Author: D. G. Hart

Tim Bayly Does His Impersonation of St. Peter

Published on by D. G. Hart11 Comments

Apparently the Brothers B have dyslexia, though I am open to other explanations for how they garble other peoples’ writings and ideas. Tim Bayly has written yet another blast of their loud trumpet against 2k theology. This time they identify with the plow boy who knows right from wrong and they pit the common person against the egg-head academics who argue for a two-kingdom perspective and do so by often invoking the apostle Paul. Never mind that the simple apostle, Peter, like the Baylys apparently, found Paul hard to understand sometimes. The plow boy in the Baylys is a cocky little fellow who knows what he knows and disregards any instruction even after he steps in a big pile of mule manure because he was reading Bayly Blog on his I-Phone.

Aside from identifying with Peter’s roots as a man of the fishermen, the Baylys seem to be fond of rushing to judgment and action like the apostle did when evil is prevailing over the good. It was Peter, after all, who committed the only act of outright political defiance by the apostles when he raised the sword and took a swipe at one of the soldiers who arrested Jesus. Anyone with an ounce of sympathy for Christ can also appreciated Peter’s desire and courage in defense of his Lord at a time of great injustice. But Peter still didn’t understand, like the Baylys, that Christ’s kingdom comes not by a physical but a spiritual sword.

That is what 2k strives to clarify, the spiritual nature of the church.

But here is how the Baylys once again misrepresent 2k in tones quite out of tune with the love the repeatedly profess:

They [2k men] are fixated on silencing the voice of their fellow citizens who are religious, particularly those citizens who profess faith in Jesus Christ. Their endless political message is that no man may speak for God outside the privacy of his own home and church-house; and that if he does choose to speak as a citizen of these United States, he must be ever so careful to make it clear he’s not speaking for God or His Church. Our form of government requires him to parse his words and mince his sentences and nuance his tone so that no civil magistrate or fellow citizen will feel threatened by Christians-as-Christians, let alone Church-members-as-Church-members or Church-officers-as-Church-officers. This is the nature of our civil compact, and if religious people speak for God and His Church and people, they are violating that civil compact.

Wrong! The Bible actually requires ministers to parse their words carefully. And the Reformed interpretation of Scripture insists that ministers have a biblical warrant for when they declare what the Lord requires. And lo and behold, one of the doctrines the Bible teaches is liberty of conscience. Again, the egg-headed apostle Paul, did a good job of teaching a doctrine that plow boys and Brothers Bayly have trouble grasping when he talked about the liberty that Christians have to eat meat offered to idols.

According to the Bible, idolatry is wrong.
Also, according to the Bible, meat produced by idolatry is not wrong.
Also, according to the silence of Scripture, ministers are not required to shut down the butchers who sell the meat produced in false temples.

Let’s see about the Baylys red-letter edition of the Ten Commandments.

According to the Decalogue, murder is wrong.
Also, according to the Bible, the penalty for murder is not specified (unless you are a theonomist), which means Christians are free to support and oppose the death penalty.
Also, according to the Bible, ministers are not required to petition the government to punish murderers. Christians themselves as citizens may be free to do so.
But ministers cannot condemn as sinful something about which Scripture is silent.

In which case, the Baylys have substituted their word for the word of God in denouncing as sinful 2k theology.

Here’s the icing on the cake: 2k theology was the doctrine that informed J. Gresham Machen’s opposition to the church’s support for Prohibition and teaching Scripture in public schools. According to Machen:

. . . you cannot expect from a true Christian church any official pronouncements upon the political or social questions of the day, and you cannot expect cooperation with the state in anything involving the use of force. Important are the functions of the police, and members of the church, either individually or in such special associations as they may choose to form, should aid the police in every lawful way in the exercise of those functions. But the function of the church in its corporate capacity is of an entirely different kind. Its weapons against evil are spiritual, not carnal; and by becoming a political lobby, through the advocacy of political measures whether good or bad, the church is turning aside from its proper mission. . . .

Now, of course, the Baylys are not required to affirm Machen’s argument, and their previous credentials within a communion that excommunicated Machen might account for their lack of sympathy for his spirituality of the church idea. But if they are going to re-write the informal rules governing conservative Presbyterianism post-1950 and banish Machen from the list of worthies, they will need to do more than blow their trumpet. They might actually need to read and think about Machen’s reading of Scripture.

At Least He Has An Ergo

Published on by D. G. Hart27 Comments

Nelson Kloosterman and Brad Littlejohn have been tag-team reviewing David VanDrunen’s recovery and defense of two-kingdom theology. Apparently, VanDrunen is deficient because he does not follow Abraham Kuyper (according to Klooserman’s pious desires) or Richard Hooker (by Littlejohn’s Anglophilic standards). Never mind that VanDrunen may have historical, theological, or biblical reasons for arguing the case for natural law and two-kingdom theology.

Recently, Littlejohn reviewed VanDrunen’s Living in God’s Two Kingdoms and summarized the two-kingdom perspective as follows (with a little instruction in Latin from Kloosterman):

1) Christ has fulfilled Adam’s original task.
2) Therefore [Latin, ergo], Christians are not called to fulfil that task.
3) Christians do not need to earn eternal life by cultural labours; they already possess the eternal life that Christ has won for them.
4) Our work does not participate in the coming of the new creation–it has already been attained once and for all by Christ.
5) Our cultural activity is important but temporary, since it will all be wiped away when Christ returns to destroy this present world.

Sounds pretty good to me (except for number 5 which is a bit of a caricature), but it also makes sense theologically since you wouldn’t want to argue the opposite of these deductions, would you? Do you really want to be on the side of affirming that Christians earn eternal life through cultural labors?

Such a question does not appear to be sufficiently troubling for Littlejohn or Kloosterman who regard VanDrunen as betraying the genius of a culturally engaged Christianity. According to the former, with a high five from the latter:

. . . for VanDrunen, the suggestion that we are called to participate with Christ in restoring the world suggests synergism, suggests that Christ is not all-sufficient—if we have something to contribute to the work of redemption, then this is something subtracted from Christ, something of our own that we bring apart from him. Solus Christus and sola fide must therefore entail that there is nothing left to do in the working out of Christ’s accomplishment in his death and resurrection, that we must be nothing but passive recipients.

Here we find, then, that Puritan spirit at the heart of VanDrunen’s project–the idea that God can only be glorified at man’s expense,** that it’s a zero-sum game, and that thus to attribute something to us is to take it away from Christ, and to attribute something to Christ is to take it away from us. If Christ redeems the world, then necessarily, we must have nothing to do with the process. But this is not how the Bible speaks. He is the head, and we are the body. We are united to him. He looks on us, and what we do, and says, “That is me.” We look on him, and what he does, and say, “That is us.” He invites us to take part in his work—this is what is so glorious about redemption, that we are not simply left as passive recipients, but raised up to be Christ-bearers in the world.

Sorry, but I missed the ergo after union with Christ. We are united with Christ, ergo, we take part in redeeming the world? How exactly does that follow?

Actually, God’s glory is not a zero-sum game but redemption is. Somehow my blogging may glorify God. Somehow my cat, Isabelle, doing her best impression of a rug, is glorifying God. Somehow John F. Kennedy, as the first Roman Catholic president of the United States, glorified God. Which is to say it is possible for the glory of God to be differentiated and seen apart from the work of redemption. Since the heavens declare the glory of God and Christ did not take human form in order to redeem the heavens, such a distinction does not seem to be inherently dubious.

But to turn cultural activity into a part of redemption does take away from the all sufficiency of Christ or misunderstands the nature of his redeeming work (not to mention his providential care of his creation). And this is the problem that afflicts so many critics of 2k, even those who claim to be allies for the proclamation of the gospel. You may understand the sole sufficiency of the work of Christ for saving sinners, but if you then add redeeming culture or word and deed ministries to the mix of redemption, you are taking away from Christ’s sufficiency, both for the salvation of sinners and to determine what his kingdom is going to be and how it will be established. Maybe you could possibly think about cultural activity as a part of sanctification where God works and we work when creating a pot of clay. But as I’ve said before, the fruit of the Spirit is not Bach, Shakespeare, or Sargent; if you turn cultural activity into redeemed work you need to account for the superior cultural products of non-believers compared to believers.

To Littlejohn’s credit (as opposed to Kloosterman who fails to notice that Littlejohn has anything positive about VanDrunen), he does see merits in VanDrunen’s position:

In short, I really do salute VanDrunen’s intention to liberate Christians for cultural engagement as a grateful response to Christ’s gift, but I have a hard time seeing how he can give any meaningful content to this, given the theological foundations he has provided.

Actually, VanDrunen supplies plenty of theological justification for his view of Christ and culture since he sees important layers of discontinuity between Israel and the church (which many Kuyperians, Federal Visionaries, and theonomists fail to see and refuse to concede any ground to Meredith Kline). It does not take much imagination to see that the Israelites, even the ones who trusted in Christ during his earthly ministry, were completely unprepared for the new order that was going to emerge after the resurrection. They were still committed to Jerusalem, the Temple, the sabbath, and eating kosher. And Paul, who set the Gentiles free from those obligations, even submitted to the old arrangements for the sake of unity. But the new order of the church was completely unprecedented in the history of redemption to that point in time.

I see no reason why the next age of redemptive history will similarly exceed any expectation that we have based on our experience of this world. In fact, it strikes me that those who can’t imagine a very different order in the new heavens and new earth — what, after all, is it like to be male and female without marriage or reproduction? — are so tied to the arrangements and attractions of this world that they cannot set their minds on things above.

The Forgotten Mark Hatfield

Published on by D. G. Hart5 Comments

The governor of Oregon and U.S. Senator, Mark Hatfield, died last Sunday. For many evangelicals born after 1970, Hatfield’s name is obscure. But during the 1960s and 1970s he was a model for evangelical political engagement. Only after the rise of the Moral Majority under Jerry Falwell and the Reagan Revolution did Hatfield’s brand of liberal Republicanism disappear as an option for born-again Protestants. But now that a younger generation of evangelicals, recovering from Falwell and Bush fatigue, is looking for a less conservative and (even) more compassionate way of doing what Jesus would do in the public square, reflections on Hatfield’s legacy will likely be positive.

Hatfield makes an important appearance in From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin as a representative of what might have been had Falwell and the Moral Majority not come along. As important as Hatfield was, especially by inspiring the likes of Jim Wallis, he committed the same error as Falwell — baptizing politics in the name of Jesus. Here is an excerpt from the book:

Hatfield initiated any number of pieces of legislation on domestic and foreign policy that struck many as naively idealistic. From American consumption of food, and dependence on fossil fuels to the United States’ production of a nuclear arsenal, Hatfield was often ready with proposals that reflected his own understanding of what would Jesus do if he were an American Senator. Aside from legislative proposals, the Oregonian also used his own limited bully pulpit to prick the conscience of fellow Americans. Two resolutions from the 1970s stand out. In 1974 Hatfield called for a National Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer on which Americans would humble themselves, acknowledge their dependence on their creator, and “repent of their national sins.” The Senator’s home newspaper referred to the proposed day as the time “we all eat humble pie.” The same year, Hatfield proposed a “Thanksgiving Resolution” that would have called upon Americans to identify with the world’s hungry, and encouraged fasting on all holidays between Thanksgiving Days of 1974 and 1975. To publicize this resolution, Hatfield hosted a luncheon in the Senate where eaters were treated to a one-course meal consisting of a hard roll.

Hatfield’s political sensibility made no sense to conservatives leaders in the GOP but it resonated with the young evangelical desire for a religiously motivated politics. In several books, such as Between A Rock and A Hard Place, Hatfield insisted that politicians and citizens who followed Christ should be committed to four basic ideals: identifying with the poor and oppressed against exploitative institutions and social structures, opposition to all forms of violence and militancy, resisting a materialistic life-style, and understanding political authority as essentially a form not of rule but service. “Our witness within the political order must hold fast,” Hatfield wrote, “with uncompromised allegiance, to the vision of the New Order proclaimed by Christ.” As such, the role of the Christian politician was always prophetic — the Senator drew much inspiration from the case of the Old Testament prophet, Jeremiah. “Our allegiance and hope rest fundamentally with [Christ’s] power, at work in the world through his Spirit, rather than in the efficacy of our world’s systems and structures to bring about social righteousness in the eyes of God.”

For Hatfield, whose close exposition of the Bible was more substantial than most of the evangelicals who were writing about politics, a fundamental tension existed between Christianity and politics. This world’s structures of governance and economic productivity were essentially corrupt. Rather than regarding the role of the civil magistrate as one of restraining such evil until the return of Christ and the establishment of a new order, Hatfield believed the Christian politician’s duty was to implement those longed-for patterns of justice and righteousness in the present. As utopian as such an ideal might appear, the Oregonian’s reliance on the Bible forced evangelicals to take him seriously. For the younger evangelicals, and especially those attracted to an alternative form of politics, Hatfield’s arguments expressed exactly the themes that should characterize Christian social concern. But even older evangelicals, who were more comfortable with the label of conservative and who channeled their political energies into the GOP, could not dismiss Hatfield because of his standing in the Senate and his appeal to Scripture. If evangelicals had actually been comfortable with political theories derived from reflection on human nature and the created order, they might have dismissed Hatfield as just one more radical idealist who happened to know his Bible. Because he spoke the language of Bible-based, Christ-centered social activism and political responsibility, Hatfield was another in a long line of American Protestants who thought he was doing the Lord’s work.

At Least Theonomists Are Consistent (well, maybe not)

Published on by D. G. Hart21 Comments

I participated yesterday in my first interview on my new book (all about me, remember), From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin, yesterday on a local Detroit Christian radio station. The host was gracious but unfortunately we talked much less about the book than about his and my own differences over theology and politics. One take-away from the exchange was that many evangelicals, if this host is representative, think they are political conservatives simply because they are conservative Christians. No matter that American conservatives have been discussing the boundaries of the Right for over fifty years in such outlets as the National Review, Modern Age, or the American Conservative, a conversation led initially by the likes of William F. Buckley, Jr. and Russell Kirk. I actually invoked Michigan’s own Kirk yesterday, twice. And I don’t think it had any effect. Evangelicals seem to believe they are conservative because they follow the Bible and it doesn’t faze them that folks like Kirk and Buckley let the Bible seldom if ever enter into their considerations of conservatism.

The most frustrating part of the interview was the phenomenon I have repeatedly observed here and at other blogs — the appeal to Scripture selectively. As readers might well imagine, the interviewer was opposed to abortion and gay marriage, as am I, and believed that biblical teaching should be followed by the U.S.A. I responded with a question about the commandments that precede the sixth and seventh (fifth and sixth for the Protestant-challenged) and the answer distinguished between America as a republic and not a theocracy. Evangelicals believe that their designs have nothing to do with theocracy even when they follow a book that does describe a polity that at the very least had theocratic aspects.

The frustration escalated when I brought up the example of Michele Bachmann who is receiving questions about the place of her husband in the White House should she win the election. Biblical teaching does require women to submit to their husbands and so journalists, whether for gotcha reasons or not, do have plausible reasons for asking how Bachman’s evangelical faith would square her political power with the Bible’s call for wifely submission. (This is the same kind of question, by the way, that journalists put to Morman and Roman Catholic politicians who seemed to be under obligation to authorities in competition with the U.S. Constitution.) The response, quite sensible, was to distinguish the spiritual aspects of Bachman’s life from her political responsibilities. But if you can do that with Bachmann’s marriage, why can’t you do so with the civil institution of marriage more generally? After all, if biblical teaching demands that marriage be between a man and a woman (which it does lest anyone think I’ve gone soft), why aren’t evangelicals also calling for policy and legislation that would enforce biblical teaching about divorce, or about the way Paul describes the relationship between a husband and a wife? Also, if you are going to appeal to the Bible for certain aspects of public policy, is it really bad form for journalists to inspect Scripture to see how far such appeal will take a candidate? Saying that suggestions that evangelicals are theocrats is silly just isn’t much of a defense.

But if you believe in natural law or that the light of nature does reveal certain ethical norms, then it is possible for evangelicals to oppose gay marriage and abortion without appealing to Scripture and bringing up that unfortunate business about women wearing hats.

During the interview I did think that theonomists are more consistent than your average evangelical. Theonomists want all of the Bible to inform public policy, and I also suspect that theonomy gained a hearing in the 1980s as the more consistent, philosophically and theologically compelling, critique of secular politics and secular humanism than what folks like Jerry Falwell and Francis Schaeffer were offering.

And then I actually picked up a book by Greg Bahnsen and had to scratch my head about such consistency. For some reason, Bahnsen was eager to follow Old Testament teaching but drew the line at jihad. Not even general equity could prompt him to embrace God’s reasons for the Israelites purging the promised land of the pagan tribes. “The command to go to war and gain the land of Palestine by the sword,” Bahnsen wrote, “is not an enduring requirement for us today.” How this squares with Bahnsen’s earlier assertion that “God’s law as it touches upon the duty of civil magistrates has not been altered in any systematic or fundamental way in the New Testament,” is a mystery. [By This Standard, pp. 5, 3] After all, the command to go to war against the pagan tribes was hardly a local circumstance but a reflection of God’s holy and righteous opposition to sin and unbelief and a revelation of how he will punish it.

The take away is that the world of biblical politics is filled with inconsistencies. Of course, we all have our problems. But evangelical politicians should at some point not be surprised but expect to receive questions about where the appeal to the Bible begins and ends, that is, in which areas they are prepared to be 1k and in which domains they will follow 2k teaching. Until both Christians and secularists receive such an explanation, political biblicists will continue to be exasperated and exasperating.

What's Good for the Immanentizer is Good for the Post-Millennialist

Published on by D. G. Hart46 Comments

Alan Jacobs pushes back against Andrew Sullivan’s recent denunciation of Christianism. According to Sullivan:

Christians will look back on this period, I believe, with horror. The desire to control others’ lives and souls through politics is so anathema to the Gospels it will one day have to be exposed and ended. Until then, we just have to keep our spirits up and attend to our own failures as Christians, which, of course, are many.

Jacobs thinks he has the perfect antidote to Sullivan, and his name is Martin Luther King, Jr. Jacobs seems to think that King was doing what today’s Christians are doing, namely, arguing for conformity between the law of God and the laws of the United States:

[King] could have stayed in his prayer closet instead of politicking; he could have attended to his own failures as a Christian, which of course were many; he could have forgiven white Southerners instead of judging them. But no. He became an “outside agitator,” marching into ordinary American communities and telling them that their local laws, and indeed in some cases federal laws, were not to be obeyed — and why? Because they conflicted with the law of God! Notice the arrogance with which he associates his cause with God Himself. He even asserts that “human progress” only happens when “men [are] willing to be co-workers with God.” His whole vision for America is Christian and Biblical through and through: in his most famous speech he simply identifies the American situation with that of the Biblical Israel: “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; ‘and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.'” Talk about “the desire to control other people’s lives and souls”!

Well, I’ll take the bait. King’s immanentized political theology and identification of the United States with Israel was as bad as Jerry Falwell’s or now Rick Perry’s. That doesn’t stop Jacobs who explains, “After all, Dr. King’s faith commitments were at least as encompassing in their scope, as universal in their claims, as publicly political as Rick Perry’s . . .” Thinking of the United States as the New Israel is wrong no matter who is doing it and no matter what the cause.

But Jacob’s comparison is far fetched for at least three reasons. First, the Christian or Religious Right has not faced the same sorts of obstacles that African Americans did and IN some cases still do. Trying to glom evangelical politics on to the Civil Rights movement is just plain bad form (and this is from someone who doesn’t care for the increased power of the federal government that came with Civil Rights legislation). Second, King was not running for president. sponsoring a prayer rally around the same time that you are contemplating entering the Republican bid for the presidential nomination is almost as tacky praying before a NASCAR race and thanking the Lord for a “smoking hot” wife. Third, King’s appeal was much more common at a time when mainline Protestants dominated public life and appealed to Christian theology for social reform. For some reason, evangelicals don’t seem to understand that the United States has changed a lot since 1963, along with the etiquette governing public speech about the United States as a Christian nation. If not everyone, including the media elites, believes the United States to be a biblical polity, then maybe you don’t bring up the Bible if you want to persuade the media elites. Maybe also you don’t pray in public with a humongous U.S. flag at your back.

One last point: when Christians enter the public square and start using theology for political purposes, Christian doctrine always, always, always suffers. It happened with the Social Gospel. It happened with Martin Luther King, Jr. It happened with Reinhold Niebuhr. And it’s happening with Rick Perry. Consider the following from a report about the recent prayer rally:

The lineup of speakers at The Response reflect the impact of new charismatic and Pentecostal movements, especially those emphasizing spiritual warfare and round-the-clock prayer and worship, and which have produced another sort of army. That one is not particularly intrigued by the horse race of politics, but rather focused more exclusively on the supremacy of Jesus and preparing for his return.

That caused some controversy for the organizers of Perry’s event, which included speakers and endorsers who follow the New Apostolic Reformation. The NAR’s strident language of spiritual warfare and emphasis on prophecy, signs, and wonders, has drawn scrutiny. But it has the same dominionist aims of the old religious right, even while employing some new rhetoric.

The NAR has also drawn criticism from conservative evangelical “discernment” ministries that consider it heretical—a criticism that Response organizers dismissed. A week before The Response, Marsha West, a conservative writer and editor of the website Email Brigade, wrote a scathing blog post; which she published on the website of Response host the American Family Association, and which was subsequently taken down. West complained that the NAR, which she considers unbiblical, was involved in The Response.

West told me in an email that she was “thoroughly disgusted with Christian Right leaders who have joined forces with a group that is, by definition, a Christian cult. Because of CR leader’s lack of discernment, the NAR is now becoming mainstream.” (According to her website, West also considers Mormonism, the emergent church, new age spirituality, word of faith, homosexuality, and more to be unbiblical.) In the NAR, she particularly identified Mike Bickle of the International House of Prayer, who played a big role in The Response. “[T]hese people are what the Bible calls ‘false prophets’… not true Christians,” West wrote. When I asked Garlow [Jim Garlow heads Newt Gingrich’s nonprofit, Renewing American Leadership]about West’s complaint, he shrugged it off, saying that he was not familiar with the term New Apostolic Reformation, even though he knew its founder, Peter Wagner. “I have a lot of confidence in him spiritually,” Garlow said of Wagner.

“There are a lot of theological differences here, but we’re focusing on one issue: Jesus,” Garlow added. “It’s not about whether Perry becomes president, it’s about making Jesus king.”

Does Jacobs actually believe Garlow? Can he not see that Sullivan is just a little bit justified in being skeptical about today’s “Christian” politics?

Who's Radical Now?

Published on by D. G. Hart53 Comments

The Brothers Bayly are persistent in besmirching two-kingdom theology and its proponents but their latest swipe is rich indeed. They have reprinted a mysterious piece (impossible to find anywhere else on the Net) about the enormities of the Obama administration. Nathan Ed Schumacher is the author and Tim Bayly’s foreword runs ever charitably as follows:

This piece . . . demonstrates that the silence of Emergent and R2K men in the face of the wickedness and oppression in our public square is of the same fabric. Fear of man is a principle that knows no boundaries.

I keep wondering why fear of God pertaining to the ninth commandment, you know one of those laws that the Baylys would seem to want to prevail in the public square, does not inform the way these fellows write about Christians — not to mention officers — in the church. But I digress.

Schumacher, it seems, had a conversation with a graduate of a seminary on the West Coast – hmmm – about the woes of the nation and why more ministers were not speaking publicly about such matters. Schumacher contended with the seminary graduate that the difficulties facing the United States were not simply political but moral in nature. But the seminarian responded that the church should only speak to spiritual matters. Schumacher responded:

Here we have a spirituality radically disconnected from morality – an ethereal religion not connected to historic Christianity and its application of ethics to the real world. What kind of “spirituality” or theology is this that can disregard morals, ethics, and God’s Law and even silently abide open murder?

So what is Schumacher talking about when it comes to immorality in the United States? It turns out that morality is closely tied to politics.

We live in an astonishing time in America where the President is making open war domestically on the Constitution, and openly making unlawful wars internationally – such wars outlawed by the Constitution and long vested by the Rule of Law as war crimes and open murder – and formally recognized as such by the Nuremberg trials. When a President publicly usurps the Constitution, making an open show of violating its limits on exercising power, whether it be by his making illegal war, giving secret orders, punishing American soldiers for exposing truth, building secret prisons, operating torture chambers, running kidnapping operations (rendition), publicly asserting his right to kill American citizens with no trial or process, openly publicly stealing money via “bailouts”, taxing in violation of the Constitution, openly violating the Bill of Rights, creating illegal Federal agencies and programs, etc., ad nausem, then what does that mean according to the Principles of Law? It means, without question, that he has invoked the Law of Belligerents against the American people by acting as a belligerent upon the American people themselves, because publicly assaulting their Constitution is, in fact, an assault upon them. In other words, the President is openly making war upon the American people by these belligerent actions – actions which are open, public, and undeniable. If you don’t understand this, you are not paying attention. Our Constitution formally defines this as treason.

Schumacher’s solution is for the church to call a synod:

It is long past time for church Officers to convene formal and official church councils and synods all across this land to address the open lawlessness and public sin and crimes of what passes for “our government”- and to address the way forward. Nevertheless, it is probable that they can be expected to refuse to do this – and likely that they will always have a long list of lofty “spiritual reasons” as to why they cannot accept responsibility. But if church Officers, who are the official voices of moral authority, refuse to do this then there is a deafening silence and they cannot expect to be found faithful – and the rest of us will suffer the continuing consequences of their dereliction of duty – praying that God will raise up some “Thomas Beckets” who are jealous for the church, the Law of God, and who will have the courage to say “No” to our present political “king”.

In the comments on this post, the Baylys add a curious wrinkle to the clear overreach (clear according to what follows below). When one commentator brought up the example of the apostle Paul who did not seem to be overly upset by the rule or policies of Caligula, Tim and David ever lovingly responded:

. . . we don’t need to see it happening constantly with the Apostle Paul or John the Baptist or Jesus or Augustine or Calvin or Edwards or Machen in order to know that the R2K men are wrong when they oppose the church and her officers standing against theft, oppression, rampant gross immorality, the repudiation of the rule of law, and the massive bloodshed of the slaughter of hundreds of millions of wee ones.

When you find yourself arguing that John the Baptist is no model for pastors today, you should wonder whether, just maybe, your cowardice has gotten the best of your faith.

Two aspects of this response are striking. The first is the Bayly habit of hitting below the belt – that is, questioning masculinity rather than formulating an argument. The second is that the Bible really does not need to be our guide because the existing evils are so enormous. Paul, Jesus, and the rest of the apostles may not have led protests against their societies, but their silence is only an opening for the Baylys’ shouting. Never mind that a cardinal conviction of Reformed Protestantism is that officers in the church, whether individually or collectively, need a biblical warrant for using their authority.

I do wonder why the Baylys do not recognize how partisanly political their moral hectoring looks. It is not as if Obama is the first president to abuse the powers of the Constitution or propose questionable economic policies. Can the Baylys or Schumacher remember the former president’s apparent disregard for the Constitution in the Gulf War, the Medicare bailout, or the Patriot Act? Do they not know that Christians on the Left opposed Bush in terms remarkably similar to the way they castigate Obama, thus making party affiliation more than biblical interpretation the basis for moral posturing?

I also wonder if the Baylys have ever heard of the United States Civil War and the debates that Old School Presbyterians had over support for the federal government. The 1860s was a time of grave national crisis also driven by a hotly disputed moral issue and the Old School General Assembly of 1861 decided to address the matter through the clumsy Spring Resolution. Here we have a church doing exactly that for which Schumacher calls and the Baylys approve — an Assembly addressing a moral and political question. And yet, Charles Hodge, a man who voted for Lincoln, believed secession was treasonous, and that treason was immoral, opposed the church taking a stand on matters that literally broke the United States apart. Hodge wrote:

. . . a man who acts on the theory of secession, may be justly liable to the penalty of the civil law; he may be morally guilty in the sight of God; but he has committed no offense on which the church can take cognizance. We therefore are not inconsistent in asserting, 1. That secession is a ruinous political heresy. 2. That those who act on that doctrine, and throw off allegiance to the Constitution and the Union, are guilty of a great crime; and, 3. That nevertheless they are not amenable in this matter to the church. The question whether they are morally guilty, depends on the question whether their theory of the constitution is right. If they are right, they are heroes; if they are wrong, they are wicked rebels. But whether that theory is right or wrong it is not the province of the church to decide.

The reason why the church cannot decide such political and constitutional matters, even when morality is involved, is that the Bible does not address these topics. Hodge explained:

The church can only exercise her power in enforcing the word of God, in approving what it commands, and condemning what it forbids. A man, in the exercise of his liberty as to things indifferent, may be justly amenable to the laws of the land; and he may incur great guilt in the sight of God, but he cannot be brought under the censure of the church.

What the Baylys (as well as most critics of the spirituality of the church) miss is the distinction between morality and authority. The Baylys go knock-kneed whenever a 2k person suggests that a moral truth should not necessarily be advocated by the church. The Bayly logic seems to be that if it is right, then all authority must be used to execute the right. But biblical teaching would also prompt questions about who has authority to enforce the good. Just because I believe drivers who pass me on the right are wrong does not mean that I have power to pull those drivers over and lock them up in our basement. The Baylys desire to marshal the church’s power behind their interpretation of the Constitution (and their assessment of the culture wars) comes dangerously close to ecclesiastical vigilantism: the church can and should do whatever is right and not bother with the technicalities such as the confession of faith or Book of Church Order. Ironically, then, in the Baylys’ twisted logic, the very constitution of the church becomes expendable in the defense of the United States Constitution.

A related point that the Baylys miss is how radical their views are compared to the supposed radicality of 2k. Charles Hodge was by no means the most vociferous proponent of the spirituality of the church. But he could see the folly of positions like the Baylys on good 2k grounds. Hodge was not a radical and neither are 2k proponents. In contrast, the Baylys’ disregard for the constitution of their church and the teachings of their confession of faith several steps down the road to anarchy.

And they call 2kers antinomian? Call again.

If You Can't Stand the Polemic, Get Out of the Calvinist Kitchen

Published on by D. G. Hart38 Comments

An arresting little wrinkle in the current popularity of Calvinism among those who don’t baptize their infants and sometimes speak in tongues (and don’t belong to a Reformed church — redundant, I know), is the notion that Calvinists are mean. Justin Taylor is apparently on vacation and has bloggers filling in for him. Jared Wilson’s number came up on Wednesday and he tried to explain the stereotype of the “graceless Calvinist” (would Mr. Wilson actually refer to Americans of Polish descent in such a stereotypical manner?). Such exhibitions of pride are exceedingly disappointing to Wilson:

. . .gracelessness is never as big a disappointment, to me anyway, as when it’s found among those who call themselves Calvinists, because it’s such a big waste of Calvinism. Why? Because it’s a depressing irony and a disgrace that many who hold to the so-called “doctrines of grace” are some of the most graceless people around. The extent to which your soteriology is monergistic—most Calvinistic nerds know what I’m talking about here—is the extent to which you ought to know that your pride is a vomitous affront to God.

What is odd about this comment is that Wilson seems to show a similar gracelessness in calling out Calvinists. (Hasn’t every husband figured out a euphemism for observing a weight gain in his wife?) Wilson knows that gracelessness is wrong and so apparently doesn’t need to be gracious in pointing it out. He does not seem to consider that some Calvinist polemics may stem from a sense of error as deeply felt as Wilson’s. If Wilson knows that gracelessness is obviously wrong, maybe Calvinists also know that Arminianism is profoundly wrong. In which case, Wilson attributes Calvinist gracelessness almost entirely to character, not the most flattering or gracious interpretations of Reformed orneriness.

Also odd is Wilson’s perseverance in identifying with Calvinism, since the man to whom that moniker points was no slouch when it came to invective. For instance, here’s an excerpt from Calvin on the relationship between the Old and New Testaments:

. . . although the passages which we have collected from the Law and the Prophets for the purpose of proof, make it plain that there never was any other rule of piety and religion among the people of God; yet as many things are written on the subject of the difference between the Old and New Testaments in a manner which may perplex ordinary readers, it will be proper here to devote a special place to the better and more exact discussion of this subject. This discussion, which would have been most useful at any rate, has been rendered necessary by that monstrous miscreant, Servetus, and some madmen of the sect of the Anabaptists, who think of the people of Israel just as they would do of some herd of swine, absurdly imagining that the Lord gorged them with temporal blessings here, and gave them no hope of a blessed immortality. Let us guard pious minds against this pestilential error, while we at the same time remove all the difficulties which are wont to start up when mention is made of the difference between the Old and the New Testaments. By the way also, let us consider what resemblance and what difference there is between the covenant which the Lord made with the Israelites before the advent of Christ, and that which he has made with us now that Christ is manifested. (Institutes II.10.1)

Hide the Anabaptists and their unbaptized children.

Of course, we could chalk this type of polemic up to the parlance of Calvin’s time, when such vituperation was common in the academy and the church. But if that’s the case, why does Wilson not give modern-day Calvinists a similar benefit of the doubt? He concedes that other groups of believers exhibit gracelessness. And if he watches CNN or Fox News, he may also become familiar with invective in the culture at large, all of which might suggest that Calvinists don’t have a corner on meanness.

Or maybe if the young Calvinists actually read Calvin, they would come to understand that some doctrines and practices really are worthy of polemics, and some faulty ideas and forms of devotion really are harmful.

Either way, it is clearly odd to identify with Calvin who was capable of getting agitated and then object to Calvinists when they become animated. Calvinism would appear to be the wrong label. Again, why not Particular Baptist?

I could take some comfort from Wilson’s explanation of Calvinistic gracelessness:

. . . the problem is not the Reformed theology, as many of my Arminian friends will charge; it’s not the Calvinism. No, the problem is gospel wakefulness (which crosses theological systems and traditions), or the lack thereof. A joyless Calvinist knows the mechanics of salvation (probably). But he is like a guy who knows the ins and outs of a car engine and how the car runs. He can take it apart and put it back together. He knows what each part does and how it does it. A graceless Calvinist is like a guy who knows how a car works but has never driven through the countryside in the warm spring air with the top down and the wind blowing through his hair.

This is a curious analogy since it suggests that nice Calvinists conceive of the Christian life as a joy ride. This is not exactly the way that Calvin thought of our life in this world, which he likened to being on look out at a sentry post. But jarring analogies aside, what happens to the guy with the wind-blown hair when the universal joint goes on his Thunderbird? Or a little less dramatic, does the fellow who likes to take the car out for rides through the country need to worry about filling up the tank (or even about the environmental consequences of fossil fuel)? Maybe Wilson’s analogy is entirely apt. The young and restless ones don’t want to be bothered with fixing cars or refilling the tank, and as stereotypical youngsters they regard parents who say that teens should attend to these things are mean. That difference might go along way to explaining the difference between a gospel coalition and a Reformed communion.

Christ and Whatever

Published on by D. G. Hart31 Comments

This video has been making the rounds and it reminded me of how inexact the current evangelical understanding of culture is. Many assume that culture is everything that the church or religion is not and so Christianity and culture need to be brought into a coherent relationship. The problem is that this understanding of culture is about as precise as the adolescent quip “whatever.”

For instance, here is an on-line dictionary definition of culture:

1. the quality in a person or society that arises from a concern for what is regarded as excellent in arts, letters, manners, scholarly pursuits, etc.
2. that which is excellent in the arts, manners, etc.
3. a particular form or stage of civilization, as that of a certain nation or period: Greek culture.

In other words, culture used to refer generally to the arts, education of a liberal variety, morals, manners, and languages. This definition arose chiefly in the eighteenth and nineteenth century when European nations were caught up with their superiority over barbarian continents and peoples. That’s not meant to be a swipe against the notions of higher, lower, and middle-brow cultures. It is to suggest that we are using the word today when talking about “the transformation of culture” in a different way than it was originally employed. Since language is essential to culture, the idea of transforming English or Dutch or Swahili according to — what, Christian rules of language? — makes about as much sense as transforming culture.

What is not used nearly as much — in fact, seldom — by evangelicals is the phrase “civil society” and this is much closer to what people mean when they talk about transforming culture. Civil society refers to all of those spheres of life outside control by or regulation from the state. It is comprised of clubs, community organizations, schools, and voluntary associations of all kinds including churches, for starters. And what characterizes civil society, as opposed to culture, is pluriformity and diversity. A healthy civil society is one in which people form distinct associations to address separate parts of human existence. A Kuyperian might be tempted to speak of sphere sovereignty when thinking about civil society but in a healthy society voluntary associations far outnumber the spheres.

But what is particularly frustrating about contemporary appeals to culture and its need for transformation is that the Bible fails to yield a definition of culture or describe a Christian one for that matter. The notion of culture is much later than Hebrew or Christian times and the concept is simply absent in Scripture. That sure is an oddity if Christians are more then ever agitated to Christianize the culture.

Of course, the remedy, as usual, is to read the likes of a Russell Kirk, T. S. Eliot, or Joseph Epstein on culture and what makes for a wholesome one, and let the Bible speak for itself about matters of faith and practice. Authors who do not go to the Bible for the details of a healthy culture do go to another divinely revealed book whether they know it or not — general revelation. If evangelicals spent more time reading secular authors on culture, and less time trying to find cultural patterns or norms in holy writ, they might deflate the scope of culture and find less reason to transform it. And that in turn might elevate the importance of word, sacraments, and prayer.

Why You Won't Find Jesus On Facebook

Published on by D. G. Hart24 Comments

For those who prefer personal embodiment to an on-line presence as the means for maintaining friendship, Facebook has no real appeal. This doesn’t necessarily make non-Facebook users better people but it may make for better friendship since the real me is more of me than the virtual me. (Of course, the real me could always be worse – i.e., less palatable – than the virtual me, which would make Facebook the social media for misfits.)

The tension between the real and the virtual is all the more complicated when it comes to thinking about a friendship with Jesus. Protestants have various hymns that celebrate the friendship between believers and their savior. And some preachers will even encourage hearers to deepen their intimate relationship with Jesus.

But I wonder about such intimacy since how many friends can a real man have? Ten close friends seems about as many as I could imagine managing, though the reality is more like six. Maybe someone who is more cheerful and outgoing than I could have 100 close friends, though I don’t know how you could ever email, call, or drink with such a number of people sufficiently to merit calling them close. But beyond 100 it would seem hard to go.

In which case, if Jesus is a friend, even an intimate one, with all of his children (to mix metaphors), how could he possibly be a close friend to all of the elect? One tempting answer – aside from speculating that the elect totals only in the double-digits – is to refer to his divinity as the source of his capacity to befriend so many people. But it is not Jesus’ divinity that makes him a friend to sinners. It is his unique work as a man who is also God. What is more, in his earthly ministry Jesus was known to be partial to one of his disciples, as in the beloved one to whom John refers frequently. This would suggest that in Jesus’ humanity he was drawn, as all people are, to certain persons more than others to form a close personal bond.

At the same time, the very situatedness of having a bodily existence and being located in a place would also imply limits upon Jesus’ capacity for intimate relationship with all believers. Since he has a body and is limited at least in his interactions as the second person of the Trinity to his physical form, when Christians go to be with him a lot of believers will likely be vying (and waiting) for face time with their savior. I imagine long lines. I also wonder if the beloved disciple will have better access to Jesus than I will. And if I go to the new heavens and new earth expecting intimacy, I may be be very disappointed.

None of this is to suggest that Jesus is not a friend to sinners. It is only to consider that our understandings or expectations of friendship should be recalibrated when it comes to considering our relationship to Jesus. Jesus is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. That kind of sameness is not what we encounter in any of our acquaintances in this world. Depending on the variations of emotions and expressions in those around us, those daily changes draw us closer to some more than others. Of course, constancy of trust is an important part of friendship. But a friend who said the same thing all the time would be at least uninteresting. And this is what we encounter in Jesus who has spoken in his word and has stopped speaking. He has also communicated the same thing to all of his believers – the Bible. Granted, this is a lot of communication and well preserved. It is also personal, not like the computer HAL in 2001 A Space Odyssey. But it is not intimate as we who seek close friendships consider intimacy.

So instead of looking for an intimate relationship with Jesus, or regarding him on the order of a best friend, perhaps we need to be content with the relationship we have. He is our prophet, priest, and king. In executing those offices he may not meet a person’s felt needs for intimacy or longing for a best friend. But thanks to the abiding goodness of his creation, he has provided stand-ins, creatures with attributes sufficiently attractive and persevering to form real friendship.

Machen Day 2011

Published on by D. G. Hart9 Comments

I am not sure if our favorite PCA blogger had J. Gresham Machen’s birthday in mind when he posted a piece on the fortunes of Machen’s kind of confessionalism within the PCA, but it was good preparation for today’s festivities. The same goes for Westminster Seminary California which has released Scott Clark’s interview with me about Machen’s legacy and the chapter I wrote for W. Robert Godfrey’s festschrift, a recording that may put party-goers quickly to sleep.

But whether these resources were designed to highlight today’s anniversary, the following may provide reasons for donning party hats and blowing horns:

There are entirely too many denominations in this country, says the modern ecclesiastical efficiency expert. Obviously, many of them must be merged. But the trouble is, they have different creeds. Here is one church, for example, that has a clearly Calvinistic creed; here is another whose creed is just as clearly Arminian, let us say, and anti-Calvinistic. How in the world are we going to get the two together? Why, obviously, says the ecclesiastical efficiency expert, the thing to do is to tone down that Calvinistic creed; just smooth off its sharp angles, until Arminians will be able to accept it. Or else we can do something better still. We can write an entirely new creed that will contain only what Arminianism and Calvinism have in common, so that it can serve as the basis for some propose new “United Church.” . . . .

When we pass from these modern statements to the great creeds, what a difference we discover! Instead of wordiness we find conciseness; instead of an unwillingness to offend, clear delimitation of truth from error; instead of obscurity, clearness; instead of vagueness, the utmost definiteness and precision.

All these differences are rooted in a fundamental difference of purpose. These modern statements are intnded to show how little of truth we can get along with and still be Christians, whereas the great creeds of the church are intended to show how much of truth God has revealed to us in His Word. (“Creeds and Doctrinal Advance”)