. I don't intend to dump on that practice, but I want to argue that it's often unnecessary.

In God's king providence, our church's series through Leviticus lined up remarkably well with the calendar over the past few weeks:

12/25: Leviticus 16 (the Day of Atonement). If you can't think of an appropriate way to handle that text on Christmas morning, you probably shouldn't be preaching.

1/1: Leviticus 17 (guilt, blood, life, and cleansing). Maybe a bit of a reach, but it's not too hard to see how some of those themes relate to the first day of a new year.

1/8: Leviticus 18 (laws concerning sexual immorality). I don't see any particular connection between the text and the calendar here. In fact, for awhile it looked like our pastor would land on this text on 12/25. And even I would argue against the prudence of sequential exposition in that event.

1/15: Leviticus 19 (a bit of a grab bag of laws related to holiness, but with a particular emphasis on justice and oppression in relationship to foreigners). And today we remember Martin Luther King's birthday.

1/22: Leviticus 20 (opens with condemnation of child sacrifice to idols). On the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

Look, I realize that the anti-sovereigntists may argue that this is coincidence, or we just got lucky. But I actually want to suggest that you don't really need texts to line up this neatly in order to make sequential exposition connect with major holidays.

Think for a second about how many holidays relate to freedom, sacrifice, gratitude, and grace. Is it not fairly obvious how each of those themes relates directly to the over-arching message of Scripture? Or even more directly, aren't each of these themes foundational to the gospel?

Let me put all my cards on the table. I think you ought to explain what every text you preach has to do with the gospel and the big story of the Bible. And if you're doing that, it really may not be so difficult to explain to your congregation how just about any text relates to the major cultural observation that everyone has, at the very least, in the back of their minds when they walk in your church's doors.

Voices from the Past: Provocative Perspectives on Accreditation (Part 2) [or] How BJU "Turned to Egypt"

2011-12-19T05:31:00.002-06:00

"We ought not to survive." "We ought to just close."

That's what BJU's representative at a 1995 conference said should happen rather than pursuing regional accreditation.

Part 1 drew our attention to BJU's decision to pursue regional accreditation–a more widely-regarded and secular alternative to its present accreditation with TRACS. We looked at a short quote from the leader of a sister institution. Now we'll see at what the BJU president had to say:

Bob Jones University refuses regional accreditation because we can't take our counsel from two masters. If indeed the Scriptures and the God of the Scriptures is the God we bow our knee to, we cannot bow before a dual authority. We cannot bow in educational matters to the secular world that knows nothing of our God and the purposes of our institution. Those who are accredited—if we were accredited at Bob Jones University we would always have to turn one ear toward the accrediting agency, and that means we only have one ear turned to God. And when God is speaking in one ear, and the accrediting agency is speaking in the other ear, I wonder which authority we would yield to when the two were in conflict.

I believe with all my heart the Bible has a great deal to say that precludes our being able to be accredited. Second Corinthians 6:14 makes it very clear that we are not to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. With all my heart I believe this is unequal yoking.

I remember twenty-six years ago this summer [1969] some 25 men assembled themselves together at Bob Jones University—Christian college men who said, "We know accreditation is wrong. It's not for Christians. We know it's bowing to an authority that's going to make us cease to bow our knee to the Lord's authority and to the authority of his Word. [Explanation of how those men considered forming their own accrediting association and discarded it. Then names a bunch of the men who were there at that meeting.] I was there in that meeting 26 years ago. Some very wise and godly men who understood the horrific dangers of being regionally accredited and said, "We cannot do this."

Were they wrong? Did they misunderstand the Scriptures? Is their advice to be thrown aside and stepped underfoot and trampled and considered old-fashioned and no longer valid for our day? Bob Jones University cannot be accredited because of the abundant present evidence that accreditation does change the purpose of the school—does impose upon schools things that their Christian conscience would not allow them to do. [Lists several examples.]

We're not accredited because of the inconsistency of being accredited as a Christian college. You know, ladies and gentlemen, I don't think anybody here would have a debate at this conference that fundamental independent churches should join a liberal denomination for whatever perceived benefits there might be in doing so. We would say, "That's not a talking point for fundamentalism." Why? Because they give up their autonomy when they do this, and they get into a political arena when they do this, that eventually affects their pulpits, destroys and degrades their pulpits. Now why should we that the educational institutions doing the same thing with a counterpart—a hierarchal [sic] control, if you will, of the accrediting agency—why should we be immune from those political pressures and the degradation that will take place?

If the accrediting agencies praised us—if they thought Bob Jones University was a great school, and if we had to have their endorsement that we were doing a good job and that we were a great school, I think something would be drastically wrong with Bob Jones University. The endorsement we want is from above. The endorsement we want is from the people of God who stand by the Word of God, and the endorsement because we stand by the Word of God, and if we don't they ought not to endorse it. We're not looking for the endorsement of the world. We don't want them to praise us. If they were praising us, something would be wrong with what we were doing. This is why Bob Jones University is not accredited. We would be scared to be accredited. We would feel that we had failed God if we were accredited.

[Discussion of graduates' access to grad schools.]

If we were going to get accredited, what would be our motive? I can tell you what the motive would be. And I have to guess—I don't know the motive of anybody else—but I can tell you what our motive . . . It would have to be survival. We don't need the accrediting agency unless we think they would make our job easier, and it'd be better for our graduates, unless we were in financial difficulty.

Why would we turn to Egypt? You'd turn to Egypt because you're in trouble and Egypt has something you think you need. I believe with all my heart that regional accreditation is not essential to survival, and if it is then we ought not to survive. The survival of our institutions is not the issue. The faithfulness to God is the issue!

And if we have to do what I would say is absolutely wrong and unscriptural in order to survive—if God wants us to close, let him close us. We may close one day. We too, Dr. [speaker in first set of quotes], may be greatly smaller one day. That's ok! Survival is not the name of our game. Trying to please God and be faithful and do right is the name of our game.

So as far as I'm concerned, the bottom line in discussing accreditation is, "Is it right?" If it is let's do it. If the argument is, "Well, it's essential for the sake of financial or academic survival," and we have to go down to Egypt to survive, we better not go. We ought to just close. There are worse things than being dead and buried. Far worse is to live without the approval of God. [emphasis mine]

Four observations, at least a couple of them brief:

1. I have no quarrel with BJU pursuing regional accreditation. I suspect it'll be quite helpful in the short term.

2. Whether the perspective in the above quote about deleterious long-term effects is correct, I do not know. I suspect no one really does, though it does seem plausible.

3. This extended quotation offers a vivid argument for why institutional leaders in the BJU wing of a [former?] movement are unpersuasive when they try to claim that there's no change taking place in how they apply long-held principles. They're moving their "ancient landmarks," as some folks used to say. Maybe they were dumb landmarks to use in the first place, but they were landmarks nonetheless.

4. I wonder if we shouldn't learn something about our rhetoric as we read that quote and look at BJU's recent choices. Was the speaker right? Is this decision really about survival? Is BJU now refusing the counsel of God? Is it "unequally yoked" with unbelievers? Has it surrendered its autonomy to an accrediting agency? Does BJU now think that they've "failed God" because they're pursuing accreditation? Should the school shut its doors? And didn't we alumni pledge to make happen? (Maybe Christmas vaca will be busier than we expected.)

So has BJU turned to Egypt?

Fact is, I don't know and don't intend to spend a great deal of time thinking about it. But it seems that there must be at least one person who either thinks so, or perhaps has reconsidered his judgments of 1995.

Maybe this sort of rhetoric worked back in the day. Maybe it's the sort of authoritarian leadership that, as I heard someone recently suggest, was necessary for its time. I'm not so sure. I'd like to think not.

In any case, my judgment—and you can make up your own mind whether it's good or not—is that the sort of culture reflected in that quote is unworthy of emulation. It's bankrupt of principles. Bankrupt of morals. What else could we say about a culture that produces this sort of manipulation and implicit criticism of sister institutions, and then turns on a dime to serve its own interests? Are some hoping that we'll all forget the bold promises of the past?

Don't miss this: a champion of morality and principalled stands has abandoned on both. And come to think of it, I'm not the one saying it; it's the former president. (Just take another look at the bold text above.)

Like I said, I don't care if BJU gets regional accreditation. It really might be a good thing—short term and long term. I hope it is, for the kids' sakes. Frankly, I think people can and have made good cases both for and against regional accreditation. But you can't have it both ways. When you're the general and you tell the troops "with all my heart" that a hill's worth dying on, you lose a bit of credibility when you surrender that hill to save your skin. We all make mistakes. We all change our minds. But at some point, this sort of rhetoric has to remind us of Matthew 23:1-4.

Folks, friends, pastors, men, may I make a few suggestions?

1. Study God's Word relentlessly so that you may know him as he's revealed himself to us.
2. Learn to discern foundational, unchanging principles and how to distinguish them from relatively peripheral issues.
3. Declare your allegiance to those principles and hold on for dear life.
4. Don't stop listening to people you disagree with strongly.
5. If you become convinced from the Word and the work of the Spirit that you were wrong about one of those principles—either about the substance or about just how fundamental to the faith you thought it was—repent, admit you were wrong, and seek forgiveness from any that you hurt in your previous zeal for your misjudged principles.
6. Maintain your allegiance to the rest of those principles.
7. Don't confuse allegiance to institutions with allegiance to principles. Drench yourself in the truth of the Word rather than loyalty to a cabal. Don't fear man; be a man.

Well, I better stop there.

But just one more thing: I believe some folks might owe an apology to Arno Weniger.

Voices from the Past: Provocative Perspectives on Accreditation (Part 1)

2011-12-15T22:51:00.001-06:00

At its regularly scheduled meeting Dec. 2, 2011, the Bob Jones University Board of Trustees unanimously granted approval for the University to pursue the process of applying for regional accreditation.

BJU says in this statement that regional accreditation (a more secular form of accreditation, as distinct from other options available to distinctly religious institutions) is now feasible due to changes in the Southern Association's (SACSCOC) approach to accreditation:

BJU believes these recent changes significantly address past concerns we’ve held about regional accreditation.

These do appear to be helpful changes, apparently similar to the approach the North Central Association has practiced for some time. Back in 1993, Maranatha Baptist Bible College achieved regional accreditation with North Central under Arno Weniger's leadership. Weniger came under fire both within the MBBC community and from outside, particularly from the leaders of "sister" institutions. A forum at a 1995 conference brought together Weniger, another president of a regionally accredited institution, and two presidents of institutions that, at the time, resisted all forms of accreditation. (None of these men still fill the roles they did at the time, though some are still on staff at their institutions.)

Here's a bit of what one of those latter two said:

I've decided not to surrender the authority of the Scriptures in that regard. We're going to stay a Bible college; we're going to stay functioning in. That's what we're going to be. Not a half Bible college or maybe a Bible college, but that's what we're going to stay.

I think a signed agreement joins me officially in an unequal yoke in that aspect. That is a concern to me. This generation? Maybe not. Those leaders in position now may be no problem at all. "Hey, we're not going to touch you." But what I've done is I've given permission by that joining to perhaps cause some real difficulties later.

What's most interesting is that the line of argumentation offered here isn't that the particular approach to accreditation taken by SACSCOC makes regional accreditation objectionable, but that regional accreditation itself constitutes compromise. (This school doesn't even fall under SACSCOC's geographic jurisdiction.) The quotations in part two should make even more clear the perceived compromise in the very essence of regional accreditation.

Leaving Elementary Doctrines

2011-12-13T21:20:00.000-06:00

Awhile ago some of you may have heard a prominent leader—certainly no less prominent now—argue that once we're converted we need to move on, past the gospel. His argument was rooted in Hebrews 6:1-2:

Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.

Bobby Jamieson deftly exposes the flawed exegesis at the root of that argument in this post at the 9Marks blog. Here's his conclusion:

So, when the author of Hebrews “moves on from the gospel,” what does he move on to? The priesthood of Christ, the sacrifice of Christ, the heavenly intercession of Christ, the new covenant mediated by Christ, the future return of Christ, and how all of that enables us to turn from dead works and serve the living God.

In other words, the author of Hebrews doesn’t move on from the gospel; he moves deeper into the gospel. He doesn’t leave the gospel behind, but instead claws his way into more and more of its riches.

So then, at least for the author of Hebrews, leaving behind elementary teachings doesn’t mean leaving behind the gospel. Instead, it means diving into the deep end instead of splashing around in the shallows.

His follow-up post spells out some warnings and advice for those of us who believe that the gospel remains at the epicenter of Christian life and discipleship.

Speaking the Truth, in Love, of Course

2011-12-02T15:11:00.001-06:00

As long as we're kicking the concept around, let me just say a few true things in love—things that ought to be said.

Sometimes, love—whether for a person, an idea, or for God himself—demands that we say things that we assume people don't really want to hear. Depending on the person (and how we say it), we may find that we're right. But how we go about saying the things that need to be said gets a bit tricky. We've got to grapple with all sorts of factors—a list that I just deleted from this post, because they're not really my point.

Bottom line: This gets messy. We face unavoidable judgment calls, often contingent more on wisdom and prudence than exegetical clarity. We probably tend to speak too aggressively and abrasively when we're wrestling over a public issue with minimal relationship. And we probably speak too privately when we sense a stronger relationship and some hope for incremental influence. No doubt you can imagine the tendencies of other scenarios.

All that to say this: If anyone ever writes a history of the sort of ideas and people we've discussed here over the past few years (and I'm not suggesting someone should), I hope that person gets the fact that the people who changed the game weren't the people in key positions of influence. Rather, it was people like D.M. and B.B. and A.B. and a few others who put their names (and necks) on the line by telling the emperor his attire fell a few articles of clothing short of afternoon dress.

Those guys (and that's not to exclude some ladies) proved that the dog might bite, but the wound heals. Maybe the dog runs you out of the neighborhood, but you wind up a couple streets over and realize it actually wasn't such a great neighborhood after all. (The new neighborhood may not be so hot either, but hey, it has are fewer ferocious dogs.) Sometimes you stare down a dog and you actually see it's not a pit bull but a paper tiger. Then you realize that its bite is really just a paper cut.

Newt Gingrich tells the story of how Pope John Paul II visited Communist-dominated Poland in 1979. He was greeted by immense throngs of people at every stop. Eventually, the people looked around at each other and said, "You know what. There's more of us than there are of them."

So once those guys started writing and SI opened for business, it didn't take the rest of us long to figure out there were more of "us" than there were of "them." Look at all the non-change change effected by the non-leader leaders in the non-movement movement over the past couple years. It happened for a reason. I simply believe market forces are that reason—not the non-leading leadership.

[Let me just say, we should not blame the non-leading leaders too much for not leading the revolution or for not exposing other non-leading leaders for their hypocrisy and reprehensible behavior. Many of them are doing outstanding work related to the missions of the ministries that they actually do lead. Revolutionary work is almost always counterproductive to the mission of a para-church. Incidentally, the guys whose initials appear above—the leading leaders—all happen to be pastors.]

So maybe petitions as a mechanism for change are a good idea, and maybe they aren't. I read the con side's arguments and they really do resonate. I read the other side's, and I'm really glad that truth has found a voice. Those among us who've been obnoxious and/or abrasive and/or self-aggrandizing and/or [your accusation] in the forms of confrontation we've chosen will one day give account. I'm quite sure I will.

I can tell you what I believe: I'd rather give account for pursuing the proclamation of truth in love and falling short of perfect love, than for knowing truth and not speaking it. It was not so long ago that a certain dank, putrid serenity rested in our air, so we all tried to breathe through our mouths. I'm grateful for those guys who loved what ought to be and spoke the truth. It's been a breath of fresh air.

The weapons of our warfare are not silence.

My Favorite Dispensationalist Quote. Ever.

2011-12-01T00:08:00.000-06:00

Thirteen or fourteen years ago students in the Dispensationalism class at MBBC were assigned Alva McClain's Law and Grace as one of the required texts. I'm sure I read it at the time. Unfortunately, I didn't mark it at all. Flipping through the notes I might have written, from the vantage point of the present, would be a bit of theological archeology. Ah, what might have been.

The book is marginally useful—maddeningly frustrating by repeatedly ducking at least one foundational issue, while making a quite helpful contribution to the indefatigable specter of legalism. Maybe we'll get back to that later. Written in 1954, it feels a bit dated.

But one little snippet just about knocked me out of my chair towards the end of my recent re-read. Let me just say first that McClain is no junior varsity Dispensationalist. His The Greatness of the Kingdom is a Dispensationalist classic. He's actually much more thorough and persuasive than some of the more widely-known Dispensationalist authors. And he's highly regarded by Rolland McCune, who—perhaps more than any other living theologian—represents the Dispensational wing of the Dispensational Party.

So here's what McClain had to say:

I would like to encourage Christians who delight in finding the Lord Jesus Christ upon every page of Scripture. Do not permit yourselves to be frightened by those over-cautious souls who cry against what they call "too much typology." Doubtless there are some things which may properly be catalogued as "types" and the others not. But whatever you may call it, it is the privilege and highest duty of the Christian to discover and behold the face of the Lord Jesus in Scripture—everywhere! Far better to break a few rules of classical hermeneutics than to miss the vision of his blessed face. (67-68, emphasis added)

“ 'The covenant of grace' is a misleading category."

2011-11-29T21:48:00.001-06:00

So it's a painfully long paragraph, but I still find it pretty remarkable that Steve Wellum's able to dismantle the heart of a complex, centuries-old theological system so efficiently. Here's Justin Taylor's question, followed by Wellum's response:

Do you disagree that there is such a thing as the “covenant of grace,” or is your argument rather that infant baptism is not a proper implication from it?

What I argued in my chapter is that “the covenant of grace” is a misleading category. Let me explain it this way. It is beyond question that the theme of “covenant” is an important unifying theme in Scripture. However, if we are not careful the notion of the covenant of grace can flatten the biblical presentation of God’s plan of salvation in terms of biblical covenants. In truth, “the covenant of grace” is really a comprehensive theological category, not a biblical one. This does not mean it is illegitimate. After all, theological terms are often used in theology, which are not necessarily biblical terms—e.g., Trinity. However, the problem with the theological category—”the covenant of grace”—is that, if one is not careful, it tends to flatten the relationships between the biblical covenants across redemptive history without first allowing each covenant to be understood within its own redemptive-historical context, and then how each covenant relates to the other biblical covenants, and then how all the covenants find their fulfillment in Jesus Christ. I have no problem in using the category “the covenant of grace” to underscore the unity of God’s plan of salvation and the essential spiritual unity of the people of God in all ages. But if it is used, which I contend is the case in Reformed theology, to downplay the significant amount of progression and discontinuity between the biblical covenants, especially as fulfillment takes place in the coming of Christ, then it is an unhelpful term. In fact, I argued in my chapter that it would be best to place a moratorium on the category, especially if we want to make headway in the baptismal debate. In its place, we should speak of the one plan of God centered in Jesus Christ. And, furthermore, in speaking of the “covenant,” we must think in terms of the plurality of biblical covenants as we carefully unpack the relationships between the covenants across the canon. In short, it is imperative that we do a biblical theology of the covenants which, in truth, is an exercise in inter-textual relations between the covenants which, in the end, preserves a proper balance of continuity and discontinuity across the canon in regard to the biblical covenants. It is only when we do this that I am convinced we will make headway in our debate over the relationship between the biblical covenants without prejudicing the debate in one direction or the other.

I wish I'd have written that. And come to think of it, Wellum might have done a bit of damage to another theological system along the way, without even trying.

Full interview here, as well as links to several other related resources. It's all well worth a read, and I suspect that any serious adherent of a traditional theological system will do well to interact with the argument of his forthcoming book with Gentry. In the meantime, here's the outstanding book his chapter was published in.

Dumbing Down Theological Debate

2011-11-28T18:51:00.003-06:00

What do you do when you have a weak argument, a naïve audience, and a superficial medium? I'm learning lots of tricks as I'm slowly catching up on the critiques of Gilbert & DeYoung's What Is the Mission of the Church?. One post from an often-insightful and always-influential author relayed no less than six such strategies, which are no doubt rather effective in our contemporary theological climate:

Combine catchy rhetoric with exegetical oversimplification.
Pretend your critics didn't really address an important question, even though they actually addressed it rather directly and expansively.
Merely stipulate that "it doesn't have to be 'either-or'; it's 'both-and'!"
Portray your critics as isolationist bumpkins who just don't grasp the issues or comprehend the big picture.
Don't cite your critics. Broad-brush. Generalize. Caricature.
My personal favorite: Cherry-pick a few critical but marginally coherent sentences from a generally positive review, and pretend that they "offer a unique degree of clarity." (My dear brother, "I felt like they were a little pessimistic" and "there was not much discussion of" and "seemed to push too far into saying" and "[Name] and [Name] have interesting books" is not the stuff of which unique clarity is made. I suspect the guy who wrote those lines probably knew that. You should too.)

Carl Trueman on the Mission of the Church, the Gospel Coalition, and Gospel-Centered Polarization

2011-11-23T09:20:00.000-06:00

Just over a year ago I argued that the growing debate over the Church's mission is likely to be "the fault line that will form a crevasse, dividing evangelicals—even conservative, reformed evangelicals." In their new book, Greg Gilbert and Kevin DeYoung make the same argument:

[O]ur sense is that this whole issue of mission (along with related issues like kingdom, social justice, shalom, cultural mandate, and caring for the poor) is the most confusing, most discussed, most energizing, and most potentially divisive issue in the evangelical church today. (25)

And last week Carl Trueman made a similar point:

The gospel-centred world seems divided over whether the gospel is primarily about transforming culture or individual forgiveness for sins. Of course, there is a spectrum of opinion on this matter and not everyone is at one end of it or the other. Yet the passions generated by DeYoung and Gilbert highlight the problem and indicate that it cannot be ignored. Indeed, it seems likely that the gospel-centred world is set to become more, not less, polarized on this issue. After all, how one answers the question of the mission of the church reflects how one understands the gospel and shapes everything that the church does.

In that same article Trueman alludes to some of his concerns about both the nature and role of The Gospel Coalition in reformed-ish, conservative-ish evangelicalism. But he's much more punchy in this interview. There, he relates an anecdote that might be a bit repugnant to those who share his sensibilities:

I received from an employee of The Gospel Coalition just last week an e-mail basically telling me to shut up about James MacDonald because I was effectively opposing the work of the church in the current time, and I'm sitting in my office thinking, "Since when did James MacDonald get appointed as my spokesman? I'm ordained in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. He's not an officer in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Who has decided that the agenda of my denomination and my congregation is suddenly to be set by people that I hadn't heard of until six months ago?"

So I think the overweening ambition of the parachurch becomes critical at this point as well. To me, churches should set the Church's agenda. Parachurch is helpful in supporting the church in that, but when you get an organization that is effectively starting to creep into church areas and trying to silence churchmen on these key points, that is very, very problematic to me.

The Wager of the American Experiment (or, Why We Can't Keep Thinking We're a Christian Nation)

2011-11-22T17:42:00.000-06:00

Leave it to an Irishman born in China to offer the most succinct insight into the matter that I've ever encountered.

Video is embedded below. Start at 53:13 for context. Or click here for an external link to that precise point. Or just read the most important part:

There's two places on which America is a gigantic wager, or gamble. Put it like this: On the one hand, the republic requires ultimate beliefs. It requires them. Otherwise, there's no roots to the rights. On the other hand, the republic rejects any statement of what those ultimate beliefs are. There is no orthodoxy. There's no heresy.

How do you bring those two together? The republic requires them; the republic rejects anyone saying what they are. The only way you bring that together is, the republic wagers that in the free democratic debate the best beliefs—the most human, the most true, the most just, et cetera—win the argument!

And it's foreseeable in two ways that you might have trouble. One is if there are so many views that nobody cares about everything. You have such tolerance that it becomes indifference. We all just . . . slump. And clearly, parts of the country are towards that today.

The other view is, in the open pluralistic games, someone plays the game to get power who doesn't believe in pluralism and puts everyone else out of business. And if you've read the stuff of the extreme Islam-ism—not Islam, Islam-ism—they want to replace the Constitution with a caliphate. And they're in essence openly trying to exploit pluralism to get the power to put others out.

Another way of putting it is like this: Constitutionally, there's absolutely no limit to what anyone in America can believe, is there? First Amendment: Constitutionally, no limit. Sociologically and culturally, there is a limit. As I've just said, you could have beliefs arise that endanger the whole thing. How do you bring that tension together, once again? Democratic debate.

Pagan Sermons, David Cloud, and Preacher Idol

2011-11-18T06:44:00.004-06:00

1. Your Old Testament sermon needs to get saved. Though I might push back on a couple points, this is the most clear, compact argument I can remember for why and how we should preach the OT in light of the pervasive Christological themes in Scripture.

2. Read this article on church music and tell me who Al Mohler's quoting in this tweet. Because I'm not sure I believe my eyes. Maybe now I've seen it all.

3. The next hipster rage: having some fun with elders who sense a call to preach, inspired by the "American Idol" concept. I'm grateful to serve in a church that treats elders with greater dignity.

4. An interesting look at the divergent trajectories of historically Baptist colleges, and the price required to pursue biblical fidelity.

5. Some helpful perspective on student ministry from SEBTS prof Alvin Reid here. He cites a startling admission from the founder of one of the largest youth ministry organizations:

We got what we wanted. We turned youth ministry into the toy department of the church. Churches now hire professionals to lead youth ministry. We got relevance but we created a generation of teenagers who are a mile wide and are an inch deep.

Here's the fourth component of the corrective measures Reid proposes:

Connect to the whole church, across generations. The generation of teens today is not only the largest, it is also the most fatherless. We must connect students to the larger church and not function as a parachurch ministry within a church building. Students need older believers in their lives. We need a Titus 2 revolution where older men teach younger guys and older women teach younger ladies.

6. Finally, I greatly appreciated Ryan Martin's concluding post on biblical discernment—a brief summary of some key texts. I'm posting the link here so I can find it later, but I suspect you may enjoy it as well.

Sound Familiar?

2011-11-16T10:35:00.000-06:00

God wouldn't demand something of us that we don't have the capacity to do.

Makes sense, right? Fair. Reasonable. Just. Logical.

I wonder if you've ever heard someone make that argument. I know I have. And of course it's not a new argument. Someone else made it centuries ago. No less than sixteen centuries, as a matter of fact:

No one knows better the measure of our strength than he who gave us our strength; and no one has a better understanding of what is within our power than he who endowed us with the resources of our power. He has not willed to command anything impossible, for he is righteous; and he will not condemn a man for what he could not help, for he is holy.

Only problem is, that's not biblical. It's actually a logical extrapolation proceeding from unsubstantiated assumptions about God's nature and character. In other words, the premise is flawed.

I heard a conversation on evangelism and divine sovereignty in salvation not too long ago. Funny thing was, the most aggressive anti-Calvinist was the person who wanted to deal most with philosophical categories and least with the biblical text.

Maybe that was an anomaly. At the very least, it was ironic. But the more I thought about it, the less surprising it became.

By the way, the above quote [PDF] is drawn from Pelagius, whose teaching has been condemned as heresy throughout the history of the Church. One might argue that this particular statement is not precisely what was condemned, and it doesn't necessarily lead to full-blown Pelagianism. I'm just not sure what would stand in its way.

Libertarians, Singles, Billy Graham, and Rick Perry: You won't get this anywhere else.

2011-11-08T06:16:00.005-06:00

1. The first story in Al Mohler's 10/25 edition of "The Briefing" is chilling. It tells the story of the gravely wounded Chinese toddler left to die on the street. But it's more than a tear-jerking human interest story or a commentary on Chinese society and jurisprudence. It also demonstrates the moral bankruptcy of a market system disconnected from a traditional-moral-religious foundation.

In other words, don't buy the Libertarian lie that the free market will solve all our problems. Libertarianism, at best, maintains uncomfortable and flimsy ties to theistically-defined morality, not to mention the doctrine of depravity. When those ties are finally severed as pluralism pervades Western culture, we'll see stories like this one from China on our own shores. Or perhaps we've already seen 50 million of them.

2. I haven't yet watched the Mohler-Wallis debate on social justice and the mission of the church, but if you beat me to it, let me know what you think.

3. This is a great list of things not to say to single women in your church. (With my wife's help, I continue to compile a list of things not to say to pregnant women. Suggestions are welcome.)

4. And then here's some constructive advice on how we can serve singles well.

5. Could be some interesting stuff in these sermon archives if someone wants to dig around. Let me know what you find.

6. Now, for my favorite part, the Rick Perry section. (We don't do much politics here, but today I just can't stop myself.)

First, the pastor who endorsed him and called Mormonism a cult fields some pointed questions and doesn't Osteen them.

And somebody please tell me, why are Perry supporters working so hard to convince people this is what he's like when he's sober? As if that's a real win for him?

On Climbing the Shepherding Career Ladder

2011-11-07T06:20:00.002-06:00

A friend told me about a pastor he's known for years who wrote a personal resolution in the margin of David Wells' No Place for Truth, where Wells addresses "The Pastor as Impermanent" (249-250). First, a bit of what Wells had to say:

The combination of professionalization and [the impermanence of modern society] has encouraged pastors to suppose that it is proper for them to seek careers. When they cannot form lasting relationships in a particular community, they are tempted to look inward for the measure of fruitfulness rather than outward. They will be tempted to seek first a career rather than to make an enduring contribution to the people in a particular place. But how can the biblical teaching on service be reconciled with the psychological appetites for greater visibility and power that careers generate? Perhaps, instead of seeking a career, the modern minister would find it easier to model the virtues of humility and self-sacrifice by seeking to be a fool.

Here's what the pastor wrote in the margin:

Resolved, by God's grace and not against his clear leading: I am unwilling to subject the precious sheep under my charge to the indignity and pain of saying to them that a different flock—with which I am not intimate—is more worthy of my efforts and merits the uprooting of all my perseverant labors with my flock merely because the new flock is larger (or smaller) or grazes in a more verdant, visible field.

My present charge may, in some ways, take me for granted. And by jumping ship, I might initially be greeted with a burst of noteworthy success. But at the end of the day, would I not stand guilty of sacrificing a content and vulnerable flock for the advancement of self as a shepherd? What do shepherds know of self-advancement? And in the end, is not the Chief Shepherd whose commendation matters? And will he not commend faithful, life-long fidelity to a flock that is ever confident in the persevering, selfless love of his loyal under-shepherd?

He's had his chances to jump ship. His sheep are fortunate.

How Much Stuff Happened to David So That He'd Look Like Jesus?

2011-11-02T21:25:00.000-05:00

I'm in no position to analyze the chain of causation, but one of the benefits of the attention to biblical theology and gospel centrality in the last decade or so has been a rediscovery of the Old Testament. Maybe the Presbyterians out there are laughing at me for that comment, but I think it'd be fairly easy to make a case that the OT was largely ignored (at best) or grossly abused (at worst) by baptistic folks in recent decades.

That rediscovery of the OT has sparked a healthy conversation about how the OT text casts historical (real) events and characters as emblematic of larger patterns in the development of the biblical storyline. (Hamilton's recent book is one place to see some of those issues under the microscope.) Trouble is, Covenant Theologians and Dispensationalists are inclined to polarized conclusions. Someone positioned between those systems might say that CT'ers flatten everything out and see too much continuity—types everywhere, descending into allegory. And D's often deny all types but those the NT explicitly identifies, disrupting the unity of the Bible.

One of the more thought-provoking discussions I've encountered is Jim Hamilton's 2008 lecture, The Typology of David’s Rise to Power: Messianic Patterns in the Book of Samuel [PDF] Audio's available here. Hamilton considers:

whether we are limited to the examples of typological interpretation seen in the Old and New Testaments, or whether, taking our cues from those examples, we can build upon them.

In other words, does the NT identify every OT type, or should we look for the same kinds of correspondence that the NT writers identify, and apply them to OT figures that the NT writers don't? Or, should we apply the same hermeneutic to the OT that the NT writers did? If your answer is no, why not? And if your answer is yes, how do you know when you've crossed the line into unjustifiable allegory?

One of Hamilton's more important arguments against the limitation of OT typology to those specifically identified in the NT is that the OT itself interprets other OT texts typologically. On top of that:

[S]everal passages in the New Testament invite readers to conclude that the Old Testament is fulfilled in Jesus and the church in more ways than are explicitly quoted in the New Testament (cf. Luke 24:25–27; John 5:39–46; Acts 3:24; 17:2–3; Rom 15:4; 1 Cor 10:11; 2 Cor 1:20; Heb 8:5; 10:1; 1 Pet 1:10–12).

Where the rubber meets the road on all of this is that Hamilton perceives several dozen points of correspondence between David and Jesus—right down to the minute details of the number of days between events. Were they all providentially ordained in history so that they might be recorded in the OT text as instruction both to its original and intended readers? I'm not fully convinced, and Hamilton concedes that he's not either. But he's convinced that some of them are, and that they're pretty important for how we interpret our Bibles:

It seems to me that typological interpretation is central to answering that question: precisely by assuring us of the unity of Scripture and the faithfulness of God—that as God has acted in the past, so he acts in the present, and so we can expect him to act in the future—we find the words of Paul true in our own lives:

"For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom 15:4–6).

"Neither Dispensationalism nor Covenant Theology understand . . ."

2011-10-26T05:26:00.003-05:00

This is the end of the end. As you've seen in previous posts, we're interacting with the relationship between the biblical covenants and the association of the nation of Israel and the Church with them. Below is a chart reproduced from John Reisinger's Abraham's Four Seeds. The chart is rooted in what Reisinger calls "five biblical facts."

His conclusions (117-118) ought to be thought-provoking, not lightly dismissed on the basis of our rigidly held presuppositions:

1. Neither Dispensationalism nor Covenant Theology understand the biblical doctrine of the Church as the Body of Christ in the redemptive purposes of God.

2. Neither of these systems really has a true New Covenant replacing an Old Covenant where both covenants relate to the same redemptive purposes of God for his one true people. This is why Hebrews 8 does not fit either system.

3. Neither of these systems sees the true relationship of Israel and the Church. Both Dispensationalism and Covenant Theology insist on bringing the physical aspect of Israel as a nation into the New Testament either directly or indirectly.

Finally, and this is what ties it all together:

It should be abundantly clear that the unconditional promise that God made to Abraham has nothing at all to do with plural "seeds." It can have nothing to do with physical Jews and Palestine or with the children of believers and their salvation. God unconditionally promised Abraham that his seed would be the Messiah. The seed promised to Abraham is Christ! God promised to save and keep all those who were chosen in Christ to be the objects of the Father's unconditional love and grace.

There is only one really vital question: "Are you personally in Abraham's seed and an heir with him according to the promise?" The answer has nothing at all to do with your family lineage or what religious rite or ceremonies were performed on you. It has to do with whether you are in Christ. It has to do with the power of the Holy Spirit revealing Jesus Christ to your heart in saving grace and power. (119)

"The Church is now all of the specific things that Israel never became."

2011-10-24T20:33:00.001-05:00

A long, long time ago—back in May—I launched a series on the relationship between the major biblical covenants. Initially rooted in arguments from this book, we more recently (July!) interacted with John Reisinger's Abraham's Four Seeds. And that's where we'll land, finally, in this post and another scheduled to publish soon.

Reisinger published a chart on pages 114-115 that was designed to compare and contrast the nation of Israel with the body of Christ—two nations, two covenants, related to one another under "God's one single goal." I've reproduced it below, not because it indisputably resolves all the issues (I actually think it doesn't), but because it's an enlightening glimpse at the issues from one particular angle that I've seldom heard discussed:

Reisinger argues that the chart is rooted in five biblical facts. He expands on and defends them (115-117); I'll merely list them:

1. The physical nation of Israel was given the specific promise of becoming the true holy nation of God if the people would obey the covenant of law given at Mount Sinai (Ex. 34:27, 28).

2. Israel, as the physical nation of God, was brought into being, as a nation or "body politic," by the Law Covenant at Sinai (Deut 4:13). Their national existence and special relationship to God were based on their obedience to that legal covenant and all its ceremonial and civil accruements.

3. The physical nation of Israel was cast off and the special national covenant relationship was totally ended when Christ came (Matt. 21:43)

4. The spiritual nation, the Body of Christ, was "born in a day" [an allusion to Is. 66:8] and has become all of the very things Israel never became. . . . It is impossible not to see 1 Peter 2:5-9 as the word-for-word fulfillment of the promise made to Israel at Sinai in Exodus 19:5, 6.

5. The Church inherits the true spiritual blessings promised to Israel in the law covenant at Sinai simply because her Lord has kept the covenant for her. Christ earned every blessing the law covenant promised by being born under that covenant (Gal. 3:24-4:7), and then rendering to it the perfect obedience that it demanded (Phil. 2:5-11 and Rom. 8:1-4). This was the only way that he could earn (for us) the righteousness that was necessary to inherit the blessings that the law covenant promised. Christ also endured every curse that same law covenant threatened when he died on the cross under the judgment of God. [. . . and I hope we can all say amen to that . . .]

His final conclusions soon to come . . .

What Luther Might Say About Our Preaching

2011-10-20T10:28:00.000-05:00

I just finished typing into a Word doc a few quotes that I wanted to remember from Luther's The Bondage of the Will. As it happens, at the same time I was listening to the conclusion of a sermon preached at a Bible college. I was struck by the juxtaposition of two strikingly different articulations of the gospel and sanctification—one entering through my ears, and the other through my eyes.

In the sermon, the preacher argued that if we're going to obey Scripture, we need a strategy. We need an achievable plan of action if we want to pursue our new direction successfully. We need to figure out what we need to do to change.

Depending on how we define some of those terms, I wouldn't necessarily argue that he was wrong. I do wish he'd have said a bit more, somewhere along the way. I think Martin Luther tells us why:

I frankly confess that, for myself, even if it could be, I should not want ‘free-will’ to be given me, nor anything to be left in my own hands to enable me to endeavor after salvation; not merely because in face of so many dangers, and adversities, and assaults of devils, I could not stand my ground and hold fast my ‘free-will’ (for one devil is stronger than all men, and on these terms no man could be saved); but because, even were there no dangers, adversities, or devils, I should still be forced to labour with no guarantee of success, and to beat my fists at the air.

If I lived and worked to all eternity, my conscience would never reach comfortable certainty as to how much it must do to satisfy God. Whatever work I had done, there would still be a nagging doubt as to whether it pleased God, or whether He required something more. The experience of all who seek righteousness by works proves that; and I learned it well enough myself over a period of many years, to my own great hurt. But now that God has taken my salvation out of the control of my own will, and put it under the control of His, and promised to save me, not according to my working or running, but according to His own grace and mercy, I have the comfortable certainty that He is faithful and will not lie to me, and that He is also great and powerful, so that no devils or opposition can break Him or pluck me from Him. . . .

Furthermore, I have the comfortable certainty that I please God, not by reason of the merit of my works, but by reason of His merciful favour promised to me; so that, if I work too little, or badly, He does not impute it to me, but with fatherly compassion pardons me and makes me better. This is the glorying of all the saints in their God. (313-314)

We need to preach biblical imperatives. We need to help believers see their obligations to obey biblical commands in a culture that's very different from the first century. But if we fail to encourage them that their hope of victory isn't grounded in their action plan, but in a whole-hearted dependence on the transforming power of the Holy Spirit of God—then we've taught them how to fail, and we've given them a reason to quit.

We can debate whether that's a chord we need to play every time we step into the pulpit. I think I can make a reasonably persuasive case that we should. But I suspect that many of us have lived and served in places where we never heard it. My question is this: How big of a problem do we think that is? How we answer that question reveals a great deal about our understanding of the gospel.

Can We Advance the Kingdom?

2011-10-19T21:25:00.000-05:00

I found David Wells' survey of the biblical data quite helpful:

[T]his reign, this rule, is something God is doing. The reason, clearly, is that this is not something that emerges from "below," which we ourselves can get going. It must come from "above." We cannot bring it about; only God can.

We can search for the kingdom, pray for it, and look for it, for example, but only God can bring it about (Luke 12:31; 23:51; Matt. 6:10, 33). The kingdom is God's to give and to take away. It is ours only to enter and accept (Matt. 21:43; Luke 12:32) We can inherit it, possess it, or refuse to enter it, but it is not ours to build and we can never destroy it (Matt. 25:34; Luke 10:11). We can work for the kingdom, but we can never act upon it. We can preach it, but it is God's to establish (Matt. 10:7; Luke 10:9; 12:32).

God's inbreaking, saving, vanquishing rule is his from first to last. It has no human analogues, no duplicates, no parallels, and no surrogates. It allows of no human synergism. The inbreaking of the "age to come" into our world is accomplished by God alone. This is all about the spirituality that is from "above" and not at all about that which is from "below." It is about God reaching down in grace and doing for sinners what they cannot do for themselves. For if this is God's kingdom, his rule, the sphere of his sovereignty, then it is not for us to take or to establish. We receive, we do not take; we enter, but we do not seize. We come as subjects in his kingdom, not as sovereigns in our own.

David Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant, 196.

For similar exegetical analysis, check out this 9Marks interview with Greg Gilbert and Kevin DeYoung.

A Brief Tour of Some Spirits of the Age

2011-10-06T13:44:00.002-05:00

1. Just for starters, another Kindle deal that's too good to pass up: The two-volume Works of Jonathan Edwards for $1.99.

2. I've been told that a particular brand of children's pirate CDs now lead children through the "sinner's prayer" at the end. Aarrrrrrrghhh! Can anyone confirm yea or nay?

3. None of these arguments actually support the author's conclusion. One or two of the arguments aren't even true. Let me quote a wiser man than I once again:

If we wanted to devise a plan to turn out as many legalists as we could, how would we go about it? One way that we might do it is to offer some sort of of a carnal or this-worldly inducement for performing spiritual exercises.

4. Any idiot can throw rocks at Joel Osteen, so that's not my point here. He's simply ahead of his time. This sort of spineless attempt to maintain some veneer of biblical fidelity while accommodating secularists' incredulity is going to be the temptation the people in our pews face. Sooner or later, if not already. And, frankly, probably our temptation too. As David Wells has said in this outstanding book, "Engaging the culture is not the same thing as capitulating to it" (92).

5. And speaking of a look into the future, here's what Apple thought the future looked like back in 1987:

Machen's Christianity and Liberalism $.99 for Kindle

2011-10-03T16:11:00.000-05:00

Here. Even more relevant today than it was nearly a century ago.

Another Chance

2011-09-29T07:54:00.000-05:00

A few months ago I pointed out a great sale on a useful (but otherwise pricey) pastoral tool: CCEF booklets. It's back. You can buy a whole set of 27 for $39.99 (50% off) or a 5-pack of one title for $1.64/booklet ($3.99 regular price).

These aren't magic bullets. They may be merely a first step as men and women desire to fight sin and pursue godliness in the midst of difficult circumstances and seductive temptations. But they can be an extraordinarily helpful way to put people on a trajectory towards biblical thinking and repentance, particularly if they're shamed by their sin and not yet ready to speak with a pastor.

Elders and Theological-Pastoral Development

2011-09-28T04:52:00.009-05:00

Over the past several years, beginning long before I was here, our elders have set aside time in our bimonthly meetings to discuss the content and pastoral implications of one chapter in a book. We've worked our way through Grudem's Systematic Theology, and we're about to finish Believer's Baptism. Lord willing, in a few week's we'll start a new study. These books are theological enough to offer some real meat to chew on, but the pastoral implications are pretty obvious in most of the chapters. And at some point we may also work through some of the dialogues on sanctification that have emerged in the blogosphere in recent weeks.

These conversations have been fruitful in three ways. First, we've each grown in our understanding of Scripture and how various texts relate to each other. Second, we've identified areas in which we still don't agree completely and considered what we really do and don't need to agree on in order to function together as a church—even as elders. And finally, we've wrestled with some practical pastoral questions outside the context and pressure of a real-life situation.

Let me encourage you to create these sorts of conversations among your elders. And, of course, if you don't like the historically Baptist ecclesiology of elder-led congregationalism, you might even find this sort of thing helpful among your pastoral staff. Or even with the deacons.

Who Should Marry Cohabiting Couples?

2011-09-27T16:42:00.000-05:00

This post raises a thought-provoking conversation for pastors to consider. I agree in principle with Doug Wilson that it's better for non-Christian*, cohabiting couples to get married than to continue cohabiting unmarried. I also agree with those who note that this creates an opportunity for a conversation about marriage and the gospel. (Well, a couple people sort of reference the gospel, at least.)

But there are other issues that no one addresses and only Al Mohler even approaches. For example, why would a cohabiting couple even desire marriage by a pastor? Do they want a "church wedding"—a Christianized ceremony conforming to societal expectations and endowed with a pastoral imprimatur? Is that something a pastor really wants to offer couples in an ongoing state of unrepentant sin?

My dad's a mayor and (at least so far) marries everyone that the law allows. Couples leave that ceremony with no illusion that they have the blessing of a religious sacrament. I think I could marry a non-Christian, cohabiting couple, but only if I'd thoroughly persuaded them of that same fact.

*The post doesn't explicitly address whether the couples are believers or not, and some of the commenters unhelpfully increase that ambiguity.

Does Racial Sin Undermine the Gospel?

2011-09-22T00:27:00.000-05:00

I get the sense that's one of the key questions John Piper's new book addresses. You can read an excerpt from it in Christianity Today—though not one that addresses the exegetical issues. I suspect you can get a hint at his ultimate conclusion from this comment:

The Bible does not oppose or forbid interracial marriages but sees them as a positive good for the glory of Christ.

It reminds me of some comments Michael Lawrence made in a sermon a couple years ago.

Piper's excerpt raises a number of personal and historical perspectives. This reminder draws on both:

[T]here is no mystery in it as to why a young black man [Jesse Jackson, taken in context] growing up [in Greenville, South Carolina]—or a Martin Luther King growing up in Atlanta a generation earlier—would get his theological education at a liberal institution (such as Chicago Theological Seminary or Crozer Theological Seminary). Our fundamental and evangelical schools—and almost every other institution, especially in the South—were committed to segregation.

Did Decisionistic Revivalism Marginalize Baptism?

2011-09-20T16:10:00.000-05:00

Ardel Caneday argues that it did in his thought-provoking article, "Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement," in this book. Here's his case:

Ironically, since the Great Awakening, [zeal to isolate baptism from Christian conversion] has permitted "new measures" of various kinds, such as the "mourner's bench," the "invitation system," or a recited "sinner's prayer" to displace baptism as the rite of conversion, thus shirking and even marginalizing Christ's command to the church. Zeal to avoid "baptismal regeneration," which many perceived to be the necessary consequence of Alexander Campbell's teaching, actually spawned another error, "decisional regeneration." This was an error rooted in revivalism that is now a traditional element in American evangelicalism. If the former error is to relegate regenerating efficacy to the rite of baptism itself, the latter error assigns the same efficacy to the human decision to act upon whichever measures preachers may use.

The Enlightenment's high estimation of the power of human choice took root in the frontier American church. Regrettably, evangelical churches yielded to confluent streams of revivalism and Enlightenment influences. Though Alexander Campbell unwittingly yielded to the Enlightenment's overconfidence in human reason, he rightly opposed the introduction of "new measures" that began to impoverish churches by the acceptance of conversions that did not yield transformed people. (p. 325, paragraph division mine)

Theoretical Calvinism, Functional Arminianism

2011-09-12T05:19:00.000-05:00

When I read an influential book from the 50s, I found myself thinking, "He says he's a Calvinist, but he's arguing like an Arminian—as if modern strategies, social engagement, and intellectual credibility offer our best shot at persuading people to receive our message." In these two videos John MacArthur accurately identifies pretty much the exact same mindset among the YRR crowd today. Here's what he says:

How in the world could you have a true, reformed view of the doctrines of grace related to salvation, and then think that having holes in your jeans and an Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirt and a can of beer in your hand somehow give you access to the lost. I mean, c'mon, that's irrelevant to what you're trying to do. So because you affirm the Calvinistic doctrine of salvation, it seems to me that you can be an Arminian everywhere else you want to be. And the fear is that the power of the world's attraction is going to suck these guys in every generation after them more and more into the culture, and we're going to see a reversal of the reformed revival.

Five Great Books on Afghanistan

2011-09-11T05:00:00.001-05:00

I'm not saying these are the best five. Just the five I happened to read during the past few years, of the many that came highly recommended. I loved each one. In chronological order . . .

1. The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan. The story of a lone American who maneuvered his way into power in the early 19th century. Great story, of the five, the one I'd least recommend.

2. The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia. When you hear people talk about how Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires, this is one of the classic illustrations. It's a fascinating story of a different time—and a place people who really know Afghanistan will tell you to start if you want to understand it.

3. The Kite Runner. By now you've probably seen the movie and at least heard of the book. The movie was harder to watch. The book painted a more memorable picture of Afghanistan both pre- and post-Taliban.

4. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. Absolutely gripping and well worth a read for its thorough research and wide-ranging scope, thought it's a bit tough to follow for the same reasons. It ends with the bad stuff that happened on September 10th that you probably never heard about.

5. Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan. Wow. If you want a feel-good story from Afghanistan, this is probably as close as you're going to get. Did your jaw drop reading accounts of the OBL-killing mission? This one's even better. What this handful of guys did is just astonishing.

Bonus: Haven't read it, but lots of people tell me The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 is quite good. Covers more or less the same time period as Ghost Wars, but I think it focuses more on Al-Qaeda and less specifically on Afghanistan.

Have You Hugged a Presbyterian Today?

2011-09-09T22:33:00.000-05:00

Two reasons you should:

1. Should I ever attend the SBC annual meeting again, it's going to be sorely tempting to nominate Carl Trueman for our president. Here's why:

Southern Baptists should be delighted that the organizers [of the National Cathedral's 9/11 commemoration] had the sensitivity and foresight not to place them in the grim position of having to turn down such an invitation in order to avoid compromising their orthodox, Protestant identity. The public relations disaster that would have followed this elementary stand for biblical truth and exclusivity would have been spectacular. After all, how could one maintain that one is taking seriously 1 Timothy 2 while sharing prayer time with a real-life incarnate lama?

The Southern Baptists need to stop feeling disappointed that such a well-intentioned but theologically incoherent gathering does not want their presence and they should instead remember the wisdom of Marx - not Karl, but Groucho: you should never want to join any club that would have you as a member.

2. When I watched Collision, a documentary of debates and conversations between Doug Wilson and Christopher Hitchens, I was looking for a clear exposition of how Hitchens' atheistic worldview is compatible with his affirmation of the existence of objective evil. Though Hitchens addressed the issue with characteristically entertaining disdain, I didn't find his argument coherent. Unfortunately, the medium didn't really permit a sustained clash of ideas. But now Wilson's dismantling response to Hitchens' recent declaration that 9/11 was a day of "pure evil" provides exactly that. Wilson's essay is one of the rare things you find on the internet that's worth reading more than once. Here's his conclusion:

[Hitchens'] atheistic rhetoric is full of borrowed theistic words. He sounds like totalitarianism is objectively bad. His approach would seem to indicate that being vicious is a sin. The big lie would be a violation of the Ninth Commandment, of course, but I thought we had explained all that.

I for one am glad that Hitchens wants to repudiate the big lies. I am glad that he stands against vicious totalitarian ideas. Thus far I can applaud him. But in order to stand against anything, however obviously bad it is, you must have something to stand on.

Anybody Surprised? Just Curious . . .

2011-09-09T10:38:00.001-05:00

Jonathan Leeman interviews Andy Naselli and Collin Hansen on their forthcoming book, Four Views on the Spectrum of Evangelicalism. Leeman asks, "Did anything surprise you when reading the answers and rejoinders of these four authors?"

Hansen replies:

I was surprised to see the close resemblance between Mohler's confessional evangelical position and the fundamentalist view, at least as described by Kevin Bauder. John Stackhouse and Roger Olson respond with alarm as they point out this similarity.

Exegeting the Church's Mission

2011-09-07T21:19:00.002-05:00

I've speculated previously that the increasing tension among reformed, conservative evangelicals over the church's mission may lead to a deep fissure between those who otherwise have much in common theologically. As this conversation points out, when you start talking about the church's mission, you inevitably wind up in a difficult conversation over soteriology, ecclesiology, and even eschatology—just not the "Left Behind" kind.

A big part of the trouble here is that far too often the debate is cluttered with flimsy exegesis. That's why I'm looking forward to reading this book. Back-of-the-book endorsements sometimes skew towards hot air. But scan these comments and you'll see a consistent emphasis on Gilbert and DeYoung's sound exegesis. And take a look at who's saying those things, and I think you'll find the sort of people who know what sound exegesis looks like.

And by the way, for the next couple days you can get an outstanding deal—about half what Amazon's listing it for, with a special quantity discount if you want to create a good discussion among your elders, church staff, or missions team.

Your Best Life Now: A Review of Milltown Pride

2011-09-02T09:25:00.000-05:00

I'd like to affirm that David Oestreich [seems at this time to be misspelled on SI] "hit the ball out of the park" with his review, but I have to be honest that I haven't seen the movie. Nevertheless, he's a thoughtful guy, skilled in aesthetic issues. I suspect his critique is spot-on. But what I'm most interested is his conclusion, which exposes the film's pseudo-gospel. Here's a portion of his argument:

Unlike the prodigal son, Will moves from one comfortable situation to a different comfortable situation, the latter complete with a cushy job, a girlfriend and the unfettered pursuit of baseball!

Which brings us to Milltown Pride’s worst weakness—an incomplete portrayal of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is one thing to use characters as a means to a narrative end. It is quite another to so use the gospel. But when the outcome of Will’s conversion is not only the erasure of nearly all his personal problems but a clear path to realizing his goal of playing professional sports, there is but one thing for a viewer to think: trust Jesus, and all your wildest dreams will come true.

Perhaps easy-believism and a partial message might be forgiven in the film genre. Perhaps. (As someone used to say, "I speak as a fool.") But when the producer/actor/BJU Dean of the School of Fine Arts and Communication argues that Unusual Films' "primary mission is to produce high-quality films that clearly present the Christian message" because "older forms of Christian expression aren't as effective any more," you better make extra special sure you get the gospel right.

According to Oestreich, they didn't. Not even close.

Utilitarian, Prophetic Religiosity: The Handy god of Evangelical Politics

2011-09-01T22:29:00.000-05:00

In a campaign appearance last weekend, Michelle Bachmann said,

I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?’ Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we’ve got to rein in the spending.”

Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, Washington Post blogger and President of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, responded:

[Ms. Bachmann] imagines not only that there is meaning and purpose to such events and that they are controlled directly by God, she imagines that she knows the mind of God and can tell America what such events mean. That is called prophecy, especially when done in such an immediate and direct way, and as far as I know Michele Bachmann doesn’t claim to be a prophet. Or does she?

While not making that claim overtly, Ms. Bachmann consistently approaches both politics and religion from a position of absolutes - the kind of absolutes which, if not absolutely 100 percent correct, can be pretty dangerous. From defaulting on our national debt to abortion to this weekend’s hurricane, there is, according to Michelle Bachmann, only one right answer - hers. And unless someone speaks with the absolute knowledge that most believers ascribe to God or prophets, that’s a pretty dangerous way to speak.

Though I'm rather confident that Hirschfield and I don't share the same view of God and the gospel, I agree with every word he wrote about Bachmann. But because of what I do believe about God and the gospel, I'm persuaded that there's more to be said, and I'll get straight to the point.

Bachmann's comments are utterly indefensible. Some, Hirschfield apparently among them, believe her speech will further damage our national political discourse. I agree, but I suspect it (and so many others like it) is actually more detrimental to the Christian faith. As the prophet Joel reminds us, God does intend for natural disasters to direct our attention toward the certainty of future and greater divine judgment on human rebellion. But the notion that judgment falls on us for rampant spending grossly distorts the human condition and cheapens the gravity of our fundamental need. Bachmann claims the comments were made in jest. If that's true, she's treating God and his verdicts lightly—taking his name in vain—and the offense is only greater.

C.S. Lewis wrote, "We will never save civilisation as long as civilisation is our main object. We must learn to want something else even more." (You may have read that somewhere before.) The price of Bachmann's comments is the marginalization of the gospel of God's eternal kingdom in exchange for immediate and temporary political influence. I wish evangelicals and the God-users they vote for would learn what the Preacher in Ecclesiastes knew—that fixing our hopes on that which cannot last and will not satisfy is emptiness and striving after wind.

Before Gospel-Centered Was Cool, It Was True

2011-08-29T03:45:00.003-05:00

From Richard Sibbes in The Bruised Reed, 1630:

[Christ] is our Sanctifier as well as our Saviour, our Saviour as well by the effectual power of his Spirit from the power of sin as by the merit of his death from the guilt thereof; provided these things are remembered:

1. The first and chief ground of our comfort is that Christ as a priest offered himself as a sacrifice to his Father for us. The guilty soul flies first to Christ crucified, made a curse for us. Thence it is that Christ has right to govern us; thence it is that he gives us his Spirit as our guide to lead us home.

2. In the course of our life, after we are in a state of grace, if we are overtaken with any sin, we must remember to have recourse first to Christ's mercy to pardon us, and then to the promise of his Spirit to govern us.

3. And when we feel ourselves cold in affection and duty, the best way is to warm ourselves at this fire of his love and mercy in giving himself for us.

4. Again, remember this, that Christ rules us by a spirit of love, from a sense of his love, whereby his commandments are easy to us. He leads us by his free Spirit, a Spirit of liberty. His subjects are voluntaries. The constraint that he lays upon his subjects is that of love. He draws us sweetly with the cords of love. Yet remember also that he draws us strongly by a Spirit of power, for it is not sufficient that we have motives and encouragements to love and obey Christ from that love of his whereby he gave himself for us to justify us; but Christ's Spirit must likewise subdue our hearts, and sanctify them to love him, without which all motives would be ineffectual.

Our disposition must be changed. We must be new creatures. They seek for heaven in hell that seek for spiritual love in an unchanged heart. When a child obeys his father it is from reasons persuading him, as likewise from a child-like nature which gives strength to these reasons. It is natural for a child of God to love Christ so far as he is renewed, not only from inducement of reason so to do, but likewise from an inward principle and work of grace, whence those reasons have their chief force. First we are made partakers of the divine nature, and then we are easily induced and led by Christ's Spirit to spiritual duties. (80-82)

May it never again be denied that the cross is the epicenter of sanctification.

Is the Sin of Idolatry Pretty Much Obsolete?

2011-08-26T21:04:00.000-05:00

Jay Adams seems to suggest that it is—unless, of course, you're bowing down to a piece of stone. At the very least, he's arguing that we're acting unbiblically if we help people identify their heart idols. Adams' comments are rather vague. It's not at all clear what he's responding to, or whether his preference is that counselors deal exclusively with raw human behavior rather than the affections that motivate the behavior.

Frankly, his comments are puzzling, since I'd assume most pastors and counselors would find some benefit in identifying the sinful heart issue beneath the sinful behavior. And it's not as if Adams (a Presbyterian) is coming from some hyper-dispensationalist position that radically bifurcates the OT prevalence of idolatry from the NT.

Adams, and all of us, ought to be able to recognize that the issue in OT idolatry isn't the nature of the object, but that the idol displaces God in the human heart. OT idolatry is a worship issue. It's about misplaced or distorted affections, values, allegiances, and hopes. One might well ask a NT sinning saint, "What were you loving or trusting in most at the moment you chose to sin? What lie were you believing about whom is worthy of your ultimate affections? What or whom were you really worshiping?" If that sort of communication isn't present in our preaching and our counseling, I'm not sure how we're going to accomplish anything more than behavior modification—treating symptoms

Of course, these notions aren't original with me. You can find them in Paul Tripp's books (especially this one), Tim Keller's sermons, and this outstanding little sermon series from Kevin Bauder. As I remember, the final sermon, "Shaping Our Affections Toward God" [MP3], spelled it out most directly.

Finally, and briefly, if you want NT texts that prove believers need to be warned about idolatry, in Galatians 5:19-20 one of the works of the flesh is idolatry. And even more explicitly, in Colossians 3:5 covetousness is idolatry. Covetousness—by definition a sin of the mind and heart.

Exegesis or Extra Jesus: How Much Christ in the OT Narratives?

2011-08-18T23:20:00.000-05:00

Anybody else out there struggle to preach OT narratives? I was completely lost until a couple people helped see that narratives are more than stories with moral lessons, but actually teach theology and call for faith. Increasing exposure to biblical theology helped me begin to grasp how individual narratives relate to the overall metanarrative. But I've remained puzzled by how to handle the selection and arrangement of narrative material. Why did authors include some stories and details and omit others? And what does one narrative have to do with the one that precedes it and another that follows it?

Dale Ralph Davis' The Word Became Fresh is the most helpful resource I've encountered on that particular issue, and it's a useful overall intro to preaching OT narratives as well.

His approach to preaching Christology from OT narratives is also worth noting. Some exegetes suggest that we should only see Messianic references in OT texts that are specifically identified in the NT—and sometimes not even then. Others suggest that texts like Luke 24 teach that we need to find Christology in every OT text. Davis denies both extremes, and clarifies a balanced (some might say "plain" or "normal") reading of that chapter:

From Jesus' statements I make an inference and form a corollary: the whole Old Testament bears witness to Christ; and, the Old Testament does not bear witness only to Christ. Why this corollary? Because I agree with making an extensive inference from Luke 24:27 and 44 but hold that an intensive inference is illegitimate.

What on earth does that mean? It means I think Jesus is teaching that all parts of the Old Testament testify of the Messiah in his suffering and glory, but I do not think Jesus is saying that every Old Testament passage/text bears witness to him. Jesus referred to the things written about him in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms—he did not say that every passage spoke of him (v. 44). Therefore, I do not feel compelled to make every Old Testament (narrative) passage point to Christ in some way because I do not think Christ himself requires it (pgs. 134-135).

I would simply add that true, full-orbed exposition of any text in its context must consider that text's relationship to the full context of Scripture—Genesis to Revelation. And that work must surely take the person and work of Christ into account.

On Pastors Who Prophesy About People's Hidden Sins

2011-08-16T21:49:00.001-05:00

If you put a gun to my head and make me pick teams in this fight, it's not a tough call. And I'm guessing that if you know me well at all, you can figure it out without breaking much of a sweat. (Unless, of course, you're the guy who told my then-boss that I was in the tank for a couple guys with the initials R.W. and J.O. . . .)

Now having said that, it just happened (I'm not calling it revelation) that I was cleaning out some really old e-mail tonight and stumbled across a link a friend sent me back in 2008. That article contains this curious anecdote:

The ministry of Charles Spurgeon is a case in point. Read carefully the following account taken from his autobiography:

“While preaching in the hall, on one occasion, I deliberately pointed to a man in the midst of the crowd, and said, ‘There is a man sitting there, who is a shoemaker; he keeps his shop open on Sundays, it was open last Sabbath morning, he took ninepence, and there was fourpence profit out of it; his soul is sold to Satan for fourpence!’ A city missionary, when going his rounds, met with this man, and seeing that he was reading one of my sermons, he asked the question, ‘Do you know Mr. Spurgeon?’ ‘Yes,’ replied the man, ‘I have every reason to know him, I have been to hear him; and, under his preaching, by God’s grace I have become a new creature in Christ Jesus. Shall I tell you how it happened? I went to the Music Hall, and took my seat in the middle of the place; Mr. Spurgeon looked at me as if he knew me, and in his sermon he pointed to me, and told the congregation that I was a shoemaker, and that I kept my shop open on Sundays; and I did, sir. I should not have minded that; but he also said that I took ninepence the Sunday before, and that there was fourpence profit out of it. I did take ninepence that day, and fourpence was just the profit; but how he should know that, I could not tell. Then it struck me that it was God who had spoken to my soul though him, so I shut up my shop the next Sunday. At first, I was afraid to go again to hear him, lest he should tell the people more about me; but afterwards I went, and the Lord met with me, and saved my soul.’”

Spurgeon then adds this comment:

“I could tell as many as a dozen similar cases in which I pointed at somebody in the hall without having the slightest knowledge of the person, or any idea that what I said was right, except that I believed I was moved by the Spirit to say it; and so striking has been my description, that the persons have gone away, and said to their friends, ‘Come, see a man that told me all things that ever I did; beyond a doubt, he must have been sent of God to my soul, or else he could not have described me so exactly.’ And not only so, but I have known many instances in which the thoughts of men have been revealed from the pulpit. I have sometimes seen persons nudge their neighbours with their elbow, because they had got a smart hit, and they have been heard to say, when they were going out, ‘The preacher told us just what we said to one another when we went in at the door’” (The Autobiography of Charles H. Spurgeon, [Curts & Jennings, 1899], Vol. II, pp. 226-227).

Now, the preacher in the first link might be quite appropriately criticized for many things—many things even in the 5-minute clip embedded in that post. But perhaps the root issue—the question of whether the Spirit supernaturally reveals specific details of people's sins—might be more complex than we think. At the very least, perhaps we need to expand the objects of our criticism.

Some Fun Video

2011-08-15T06:18:00.001-05:00

If you like this blog (and I don't assume that you do), I think you'll really enjoy these two links.

First, Ed Stetzer posted a couple videos of a conversation that happened several years ago. It addresses contextualization, ecclesiology, and appropriate levels of cooperation when we don't agree. That was one of the most unusual days from my time in DC—eye-opening on several levels, and hopefully fruitful on some as well.

Second, I've been eagerly anticipating release of the videos Southwestern Seminary kindly recorded of Paige Patterson's interview at 9Marks@9 at the SBC annual meeting in June, 2011. The video interface is a bit cumbersome, but it's worth your patience if you want to pick up some important perspective on history and interdenominational cooperation from a warrior-statesman (if there is such a thing).

A couple brief highlights:

Patterson: "The beginning of trouble came with topical preaching."

And when asked, "Is 9Marks more a part of the problem or of the solution, when it comes to what's going wrong with the SBC," Patterson replied, "I don't see it as a major part of the problem." Funny, sort of.

On Repentance, People Who Dilute It, and Much, Much More

2011-08-11T15:09:00.000-05:00

1. I can't remember a more helpful sermon explaining the biblical definition of repentance than Michael Lawrence's from August 7, 2011. A couple brief quotes follow, but listen for much more, including an apt analogy between a conversion to Islam and the way too many Christians think about "the sinner's prayer." Lawrence argued, "A regenerate heart repents," and, "When we separate repentance—biblical repentance—from conversion, it's kind of like we're giving people a vaccine against the gospel."

2. I'm wondering, if one were of a mind to do so, if it might not be possible to make the argument that John MacArthur is to the ideological right of several leaders of independent, fundamental Baptist institutions.

3. Some folks might argue that the problem with this [PDF] is the association it creates with another speaker. I actually think that the real issue is direct fellowship with false doctrine about how God has spoken. Which issue bothers you more, or whether any of it does at all, reveals a bit about whether your analytical grid is shaped by the tradition of a movement, doctrinal fidelity, or a set of networked relationships.

4. Thank you, Michael Horton, for saying some things that needed to be said. And frankly, we only needed title of the CT article to know that someone needed to say it.

5. From Carl Trueman's argument that we ought to fire boring preachers:

Praise and worship - the ascription to God of the honour and glory which is his - is a response to knowing who he is and what he has done. It is provoked and shaped by the description of God which the teacher gives. Anything else which calls itself worship, whether traditional or contemporary, whether exhilarating or soothing, is not worship. It is merely an aesthetic experience which helps to achieve a certain psychological or emotional state. I remember at college I would often hear people talk of this church as being great at doctrine and that church as being great at worship. That should a false dichotomy. One cannot really be good at one and not the other, for they are intimately and inseparably connected.

6. I do not know of a more useful extra-biblical pastoral tool than a well-designed and maintained membership directory.

7. Here's a piece of the late Mark Hatfield's story that you won't find in the mainstream media.

8. No more Mars Hill "campuses." This is an intriguing shift. Of course they're right that the NT speaks of "churches," not "campuses." But I'm not exactly sure how this structure is meaningfully distinct from Anglican polity.

9. Michael Green shares an absolutely priceless Francis Schaeffer anecdote beginning at the 35:35 mark of this video:

Panel 20/20 Collegiate Conference 2011 Session 3 from Southeastern Seminary on Vimeo.

Ten Things You Need to Read Before You Go Watch "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" This Weekend

2011-08-05T15:50:00.001-05:00

1. Chris Anderson just highlighted a blogpost from Jay Adams that simply floored me. Though I share Adams' concern that "gospel-centeredness" can be an amorphous blob of mystical platitudes, he proceeds to suggest that learning to preach the gospel to yourself is an unhelpful idea. It seems clear to me that he doesn't really understand the concept. (NANC has developed a reputation for emphasizing moralistic human effort over our need for the ongoing work of the gospel as we pursue sanctification, has it not?) It's just difficult for me to imagine that Adams—having surely forgotten more counseling sessions than I'll lead in my lifetime—seems never to have encountered someone who needed to learn how to remind himself of the past, present, and future work of the gospel in his life.

2. The senior managing editor of Christianity Today believes people find evangelicalism to be "bankrupt" because of "crazy uncles" Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Ironic?

3. Some fascinating statistics on church planting rates for various denominations.

4. Some reflections from John Piper on John Stott. This comment from Piper is very close to the reason I have a rather sporadic interest in The Gospel Coalition blog (exhibit A):

To this day I have zero interest in watching a preacher take his stand on top of the (closed) treasure chest of Bible sentences and eloquently talk about his life or his family or the news or history or culture or movies, or even general theological principles and themes, without opening the chest and showing me the specific jewels in these Bible sentences.

5. Speaking of Stott, somewhere in one of his obituaries I learned that he was Queen Elizabeth II's personal chaplain from 1959-1991.

6. Here's what Stott said in 1996 about when it would be time for evangelicals to leave the Church of England:

I've always felt that it's unwise to publish a list of criteria in advance. Nevertheless, I'm quite happy to talk about them. I think one's final decision to leave would be an exceedingly painful one, a situation that I cannot envisage at the moment.

I would take refuge in the teaching of the New Testament, where the apostles seem to distinguish between major and minor errors. The major doctrinal errors concern the person and work of Christ. It's clear in 1 John that anyone who denies the divine-human person of Jesus is anti-Christ. So, if the church were officially to deny the Incarnation, it would be an apostate church and one would have to leave.

Then, there's the work of Christ. In Galatians, if anybody denies the gospel of justification by grace alone through faith alone, that is anathema: Paul calls down the judgment of God upon that person.

On the major ethical issues: the best example is the incestuous offender in 1 Corinthians 5. Paul called on the church to excommunicate him. If you want me to stick my neck out, I think I would say that if the church were officially to approve homosexual partnerships as a legitimate alternative to heterosexual marriage, this so far diverges from biblical sexual ethics that I would find it exceedingly difficult to stay. I might want to stay on and fight for a few more years, but if they persisted, I would have to leave.

7. Speaking of things that were never supposed to come true, remember when everybody told us this wouldn't happen? Next up, polygamous marriage rights.

8. Strictly speaking, Stott may not have been the annihilationist he's often claimed to have been. Here's how he described his view in that same wide-ranging 1996 interview linked above:

In Evangelical Essentials, I described as "tentative" my suggestion that "eternal punishment" may mean the ultimate annihilation of the wicked rather than their eternal conscious torment. I would prefer to call myself agnostic on this issue, as are a number of New Testament scholars I know. In my view, the biblical teaching is not plain enough to warrant dogmatism. There are awkward texts on both sides of the debate.

9. This conversation on whether and how much we should study cultural backgrounds to Scripture barely scratches the surface of a topic that has been largely ignored in far too many places. It needs to be at least an hour longer.

10. And finally, anybody else out there who just can't wait to ask Carl Trueman to autograph your Bible after his breakout session at T4G12?

On Churches, Game Shows, and Presidential Debates

2011-08-02T12:49:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I listened to a QnA with a presidential candidate (we'll call this person "Pat"), in which "Pat" made some comments about a recent presidential debate. Pat said what I wish I could believe most viewers were thinking at the time. Pat said what I suspect might have been a defining moment in Pat's campaign, had Pat been sensible enough to offer this answer in the heat of the moment. So here's what Pat said:

I thought when the CNN moderator was asking us questions like, "Do you prefer 'Dancing with the Stars' or 'American Idol'?", I really think in retrospect the correct answer was to say, "It's pathetic that with 14 million unemployed and a $2 trillion deficit and three wars underway you would waste our time with this." Because what it does is it trivializes the choice of the leader of the United States into a game show.

The naïvety of the American public in our presidential selection process is disheartening, to say the least, and the public debate of recent weeks has only advanced that trajectory. The notion advanced by the media (assuming it's true, silly me) that the public just wanted a compromise—as if compromise a) is equivalent to a long-term solution, and b) is not the methodology that got us where we are—is an omen of our future.

But let me just ask a simple question: How might we trivialize the mission and message of our churches by the content of our children's ministry, the strategy of our youth ministry, the commitment of membership, the smorgasbord of our programs, the frivolity of our off-hand, casual comments, the mood and form of our music, the structure of our service, the gravity of our preaching, and the priorities revealed by the sheer number of man-hours we devote to these components.

Just askin'.

Things You May Have Missed, and Opinions You Might Not Share

2011-07-11T11:50:00.001-05:00

Just a little collection of comments that intrigued me over the past few days:

1. Kudos to the GARBC for addressing openly the need to protect children from sexual abuse in the church.

2. Should you be considering showing your church a movie produced to propagate the gospel because the "older forms of Christian expression aren't as effective anymore," consider these words of caution from Dave Doran [MP3]:

Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism have both been guilty of an inordinate desire to keep up with the latest things. Okay, the latest technological advances, the latest deals to do it, so let's go back—gospel and films. I mean, it looks like the way to reach people, so all of a sudden people say, "Let's start doing that," without necessarily thinking about, "Does something happen that undermines the power of the spoken word when we move to drama?"—not even necessarily thinking about that. So I'm just saying we shouldn't chase any fad because it doesn't give us enough time to decide, and it's usually a misguided quest for relevance.

3. Some more Doran . . . I have to admit, I've barely skimmed the linked CT article, but I have no doubt he's right: "[P]rofessing evangelicals keep getting hoodwinked into publishing documents that never accomplish their purpose, but do in fact erode the boundaries of the faith." My take: The term "classic Christians" is code for "ecumenical unity is more precious to us than gospel clarity."

4. You've probably read a pastoral statement of repentance. The one you may not have heard is from Josh Harris. Give it a listen and see if any of the concerns people have voiced to CLC leadership sound familiar.

5. I'm a bit surprised that Master's Seminary alum Francis Chan is squishy on annihilationism. And it strikes me a bit odd that those comments aren't part of the story in a post that refers to arrogance in trying to attract people to Jesus by hiding things about him.

6. Though I'm not as optimistic about the future of the SBC as this author, I think he's dead right about the generation gap in its leadership:

We are merely experience the ramifications of twenty years of moderate/liberal theology in our seminaries. When it comes to strong theological training, which produces strong leadership, the SBC has a generational gap. The students in our seminaries when our schools were in such bad shape the Conservative Resugence began, are now in their 50s and early 60s. That is the age group that usually gives leadership to our convention. Many, but definitely not all, of this group tend to be atheological. Men of God who love Him and are deeply committed, but didn't have the theological training from a mentor like an Adrian Rogers or a school like our seminaries of the last 15 years. The theological void was filled by methodology and programs which has led to the rise of pragmatism over theology, which in turn produced the slippery slope down which we are currently sliding.

The last theologically driven generation is in their very late 60s, 70s, and 80s and sidelined by the convention. The next theologically driven generation is still under 45, which means lots of biblical grounding, but still very inexperienced when it comes to the ability to lead at a national level.

What Dispensationalism and Covenant Theology Have in Common (But Shouldn't)

2011-07-08T16:15:00.000-05:00

I want to wrap up the series I started several weeks ago on biblical covenants, rooted initially in Steve Wellum's chapter, "Baptism and the Relationship Between the Covenants" [PDF], in Tom Schreiner and Shawn Wright's Believer's Baptism.

A summary of where we've been so far: Part 1 provided a brief summary of main contours in Covenant Theology. Part 2 focused on the "seed" theme in the Bible, reaching the conclusion that the term is used in four related but distinct ways. Part 3 traced Wellum's argument that Christ fulfills ALL the OT covenants. Part 4 highlighted two of Wellum's conclusions.

Now in Part 5, I want to give a bit more attention to John Reisinger's Abraham's Four Seeds, a book that's been quite helpful to me in holding both Dispensationalism (D) and Covenant Theology (CT) up to the mirror of some pivotal biblical texts. In it, Reisinger examines four biblical usages of the theological term, "seed"—natural, physical, unique (Christ) and "special" natural (the Nation of Israel). (Regardless of your personal convictions, it's worth a read, if for no other reason than that it'll help you look at those texts from outside the comfortable confines of your theological system.) Be aware that he's primarily critiquing the D of Scofield and the CT of the Westminster Confession, so your particular flavor of revised D or CT may not overlap precisely.

Most everyone would agree that D and CT differ strikingly over the matter of continuity in Scripture, related to the covenants and the people of God. D sees less; CT sees more. So you can get a sense of where Reisinger's coming from, here's how he describes that difference:

Dispensationalism drives a wedge between the OT and the NT and never the twain shall meet as specific promise (OT) and identical fulfillment (NT); and Covenant Theology flattens the whole Bible out into one covenant where there is no real and vital distinction between either the Old and New Covenants or Israel and the Church. (p. 19)

But Reisinger also notes a surprising point of similarity between D and CT. In fact, it's a recurring point of his book. (As much as I'm tempted to blog through the whole book, I'm choosing simply to quote the point rather than attempt to develop it. We'll see if I pay for that in the comments . . .) I think you'll see how it largely dovetails with Wellum's arguments:

What we are really saying is this: (1) Every promise that was made to Abraham and his seed is either now fulfilled spiritually in Christ; or will be fulfilled in the new heavens and new earth; or else it ended when the Old Covenant was done away; or there will be, in some cases, a 'double' fulfillment. (2) Every single thing given to a believer 'in Christ' is far better than anything in the natural world, including all of the land of Palestine. Every believer, whether Jew or Gentile, will ultimately be united to Christ and be part of his bride (Rev. 21) and experience the "better things" of Hebrews 11:39, 40.

Both the Dispensationalist and the Covenant Theologian want to bring the promise of Abraham and his seed into the present age in a physical sense via the lineage of their physical children. They both insist that the promise made to Abraham and his seed is an unconditional covenant and is therefore still in effect for physical seeds. The Dispensationalist naturalizes the seed to mean physical Israel, and the Paedobaptist naturalizes the seed to mean the physical children of believers. The Padeobaptist [sic] wants to make the Abrahamic covenant to be a special covenant with believers concerning the salvation of their physical children that is still in effect today. The Dispensationalist wants the same covenant to be a special covenant still in force with Jews concerning the land of Palestine. In the end, the Paedobaptist does exactly the same thing with Abraham's seed as the Dispensationalist! He merely does it for a different purpose. (p. 94)

In the final post of this series, I plan to reproduce a helpful chart that shows how God's single goal is advanced through two different covenants and two distinct nations.

Should we insist that our unregenerate children pray, ask forgiveness, or attend church?

2011-07-05T22:15:00.000-05:00

Scott Anderson of Desiring God Ministries interviews Elyse Fitzpatrick on her new book, Give Them Grace, and asks her those kinds of questions. You might be surprised, or even appalled, at her answers. Whether or not you agree with her conclusions, I think you'll see that they emerge from a biblical understanding of human depravity and the Spirit's work in accomplishing regeneration. I hope you'll find it thought-provoking and maybe let it simmer for a bit.

The bottom line: Fitzpatrick is convinced that we focus far too much on behavior and teach far too little on the gospel as we go about our parenting labors. Her point isn't that we shouldn't train behavior, but that we must lead our kids to understand that, apart from God's work in them, they really can't change in any meaningful way. And even if they could, it wouldn't get them anywhere with God.

Speaking from some experience as one of the formerly people-pleasing and falsely-professing-Christ kids Fitzpatrick describes (the "older brothers" and outwardly religious Pharisees), I think she's on to something. Video is embedded below, but this DG post has some helpful time-stamps.

"What kind of Christians do contemporary services produce?"

2011-07-04T11:43:00.000-05:00

This is an insightful piece from a Baylor prof, published in Christianity Today, and well worth a read. Among several poignant quotes, this one seemed to sum up the point best:

[A]esthetics is never mere aesthetics; the medium may well override the message, or worse, become confused with the message. Tailoring the message to personal styles can easily result in adapting the faith to one's own needs. Instead of allowing the gospel to challenge us, we alter the historic faith to fit the trends of our age.

Great Deal on Some Classical Music

2011-06-29T19:19:00.000-05:00

The 99 Most Essential Masterpieces of the Classical Era for $1.99. I've bought a few of these deals as an inexpensive way to develop a reasonably broad range of some classics. Some experts may argue that these recordings aren't the best available, but I've never been disappointed, and you can't beat the price with a stick.

Some Interesting Tweets and Other Things of Less Significance

2011-06-23T20:21:00.001-05:00

1. Sometimes who makes a point is as compelling as the point itself:

Kauflin: Sunday AM musical skill is meant to increase congregational participation, not overpower it.

. . . and . . .

More Kauflin: If people need vibey intros, [guitar] effects, cool licks & low lights to engage w/ God, we're misleading, not leading them.

His second statement, in particular, is a helpful repudiation of the belief common among charismatics and Pentecostals that our worship atmosphere (for lack of a better term) is able to invoke a manifestation of the Holy Spirit.

2. Once you reach the conclusion that there's no need for a pastor to preach to an assembled congregation in their presence, this is a minimal and rational step:

Driscoll: Pre-recording 2 sermons today. Allows me to go to Zac’s baseball tourney with my family rather than not seeing them on Father’s Day.

3. And finally, some of you may have heard some people trying to figure out what's wrong with the young'uns and what should be done about it. I'd just like to suggest that there is no problem worth solving, to which "you need to have a Facebook" is a solution.

Contrasts in Pastoral Transitions

2011-06-16T21:54:00.002-05:00

John Piper (age 65) discusses the issue—challenging because it's "not in the Bible"—with Tim Keller (60-ish) and Don Carson (64) . . .

. . . and describes Bethlehem's ongoing process as well as his personal intentions:

My proposal to the elders—and it comes from Noël and me, not just me (we have talked a lot about this, as you can imagine)—is that I transition from pastor for preaching and vision to a fulltime writing and BCS teaching and mentoring and wider speaking role on June 30, 2014—three years from now. And that we be very intentional and prayerful and thoughtful about a successor in those years.

John MacArthur (who turns 72 on Sunday) reflects briefly on the same topic as he concludes a decades-long project of preaching through the New Testament:

I want to let you know that I'm not planning a retirement. I've told the elders, as long as I make sense, leave me alone. [audience laughter] When I don't make sense, just try to convince me that I don't make sense. [audience laughter] That's the problem, isn't it, so, drag me out of there.

Direct Mail Levity

2011-06-15T14:54:00.000-05:00

James MacDonald's new study:

And from BJU:

A dude. Wearing jacket and tie. On the lawn. Reading a book on separation. To two girls.

SALE: Biblical Theology Series

2011-06-14T11:35:00.001-05:00

Just an FYI here. This series is worth getting to know. I've read or am generally familiar with just a few volumes, but those have been extraordinarily helpful. I'd recommend this one in particular.

Couple caveats: 1) If you're completely new to biblical theology, they may not be the best place to start, and 2) These prices are better than usual and cheaper (from the ones I checked) than Amazon, but they're not going to blow your doors off. Still, if you want to pick up a couple, this seems like the time to do it.

Sloppy Talk About the Church's Mission

2011-06-09T22:32:00.000-05:00

Previously, I've alluded to those who suggest that the Church's mission must be equivalent to Jesus' mission. Two primary concerns: 1) Often, they make the argument in a dismissive way, as if anyone who thinks the issue demands substantive discussion or nuance is obtuse. 2) They're wrong, and a sure implication of getting this one wrong is a redefinition of the Church's mission, often resulting in the marginalization of gospel proclamation.

I appreciate how Michael Horton addressed the issue, and I particularly appreciate that he addressed it in the context of a conference examining the implications of the gospel for all of life. Horton:

Our mission is qualitatively different from God's mission. God sends us on a mission, but it's a different mission than the mission he sent his Son on. It's different from the mission he sent his Spirit on. The Son could redeem the world. We can't. Again, loose talk—loose talk in the Church today about our redeeming activity in the world. WE should never, ever sully that wonderful word by saddling it to us as the subject of the verb. When it comes to redeeming anything, we are not the subject of the action. Jesus Christ is. Jesus is the unique, only, exclusive Redeemer of the world.

"Well, we're extending his redemption." No, we're not. There is no extension. He accomplished it once and for all. "Well, we are extensions of his incarnation." No, we're not. We're members of his body. I wasn't born of a virgin. I didn't suffer under Pontius Pilate. I wasn't crucified. I wasn't raised on the third day.

We preach not ourselves but Christ, and we are his ambassadors! Paul says, "Let's get that right. We are not the message. We're the messengers." So our mission is qualitatively different from God's. But because he finished his mission in his Son—his mission of redeeming—and he sent his Spirit to open the hearts of those to whom we speak, we have a mission that is guaranteed success.

In the Interest of Fairness and Honor, Where It's Due

2011-06-01T17:08:00.000-05:00

Previously, I've obliquely pointed out the irony of a militantly separatist institution naming a dorm after Bibb Graves.

Well, Bibb's been expunged. I (and people better-connected than I) am unaware of any public explanation, but I'm assuming that a thoughtful insider did some good work. Thanks to you, and all who advanced this decision.

Father Abraham

2011-05-26T10:50:00.002-05:00

Part 1 of this series based on Steve Wellum's chapter, "Baptism and the Relationship Between the Covenants" [PDF], in Tom Schreiner and Shawn Wright's Believer's Baptism, provided a brief summary of main contours in Covenant Theology. Part 2 focused on the "seed" theme in the Bible, reaching the conclusion that the term is used in four related but distinct ways. Part 3 traced Wellum's argument that Christ fulfills ALL the OT covenants.

Now, I want to highlight two of Wellum's conclusions, which are rooted in what we've considered so far (and by "we" I mean me and the two other people reading this). First:

To be a member of Abraham’s family now is not tied to a speciﬁc physical lineage, nor circumcision, nor any kind of physical links to other believers. Rather, one becomes a part of Abraham’s family only through faith union in Christ brought about by the Spirit (Gal 3:26–29). Thus, in the coming of Christ, a new era of redemptive history has dawned where the structures, types, and shadows of the old have given way to the reality and fulﬁllment of what the OT was all along pointing to (pg 143-144 in the PDF).

And another conclusion:

[Equating the Abrahamic Covenant with the New Covenant] not only fails to do justice to the diverse aspects of the Abrahamic covenant, but also to the way that covenant is ultimately fulﬁlled in Christ. So Israel, as a nation, is a type of the church. But this is the case, not because the church is merely the replacement of Israel, but because Christ, as the true seed of Abraham and the fulﬁllment of Israel, unites in himself both spiritual Jews and Gentiles as the “Israel of God” (Gal 6:16). There is continuity, but also important discontinuity. . . . The new covenant people of God are all those, regardless of ethnicity or circumcision, who have confessed Christ as Lord, the true/spiritual seed of Abraham. It includes all those who believe in Christ and who have been born of his Spirit (pg. 144 in the PDF).

What's most intriguing to me about Wellum's arguments is that they're targeted at a flawed presupposition of Covenant Theology, but they also critique Dispensational conclusions. (And I've only quoted the passages that apply most directly to both systems.) Covenant Theology denies differences between the biblical covenants; Dispensationalism denies that the Church is a full participant in the New Covenant—or even a participant at all. More on that, as well as ironic similarities between CT and D, to come.

800 Pound Gorillas

2011-05-25T23:19:00.000-05:00

1. Is there any possibility that something is profoundly wrong with a culture that produces this (not to mention the events behind it)? That's not to indict any particular individual or the host venue. We (and I'm surely a part of that "we") are shaped by our culture, often in ways we neither desire nor perceive. Still, as long as precious few either detect the aroma or speak truthfully about what it smells like, the putrefaction will progress.

2. I wish I could say I found this not to be credible, but personal experience will not allow it:

Tina then went off to college -Maranatha Bible College in Wisconsin where one of the Deans advised her to 'keep her mouth shut' about what happened to her.
by Amy Coveno / WMUR Staff at Mon May 23 2011 12:48:09 GMT-0500 (CDT)

3. Speaking of products of a culture . . . I haven't yet heard anyone make an observation about "jihad Christianity," but Phil Johnson and Justin Taylor may tell us all we need to know, not that it's all we actually know—not by a long shot.

4. Just as a breath of fresh air, here's an entirely different sort of conversation–simply fascinating.

The Convergence of Covenant Fulfillment in Christ

2011-05-23T23:03:00.000-05:00

This post is part 3 of a series based on Steve Wellum's chapter, "Baptism and the Relationship Between the Covenants" [PDF], in Tom Schreiner and Shawn Wright's Believer's Baptism. Part 1 provided a brief summary of main contours in Covenant Theology. Part 2 focused on the "seed" theme in the Bible ("offspring" in some translations) and examined the biblical usage of the term, reaching the conclusion that the term is used in four related but distinct ways in the text. The two long quotations in those posts were part of Wellum's summary and critique of Covenant Theology.

Now that we've set a bit of the context of Wellum's argument, we're getting closer to the point I want to emphasize. Between the two passages I quoted previously, Wellum focuses on the relationship of the Abrahamic Covenant to the Mosaic, Davidic, and New Covenants:

In the OT none of the covenant mediators—whether Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, or David—fulﬁlled their role and brought about the promise; they only typiﬁed and anticipated the one to come (Rom 5:14). Only our Lord Jesus Christ, the God-man, fulﬁlls the roles of the previous covenantal mediators and brings about the promises stretching back to Gen 3:15. That is why the NT presents Christ as nothing less than the Lord as well as the last Adam, the true seed of Abraham, David’s greater Son, who ushers in a new covenant—a covenant which all the previous covenants anticipated and typiﬁed.

In Christ, all the promises of God are yes and amen (2 Cor 1:20). That is why in Jesus and his cross work, the desperate plight begun in Eden now ﬁnds its solution as the last Adam, the obedient Son, has accomplished his saving work. The promise that God himself must be the Savior of his people is fulﬁlled for he himself is the Lord. Indeed, the death of Jesus, the crime of all crimes, is nevertheless determined by the divine plan (Acts 2:23). Why? To bring to fulﬁllment what God had promised through the prophets, that Messiah would suffer (Acts 3:18) in order to save his people from their sins (Matt 1:21).

In Jesus Christ, the prophetic anticipation of God’s coming to save in and through David’s greater Son is fulﬁlled. Indeed, as D. A. Carson reminds us, “the promise that through Abraham’s seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed, gradually expanded into a major theme in the Old Testament, now bursts into the Great Commission, the mushrooming growth of the Jewish church into the Gentile world, the spreading ﬂame reaching across the Roman Empire and beyond, in anticipation of the climactic consummation of God’s promises in the new heaven and new earth.” [Paragraph divisions and boldface type added. This portion is taken from pgs. 139-140 in the PDF and pgs. 131-132 in the print edition.]

In Part 4, I plan to build on this platform to take a closer look at our union with Christ and the ironic similarities between Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism.

Interrupting the Series to Close Some Browser Tabs

2011-05-18T22:53:00.000-05:00

1. It must feel pretty cool to see John Piper say you wrote the book Jonathan Edwards wanted to write.

2. Little known facts: "The SBC only truly exists two days a year. It is not a denomination, it is a collective of free churches choosing to partner together for mission."

3. Don't tell me there's no "emerging middle."

4. This offers a great look inside the mind and mood of Christianity Today.

5. Though I've disagreed with Scot McKnight on many points, he's dead on in his critique of George Ladd's yearning for "a place at the table." Here's the conclusion:

I don’t believe our goal as Bible or theology scholars is to be deemed among the finest of scholars or to find a place at the table, but to be faithful to Jesus Christ and to the gospel and to orthodox theology and to academic rigor. Yes, we are to work to discover and to be creative, but the driving passion to prove ourselves at the feet of others falls short of a true Christian telos. I’d put it this way: we are called to be faithful, whether we are accepted or not.

6. And finally, Russell Moore published a provocative analogy to romance novels today:

Pornography is based on the illusion of a perfectly willing, always aroused partner without the “work” of relational intimacy. Often romance novels or their film equivalents do the same thing for the emotional needs of women that pornography offers for the erotic urges of men.

But to be fair, my wife's and my friend, Beth Spraul, said it first! [PDF]:

Let me start with a somewhat provocative, but reasonable comparison. Among thoughtful Christians, one will hear significant concern for how the culture of pornography harmfully affects men by distorting their view of sex and women. . . . I’d like to suggest that culture attacks women similarly — it is just a bit more subtle. The lies told to women are introduced at the level of women’s emotions (less harmful, right?), in how they dream about men, and in what they long for relationally. Like pornography, chick-flicks take a good gift from God (romance, relational intimacy) that women are created to desire, and distort it by presenting as “normal” an unbiblical and unrealistic picture of men, love and marriage. And just like men who buy into the lies of pornography, women who believe that their husbands and marriages should always be like what they see on the screen will be sinfully dissatisfied with God’s good gift to them of a “normal” husband and marriage.

Abraham's Four Seeds

2011-05-18T10:49:00.001-05:00

In case you missed yesterday's post, I'm running a mini-series on Steve Wellum's outstanding chapter, "Baptism and the Relationship Between the Covenants" [PDF], in Tom Schreiner and Shawn Wright's Believer's Baptism. (I love that WTS bookstore carries it.)

If I'd done a better job on that post, I'd have mentioned that Wellum is deconstructing Covenant Theology, in the process of demonstrating that paedobaptism is grounded in a misunderstanding of the relationship between the biblical covenants. He spends the first 28 pages of this 65-page chapter simply unpacking the covenantal argument for infant baptism. Yesterday's post didn't summarize that argument, but it emerged from that portion. If you want a summary, it's in the PDF.

This post emerges from the second portion of Wellum's chapter, which is an evaluation and critique of the covenantal argument for infant baptism. Though, my purpose for this post and the whole series is less about our conclusions on baptism, and more about the significant issues further upstream—the relationships among the biblical covenants.

So on that note, one of the conversations that's come up here from time to time is the Abrahamic Covenant and the identity of Abraham's "seed" or "offspring" in relationship to the promises of the Abrahamic Covenant. It's essential that we get the seed right if we're going to get the Bible right. As it happens, I've been reading John Reisinger's "Abraham's Four Seeds," which Wellum helpfully summarizes in his chapter.

I've found Wellum's overall argument and critique to be tighter and more on-point than Reisinger's, though Reisinger is certainly helpful. Here's Wellum's survey of the data on the four biblical senses of Abraham's "seed":

My answer is no. We see this by answering the important question, Who is the seed of Abraham? Who is the true heir of God’s promise? Scripture teaches that there are four senses that must be distinguished and not confused. Let us look at each of these in turn.

1. The “seed of Abraham” ﬁrst refers to a natural (physical) seed, namely, every person who was in any way physically descended from Abraham such as Ishmael, Isaac, the sons of Keturah, and
by extension Esau, Jacob, etc. In each case, all of these children of Abraham received circumcision even though many of them were unbelievers, and even though it was only through one of the “seeds,” Isaac, that God’s promises and covenant was realized (Gen 17:20–21; cp. Rom 9:6–9). Circumcision also marked out those who were not physically Abraham’s descendants, but who were related to him either through a household birth or purchased as a slave (Gen 17:12). In the latter case, circumcision enabled those who were not biologically related to Abraham to become his children and thus beneﬁ t from the divine blessing mediated through him.

2. The “seed of Abraham” also refers to a natural, yet special seed tied to God’s elective and saving purposes, namely Isaac, and by extension Jacob and the entire nation of Israel. As God enters into covenant relationship with Israel, they are a special, chosen people (Deut 7:7–10). As in the case of the natural seed, they too are marked as Abraham’s seed by circumcision. But as a nation, they are a “mixed” entity comprising believers and unbelievers—Elijahs and Ahabs simultaneously—even though all males within the covenant nation, regardless of whether they were spiritually regenerate, were marked by the covenant sign of circumcision. In fact, being God’s chosen people did not guarantee that they would receive God’s ultimate redemptive blessings (see Matt 3:9; Luke 3:8; 16:19–31; John 8:31–39; Rom 9:1–15). Instead, their being marked with the covenant sign not only showed their relationship to Abraham, but also, unlike the mere natural seed (Ishmael), allowed them the supreme privilege of bringing God’s blessing to all nations through the coming of the Messiah.

3. The Messiah is the third sense of the “seed of Abraham.” In Gal 3:16, Paul argues that the singular use of “seed” in Gen 12:3 and other places is a reference to the true/unique “seed of Abraham,” namely Christ. Here Paul is picking up the promise theme from Gen 3:15, traced through a distinctive line of seed, beginning with Adam, running through Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Israel, David, and eventually culminating in Christ. In Christ, we have the promised seed, the mediator of God’s people, the one who fulﬁlls all God’s promises, not least the Abrahamic promises. Hence, he is the true seed of Abraham, the true Israel, and David’s greater Son. In this important sense, then, Jesus is the unique seed of Abraham both as a physical seed through a speciﬁc genealogical line and as the antitype of all the covenant mediators of the OT. What is crucial to note at this juncture is how in Christ, viewed as the true seed of Abraham and the mediatorial head of the new covenant, there is a signiﬁcant typological advance as we move across the covenants which has implications for understanding the expression “to you and your seed.” This is clear in the fourth sense of the “seed of Abraham.”

4. In this last sense of the “seed of Abraham,” the NT emphasizes its spiritual nature now that Christ has come. It includes within it both believing Jews and Gentiles in the church. Given the new era that Christ has inaugurated, the way into Abraham’s family is not dependent on circumcision or the Torah, but it comes through faith and spiritual rebirth. Only those who have experienced conversion are those who are Abraham’s “seed” in this spiritual sense. To be a member of Abraham’s family now is not tied to a speciﬁc physical lineage, nor circumcision, nor any kind of physical links to other believers. Rather, one becomes a part of Abraham’s family only through faith union in Christ brought about by the Spirit (Gal 3:26–29). Thus, in the coming of Christ, a new era of redemptive history has dawned where the structures, types, and shadows of the old have given way to the reality and fulﬁllment of what the OT was all along pointing to.

Brief note: I've removed the footnotes, though they're obviously available in the PDF and print editions. There's also a discrepancy between the pagination of the PDF and the print edition. This extended quote is on pages 133-135 of my book, but pages 141-144 in the PDF. I haven't figured out how to account for the difference.

Main Contours of Covenant Theology

2011-05-17T13:28:00.001-05:00

As I remember, I've linked previously to this PDF of Steve Wellum's outstanding chapter, "Baptism and the Relationship Between the Covenants," in this book, edited by Schreiner and Wright (Shawn, not N.T. or Ben). I don't think I've ever interacted at all with the text. My plan, over the next few days, is to post a handful of particularly helpful passages from the chapter. Here's the first:

Let us examine the main contours of covenant theology. The “covenant of grace” is contrasted to the ﬁrst covenant made with Adam, the “covenant of works.” The covenant of works was made with Adam as the head and representative of the entire human race. To him and his entire posterity, eternal life was promised upon the condition of perfect obedience to the law of God. However, due to his disobedience, he, along with the entire human race, was plunged into a state of sin, death, and condemnation (see Rom 5:12–21). But God, by his own sovereign grace and initiative, was pleased to make a second covenant—the covenant of grace—with human beings (speciﬁcally, the elect), wherein the God of grace freely offered to sinners life and salvation through the last Adam, the covenantal head of his people, the Lord Jesus Christ (West. Conf. 7.2–3). Thus the covenant of grace began immediately after the Fall with the promise of grace in Gen 3:15. This promise was then progressively revealed and fulﬁlled in history through variously administered covenants with Noah, Abraham, Israel, and David. Ultimately it was brought to fulﬁllment in the new covenant inaugurated by Jesus Christ in his victorious cross work on our behalf.

But it is important to stress that for covenantal theologians even though there are different covenants described in Scripture, there is, in reality, only one overarching covenant of grace. That is why one must view the relationships between the covenants in terms of an overall continuity. Booth underscores this point in his comments on the “newness” of the covenant inaugurated by our Lord. He states, “The new covenant is but a new—though more glorious administration of the same covenant of grace.” Thus, under the old covenant, the one covenant of grace was administered through various promises, prophecies, sacriﬁces, rites and ordinances (e.g., circumcision) that ultimately typiﬁed and foreshadowed the coming of Christ. Now in light of his coming, the covenant of grace is administered through the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments. But in God’s plan there are not two covenants of grace, one in the OT and the other in the NT, but one covenant differing in administration but essentially the same across the ages (see West. Conf. 7.6).

This brief overview of covenant theology raises several issues that we will address in four points. First, how is the new covenant new? Second, whether the covenant of grace is conditional or unconditional. Third, who are the parties to the covenant of grace? Fourth, the relationship between the covenant of grace and the Abrahamic covenant. Examining these four issues will show us the rigorous logic of covenant theology’s argument for paedobaptism. [footnotes omitted here, but available in the PDF]

Driscoll vs. the "Conference Christians"

2011-05-16T19:21:00.000-05:00

I think these are some rather helpful warnings and insights to obsessive conference-attenders. Among several important points, I thought this one was particularly salient:

They start comparing the preaching, music, and overall experience of their favorite conference to their local church Sunday experience. This makes it impossible for the average pastor and church to ever measure up. It’s a bit like the guy who is so enamored with the Victoria’s Secret catalogue that his wife starts to look less and less attractive, as if it were a problem with her appearance instead of his obsession.

If You Had To Guess . . .

2011-05-04T22:30:00.001-05:00

. . . what organization would you say was being referred to here—by one of its leaders?

I have never been interested in having some kind of big tent for the _________________. I was instrumental in writing the doctrinal statement for the _________________, and we made it as tight as we possibly could, particularly on bibliology, soteriology, and ecclesiology. Unfortunately, some people sign that statement every year, but do not genuinely hold to some of its most important tenets.

No fair googling, and if you've read the original source, maybe let some others play for a bit.

And just to be clear, historically, indifferentists (to borrow Machen's term) are the people who believed the doctrinal statements themselves but were happy to make common cause with the ones who didn't.

An Evangelist and a Pastor on "What Evangelism Isn't"

2011-05-03T23:30:00.000-05:00

This book (pgs. 69-82):

Imposing our beliefs on others
Personal testimony
Social action and public involvement
Apologetics
The results of evangelism (conversions)

And evangelist Steve Pettit, starting about 7:28 in:

Imposing our religious views on other people
Sharing our personal testimony
Doing social work
Apologetics
The results of evangelism (seeing people saved)

I couldn't possibly agree more.

"Fourteen dead in this Alabama neighborhood . . . now for more on Kate's dress . . ."

2011-04-29T18:05:00.001-05:00

Not an exact quote, to be fair, but surely representative of news coverage the past couple days. James Davison Hunter addresses some of these same issues that Neil Postman previously addressed. Hunter writes:

[E]lectronic media such as the radio, television, and Internet compartmentalize the world and place its parts together in incoherent ways, as when a news report on a famine in Africa is followed by an advertisement offering pharmaceutical help for erectile dysfunction, which is then followed by the latest results of the NCAA basketball tournament in Charlotte, North Carolina; the stock market news from New York, London, Frankfurt, and Tokyo; a murder trial in Los Angeles; a trailer for a new coming-of-age movie; and so on. The format of the newspaper also compartmentalizes this way with no overarching narrative structure, but the new electronic media does it more seamlessly, rapidly, and intensely. The fictional and the real, the comical and the serious, the insignificant and the significant, all blend together flattening out the distinctions among them. The net effect is that all content is trivialized (p. 209).

Sadly, far too often our churches are similarly guilty. I suspect it wouldn't take a great deal of effort to start a nice list.

Schreiner: How We Become Heirs to God's Promises to Abraham

2011-04-20T09:44:00.000-05:00

I've found Tom Schreiner and Shawn Wright's Believer's Baptism to be helpful reading on many counts, including some that reach far beyond the nuts and bolts of baptism. Here's one example from Schreiner's chapter, "Baptism in the Epistles" (88-89):

The eschatological thrust of baptism is also evident in Gal 3:27. Paul argues in Gal 3:15-4:7 that with the coming of Christ the covenant with Abraham has been fulfilled, and thus the covenant with Moses is no longer in force. Jesus is the seed promised to Abraham (Gal 3:16), and in him the pledges made to Abraham are realized. The age of childhood and infancy under the Mosaic law has ended (Gal 3:22-25), and now "you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus" (Gal 3:26).

What Paul meant by "sons" is that all believers are now "adults" through faith in Christ; that is, they are no longer in the period of infancy under the Mosaic law. They are mature and grown up because the promises made in the Old Testament have come to fruition. Believers are the seed of Abraham because they "belong to Christ" (Gal 3:29). Since Christ is the only seed of Abraham (Gal 3:16), then belonging to Christ is the only means by which one can become part of the family of Abraham and receive the promises.

How does one know that one belongs to Christ? Verse 26 says we know we are Christ's if we have faith. And v. 27 says that those who are baptized have clothed themselves with Christ. In other words, baptism signifies that one is united to Christ. And since Christ is the only seed of Abraham, then baptism signifies not only that we belong to Christ, but also that by belonging to Christ we become part of Abraham's family. The unity in Abraham's family is what Paul has in mind in Gal 3:28 when he says that we "are all one in Christ Jesus." In baptism we become part of Christ and become heirs to the eschatological promises made to Abraham.

[Paragraph divisions and emphasis are mine.]

Off Topic [Budget Rant]

2011-04-19T22:47:00.000-05:00

For perspective on the federal budget and the "$38 billion" "cut," divide by 100,000,000:

We have a family that is spending $38,200 per year. The family’s income is $21,700 per year. The family adds $16,500 in credit card debt every year in order to pay its bills. After a long and difficult debate among family members, keeping in mind that it was not going to be possible to borrow $16,500 every year forever, the parents and children agreed that a $380/year premium cable subscription could be terminated. So now the family will have to borrow only $16,120 per year.

Do We Get What We Honor?

2011-04-15T20:41:00.000-05:00

Dave Doran briefly addressed the validity of the adage, "You get what you honor" in the process of making a related point:

Many of us have heard the short leadership quip, “You get what you honor.” The point is that what you hold up for admiration is what receives imitation. The quip calls us to recognize the power of example and use it for the purpose of leadership. I’ve always had some hesitation about its use with regard to spiritual growth and developing leaders because the last thing we need is Christian leaders who are motivated by an ambition for public recognition. I know it doesn’t have to work that way, but lurking beneath “you get what you honor” is the potential that some will do what needs to be done to receive that kind of honor.

As it happens, I'd just recently had a conversation with a friend about the same phrase. Here's the argument I made to him:

I think it's partially true. Some things are more or less within our control to produce. Human beings can condition behavior. But you know as well as I do that we cannot accomplish heart transformation. That's a work of the Spirit. We can honor heart transformation all we want (assuming we even know how to identify it with certainty), but no matter how much we honor it, we can't make it happen.

Last night I had the opportunity to talk about parenting to reach children's hearts in a non-religious setting. The parents who were there clearly recognized that we can control behavior—to an extent. Our reward-punishment schemes will succeed with children as long as they want what we can give them (candy, prizes, recognition, honor) more than they want what we don't want them to have (unlimited internet access, acceptance with their friends, sex). As one mother put it, "My kid can say he's going to youth group, but if he can always lie to me and sneak out with his friends."

Of course, I had to admit to them that the fundamental need for heart change that both their children and they need is something that no parent—even no human can accomplish. If you want to produce great athletes, honor great athletes [/SkinCrawl]. If you want to produce memorizers of Scripture, give kids stuff when they do it. But if you want godly children (or adults) no human scheme is sufficient to change the heart. Whose power and ingenuity do we really trust? Or whose should we?

Quick Hitters: More Stuff Than You Have Time to Read

2011-04-08T17:16:00.001-05:00

1. I don't know what really happened in the churches that will be discussed on 20/20 tonight, and given the options (mainstream media vs . . .), it'll be hard to know whom to believe. I do think it's worth noting that institutions like the Wilds make clear statements about their conclusions of what happened (surely not indifference to it?!) when they continue to affirm that those men are examples of biblical leadership.

2. Dave Doran:

The church was never made by God to become some kind of "show window" that the world looks at and thinks, Wow, that's really attractive. I want to be a part of that. That's really impressive. They have everything together. They have beautiful buildings. They have wonderful programs."

Yeah, but what about a Christian college? Ah, never mind. Y'all are too young.

3. Taking us back to a recent post, tonight's the big night for the latest edition of "the red carpet on the sawdust trail." I wonder what would happen if a local movie theater wanted to show it. Or if 5,000 nationwide did.

4. Does anybody know off the top of their heads how the Bob Jones family reached Baptist convictions? Though Bob Jones, Sr. was a long-time member of United Methodist churches, my understanding is that Jones, Jr. was a member of a Baptist church in eastern North Carolina in at least the latter portion of his life. And I don't know where Jones, Sr. was a member at the end of his life. Just curious . . .

5. And speaking of Bob Jones, bet you didn't know that Shoeless Joe Jackson is buried just down the street from BJU.

6. Synchronize your clocks, people.

7. The truth finally comes out. I am Dave Doran's puppet.

8. Speaking of Doran and slander, I soon expect some looney blogger to accuse him of being a closet evolutionist for his reference to "vestigial organs."

9. Quote of the Whatever Time Period It's Been Since Michael Riley Wrote It:

[T]o the degree that our music and liturgy promote sentimentalism, we have tilled the soil in which heresy grows. We don’t preach Rob Bell’s universalism; we simply prepare his audience to receive his message.

Full post here.

10. John Stott is surely right:

We seem in our generation to have moved a long way from this vehement zeal for the truth which Christ and his apostles displayed.

But if we loved the glory of God more, and if we cared more for the eternal good of the souls of men, we would not refuse to engage in necessary controversy, when the truth of the gospel is at stake.

Fascinating.

And finally, some old stuff I found as I was cleaning out iTunes:

11. Dever as a guest on Mohler's old radio show back in 2009:

It is shocking how many people who call themselves evangelicals really don't know what the good news [of the gospel] is. I find this all the time in conversations. I have divided more than one organization by pressing that question.

12. Mohler, speaking to Sovereign Grace pastors back in 2003, as he told the chilling story of his early years at Southern Seminary: "We are dying in evangelicalism of the terminal sin of niceness. We cannot afford to be nice. Nice means, "I'm going to be polite and not raise your heterodox teaching with you." Brothers, if you ever hear me to teach anything that is in conflict with the Word of God, love me enough to tell me. Force me into confrontation with the Word, so I will either have to harden my sin in resistance against the Word and be judged for that, but obviously you pray, as I know you would, that the Holy Spirit would open my eyes and I would see.

You Have Not Come to Mount Sinai

2011-04-07T22:29:00.001-05:00

A few more thoughts on Covenant Theology before I move on:

1. I probably should have mentioned in the previous post that I understand the matter of the continuity of the covenants to be a foundational building block to the system. Essential unity to the covenants reverberates through it all. If it falls, the system falls, as best I can tell. (I'm curious to hear if any CT'ers out there would disagree.)

2. This 9Marks interview with O. Palmer Robertson was helpful to me. It's been a while since I listened, but it might be a nice introduction to some of the issues from a CT perspective if you're looking for one.

3. Finally, if you're trying to teach people to affirm Dispensationalism, you are not helping your cause if you do not lead them to grasp the fundamental tenets of Covenant Theology on terms CT'ers would recognize. And I suppose the vice versa applies as well. Disdain is not an argument.

4. UPDATE: I just stumbled upon this, which is a helpful breakdown of some different positions, including one I'd not encountered.

Why I Reject Covenant Theology

2011-04-06T17:12:00.001-05:00

Like Dispensationalism, Covenant Theology is not monolithic. Still, I understand O. Palmer Robertson's Christ of the Covenants to be a well-respected and representative work on the theological system. (Incidentally, if you're a D who's never read anything on CT, or vice versa, you really should.)

Robertson argues that "the covenants of Abraham, Moses, and David actually are successive stages of a single covenant" (41). I'm not going to unpack out his whole case, but I trust it's reasonably obvious how this conclusion also serves as a necessary premise for fundamental continuity in God's relationships with mankind after the fall. IOW, if those three covenants aren't essentially the same covenant, the CT argument for strong continuity can't stand.

Here are a couple other examples of this piece of the CT argument:

Jeremiah's classic prophecy clearly relates the new covenant to its Mosaic predecessor (cf. Jer. 31:3ff.). This "new covenant" with the "house of Israel and with the house of Judah" will not be like the Mosaic covenant in its externalistic features. But the law of God as revealed to Moses shall be written on the heart. While the substance of the law will be the same, the mode of its administration will be different. The form may change, but the essence of the new covenant of Jeremiah's prophecy relates directly to the law-covenant made at Sinai. (41)

. . . and . . .

The covenants of God are one. The recurring summation of the essence of the covenant testifies to this fact. (52)

On the very next page, Robertson argues that the covenants are one structurally and thematically; however, they are distinct in their administration. In other words, the essence of the covenants are indistinguishable, but God uses different mechanisms and structures to implement that covenant.

That argument reminds me of some words from one of my profs at Southeastern, which even now echo in my ear: "Covenant Theology is an amazing theological system. The only problem is, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the Bible." Though that may have been a bit of hyperbole, his conclusion is nowhere more clear to me than on this particular point that Robertson asserts. Robertson is helpful in many ways, particularly in demonstrating how Gentiles were incorporated into the Abrahamic Covenant from its inception. (Why should we be surprised if they are incorporated today via the Church?) But when I read Scripture, I find evidence that is incompatible with the notion that the biblical covenants are essentially the same.

We can begin at the text Robertson notes above: Jeremiah 31. Robertson argues that the "new covenant" is the same covenant as the covenant established through Moses at Sinai. But Jeremiah says this new covenant is not like that old covenant. He doesn't say the administration of the covenant changes. He says the covenant changes. The administration is part of the very essence of the new covenant. That's the argument Jeremiah makes in verses 33-34 when he says, "This is the covenant:" and then proceeds to tell us that part of the essential change in covenant is administration. Administration change is part and parcel to covenant change. Hebrews 8 quotes this passage and concludes (v 13), "In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one [covenant] obsolete."

We could walk through other texts in Hebrews, but let's instead back up to Galatians 3-4—a passage, incidentally, which presents no small problems for many Dispensationalists. Covenant Theologians will quite reasonably argue from 3:15-22 that the Sinai Covenant did not abrogate the earlier Abrahamic Covenant. But 4:21-31 explicitly declares that there are still two covenants (not two administrations of the same covenant). One of them—the covenant of Sinai—leads to slavery. The other—the covenant to which we are parties ("the Jerusalem above . . . is our mother") leads to freedom and inheritance of the promises.

"If we wanted to produce legalists, how would we go about it?"

2011-03-20T11:26:00.000-05:00

Kevin Bauder:

If we wanted to devise a plan to turn out as many legalists as we could, how would we go about it? One way that we might do it is to offer some sort of of a carnal or this-worldly inducement for performing spiritual exercises. In order to get children to memorize Scripture. In order to get them to read the Bible. In order to get them to spend time in prayer. Offer them rewards, preferably rewards that are going to get them recognized in front of other people, so that they become used to the idea that "the things I'm doing, I'm doing for recognition on the part of other people." Isn't that the essence of legalism?

From his talk, "Shaping Our Affections Towards God," which is available here (along with more talks well worth hearing).

I Lied: More Really Good Stuff I've Been Saving up for You (And Some New Stuff Too)

2011-03-15T21:27:00.005-05:00

1. M*ark D*ever is a really good bowler.

2. Without a hint of irony, Christianity Today publishes a (biblically valid) warning to bloggers that we will give account for what we publish. Let's make a deal, CT: I'll stop blogging, and you . . . ah, never mind.

3. For whatever reason, this interview with David Saxon of Maranatha suddenly disappeared from its initial home, but it's back online now in a different place.

4. I'm all for figuring out what the Bible really says about Gog and Magog, but sometimes (especially in apocalyptic literature) perhaps we need to consider option #4: The Bible doesn't answer the question we're asking.

5. Mark Driscoll's traveler's guide to the emerging church/morass, with special attention to Rob Bell.

6. Since I opened that can of worms, here's Kevin DeYoung:

Love Wins has ignited such a firestorm of controversy because it’s the current fissure point for a larger fault-line. As younger generations come up against an increasingly hostile cultural environment, they are breaking in one of two directions—back to robust orthodoxy (often Reformed) or back to liberalism. The neo-evangelical consensus is cracking up. Love Wins is simply one of many tremors.

And right on cue, Fuller Seminary President Richard Mouw reminds us which side of that crack he's on.

8. By the way, if you reject any notion of limited atonement, do you really have any justification to be mad at Rob Bell?

9. It might be interesting to know what was going through Kevin Bauder's mind when Mark Minnick proposed [MP3, beginning 6:22 in] that Kevin Bauder had just made the case that BJU's Unusual Films did a great thing in sending people to Hollywood to learn better methods for filmmaking—putting "the red carpet on the sawdust trail." That moment and others [MP3] reminded me that not everyone who wants to preserve the truth—even in a group demonstrating a presumably high level of homogeneity—agrees on what exactly is this truth worth preserving. (Full audio available here.)

All the Really Good Stuff I've Been Saving up for You

2011-03-08T21:11:00.000-06:00

1. I vehemently reject any analogical relationship between the return of Christ and Michigan football.

2. I don't know who this guy is. I'm assuming he's some sort of cross between a hipster and a fundamentalist legalist.

3. This is a fascinating article on hymns in the mainline denominations. The gospel is still proclaimed in song in places where it has long been absent from the pulpit.

4. Great stuff on parachurch ministries from Mack Stiles and Carl Trueman, both of whom are themselves affiliated with parachurch ministries.

5. Fascinating conversation here. I'm hoping Mohler interviews Marsden sooner or later.

6. The SBC is not a confessional organization (surprised?), though it does maintain a confessional basis for cooperation. Whether it should be confessional is a worthwhile question that some have raised. I'm undecided.

7. One of Kevin Bauder's best lines ever:

In today’s debates, hyper-Arminians often prefer to call themselves Biblicists.

8. And last but not least, Russell Moore seems to be muddying a pretty important debate (and this isn't the only example I could cite):

On the other hand, there is still a growing body of Christians who speak as though the kingdom is either wholly future or wholly spiritual. Look at the ongoing efforts to divide concern for evangelism from a concern for justice, the mission of the church in caring for people's souls from caring for their bodies. There are rarely prophecy charts involved anymore, but it is, at heart, the same old dispensationalist hermeneutic involved, seeking to "rightly divide" the parts of Jesus' ministry that apply to us now from those that will only apply later.

Whether the kingdom is inaugurated in the present age is a question related, but not identical to, whether our mission is identical to Jesus' ministry. His argument would be more useful if he were to present his case for mission continuity and identify whom exactly is among this "growing body of Christians."

Tottering Authority

2011-03-01T11:32:00.000-06:00

Both international and ecclesiastical events brought this quote to mind, published in the WSJ a couple years ago:

From Ryszard Kapuscinski's "Shah of Shahs" (1982):

All books about all revolutions begin with a chapter that describes the decay of tottering authority or the misery and sufferings of the people. They should begin with a psychological chapter, one that shows how a harassed, terrified man suddenly breaks his terror, stops being afraid. This unusual process, sometimes accomplished in an instant like a shock or a lustration, demands illuminating. Man gets rid of fear and feels free. Without that there would be no revolution.

And regarding a topic completely unrelated to "tottering authority," Christianity Today reports that someone thinks John Piper is flippant. I think that's ironic. Read that comment thread, then read this salient observation from Phil Johnson:

Bell's latest heresy neither surprises nor interests me. What does intrigue me is the tragic drift of popular, mainstream evangelicalism. Here we see clearly why the evangelical movement is in grave trouble: The passions of today's self-styled evangelicals are easily aroused in defense of someone who makes a career dabbling around the edges of truth. Rob Bell likes to play with damnable heresies as if they were Lego bricks, and yet anyone who points out the glaring errors in Bell's teaching will be met with a wall of angry resistance from young, self-styled Christians who grew up in the evangelical mainstream.

Revising "On the Christian Sabbath": Suggestions?

2011-02-17T10:44:00.001-06:00

Article XV of the New Hampshire Baptist Confession reads:

Of the Christian Sabbath: We believe that the first day of the week is the Lord's Day, or Christian Sabbath (78); and is to be kept sacred to religious purposes (79), by abstaining from all secular labor and sinful recreations (80); by the devout observance of all the means of grace, both private (81) and public (82); and by preparation for that rest that remaineth for the people of God (83).

I believe that needs revision on a few levels, and I'm curious to hear if y'all have suggestions for revising both the text and the Scripture proofs.

Let's start with a new title: "Of the Lord's Day"

Bonus points if you want to check all the footnoted Scripture proofs:

78. Acts 20:7; Gen. 2:3; Col. 2:16-17; Mark 2:27; John 20:19; 1 Cor. 16:1- 2

79. Exod. 20:8; Rev. 1:10; Psa. 118:24

80. Isa. 58:13-14; 56:2-8

81. Psa. 119:15

82. Heb. 10:24-25; Acts 11:26; 13:44; Lev. 19:30; Exod. 46:3; Luke 4:16; Acts 17:2, 3; Psa. 26:8; 87:3

83. Heb. 4:3-11

Genesis 1-2: Before We Made It a Science Textbook

2011-02-15T22:26:00.000-06:00

Justin Taylor has directed us to an article that might be helpful in shaping our perspective on the Creation debates. In a day when some suggest that any divergence from the "Genesis 1-2 = 7 days" interpretation is a fundamental compromise that rejects the clear, plain reading of the text, it might be instructive to consider what people who were committed to the complete reliability and authority of Scripture believed—before we felt compelled to read the text as an explicit refutation of Darwinism. Taylor points us to an article that raises the provocative issue of what orthodox believers prior to the rise of Darwinism and modernism understood to be clear, or perhaps not so clear.

To be sure, some interpretations of Genesis 1-2 are incompatible with ex nihilo creation, Divine sovereignty, the reliability and authority of Scripture, and Adamic headship—not to mention other biblical texts. Some of these interpretations have direct implications for our understanding of the gospel, and not in a good way. But these are some interpretations. Which particular interpretation is correct is a question that, as Taylor notes, "must be settled by careful exegesis" (not by church history).

Sometimes, the Bible doesn't say everything we wish it said, even if our wishes are motivated by our desires to defend it. What's more, the Bible is not our tool to refute the views we don't like, even if they're really harmful views. The Bible is God's tool. It's sufficiently clear to accomplish what he intends. But let's be cautious towards the assumption that what seems clear to us is the final authority on what must be clear to everyone. A better awareness of church history may be instructive toward that end.

The Messiah in the OT: Read Between the Lines, AND Read the Lines

2011-02-14T21:36:00.001-06:00

I remember when I agreed with this argument—that when we read the OT, we find "virtually nothing about Christ, the Cross, or the Gospel." And I'm still not one who lightly dismisses this position with a deft wave of Luke 24:27.

Still, now, I find it completely foreign to my reading of the Bible to suggest, as Snoeberger does, that "Christ and the Gospel do not emerge as major OT themes. In fact, they're not themes at all." Remember, "Christ" is simply the Greek form of the Hebrew term, "Messiah," or anointed one. At this point in my life, it is impossible for me to read the OT without seeing a constantly recurring theme—both explicit and implicit—of a coming King who would restore all things to their proper place under the dominion of God. To say that the Messiah is not a theme of the OT at all is simply breathtaking. I wonder if the members of the intertestamental Jewish messianic communities might not have disagreed.

The Christ/Messiah theme is not the only theme in the OT, and more skilled theologians and writers surely offer better summaries than mine. But in any case, I doubt you'll find a more skilled writer and theologian than Snoeberger among those who dogmatically disagree. It is often useful to hear the best arguments from the other side.

Preaching Like the World?

2011-02-09T22:55:00.000-06:00

Everything noted here might be just as accurately applied to a category perhaps we could call, "yellow preaching."

Last Chance . . .

2011-02-09T10:46:00.000-06:00

Just one day left to take advantage of this excellent deal.

"A Glorious and Abundant Emanation of His Infinite Fulness of Good": Why God Does What He Does

2011-02-08T17:51:00.000-06:00

Sunday I had an opportunity to teach a class on what God has revealed to us in Scripture about his purposes and intentions—why he does what he does. Perhaps the most provocative question to answer what what God reveals about his ultimate ends. In the prep process I found a couple summaries that were helpful, though we spent too much time in the text to consider the quotes. First, Jonathan Edwards in his book, The End for Which God Created the World:

Thus it appears reasonable to suppose, that it was God’s last end, that there might be a glorious and abundant emanation of his infinite fulness of good ad extra, or without himself; and that the disposition to communicate himself, or diffuse his own fulness, was what moved him to create the world.

John Piper published a helpful exposition of Edwards, which includes Edwards' full text.

The last thing I did Saturday night was to read a portion of Spurgeon's Lectures to My Students. And in God's kind providence, this was the very last paragraph I read:

Man cannot be the centre of the theological universe, he is altogether too insignificant a being to occupy such a position, and the scheme of redemption must exist for some other end than that of merely making man happy, or even of making him holy. The salvation of man must surely be first of all for the glory of God; and you have discovered the right form of Christian doctrine when you have found the system that has God in the centre, ruling and controlling according to the good pleasure of his will.

Excellent Sale on CCEF Booklets—At Least Take a Peek

2011-02-03T09:55:00.000-06:00

The Christian Counseling and Education Foundation (CCEF) publishes a wealth of helpful resources. Some of their best are a collection of useful little booklets on specific issues like grief, adultery, guilt, addictions, eating disorders, divorce, and pornography. Frankly, I think their regular price is a bit high, but Westminster Seminary bookstore is running a terrific deal right now that includes a free display.

A Theologian's Reflections on the Past and Anticipation of the Future

2011-02-02T23:30:00.000-06:00

Carl Henry intrigues me. There's more than one reason, but it's not least because he embodies a curious collision of conflicting (to me, at least) theological, ecclesiological, and missiological commitments. Here's my summary of his place in history: Henry was the early intellectual force behind the movement that began to coalesce in the 1940s, which criticized fundamentalist separatism from broader culture engagement and the ecumenical attempts to evangelize and transform it. Henry and his collaborators believed that intellectual credibility and social engagement would gain a hearing for the gospel and recover orthodoxy as the dominant force in mainline Protestant denominations. That in itself is worth a conversation, but I'll save that for another time.

Portions of Henry's memoirs were fascinating, as he reflected on the hopes and dreams, successes and failures, ambitions and strategies of a workaholic's life—his word, not mine. (Chances are, if you have any kind of theological library, many if not most of it is the product of the resurgence of evangelical scholarship that Henry helped to trigger.) But perhaps most interesting were a couple passages that offer a glimpse into Henry's perspective on the ecumenical-evangelical-fundamentalist tensions.

Eastern [Baptist Theological Seminary]'s course was not decided in the long run by a handful of special-problem faculty. Its "middle ground" avoidance of extremes enabled those left of center to oppose the right and to espouse critical views. Lack of theologically literate trustees, gradual acceptance of the pluralistic denominational context it originally challenged, professing conservatives whose critical views emerged only after they were hired or received tenure and the translation of personal friendships into board support, all played a role.

and . . .

Key '73 [a 1973 U.S. evangelistic campaign] achieved certain commendable goals; it was hindered, however, by the refusal of independent fundamentalist churches to cooperate in a witness to Jesus Christ that involved also ecumenically affiliated churches [including, though Henry doesn't tell us, 43 Roman Catholic dioceses]. A further deterrent came through ecumenically aligned spokesmen who under bureaucratic pressures sought to make social justice rather than personal evangelism the forefront thrust.

As I read Henry's final chapter that reflects on the prospects for evangelicalism late in the 20th century, I sensed a note of disappointment–deep awareness of missed opportunities and aspirations that fell short, with unavoidable implications in the future. I found myself wondering if Henry ever perceived that the seeds of disappointment were sown in the soil of partnership for the gospel with people who never really embraced the gospel.

Nevertheless, I was encouraged by his closing paragraphs, which include this absolute gem:

"Heaven will be an unending feast for the soul that basks in his presence."

Who Are Abraham's Offspring?

2011-02-02T10:11:00.000-06:00

These aren't the only relevant texts, but the relationships between them seem obvious. I'm not sure we can say much at all about the identity of Abraham's offspring until we understand clearly how Paul understood Genesis 15 and 17.

Genesis 15:4-6, 18-21

And behold, the word of the LORD came to [Abram]: "This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir." And he brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them." Then he said to him, "So shall your offspring be." And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.
...
On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites."

Genesis 17:7-8

And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.

Romans 4:13-18

For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.

That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, "I have made you the father of many nations"—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, "So shall your offspring be."

Parenting Towards Good Feelings or Success . . . or Something Else?

2011-01-31T22:09:00.000-06:00

Below is a guest post from Josh Scheiderer, pastor of Bible Community Church in Mentor, Ohio.
---------------------------
The Wall Street Journal's most popular article for two solid weeks was about Chinese parenting. Currently it's at #3 almost three weeks after it was first published. Google the essay's title or the essayist's name (Amy Chua), and you will find a viral tiger on the loose. Since many in America fear that we're all going to be speaking Mandarin someday, it certainly piques the interest to find out what's going on in Chinese homes. How did all these Chinese kids turn out to be so far above average?

At a cursory glance one can appreciate the Chinese emphasis on hard work, discipline and demanding success. Upon further reading and thought another conclusion should arise. The Chinese (or at least Amy Chua) have rejected one bankrupt parenting method (the Western emphasis on a child's near-complete autonomy) for another (the Chinese emphasis on the parent's pride - filial piety).

Consider...

Anyway, the understanding is that Chinese children must spend their lives repaying their parents by obeying them and making them proud.

That leads to this:

Back at the piano, Lulu [the author's daughter] made me pay. She punched, thrashed and kicked. She grabbed the music score and tore it to shreds. I taped the score back together and encased it in a plastic shield so that it could never be destroyed again. Then I hauled Lulu's dollhouse to the car and told her I'd donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she didn't have "The Little White Donkey" perfect by the next day...I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When she still kept playing it wrong, I told her she was purposely working herself into a frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn't do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.

Not surprisingly, Ms. Chua is telling us now that we should read the cover of her new book and understand that her assertions have been blown out of proportion and/or misunderstood. Ancient Chinese marketing secret.

Back to the topic at hand... Feel good or succeed? What's a parent to aim for when raising children? The Biblical doctrine of depravity should remind us that children's feelings and natural inclinations are innately anti-God. They shouldn't be celebrated or reinforced. So the common reaction is to swing to another extreme—hard work, achievement, self-discipline, character. That's better, but it's not necessarily obedience, and it may well have little to do with the gospel. [Publisher's note: It may even be antithetical to the gospel.] Obedience is a life lived with God, not the child or his achievements, at the center because the gospel of Christ has transformed the desires and the efforts.

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

A Post for Churches Looking for Pastors and Pastors Looking for Associates

2011-01-29T11:25:00.000-06:00

Every now and then I hear from men from a particular sort of fundamentalist background whose theological convictions and philosophy of ministry are increasingly incompatible with the sort of churches they've lived and ministered in. One way to characterize that shift might be that they're increasingly interested in the centrality of the gospel to Christian life and pastoral ministry, and decreasingly interested in the centrality of ecclesiastical separation or particular applications of the Bible to behavioral standards.

I have varying levels of personal familiarity with these guys. The common denominator, more often than not, is that we both have a high level of awareness of and affinity for 9Marks principles and priorities. In most cases I know enough to tell a church that they're worth talking to, but not enough to offer a thorough reference on their giftedness and qualification for ministry. And these guys have varying levels of formal training and pastoral ministry experience.

If you represent a church looking for a pastor or you're a pastor looking to call an associate/assistant, and that's the sort of guy you're looking for, I'd be happy to help you connect. E-mail me at the address in the sidebar.

Can We Trust the Jesus and the Apostles?

2011-01-28T17:04:00.001-06:00

One of the basic questions we have to consider if we want to understand our Bibles is how Jesus and the Apostles employed quotations from the Old Testament. In other words, is their use of the Old Testament a model for us? Or, what was their hermeneutical approach, and how does it instruct us?

S. Lewis Johnson's The Old Testament in the New examines precisely those questions via the lens of six particular texts. (I can promise you, it was available for less than $58 when I bought it. Sorry.) This isn't a definitive text on the subject, but it's brief (94 pages), extremely readable (apart from some text comparisons in Greek and Hebrew), and puts some crucial issues on the table. Here's his conclusion:

[The Lord and His apostles] are reliable teachers of biblical doctrine and they are reliable teachers of hermeneutics and exegesis. We not only can reproduce their exegetical methodology, we must if we are to be taught their understanding of Holy Scripture. Their principles, probably taught them by the Lord in his post-resurrection ministry, are not abstruse and difficult. They are simple, plain, and logical. The things they find in the Old Testament are really there, although the Old Testament authors may not have seen them fully.

In the final analysis the biblical interpreter is interested not only in what the inspired author meant but also in what God meant. Therefore, the New Testament understanding of the Old Testament is the true exposition of it, because it supplies the reader not simply with what Moses and the prophets understood but also with what the Holy Spirit understood, gave to them, and empowered them to write down. [pg. 94, emphasis original]

This view is not without objection, but it seems reasonable that it ought to be our starting assumption, at least until compelling evidence to the contrary is produced. The burden of proof lies with those who would argue that Jesus and the Apostles used OT quotations in ways that are incompatible with original authorial intent.

P.S. I didn't try to track down all the links, but you may be able to find a better deal here.

Mohler and George: Abortion as a Bio-Ideology of Genocide

2011-01-28T14:31:00.000-06:00

I really enjoy Al Mohler's new "Thinking in Public" podcast. Long conversations about serious cultural issues conducted with a sense of gravity are hard to find. (Yeah, I'm looking at you, FoxNews and MSNBC.) It's sort of like NPR, but without the obsession with political correctness, moral relativism, and wine.

Anyway, Mohler's recent conversation with Robert P. George is particularly worth a listen. Here's a bit of what they had to say about abortion:

GEORGE: Over the years, millions of our African-American children—destroyed by the practice of abortion. No racist, no Klu Klux Klansman, no Nazi could have come up with a more effective way of carrying out their bio-ideology of genocide against blacks than what has happened here. And I think that those groups that push abortion, especially in minority communities and poor communities are responsible for it.

MOHLER: I heard Jesse Jackson speak on this issue in the 1980s, and he made that very point.

"Money is fiction."

2011-01-24T22:12:00.000-06:00

I'm not going to tell you that "This American Life" is a must-listen podcast. About two of every five shows aren't at all worthwhile. Another two are just ok. But that other one is absolutely fascinating.

A show from a couple weeks ago, "The Invention of Money," was one of the best I've ever heard. (The shows produced in tandem with NPR's "Planet Money" team are consistently top-shelf. "The Return to the Giant Pool of Money" and "Bad Bank" are a couple of my favorites as well. You can buy shows from the archive or stream them for free, and of course the weekly podcast is free. Of course, if you don't feel like you're already supporting public radio enough through your taxes, you can always kick in a few extra bucks.

"Legalism may sometimes be as debilitating to the church as the moral dangers against which the legalism has become the protection."

2011-01-19T17:34:00.000-06:00

In one of Mark Minnick's Preserving the Truth conference talks (I think it was his first), he quoted from David Wells' article, "The Word in the World." I found Wells' article online here, and it's well worth reading the whole thing.

The article is a bit long for the internet, and below are two extended quotes (with the portion Minnick quoted in italics), also unusually long for the medium. But as so much that Wells writes, they're penetrating and provocative:

It is not difficult to see that Protestant fundamentalism in the twentieth century has been, in these ways, a sect.3 Although its stridency in the first decades of this century came to be moderated later on, its view of the world has nevertheless always been distinctive and discernibly different from what has been considered normal in society. Its sense of antithesis, both to the culture and to the liberalism within Christian faith, was sharp and painful. It developed its own religious jargon and formulated rules that rapidly became legalisms that covered everything from wearing lipstick, to dancing, to movies. It withdrew educationally, denominationally, and culturally and organized itself into enclaves from which the outside world was excluded. Within these enclaves, therapy and comfort were offered to those who, from time to time, might wonder about the world outside. And it is not hard to see how fundamentalist doctrine had both a religious and a cultural dimension, for as George Marsden notes, at the heart of the debate with the modernists was the question: “Should Christianity and the Bible be viewed through the lens of cultural development, or should culture be viewed through the lens of Scripture?”4

For example, that the Bible was to be viewed as inerrant and “literally” true was, at a doctrinal level, a way of asserting its inspiration; but at a cultural level it was also a way of rejecting literary criticism in the universities. And this criticism was simply symptomatic of the whole drift of modern education. The belief in miracles, which was at the heart of fundamentalism, was there because it is at the heart of the Bible; but the assertion of such a belief was also an unmistakable way of rejecting the naturalistic and secular temper of the day. The belief in divine creation was, at one level, the assertion of biblical teaching; but at another, it was a deliberate rejection of Darwinianism and was a way of defying the reigning cognitive paradigm in society. Dispensational premillenialism was seen to replicate biblical teaching, but it was also a way of rejecting ideas about the progress of humanity that were at the heart of the civil credo that dominated public thinking until quite recently.5 In fact, prior to Christ’s return things are going to get much worse, not much better. Fundamentalist doctrine thus served both to protect biblical truth and to fend off the modern world.

In retrospect, it is clear that many dangers attend the path of cognitive dissonance. It is not easy to reject the reigning cognitive paradigm without stumbling into anti-intellectualism. That was a turn that fundamentalism took.6 Nor is it easy to sustain a moral antithesis to culture without drifting into legalism. Legalism may sometimes be as debilitating to the church as the moral dangers against which the legalism has become the protection. Much of fundamentalism did become hidebound and legalistic. Fundamentalism also produced a profusion of authoritarian leaders who could resolve life’s dilemmas with a degree of certainty that is usually beyond the reach of mere mortals. The fundamentalist landscape was filled with such figures.

In the early post-War years, evangelicals were determined that they would not repeat the fundamentalists’ mistakes. They distanced themselves from their rather rough and belligerent cousins by speaking of themselves as “neo-evangelicals.” The language was Carl Henry’s, though it has usually been credited to Harold Ockenga. What was “neo” about them was that they would not be anti-intellectual, separatistic, legalistic, or culturally withdrawn. They shed fundamentalist uncouthness, earned Ph.D’s from the finest universities, sat at the ecumenical table, dispensed for the most part with dispensational premillenialism, and loosed themselves from most cultural taboos.

The final chapter has not yet been written on this experiment, but when the time comes there will be an interesting question to answer For all the warts and flaws of fundamentalism, it did succeed in preserving the Word of God and the Gospel. Will this also be true of the evangelicals? They are undoubtedly much nicer than the fundamentalists, but in the end will they fail where the fundamentalists had succeeded? That will be a delicious piece of irony if it turns out to be true.

CHRIST AND CULTURE

On the surface, the issue seems simple enough. Fundamentalists exhibited too much of the “Christ-against-Culture” animus, and evangelicals have too much of the old liberal “Christ-of-Culture” outlook.7 The earlier liberals, Niebuhr said, believed they “could live in culture as those who sought a destiny beyond but were not in strife with it.”8 That is what too many evangelicals are like today. From our church marketers to our respectable journals to some of our theologians,9 there is a rush to embrace cultural norms, habits, and tastes in hope of success and in the naive belief that it is all quite harmless and can be harnessed to this or that Christian cause with impunity. So at first glance the transition from fundamentalism to evangelicalism seems like one from too much strife with culture, in the one case, to too little with it in the other.

At root, however, it is a question of how to engage the culture without losing one’s soul. Fundamentalism feared losing its soul and so did not engage the culture; evangelicalism fears being different from the culture and is in danger of losing its soul.

[. . . and then the conclusion . . .]

There is, however, a final irony to note. It is this: In the Old and New Testaments, the moments of great impact in the world were never those in which the people of God became indistinguishable from those in their world. When this happened it was a moment of spiritual debauchery. In order to influence the world, the people of God have to be quite different from it cognitively and morally. The irony is that to be relevant, the church has to be otherworldly; and when this spiritual otherness is extinguished by the ache for this-worldly acceptance, it loses the thing that it wants above all else—relevance. The church eventually discovers, to its great dismay, that it has lost its voice and no longer has anything left to say. That is the discovery that now seems to be looming ahead of the evangelical world. It is the iceberg that awaits the Titanic as those on board persuade themselves of their invincibility and pass the days in partying.

Perspectives on Change

2011-01-19T12:58:00.001-06:00

I think this (PDF, HT), written by an FBFI and Baptist World Mission board member, makes the same point I made here, just from a completely different perspective. Perhaps I should point out that his article is riddled with factual inaccuracies, so maybe just take it with a grain of salt.

How to Sink King James Only-ism with the Religious Right

2011-01-12T19:27:00.001-06:00

Undermine the KJV's credibility by getting the New York Times and NPR to sing its praises.

Six Statements You Didn't Often Hear Six Years Ago

2010-12-31T22:13:00.001-06:00

A couple weeks ago a friend reminded me of Herr Zeller's line from "The Sound of Music," referring to life in Austria after its 1938 annexation by Hitler's Germany: "Nothing in Austria has changed. Singing and music will show this to the world. Austria is the same." (In an odd twist of fate, "Herr Zeller" was played by the actor, Ben Wright. And this author currently lives on "Zeller Lane." Weird.)

I don't want to get too philosophical about change, but I want to make one point: Change often isn't best assessed by the people who are taking it mainstream in the moment they're effecting it. That's not a critique or a deliberate, vague reference to any one person.

As we wrap up another year of a particular sort of change within fundamentalism that, in my opinion, is for the better, I thought I might leave us with a few things that have been said more than once over the past year, in most cases by more than one person. I wonder if that might offer a bit of historical perspective on the present developments, or even whether there are new developments.

That's not to say they weren't being said six years ago. I think all of them were actually said six years ago. But I'll contend that they weren't being said as publicly or as forcefully by as many people in positions of perceived leadership with as broad a receptive audience. I'm curious to see what sorts of statements you might have observed. Here's what leapt to my mind:

I have more in common with some conservative evangelicals than much of the fundamentalist mainstream.
Let's invite a particular sort of conservative evangelical to be our guest speaker.
We need to apply separation just as aggressively towards people to the right of us as to the left of us.
We need to recognize that some of these issues are complex judgment calls, not all of us are going to see all the issues the same way, and we need to grant one another the freedom to apply biblical principles in the ways their consciences dictate.
Platform fellowship doesn't imply full mutual endorsement.
All of us are "disobedient brothers" in one way or another.

400 Years After a Very Sad Day

2010-12-31T10:11:00.003-06:00

As a committed 1560 Geneva Bible Only (GBO) advocate, I mourn this last day of the last year before the New Age Bible (Per)Versions gained ascendancy in the English language. In 1611 dawned a day when a "bible" produced by Anglican, gospel-compromising, Erastian, Puritan-hating, monarchists changed God's Word and displaced a TR-dependent, nonconformist-influenced, divinely designated Word of God in English produced in the REPUBLIC of Geneva.

But as a wise man once said, "I speak as a fool." We merely kid. But we kid because we love. Because we love the truth. And sanity.

Are the "New Calvinists" the New "New Evangelicals"?

2010-12-13T23:40:00.000-06:00

I'm not sure there's a consensus definition of the Neo-Evangelicals of the latter half of the 20th century. Clearly, they consciously rejected the separatism of the fundamentalists of the first half of the century, as well as its perceived cultural isolation. Clearly, they possessed a robust optimism in their capability to recover biblical fidelity in mainline denominations and gain a voice in culture.

But as I read more of their story, often in their own words, I'm struck most of all by their indefatigable pursuit of credibility—whether credibility in the academic sphere or in the public square. They believed that they needed better scholarship to win a hearing from apostate academics, and better cultural engagement to win a hearing from unbelieving society. I can't get past an irony I sense—that many of them understood themselves to be textbook Calvinists. I don't mean mischaracterize them, but their strategies seem to imply that unconditional election and irresistible grace needed a little turbo boost.

Today's Neo-Calvinists seem to be cut from much the same cloth. Granted, they don't have the same optimism for the mainline denominations. In large part, they're non-denominational—often detached from and pessimistic towards denominations, whether liberal or conservative. And they're not particularly interested in academic credibility.

What they do share in common with the old Neo-Evangelicals is a commitment to cultural engagement. They call it a missional mindset, or a missional life. To many, "missional" means not just a life committed to proclaiming the gospel, but meeting the needs of society in a way that demands a hearing for the gospel and enhances its credibility. Ultimately, this all cultivates a transformed or "redeemed" culture.

I'm sure I'm oversimplifying, and I'm not suggesting that acts of mercy are the pathway to gospel compromise. I'm simply arguing here that we should see a crucial point of continuity between two prominent movements in two different generations. Darryl Hart's concerns expressed in this essay aren't exactly identical to my point, but I think they're relevant:

I have said many times that the prefix “neo” is more important for understanding neo-Calvinism than the noun. But the more I read neo-Calvinists, I wonder if they actually read Calvin or simply make up what they contend to be the Reformed faith. [and later] Charles Finney and John Calvin have joined sides.

The Dynamics of Religious Controversy

2010-12-13T22:20:00.000-06:00

Sean Lucas offers some thought-provoking analysis at the Ref21 blog. Here's his most penetrating point:

We often want to say that we are arguing over "principle"; and sometimes we are. But more often, what drives our commitments to those principles are the underlying loyalties to people and even institutions. For some, where one went to seminary will tell you a great deal about his loyalties; not so much for specific theological commitments as for the general loyalty to a place that was formational for their Christian life and practice.

Ring Around the Rosy

2010-12-12T13:05:00.000-06:00

Hypothetical question: If you run a website that recommends churches, and one of those churches hosts an evangelist who speaks in a Free Will Baptist Church that's part of a fellowship of churches, some of which teach that a genuine believer can lose his salvation, have you compromised the gospel? After all, you're holding hands with someone who's holding hands with someone who's holding hands with someone who's holding hands with someone who's holding hands with someone who teaches false doctrine about the gospel.

Not that I have anyone in particular in mind. I'm just curious.

I Can Appreciate the Honesty

2010-12-07T23:23:00.000-06:00

Amusing Christianity

2010-12-06T09:17:00.002-06:00

As far as I can remember, I first started thinking about how our culture of amusement has shaped our culture of Christianity several years ago when I had a free Saturday night while I was traveling, and decided to drop in on a particularly influential megachurch. Though the time devoted to the pastor's speaking (it would be a mistake to call a social justice/economics lecture "preaching") was close to an hour, it was interrupted three times—twice with music and once with something about chicken coops. Though the segments were longer than you'd find in prime time, the commercial breaks were unmistakeable.

It wasn't until later that it struck me how much our culture of amusement has also shaped more traditional preaching, particularly the sort that travels around the country and pauses for the summer in a few special locations. Thanks, Finney.

All that to say this: The recent panel discussion at Southern Seminary on Neil Postman's book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, is well worth a listen. Particularly if you don't want to, you know, take the time to read the book. Surely Postman would be particularly pleased if you watched the video:

And yes, I do catch the irony that I'm writing about Postman on a blog.