Author: D. G. Hart

Where's Waldo Wednesday

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As part of oldlife’s continuing effort to assist in clarifying the Reformed faith and overcoming unnecessary disagreements, we will be featuring a number of quotations on the application of redemption from noted Reformed theologians. What drives this series is an effort to understand how the doctrine of union with Christ has or has not functioned in discussions of the ordo salutis and the benefits that believers receive through Christ’s mediatorial work. If we feature quotations where the discussion of union is absent, we are confident that others will see union even where we don’t.

The following comes from B. B. Warfield’s article on sanctification:

The evangelical doctrine of salvation common to the Lutheran and Reformed Churches includes the following points: 1) The soul after regeneration continues dependent upon the constant gracious operations of the Holy Spirit, but is through grace, able to co-operate with them. 2) The sanctifying operations of the Spirit are supernatural, and yet effected in connection with and through the instrumentality of means: the means of sanctification being either internal, such as faith and the co-operation of the regenerated will with grace, or external, such as the word of God, sacraments, prayer, Christian fellowship, and the providential discipline of our heavenly Father. 3) In this process the Spirit gradually completes the work of moral purification commenced in regeneration. The works has two sides: a) the cleansing of the soul from sin and emancipation from its power, and b) the development of the implanted principle of spiritual life and infused habits of grace, until the subject comes to the stature of perfect manhood in Christ. Its effect is spiritually and morally to transform the whole man, intellect, affections, and will, soul, and body. 4) The work proceeds with various degrees of thoroughness during life, but is never consummated in absolute moral perfection until the subject passes into glory. (Selected Shorter Writings – II, pp. 327-28)

Would Jesus Forgive Ken Starr?

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A little over a month ago I attended an evening of offbeat film where one of the archivists responsible for the program introduced himself as hailing from Raleigh, N.C. He said that he used to say this was the home of Slim Jims (I think) and Jesse Helms. But since the cooking of spicy meat bi-products was going on somewhere else, and since Jesse Helms had died, he could no longer talk that way about his home. At the point where he mentioned Helms’ death, the mostly academic and artsy crowd began to applaud.

Now I know conservatives are regularly guilty of bad taste and the examples of Rush and Glen provide daily reminders to non-conservatives of how mean the Right is supposed to be. But I find it hard to believe that even the vox talk-radioli greeted the news of Edward Kennedy’s death with the same glee evident at this evening of film. Granted, everyone on planet earth is a sinner and so constantly guilty of hypocrisy (which is sort of Paul’s point in Romans 1 and 2, right?). So I shrugged off the incident and despite discomfort with the egregious bad taste stuck around for the movies (plus, I had paid my $7). But I do scratch my head at the liberal talking point that conservatives are meanies when instances like this, not to mention various hosts at MSNBC, seem to balance the scales of meanness between the Right and the Left. If liberals want conservatives to stop being mean, shouldn’t they embody the niceness that supposedly typifies their understanding of a good society?

I was reminded of this incident when reading Randall Balmer’s recent reflections about the appointment of Kenneth Starr as president of Baylor University. I myself think that the Republicans treatment of Bill Clinton during the Lewinski scandal was in the ballpark of Clinton’s own shameful behavior – maybe not at home plate, but still inside the white lines. But liberals don’t forgive and forget anymore than conservatives, hence the helpings of meanness that fill up both the Right’s and the Left’s plates.

Balmer writes:

Starr’s appointment is not surprising because it apparently reflects the right-wing leanings of the regents, if not necessarily the faculty or the students. Starr as special prosecutor, of course, sought to bring down the Clinton administration. (Was it my imagination, or did Starr seem just a tad too interested in the tawdry Monica Lewinsky business?) Starr also has been dean of the notoriously right-wing Pepperdine Law School, and he has been in the forefront of supporters for California’s Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that reversed the legalization of same-sex marriages.

At the announcement of his appointment, Starr sought to play down his past. “Baylor’s pursuit of knowledge,” he intoned, leaning closely to read his notes, “is strengthened by the conviction that truth has its ultimate source in God.”

As a person of faith, I have no quarrel with that statement. But the real question for the faculty and students at Baylor is how the new administration approaches the “pursuit of knowledge” at the university. What if the pursuit of knowledge entails stem-cell research or leads to the conclusion (gasp!) that evolution is the most satisfactory explanation of human origins? What if a member of the religion department or the divinity school faculty notices that Jesus really had little or nothing to say about homosexuality or that Paul’s statement that in Christ there is no distinction between Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female merits a capacious interpretation?

The difficulty for Balmer here is even greater than the one that afflicted my fellow movie watchers. On a minor level, he should know that universities, their trustees, and presidents regularly engage in activities that are inconsistent with the ideals they uphold. Think, for instance, of the welcome that Balmer’s institution, Columbia University, gave to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But an even greater problem is that Balmer identifies with the evangelical left, a group of believers who supposedly point to the kinder and gentler Sermon on the Mount, as opposed to the Right’s harsh Ten Commandments, as the model for Christians getting along. So if Christians are to do as Jesus did, turn the other cheek, and forgive at least seventy times seven, why is Balmer publicly bearing a grudge against Starr? If the love and forgiveness that Jesus taught and practiced is supposed to provide a different model of Christian engagement in public life and discourse, wouldn’t it be good either to let this editorial against Starr go, or extend the right hand of fellowship and thereby embody the sort of ethic that Balmer finds lacking in the Religious Right?

It could be that wherever you get your law, either from Moses or Jesus, it is awfully demanding and so fails to produce the Rodney King-like society for which that liberals and evangelical lefties pine. Or it could be that Balmer is simply regretting that his most recent book has come out with Baylor University Press. At least he can explain that it wasn’t issued on Starr’s watch.

When This and That Comes Home

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The best college basketball coach in the United States works in Philadelphia and no one knows about him. Congratulations to Herb Magee for winning his 903rd game at Philadelphia University. His closest competitor is Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski with 856 wins. But does Herb get to do ads for American Express? I don’t think so.

Rabbi Bret almost makes up with the Bayly Bros. when he writes the following against 2k (amazing how unifying 2k thinking is):

. . . there are other preachers out there who do raise their voices against R2Kt. Doug Wilson does a fine job revealing its weaknesses. Also, the Bayly Brothers came out with guns blazing against it in the past week. A gentleman named Rev. Ken Pierce also spoke out strongly against it. Now, at least as concerns the Bayly’s and Rev. Pierce they are not as consistent as they might be on the subject given their disavowal of theonomy, theocracy and a bold optimistic eschatology, but still in many respects, they acquitted themselves well in speaking out against R2Kt. I think more and more people are slowly awakening to the danger that R2Kt represents and I fully expect, in the near future, that you’ll hear more Reformed ministers raising their voices against it.

But then Rabbi Bret blows it when he takes on the experimental Calvinism in ways that make the Bayly Bros. wild about the evils of 2k (isn’t this the point of Scott Clark’s Recovering the Reformed Confession?):

There is a strain in Reformed theology that emphasizes the kind of subjectivism that Alexander warns against. This kind of subjectivism would have us find assurance of faith by examining our faith, or our repentance, or our love for God, or our performance in order to discern whether or not our faith, repentance, love or performance are genuine and not spurious. The problem with this is that when scrupulously honest regenerated people dwell in a concentrated way in examining these realities the more likely they are to conclude that they are unconverted. When we seek to anchor our faith in the quality of our faith, repentance, love, or performance we are sure to be ruined from one of two directions.

If we examine ourselves and find assurance because of the quality of our spiritual virtues we run the danger of being ruined from the sense of a self-satisfaction that may easily give way to self righteousness. We also run the danger of developing a spiritual inertia that does not allow us the capacity to see our real sin since our assurance becomes wrapped up in our ability to convince ourselves of the thorough genuineness of our spiritual virtues.

On the other hand if we examine ourselves and don’t find assurance because of the real lack of quality of our spiritual virtues – thus becoming convinced that our faith, repentance, love, works, etc. are spurious – we run the danger of concluding that God’s genuine work in our lives is false. When sinners such as ourselves turn our gaze inward in order to examine our spiritual virtues what else should we expect to find except the reality that our spiritual virtues are not so virtuous?

Here are a couple of thoughts for the front porch republican heart that beats within the average Old Lifer.

Thanks to John Fea I have new reasons for thinking myself superior. It’s because Ann and I live with Cordelia and Isabelle.

Punch Drunk on Baylys

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In the many to and fro’s of kicking around two-kingdom theology with those crazy guys, Tim and David Bayly, I have wondered why their rhetoric so often starts and ends Limbaughesque. For instance, here’s a riff on two-kingdom theology and Keller-wannabes that would make Rush proud:

It’s one of the supreme ironies of our reformed fellowship that, despite what any reasonable person would think, the R2K, 2K, spirituality of the church preppies, along with their brothers mute behind the redemptive-historical gag, are out there in the Aussies’ back of beyond helping the PCA/MNA hiptsers dig. Both sides together, now.

The common denominator is hatred for the shame of the Gospel and a propensity to do the look-at-the-birdie routine, albeit they point in radically different directions.

What’s certain is that no one has a heart to love the lost, to rescue the perishing, to break the jaw of the wicked snatching the widow and orphan from his mouth, or to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ in its earthshaking power and wisdom and holiness. Find me the hip church plant where former lesbians and pro-abort feminists have been converted to the Gospel and are now zealous for the conversion of their former sisters-in-crime, pitying their bondage and, from love, going out to seek and to save that which is lost to bring them under the preaching of the full Gospel and the teaching of everything Jesus commanded–particularly that so-pertinent part having to do with Adam being created first, and then Eve.

For that matter, find me the R2K, 2K, spirituality of the Church, redemptive-historical preaching church where the pastor or elders or deacons–anyone, for that matter–faithfully show up at the baby-slaughterhouse nearby to plead for the lives of those little ones about to die.

Amazing similarities between the most disparate things are all over the place, aren’t they?

The spite mixed with sanctimony in such an outburst is truly hard to fathom (except when you remember Rabbi Bret).

What is curious, though, is that the Baylys are capable of better verbiage. In rummaging through their archives to try to diagnose the unease that produces such vituperation, I ran across a quite sensible post about the problems with Lutheranism, yes, the Lutheranism that I will go out of my way to hug. Pardon the length of the following quotation, but it is useful for making the point I want to make as well as giving a sense of the Baylys’ (I’d say) legitimate concerns with Lutheranism.

At first I viewed the increasing infatuation with Lutheranism within elements of the Reformed Church with bemusement. But as the trend toward accommodation with–and even emulation of–Lutheranism grew within conservative elements of the Reformed Church, I watched with mounting alarm. In particular, I have serious reservations about the Lutheran law-gospel divide, which, from my experience of LCMS practice, seems either to produce or (in the case of Lutheranism-smitten Presbyterians) to be the product of a desire for theological conservativism without the hindrance of practical piety.

Three things immediately struck me as a seventh-grader of Evangelical background upon entering a LCMS school:

First, I remember how startled my brother and I were by the rampant misuse of God’s name by students and adults alike. Not only did students routinely take God’s name in vain, they did so in front of pastors in class without reproach. Of course, my experience of the LCMS is narrow. There may be vast swaths of the LCMS where the third commandment is honored. Yet within the portion of the LCMS I am acquainted with a tragically casual attitude toward the name of God prevails.

Second, we were struck by the gilded cross and life-size, bleeding Jesus at front and center of the LCMS church attached to our school. Again, this is personal experience, but unlike misuse of God’s name, I am not willing to admit that I have a narrow and incomplete view of the LCMS in this area. Check it out. Visit LCMS churches and see how many contain graven images of Christ. Lutherans embrace icons in worship. If you doubt this, use Google to find pages by LCMS men defending icons of Christ in worship. Lutherans (modern Lutherans far more than Martin), in fact, seem to delight in tweaking Reformed sensibilities by defending the spiritual benefits of icons. They not only publish images of Christ in their curriculum and erect pictures of Jesus in their homes, they unashamedly place them front and center in their places of worship.

Third, one of the chief ways my brother and I stood out from the other students in our LCMS school was our father’s refusal to let us join school teams or attend the majority of school sporting events. Why? Because LCMS schools routinely scheduled games on Sundays. This remains true today. Lutherans have few qualms about pursuing their pleasures on the Lord’s Day. Lutherans were far ahead of culture as a whole in placing children’s sporting events on the Lord’s Day. Many Presbyterians find Calvin’s explanation of the Lord’s Day deficient. Lutheran practice in this area makes even the most liberal of PCA churches appear Sabbatarian. . . .

I suspect I know what most LCMS folk will say to these complaints: they’ll complain that they differ from me and other Reformed folk principially and theologically in these areas. They’ll say, “But we interpret these commandments differently than you.” Yes, they do. But I say back to my LCMS friends, isn’t it interesting how your interpretations of these commandments demolish the first table of the law as a practical force within individual human lives? Wasn’t it Luther who said that if we defend the Gospel at points other than the precise point under attack, we are in fact not defending the Gospel at all?

So, you disdain Allah and revile Buddha: but you put images of Christ, false images, idolatrous images, at the center of your sanctuaries. I know, I know, I’m a Docetist. I don’t really accept the humanity of Christ. In Christ, God took on form; we can now make images of God because God has taken on human substance. But, let me ask one question. In Christ, God did take human form. But the Christ of your crucifixes and icons, do they contain that form? Do you really know His form?

You don’t just put holes in His hands and feet and side, you make them a certain size, you put them in particular locations. You go further still: you put a distinctively formed nose on His head, colored eyes in His brow, particular cheeks and lips on His face. You give your graven image not just form, but personality and character. You show Him with tears. You place emotions and character on His face. Yet are your images true? If they are, why do they all differ from each other? Are there ten-thousand human forms of Christ?

Do your icons truly portray Christ? Would I know Jesus from your icons? Would I recognize Him on the basis of your images? Would I be able to tell Him from the reviling thief on the basis of your icons? If not, how can they be anything less than a particularly blasphemous and reprehensible lie when you place them at the front of the Church for veneration? Surely, a man who put up an image of Bozo the Clown and called it Churchill and told children to look to his Churchill for inspiration would be reviled as dishonest and contemptuous. Yet you do far worse to Christ.

Idolatry, other gods, the Lord’s Day, God’s name: the entire first table of the law the LCMS tragically diminishes.

Of course, LCMS advocates deny this. But the proof is in the pudding. As Calvin says, the second table of the law is given to demonstrate hypocrisy in regard to the first. Shall I mention how antinomian my experience of LCMS practice has been in terms of the second table of the law? The seventh grade teacher and children’s choir director who told his LCMS class that he subscribed to Playboy without the slightest fear that his job might be jeopardized? The eighth grade teacher who, though a delightful man’s man, ran off with another man’s wife? The tenth grade, school-sponsored campout where I had my first (and thankfully, only) experience of a pot-fueled group grope in which the staff sponsor was a full participant (and remained on the job for the rest of the year)?

Shall I mention the drinking and drunkenness common in LCMS churches and even at LCMS events? The disdain for Christ’s teaching on divorce within marriages of the church? Yes, all these things take place within other churches, including the PCA. But the frequency of their occurrence within our particular communions cannot be ignored. I find no pleasure in arguing this way. But I can’t be silent when I know these things to be true.

I have no desire to speak ill of the LCMS. To be honest, speaking ill of the LCMS was the last thing on my mind for many years for the simple reason that the LCMS used to be utterly outside the Reformed, Evangelical orbit. But when the LCMS is portrayed as a paradigm for Reformed churches, and when Reformed men praise Lutheran theology and worship, and when Reformed men leave Presbyterian churches for LCMS churches and try to persuade others of the wisdom of their course, I object. The LCMS is brazenly contemptuous of the first table of God’s law. It pays lip service to the second table, but even there, the standard of holiness in the average LCMS church would prove deeply disturbing to most PCA church members within their own churches.

Granted, it’s overdone at points, but aside from the Baylys’ appeal to the first table, which they disallowed when 2kers were trying to explain why they weren’t dropping everything to run out and picket at abortion clinics, their concern for second, third, and fourth commandments here is admirable. Also worth mentioning is the expressed desire of not wanting to speak ill of Lutherans. Boy, we two-kingdomers could have used a little of that love over the last two weeks at the Baylys home blog.

But the most important feature of this post is that it shows the Baylys are capable of analysis. Instead of simply shooting from the hip and dismissing as folly any form of disagreement, the Baylys based their rather restrained objections to Lutheranism on substantial theological points. And while their posts against 2kers were quick to assume the worst, this post against Lutherans manifests a measure of sadness even about important disagreements.

Wow! I didn’t know they had it in them.

Maybe it is a function of hardening arteries (or craniums). The Baylys wrote about Lutherans in 2004, six years before the current evil regime. Maybe conditions in the United States and the nation’s churches have so deteriorated that they feel the need to embody Guillame Farel more than Johannes Oecolampadius. Or it could be that they simply aren’t spending enough time at Happy Hour.

(Should I close comments now before Truth Divides . . . Truth Unites calls me an idiot?)

Wheaton Is Calling (and I Wish They'd Stop)

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Within roughly two years, Philadelphia has lost two good Presbyterian pastors to the evangelical capitol of Wheaton. The first to go was Craig Troxel, who left Calvary OPC in the city’s suburb of Glenside to take a call to Bethel OPC in Wheaton. And now comes word of Phil Ryken, senior pastor at Tenth Presbyterian Church (PCA) taking the reins as president of Wheaton College. Perhaps because Phil’s departure brings back difficult memories of losing my wife’s and my dominie, Troxel, the news of Ryken’s imminent departure from the capitol city of American Presbyterianism rocks my Old Life world more than I would have expected. (I confess to having bad dreams Saturday night over the news.) Having recently relocated to center city, only a few blocks away from Tenth Church, Phil’s presence was more reassuring than I likely realized when we decided to move (even though we continue as members at Calvary). Phil strikes me a honorable fellow, good scholar, capable preacher, and all round mensch. I am deeply saddened that I will not be running into him as a fellow resident of William Penn’s original city plan.

What Ryken’s departure means for Tenth will not be evident for some time, not simply until they call a successor but also because historical developments don’t make sense for a good twenty years. Tenth’s bones are as good as they can be for a church that I wish were more Old School Presbyterian than its practices allow. The church’s history is almost two centuries long, and its identity is not bound up with the recent past of its denomination, the PCA. This means that Tenth will likely not be caught up in PCA efforts to be hip, relevant, or influential. Tenth has been a church in the city for a much longer time than the sirens of urban ministry have been calling the PCA to transform the culture through its metropolitan centers. In other words, Tenth is comfortable being urban – it doesn’t have to try. Also, Tenth’s tradition of sacred music, though not necessarily following Reformed strictures about special music and organs, has prevented praise bands from cluttering the front of the church with the permanent apparatus of drums, music stands, and microphones. The church will likely continue to be what it is – an evangelical church with solid Reformed commitments even if not allowing those convictions to dislocate Tenth’s older patterns of worship (which is sensible, restrained and respectful), or its use of parachurch ministries for missions and other forms of devotion.

The meaning of Ryken’s appointment for the College is also not clear, though again history is a useful guide. Ryken himself embodies different strands of Presbyterian identity that have not always found an outlet at Wheaton or the town’s many evangelical institutions. Phil himself grew up at Bethel OPC, a congregation that split soon after he graduated from Wheaton and started at Westminster (Philadelphia). Part of the congregation remained in the OPC where Troxel is now pastor. The other part left to affiliate eventually with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Meanwhile, Phil, who worshiped in the OPC while at Westminster, transferred his membership to the PCA when he took the call at Tenth as an associate pastor under James Montgomery Boice. (To be clear, Tenth was in the PCUSA up until 1981 when the congregation aligned with the RPCES, and then with the PCA which in 1983 absorbed the RP’s through Joining and Receiving. The OPC missed the opportunity to join the emerging sideline Presbyterian enterprise in 1986 when an insufficient majority of commissioners voted to become part of the PCA.)

In earlier years of OPC history, Wheaton College produced a number of students for Westminster who eventually became ministers within the denomination. Through the presidency of J. Oliver Buswell and the teaching of Gordon Clark in the philosophy department, until the 1940s Wheaton was a welcome option for OP parents looking for a Christian college for their children. But after Buswell and Clark left Wheaton (partly owing to the trustees’ discomfort with Calvinism), the college of choice for OP parents became Calvin. More recently since the 1970s, Covenant College has filled the niche for many OP’s who are looking for a Reformed liberal arts institution.

This means that Ryken goes to Wheaton at a time when the stars of the evangelical and Reformed worlds are not exactly aligned. For instance, the networks of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals and Wheaton College do not overlap significantly. ACE draws heavily upon PCA ministers and Calvinistic Baptists. Neither of these groups has a big presence at Wheaton College where the church option for those with Calvinistic sensibilities is College Church, a congregation with historic and complicated ties to the Congregationalists. Another important church presence at Wheaton is Bible Church, an independent congregation that split from College Church in 1929 over fears of creeping liberalism within the Congregationalist denomination. But Wheaton has as many churches as most towns have Starbucks. The mainline congregations in town generally have an evangelical sweet spot that attracts college faculty, while sideline Protestants, including Wesleyans, Baptists, and Orthodox Presbyterians, fill in as alternatives.

Will Ryken’s presence at Wheaton bring the worlds of ACE and evangelicalism into closer proximity? Some of the most outspokenly critical Wheaton alums fear so. Indeed, the objections by the evangelical left over Ryken’s membership in the PCA and ACE is one indication of how far apart the worlds of Wheaton and conservative Presbyterianism are. (How recent posts at the Ref21 blog are helping Phil’s cause are not entirely clear either.) Ryken is hardly a flamethrower of the Totally Reformed right. He has historical interests in Puritanism, and has some loyalty to what he learned while an intern from William Still, an evangelical pastor in the Church of Scotland. But even if Phil can sup with high voltage Presbyterians, like Old Lifers, and can even appreciate their arguments, he is hardly on a crusade to make the world to conform to Richard Baxter, John Owen, or John Calvin.

All of that to say, Phil’s appointment is an encouraging sign about Wheaton College to conservative Presbyterians. But for some in the Wheaton constituency, such encouragement is part of a zero sum game where if Calvinists are happy, than evangelicals should be scared. For the moderate middle of Wheaton’s constituency, Phil’s Presbyterian credentials are likely foreign but also formidable enough to be comforting that he will give the College sound theological leadership. Not to be missed are Phil’s training and instincts as a scholar. Having graduated from Wheaton, and having kept a hand in writing and editing, Phil knows a lot about the life of the mind. As Mark Noll well cautioned in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, integrating evangelical faith and intellect is a task that may be as hard to believe as turning the bread and wine of the Mass into the body and blood of Christ. Perhaps less difficult will be integrating conservative Presbyterianism and American evangelicalism, a task that left Buswell and Clark in the 1940s looking on the outside of Wheaton’s Wesleyan leaning piety. But if anyone is up to the task, Phil is arguably the best equipped and well positioned to give it a try. We wish him God’s speed even if I also wish he were sticking around as a neighbor.

Forensic Friday: An OPC Classic

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Are Christians really new creatures? It certainly does not seem so. They are subject to the same old conditions of life to which they were subject before; if you look upon them you cannot notice any very obvious change. They have the same weaknesses, and, unfortunately, they have sometimes the same sins. The new creation, if it be really new, does not seem to be very perfect; God can hardly look upon it and say, as of the first creation, that it is all very good.

This is a very real objection. But Paul meets it gloriously in the very same vers, already considered, in which the doctrine of the new creation is so boldly proclaimed. “It is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me” – that is the doctrine of the new creation. But immediately the objection is taken up; “The life which I now live in the flesh,” Paul continues, “I live by the faith which is in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.” “The life which I now live in the flesh” – there is the admission. Paul admits that the Christian does live a life in the flesh, subject to the same old earthly conditions and with a continued battle against sin. “But,” says Paul (and here the objection is answered), “the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith which is in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.” The Christian life is lived by faith and not by sight; the great change has not yet come to full fruition; sin has not yet been fully conquered; the beginning of the Christian life is a new birth, not an immediate creation of the full-grown man. But although the new life has not yet come to full fruition, the Christian knows that the fruition will not fail; he is confident that the God who has begun a good work in him will complete it unto the day of Christ . . . . That is what Paul means by living the Christian life by faith.

Thus the Christian life, though it begins by a momentary act of God, is continued by a process. In other words – to use theological language – justification and regeneration are followed by sanctification. In principle the Christian is already free from the present evil world, but in practice freedom must still be attained. Thus the Christian life is not a life of idleness, but a battle.

That is what Paul means when he speaks of faith working through love (Gal. v. 6). . . . True faith does not do anything. When it is said to do something (as when our Lord said that it can remove mountains), that is only by a very natural shortness of expression. Faith is the exact opposite of works; faith does not give, it receives. So when Paul says that we do something by faith, that is just another way of saying that of ourselves we do nothing, when it is said that faith works through love that means that through faith the necessary basis of all Christian work has been obtained in the removal of guilt and the birth of the new man, and that the Spirit of God has been received – the Spirit who works with and through the Christian man for holy living. The force which enters the Christian life through faith and works itself out through love is the power of the Spirit of God. (J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, pp. 146-47)

Putting a Point on Two Kingdoms

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Posts and comments have been flying fast and furious over at the blog of those two crazy guys, Brothers Tim and David Bayly (they admit that they are “out of their minds”) about two-kingdom theology. It started over a week ago with acrimony surrounding the experimental Calvinism of Jonathan Edwards and Martin Lloyd-Jones, but quickly descended into mud-slinging about who has picketed abortion clinics the most, thus proving that the conversion experience is hardly otherworldly.

One of the points to surface in these debates is the cockamamie idea (to them) of the separation of church and state. As I have tried to point out, if you don’t believe in the separation of church and state, what is the alternative? One to which a Bayly Bro alluded was Calvin’s Geneva, with a nice scoop of scorn for those Calvinists who have departed so far from the pater familia of Reformed orthodoxy and Christian politics. But when I try to bring up the idea that idolaters and heretics were not welcome in Geneva – ahem, can anyone say Servetus? – I receive another helping of scorn. I simply don’t know what I’m talking about because executing heretics is not what they are talking about. Then why bring up Calvin?

I may not know what I’m blogging about, but I definitely don’t know how you can promote Calvin’s ideas on church and state and not see the pinch that might be coming in this greatest of nations on God’s green earth for Mormons and Roman Catholics (for starters). I’m not sure Baptists would be secure either since they do rebaptize. (Just trying to show I’m not selective in my dogmatic intolerance.) And the Baylys have the nerve to call me utopian. What land of chocolate (props to the Simpsons) would execute Servetus and keep Orrin Hatch?

And then along comes Rabbi Bret to the rescue. Mind you, he has been banished (it could be a self-imposed exile) from the Bayly Bros land of chocolate blogging for extreme remarks, so I am not implying that he speaks for the Baylys. But I am not sure how the Baylys and other versions of Christian America, from an orthodox George Washington and a federally envisioned Moscow, Idaho, to the transformation of New York City, can avoid having a Christian influence on society that stops at religious intolerance without limiting Christian influence to mere morality (quite like the liberal Protestant project, mind you, where the Bible was good for ethics but lousy for doctrine).

Here is how Rabbi Bret puts a point on it:

A second problem with the idea of a Christian advocating some version of “it is only fair that in a pluralistic culture that no faith, including Christianity, ever be preferred by the state” is that such a statement is treason against the King Jesus Christ. All Christians should be actively working for the elimination of false faiths from our culture and for the elimination of the influence of false faiths upon our civil-social / governmental structures. Any Christian who advocates the planned continuance of religious and cultural pluralism is a Christian who is denying the King Jesus.

If we need to be subject to King Jesus in all of our lives, and if we want his rule in every walk of life, including Manhattan for those who can afford it, then how do we tolerate other faiths in our nation? If the Bible is the norm for all of life, including politics, why doesn’t the state assume the same opposition to false religion as the church? We don’t tolerate heterodox teaching or unrepentant immoral living in our churches, so why would a nation that has Christian standards be more lenient than the church? Wouldn’t that nation be the civil version of the mainline Protestant churches before the sexual revolution? (This question has the ring of plausibility since it suggests why so many Protestants are inclined to conclude that the founding fathers, who were hardly orthodox, were highly orthodox. If orthodoxy is synonymous with morality, then the criteria for judging Christ’s rule shifts significantly.)

But aside from questions this raises about holding back on fully applying God’s word to all of life, including Roman Catholic neighbors, what about being subject to the government ordered by a constitution that preserves religious liberty? If those who say public education is a legitimate option for Christians can be accused of denying the legitimacy of Christian education, can’t those who continue to live with a regime guided by the U.S. Constitution be blamed for supporting idolatry? And if the toleration of unbelief by law is so awful, a sign of disloyalty to King Jesus, then when are folks like Rabbi Bret and the Pastors Bayly going to do more than blog or picket and actually follow the example of many Calvinists and resist tyranny? Is it really fair to accuse 2k advocates of bad faith when the accusers themselves won’t engage in the sort of armed insurrection practiced by Calvinists in sixteenth-century Holland, seventeenth-century England, and eighteenth-century America?

Where Bret seems to part company with the Baylys (and the Christian school advocate, Kloosterman) is over the magistrate’s enforcement of the first table of the law. Bret favors it, while the others seem to think that the magistrate should acknowledge the first table but not enforce it. That sure doesn’t seem to be Calvin’s theory or practice with Servetus who was executed for a defective view of the Trinity (the First Commandment by my reckoning). But even if you allow for this weasely distinction, then haven’t you introduced an area where all that Christ has commanded is not enforce? Christ commands people to have only one God. The magistrate theoretically believes this but lives with subjects who believe in many Gods. Huh? I wonder where exactly the biblical instruction comes for rulers to distinguish the first and second tables of the law so that the latter becomes legislation but not the former.

At the end of the day, it seems to me that the Covenanters had a good position on all this, even if I disagree with their starting place. They refused to participate in the U.S. regime because it did not acknowledge Christ as Lord. They would not run for office or vote in elections (up until about 1980). That seems like a good way of keeping your distance from a regime that tolerates other faiths and doesn’t acknowledge the Lordship of Christ. But folks like Bret rail against the United States and then run for Senate on the Constitution Party ticket – the God-denying Constitution, that is.

For 2k advocates along with your average conservative Presbyterian, Bret’s and the Baylys’ complaints are no skin off our backs. American Presbyterians revised our confession of faith and we now confess that the magistrate has a duty to protect the freedom of all people, no matter what their faith or level of unbelief. According to Bret’s logic, my communion is guilty of treason against the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet, the Covenanters, who would have disagreed vigorously with the American revisions of the WCF, never once considered (to my knowledge) severing fellowship with the OPC because of these differences on church and state.

In which case, are the Christian transformers of the U.S.A. making a mountain out of a mole hill? Or is it better to say that they are like Peter, defending his lord with a sword, when that way of doing things has passed away and a new order is in place, a spiritual regime for a spiritual institution – the church – which is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ?

Hug A Lutheran Age

Published on by D. G. Hart7 Comments

Over at his blog, Messiah College historian, John Fea links to one of his students who has created a Facebook page for “Hug A Lutheran Day.” We here at oldlife do not need a day to hug Lutherans. But we can appreciate their humor. The Messiah student (with props to http://www.oldlutheran.com) says you know you’re a Lutheran if:

…when someone mentions red and green (in terms of Christmas), you immediately think of a battle over hymnals.

…the pastor skips the last hymn to make sure church lasts exactly 60 minutes.

…in response to someone jumping up and shouting “Praise the Lord!”, you politely remind him or her that we don’t do that around here.

…you think a meeting isn’t legitimate unless it’s at least three hours long.

…you have more than five flavors of Jell-O in your pantry.

…when you were little, you actually thought the Reverend’s first name was “Pastor.”

…when you’re watching “Star Wars” in the theatre and when they say, “May the force be with you,” you reply, “and also with you.”

…you tap a church visitor on the shoulder and say, “excuse me, but you’re in my seat.”

…Bach is your favorite composer just because he was Lutheran, too. …your house is a mess because you’re “saved by Grace,” not by works.

…your mother reminds you often that she wishes you’d studied the organ.

…you sing “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus” while sitting down. …you feel guilty about not feeling guilty.

The only one I would add, on a more serious note, is you know you’re a Lutheran if you believe in justification by faith alone. (Major props to Martin Luther.)

Thoughts on American Presbyterianism

Published on by D. G. Hart3 Comments

Darryl G. Hart recently joined Camden Bucey of Reformed Forum to share a few thoughts on American Presbyterianism.  The conversation is casual and covers a range of topics including the modernist-fundamentalist debates of the early 20th century and the historical developments of women in office.

download the mp3

What Biblicists Miss about the Bible

Published on by D. G. Hart18 Comments

(or why we need creeds)

W. G. T. Shedd stood courageously by Benjamin Warfield’s side in opposing revisions to the Westminster Standards. Shedd explains below why appealing to the Bible or to being biblical is unpersuasive. It also suggests that the individual with his Bible does not have the status (i.e. power) of God’s ordinance (WCF 31.2) that the assemblies and synods that produce creeds do. As good Presbyterians, we should always recognize that creedal formation takes place by committee. The same goes for revision.

Of course Scripture is the only infallible rule of faith. But this particular way of appealing to Scripture is specious and fallacious. In the first place, it assumes that Calvinism is not Scriptural, an assumption which the Presbyterian Church has never granted. . . . Secondly, this kind of appeal to Scripture is only an appeal to Scripture as the reviser understands it. Scripture properly means the interpretation of Scripture; that is, the contents of Scripture as reached by human investigation and exegesis. Creeds, like commentaries, are Scripture studied and explained, and not the mere abstract and unexplained book as it lies on the counter of the Bible House. The infallible Word of God is expounded by the fallible mind of man, and hence the variety of expositions embodied in the denominational creeds. But every interpreter claims to have understood the Scriptures correctly, and, consequently, claims that his creed is Scriptural, and if so, that it is the infallible truth of God. The Arminian appeals to the Articles of Wesley as the rule of faith, because he believes them to be the true explanation of the inspired Bible. . . .

The Calvinist appeals to the creeds of Heidelberg, Dort, and Westminster as the rule of faith, because he regards them as the accurate exegesis of the revealed Word of God. By the Bible these parties, as well as all others who appeal to the Bible, mean their understanding of the Bible. There is no such thing as that abstract Scripture to which the revisionist of whom we are speaking appeals; that is, Scripture apart from any and all interpretation of it. When, therefore, the advocate of revision demands that the Westminster Confession be conformed to Scripture , he means conformation to Scripture as he and those like him read and explain it. It is impossible to make abstract Scripture the rule of faith for either an individual or a denomination. No Christian body has ever subscribed to the Bible merely as a printed book. A person who should write his name on the blank leaf of the Bible and say that his doctrinal belief was between the covers, would convey no definite information as to his creed. (Shedd, Calvinism: Pure and Mixed, pp. 145-46)