Category: Jure Divino Presbyterianism

What Does Evangelicalism Have to Do with Church Membership?

Published on by D. G. Hart2 Comments

A recent Gallup Poll shows church membership dipping below 50% for the first time in eight decades. The results have provided observers with a chance to take the temperature of religion in the U.S. Some worry about America’s national identity if faith declines. Others regard this as evidence that religious “nones” are almost as numerous as evangelicals and Roman Catholics. Still others notice that the drop has been most significant for Roman Catholics and Democrats who are religious. And among evangelicals, the lesson to learn is either that church membership is necessary and biblical or that Americans are leaving churches because evangelicals are — believe it or not — hypocritical.

What few seem to notice is that evangelicalism, for one, is not a church. It is an impulse or dynamic that turns Presbyterians into Presbyterian evangelicals, or Anglicans into low-church Anglicans. Evangelicalism is not a communion.

For another, the very point of the new birth, as George Whitefield explained it, was to place church membership several rungs below (in importance) a personal relationship with Jesus:

The kingdom of God, or true and undefiled religion, does not consist in being of this or that particular sect or communion. . . . it is certainly a blessing to have the outward government and discipline of the Church exercised; but then, if you place religion merely in being of this or that sect–if you contend to monopolize or confine the grace of God to your particular party–if you rest in that, you place the kingdom of God in something in which it does not consist. (“The Kingdom of God,” 1741)

That stress upon the internal as opposed to the external of religion, on the heart over the head, on experience over liturgical forms, is one reason why evangelicals may not be as troubled by the decline in church membership.

Thomas Kidd, who wrote a biography of Whitefield, applies the logic of the evangelist’s sermon to the recent data:

The overall picture of declining church membership should be of interest, but not special worry to Reformed and evangelical believers. We’re not so much concerned with “mere” church members, but “regenerate” church members. And evangelicals have been at their best—such as during the First and Second Great Awakenings—when they had to work hard at drawing people into church with crystal-clear proclamation of the gospel, and with caring service to the needs of congregations.

Because of this elevation of conversion over church membership, perhaps the evangelicalism in its aggregate character is more like Antifa than the church. Here is how Mark Bray described Antifa last May:

Trump cannot designate “ANTIFA” as a terrorist organization because antifa is not an organization. Rather, it is a politics of revolutionary opposition to the far right. There are antifa groups, such as Rose City Antifa in Portland and NYC Antifa, just as there are feminist groups, such as Code Pink. But neither antifa nor feminism is itself an organization. You cannot subpoena an idea or a movement. That’s not to say that antifa doesn’t exist, of course. Antifa is “very real,” . . .but not in the monolithic, hierarchical way in which he and many other Americans are accustomed to thinking of political associations.

The same applies to evangelicalism. It is an experience, a piety, a sentiment, but not an organization. Fuller Seminary or The Gospel Coalition may be evangelical organizations. But evangelicalism is not monolithic or hierarchical. Evangelicalism does not function like a Christian church.

How Roman Catholicism Works

Published on by D. G. Hart3 Comments

Congregationalism and Presbyterianism have their issues, but at what point do you become Sideshow Bob, repeatedly stepping on the rakes, handles hitting you in the head, groaning in response, if you keep running the church this way?

Once the office of bishop was clearly established in the early Church as the unitary head of a diocese (a Roman administrative unit), that office was filled by someone chosen by local people and priests, then ratified by the neighboring bishops, as a sign of the unity of the Church. Even the unbaptized were eligible, as we know from the oft-told story of St. Ambrose, whom the clergy and people of Milan chose as their bishop while he was still a catechumen. The first bishop of the United States, John Carroll, was elected by the priests of Maryland and confirmed by the pope. Today, we are so used to the pope choosing our bishops for us that we think it was always that way. It wasn’t. In fact, the right of the pope to choose bishops was only settled with the 1917 Code of Canon Law, a papal document that clearly allocated that power to the holder of the papal office.

Arguably, there is some limited lay input in the selection of bishops. When a priest is being considered for appointment as bishop, the papal nuncio sends out what are called apostolic letters to a select group, which may include laypeople from the area, asking their opinion of the candidate based on some very specific questions. Since the papal nuncio does not actually know the laypeople of a diocese, he normally gets their names from the outgoing bishop, which means that the recipients of the letters are usually wealthy donors. Under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the areas of query in the apostolic letters were: Has the man ever said anything about birth control, abortion, married priests, female priests, the remarriage of divorced Catholics, same-sex marriage? These questions reveal the biases that gave us so many culture-warrior bishops under those popes. Since the election of Pope Francis, the questions focus more on pastoral concerns. But most of the letters still tend to go to influential (i.e. wealthy) people.

Apart from these letters, there is no other lay input into the choice of bishops. The system is still pretty much an old boys’ network. Each diocese in the United States is part of an ecclesiastical province—every diocese in Illinois, for example, is in the province of Chicago; every diocese in Pennsylvania is in the province of Philadelphia. At their annual provincial meetings, the bishops of each province can put the names of priests they favor on a list of potential candidates for bishop. This is called the provincial list, and every so often the bishops update it. When there is a need for a diocesan or auxiliary bishop in the province, the papal nuncio begins the hunt by looking at the candidates on the provincial list. Laypeople do not get to put names on the provincial lists. And the papal nuncio is not even bound by the provincial list: it is only a starting point in putting together his list of potential candidates. On his own initiative, the nuncio may add the names of priests from other provincial lists around the country, or names that aren’t on provincial lists, to create the list of candidates that he sends to the Congregation for Bishops in Rome.

The Congregation for Bishops, currently headed by Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Canada, has thirty or so members, including cardinals who work at the Vatican, plus cardinals and bishops from around the world. The congregation vets the nuncio’s list (called a terna because it has three names on it) and may add different names before sending it to the pope. An American bishop (usually a cardinal) who is a member of the Congregation for Bishops has inordinate influence on who becomes a bishop in the United States. McCarrick’s appointment required no consultation with the body of clergy of New York, and no consultation with the body of the laity, beyond those few apostolic letters.

After receiving the terna, the pope can accept it and select a name from it; he can reject it entirely and ask the congregation for a new terna, with names on it that he suggests; or he can ignore the terna completely and just choose his own man.

That’s the system. Here is how bad apples like McCarrick circulate:

His first appointment as bishop was as an auxiliary in his home archdiocese of New York in 1977, where he had been serving as secretary to Cardinal Terence Cooke since 1971. Cardinal Cooke, with the consent of the other bishops of the province of New York, had his secretary’s name placed on the provincial list. When the apostolic delegate, Archbishop Jean Jadot, went looking for names for a terna for auxiliary bishop of New York, there was McCarrick on the provincial list. The Vatican report says that between 1968, when McCarrick was first considered for auxiliary bishop, until 1977, when he was appointed, fifty-two apostolic letters were sent out, mostly to bishops and priests in the New York area, suggesting that very few apostolic letters were sent to laypeople. With his limited investigation complete, Jadot placed McCarrick’s name on the terna that he sent to Rome. The Congregation for Bishops did its vetting, the list went to Pope Paul VI (who probably had a conversation or two with Cardinal Cooke), and McCarrick was chosen. His appointment required no consultation with the body of clergy of New York, and no consultation with the body of the laity, beyond those few apostolic letters. It mostly required Cardinal Cooke’s patronage.

Why Do Anglicans Get a Pass?

Published on by D. G. Hart6 Comments

Anyone familiar with debates over two-kingdom theology have also encountered the argument that allegedly proves this outlook’s error — namely, that Lutherans were 2k and it led them not to offer any resistance to Nazi Germany. Case closed. But here‘s an example of that logic — more like a claim:

the charge made against Luther is not that he made theological errors that led his followers astray in their private religious lives. On the contrary, the accusation is that Luther’s beliefs and actions led to disastrous historical consequences, not only in the Germany of his time (with the Christian submission to the princes and the slaughter of the peasants), but in the Germany of the twentieth century, when Lutheran Christians failed to resist the rise of Adolf Hitler. These charges are extended to Lutheran communities in South Africa and Chile, for example, which allegedly identified themselves with an unjust status quo on the basis of their Lutheran convictions. Further, so the indictment goes, the Lutheran accommodation to the Communists in East Germany is a confirmation of Troeltsch’s judgment that Lutheranism will comply with any political establishment. It has no social ethic on which to take a stand against worldly powers.

The thing is (maybe only “a” not “the” thing) that bishops and theologians in the Anglican church, especially under Elizabeth, James I, and Charles I (roughly 1570 to 1650) went Lutherans one better. They did not commit the supposed error of separating the church from the state in a way that left minsters without a voice in politics (a prophetic one, of course). Anglican theologians actually argued for the supremacy of the crown over the church and insisted that this was God’s will as revealed both in nature and Scripture. Imagine trying to find an argument for resistance to a selfish and bloated ruler when your queen or king is not merely the head of the church (instead of Christ) but also the divinely appointed guarantee
of order and truth in church and society.

Consider the following summary of Richard Hooker’s views (he was the author of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity and lived between 1554 and 1600):

The political philosophy of Hooker is an integral part of his defense of the Erastian relationship of the Church of England and the Tudor monarchy. He was commissioned to supply the reasonable foundation for the existing establishment. Hooker writes from the standpoint or a conservative impelled by the exigency of the time to justify the status quo. In order to prove that the Puritan contentions were inconsistent with the political structure of England, he was obliged to examine the nature or the State and the sources of authority. He hoped to show that criticism or the Anglican Church and refusal to conform to the Elizabethan Settlement could not be rationally justified. He had concluded in Book III that the Scriptures do not require a particular form of church polity, and thus, demonstrated that the Church of England was not contrary to either the Word of God or to reason. His doctrine that resistance to authority can be vindicated only in the case of immoral law condemns the Puritan position as a denial of the fundamental nature of political obedience.

The motivation for Hooker’s conservative political theories and indeed for the philosophical and theological work as a whole, was an intrinsic fear
that a general acceptance of the doctrine of private revelation would lead to spiritual chaos and civil confusion. Hooker distrusted the extreme individualism of Puritanism, alarmed by the possibility that it might replace the corporate spirit of the English State. For the all-embracing cause of public order, Hooker was willing to submit private interpretation to public reason determined by the law of the legislature. He believed that a rational decision of a Parliament or Convocation was more likely to be in accordance with the will or God than the inspiration of a saintly individual. (pp. 19-20)

Of course, no English monarch measures up on the scales of heinousness crimes to Hitler (though most governments commit unjust actions and hurt innocent people). That is not the point. Nor is this an case of an American who takes democracy for granted taking exception to what looks like an odd form of government. Actually, The Crown portrays monarchy in a way that has this American second-guessing (even more) the powers of POTUS.

The question is why the critics of two-kingdom theology who fault it for an inability to resist tyranny (or its mistaken detection of tyranny) don’t see the much greater dangers that lurked in English bishops who sidled up to English and British monarchs. They did so not only for the sake of administering the church. They also made the case for divine-right monarchy in a way that made dissent sinful.

Do Churches Need Alliances to Say that Churches are Essential?

Published on by D. G. Hart2 Comments

Brett McCracken tries to rally the gospel allies under the banner of the the notion that church is essential. Of course, as a mild-mannered evangelical, he refuses to to give offense: “I’m not suggesting churches should defy government directives, deeming themselves “essential” even if authorities say otherwise. To do so would only inflame existing culture wars in unhelpful ways.” Can you inflame culture wars in helpful way?

But he does want to push back on a form of privatized Protestantism that encourages Christians to think that the church is non-essential to genuine faith:

Even though Scripture makes clear the church (ekklesia) occupies a central place in God’s eternal plan (e.g. Eph. 3:7–12), our anemic ecclesiology often relegates church to a decidedly non-essential place. If church is just a nice-to-have part of our self-styled spiritual journey—but only insofar as it enhances rather than undermines our expressive individualism—then of course it’s something we can go without for prolonged periods. Church is not essential, we assume, because Christianity is just as easily practiced solo at home. Give me a Bible, some inspiring worship music, and maybe a few spiritual podcasts, and I’m good. Do we really need church to be spiritually healthy?

Maybe this is obvious, but the irony here is yuge! The publisher of this essay, The Gospel Coalition, is an organization that relies largely on the notion that fellowships like theirs are at least as more important for advancing the kingdom of grace as the denominations that actually believe and affirm that the visible church is the institution God has ordained to carry out the plan of salvation. In fact, TGC mainly refuses to take sides on matters that pertain to the health and well-being of the denominations that comprise most of their fellows and board members. That makes sense since weighing in on a doctrinal or disciplinary controversy in, say, the PCA (four of its nine board members and its president are PCA ministers) could hurt TGC’s effort to secure the attention and following of a certain kind of Protestants.

Here, worth remembering is TGC’s original understanding of its work in relation to “the church.”

We are a fellowship of evangelical churches in the Reformed tradition deeply committed to renewing our faith in the gospel of Christ and to reforming our ministry practices to conform fully to the Scriptures. We have become deeply concerned about some movements within traditional evangelicalism that seem to be diminishing the church’s life and leading us away from our historic beliefs and practices. (Preamble)

From the very get go, TGC was a fellowship designed to remedy deficiencies of churches. When it came to the organization’s doctrinal affirmations, their statement on the church also indicated that the particular teachings and practices of specific communions — Baptist, Anglican, Reformed, Presbyterian, independent — were beyond the organization’s scope:

The church is the body of Christ, the apple of his eye, graven on his hands, and he has pledged himself to her forever. The church is distinguished by her gospel message, her sacred ordinances, her discipline, her great mission, and, above all, by her love for God, and by her members’ love for one another and for the world. Crucially, this gospel we cherish has both personal and corporate dimensions, neither of which may properly be overlooked. Christ Jesus is our peace: he has not only brought about peace with God, but also peace between alienated peoples. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both Jew and Gentile to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. The church serves as a sign of God’s future new world when its members live for the service of one another and their neighbors, rather than for self-focus. The church is the corporate dwelling place of God’s Spirit, and the continuing witness to God in the world. (God’s New People)

As generic statements go, that one is not too bad. But it leaves up in the air the differences over doctrine, worship, and discipline that divide the communions (Baptist, Presbyterian, independent, and Anglican) where board members are members. If the church were truly essential, why wouldn’t TGC try to bring all of those evangelicals from the Reformed tradition into a single church body where they could be more than a fellowship — a true communion? Or could it be that fellowship at conferences, video interviews, and in collections of essays is as good as the communion supplied by a church? Your denomination may bring you news about evangelism in East Asia, but the Gospel Coalition gives you Nine Things You Need to Know about Human Cloning.

According to the confession that several board members affirm:

The visible church, which is also catholic or universal under the gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children: and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.

Unto this catholic visible church Christ hath given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God, for the gathering and perfecting of the saints, in this life, to the end of the world: and doth, by his own presence and Spirit, according to his promise, make them effectual thereunto. (Confession of Faith 25)

If the church does all that, why is a fellowship necessary? Why do you “need” to know about human cloning?

Odd then that McCracken describes the value of churches this way:

Personal spirituality becomes an incoherent mess when it has weak ties to a robust church community. Society at large suffers when local churches aren’t fully functioning. Among other things, churches serve critical needs in their communities (food banks, homeless assistance, educational support, orphan care, counseling, among much else) and contribute to the mental and spiritual health of the larger population.

Churches, accordingly, are good for social capital and community development.

Actually, without “the” church, TGC would not have its council or board members. It is, after all, the PCA that ordained the likes of Tim Keller and Kevin DeYoung, that calls these pastors to churches that provide a platform for their standing in their denomination and TGC, that oversees their ministry and holds them accountable (sort of). Without denominations like the PCA and other communions represented by council members, TGC would not exist.

So, yeah, the church is essential. The Gospel Coalition is not.

Presbyterians in Charge

Published on by D. G. Hart5 Comments

The news of Julius Kim’s appointment as president of the Gospel Coalition should put the organization’s sometime fascination with Anglicanism in perspective — Anglophilia runs deep in Americans (as does venerating the Founders many of whom were Anglican).

Worthwhile to recall is that when TGC aired differences over church polity, they did not include a brief for episcopacy. Instead, it was mainly a choice between Presbyterians and Congregationalists (read Baptists).

On the Presbyterian side were Kevin DeYoung and Mark Jones. DeYoung wrote in defense of the office of elder:

I hold to the Presbyterian position because of the overall New Testament teaching about eldership. The office of eldership is one of teaching and authority (1 Tim. 5:17), which is why the position is reserved for qualified men (1 Tim. 2:11-12; 3:1-7). Elder-pastors are given by Christ to be overseers and shepherds of the flock of God (Acts 20:28, Eph. 4:11). The leaders in Hebrews 13:17 who must watch over the souls of God’s people are almost certainly elders. We know from 1 Peter 5:2-3 that elders must exercise gracious oversight in the church. They are the under-shepherds serving and representing Christ, our Chief Shepherd and Overseer (1 Peter 1:25; 5:4). It is, therefore, everywhere in keeping with a biblical theology of eldership to have the elders of the church exercising the authority of the keys through preaching and discipline. In fact, it’s hard to imagine how the elders are to shepherd, govern, and protect as the New Testament commands if the final authority rests with the congregation and not with the officers who represent Christ in their midst.

Jones dug in with presbytery:

Despite what you may think, Presbyterian ecclesiology is not primarily defined by churches governed by elders, but by churches governed by presbyteries. Presbyteries can encompass the elders of a local church, a regional church, and what is termed a “general assembly.” This view is established from the oneness of the visible church. Based on the sufficiency of Scripture, Presbyterians hold that the church is governed jure divino (by divine right). There are certain fixed principles in the government of the church. We hold that Christ has blessed the church with the Scriptures, church officers, and sacraments. In doing so, Christ has “ordained therein his system of doctrine, government, discipline, and worship, all of which are either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary inference may be deduced therefrom” (Presbyterian Church in America Book of Church Order).

While there is much that Presbyterians and classic congregationalists can agree on, nevertheless, against the congregationalist view, Presbyterians affirm the authority of presbyteries beyond the local church. That’s the crux of the issue between Presbyterians and congregationalists: authority.

From the other side came Hunter Powell, a Baptist pastor, in defense of Congregationalism which appeared first at Gospel Coalition, vanished, and then moved to IX Marks:

Elders have authority given to them in the Bible. They should be obeyed. The problem is whether that paragraph says all there is to say about church power. If church members are to vote on their elders, and if church members have a right to vote in excommunication (which many Reformed divines, particularly some notable Dutch divines, argued for), then we must say that there is some church power in the congregation as a whole. But that does not by any means argue against the unique role of elders and the fact that the Bible commands churches to submit to their elders. Nor does this mean that people are mini-elders arbitrarily deciding when and where they actually submit to their leaders. If a church feels a tension there, then that is actually a good thing. The reformed divines certainly did….

It is true some congregationalists fear elders because of the tyranny of the few, but on the other hand some presbyterians fear members involvement because of the anarchy of the many. But fear never leads to good polity. The question really comes down to this: Did Christ give any share of church power to the congregation? If so, then we must account for it.

Again, no brief for bishops. The world of New Calvinism seems to have little room for the rule by one in the palace of the church. It may owe to church history like this.

Orthodox Presbyterian Lady

Published on by D. G. Hart15 Comments

At one point in our church life the missus and I were part of a missional work whose name we might have a hand in choosing. To avoid the common and somewhat tired names such as Redeemer or Calvary, I wanted to invoke the name of saints and was thinking especially of a set of Presbyterians with the name John — Muether, Machen, Witherspoon, Knox, and Calvin. To claim their names, I wanted to use Sts. Johns Church, a name that reflected a debt to these Presbyterians and that also acknowledged the Protestant conviction of the sainthood of all believers.

Needless to say, Sts. Johns was an epic fail.

A recent sermon on 2 (two?) John reminded me of this old idea. The epistle begins with this odd construction:

The elder to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in truth, and not only I, but also all who know the truth, 2 because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever

Our pastor plausibly argued that this was not an individual communication between the apostle John and a certain woman in the early church. Instead, “lady” was a word synonymous with a congregation or set of congregations in a city. (I also perked up that John referred to himself as an elder — “hey, that’s my office!”)

The last two verses of the epistle also make sense of this rendering of “lady”:

12 Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead I hope to come to you and talk face to face, so that our joy may be complete.

13 The children of your elect sister greet you.

If John were simply writing to one person, then this would be an odd communication to reach the status of canonical writing. And if it were also about one lady, then John was apparently writing to a set of sisters akin to Jane and Cassandra Austen.

So if lady does refer to a church, then it’s time (#metoo) that we put the word to ecclesiastical use.

Who Sounds Protestant?

Published on by D. G. Hart22 Comments

Another upgrader to Rome marvels about continuity between the ancient church and contemporary Roman Catholicism (were the church fathers as sexually confused as today?):

I haven’t officially tweeted this yet, but for the last 5-6 months, I’ve been struggling through a very unexpected twist in my Christian life: the Catholic Church. If you knew me before, you would know that this was the farthest thing from my mind for the past 30 years.

I was as anti-Catholic as they come (James White probably had me beat). The problem was, I knew NOTHING about their actually teachings. All I knew came from other anti-Catholic polemicists. Until I started a class on Church History (via a Reformed grad school). I was blown away.

In addition, I started to read the Church Fathers. Not what people say about the Fathers, but their actual letters and writings. This was HUGE in my dealings with the claims of Catholicism. They actually sounded Catholic and not Protestant.

Along with many, many pages of books, debates, and conversion stories, I started to really think that the Catholic Church is the Church that Christ founded 2000+ years ago. Now I am on the path towards full-communion with the Catholic Church. Crazy!

Have people like this never read Paul? What that apostle recommended to Titus does not sound like Roman Catholicism — eh veh:

1 Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness, 2 in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began 3 and at the proper time manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our Savior;

4 To Titus, my true child in a common faith:

Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.

5 This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you— 6 if anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife, and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination. 7 For an overseer, as God’s steward, must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, 8 but hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. 9 He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.

10 For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party. 11 They must be silenced, since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach. 12 One of the Cretans, a prophet of their own, said, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.” 13 This testimony is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, 14 not devoting themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth. 15 To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled. 16 They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.

Notice Paul says God reveals himself by preaching. He never mentions the sacraments in his instructions to a man who is planting a church. Odd. Though the shot at Jewish myths might make you want to check what you are doing with an altar and sacrifice in worship.

He also says overseers (bishops or presbyters) should be married to only one wife. So much for clerical celibacy.

In chapter two, Paul goes on to bang the gong for doctrine — the meat and drink of logocentric Protestants.

Then in chapter three, Paul tells Titus to be subject to the ruling authorities and to teach Christians to do the same. Let’s just say that the papacy has had a little trouble thinking such instruction applied to them. Heck, they still have a Vatican jail and mete out temporal justice.

But the church fathers don’t sound Protestant. Whatehveh.

You Can Get Away With More With A Committee

Published on by D. G. Hart5 Comments

Sorry to see that the Christian Curmudgeon is hanging up his cleats as a blogger. It seems that his bishop is hands on (unlike the loosey-goosey way in which Presbyterians operate):

One of the vows a Reformed Episcopal minister (presbyter, minister, pastor, priest – you choose) takes is to obey his Bishop. My Bishop, whom I consider also to be my pastor of 5 years and my friend of 50+ years, has directed me not to continue my work as a Blogger. While I know he has been from time to time displeased with the content of my Blogs and other comments as they related to the Reformed Episcopal Church, his reason(s) for directing me not to Blog have to do with me – who I am and my life’s failings. In this case, the fault is not at all with him and entirely with me.

I remain a Reformed Episcopalian. I am in agreement with the 1662 Book of Common Prayer (though my preference would be the Edwardian Prayer Book), the 39 Articles of Religion, and the preaching, teaching, and writing of the English martyr Thomas Cranmer, and the Founding Principles of the Reformed Episcopal Church. I also accept and submit to Episcopal government. I believe in Prayer Book worship, the Articles, the equality of ministry of Word and Sacrament, weekly Holy Communion, and the Church Year.

I for one will miss Bill’s posts. The Christian world does not have enough contrarians and few that could spot the folly of mob mentalities the way Bill did from a Reformed Protestant perspective.

I hear that the PCA is fairly hands off. I wonder if Bill be tempted to return if only to have another round with Tim Keller.

What if Celebrity Pastors Were as Honest as Ta-Nehisi Coates?

Published on by D. G. Hart5 Comments

Coates’ take down of Kanye West is receiving push back, but it has this very perceptive section on notoriety:

In the summer of 2015, I published a book, and in so doing, became the unlikely recipient of a mere fraction of the kind of celebrity Kanye West enjoys. It was small literary fame, not the kind of fame that accompanies Grammys and Oscars, and there may not have been a worse candidate for it. I was the second-youngest of seven children. My life had been inconsequential, if slightly amusing. I had never stood out for any particular reason, save my height, and even that was wasted on a lack of skills on the basketball court. But I learned to use this ordinariness to my advantage. I was a journalist. There was something soft and unthreatening about me that made people want to talk. And I had a capacity for disappearing into events and thus, in that way, reporting out a scene. At home, I built myself around ordinary things—family, friends, and community. I might never be a celebrated writer. But I was a good father, a good partner, a decent friend.

Fame expletive with all of that. I would show up to do my job, to report, and become, if not the scene, then part of it. I would take my wife out to lunch to discuss some weighty matter in our lives, and come home, only to learn that the couple next to us had covertly taken a photo and tweeted it out. The family dream of buying a home, finally achieved, became newsworthy. My kid’s Instagram account was scoured for relevant quotes. And when I moved to excise myself, to restrict access, this would only extend the story.

It was the oddest thing. I felt myself to be the same as I had always been, but everything around me was warping. My sense of myself as part of a community of black writers disintegrated before me. Writers, whom I loved, who had been mentors, claimed tokenism and betrayal. Writers, whom I knew personally, whom I felt to be comrades in struggle, took to Facebook and Twitter to announce my latest heresy. No one enjoys criticism, but by then I had taken my share. What was new was criticism that I felt to originate as much in what I had written, as how it had been received. One of my best friends, who worked in radio, came up with the idea of a funny self-deprecating segment about me and my weird snobbery. But when it aired, the piece was mostly concerned with this newfound fame, how it had changed me, and how it all left him feeling a type of way. I was unprepared. The work of writing had always been, for me, the work of enduring failure. It had never occurred to me that one would, too, have to work to endure success.

The incentives toward a grand ego were ever present. I was asked to speak on matters which my work evidenced no knowledge of. I was invited to do a speaking tour via private jet. I was asked to direct a music video. I began to understand how and why famous writers falter, because writing is hard and there are “writers” who only do that work because they have to. But it was now clear there was another way—a life of lectures, visiting-writer gigs, galas, prize committees. There were dark expectations. I remember going with a friend to visit an older black writer, an elder statesman. He sized me up and the first thing he said to me was, “You must be getting all the vulgarity now.”

What I felt, in all of this, was a profound sense of social isolation. I would walk into a room, knowing that some facsimile of me, some mix of interviews, book clubs, and private assessment, had preceded me. The loss of friends, of comrades, of community, was gut-wrenching. I grew skeptical and distant. I avoided group dinners. In conversation, I sized everyone up, convinced that they were trying to extract something from me. And this is where the paranoia began, because the vast majority of people were kind and normal. But I never knew when that would fail to be the case.

This has to be the experience of pastors who have attained fame and regularly speak on conference circuits. This is also a set of psychological bags that cannot period be good period for pastoral ministry period. How do you separate awareness of how you appear, sound, and come across when you preach merely to a congregation? But how much more is such a sensitivity when you are someone so recognizable?

Celebrity is a burden that some have to carry. It is also an attribute that any serious pastor who wants to get out of the way and let the Word and Spirit do their gracious work should avoid like Donald Trump.

Obviously, Tim Has Not Read Meredith

Published on by D. G. Hart14 Comments

Tim Challies posted a brief for medical missions that could help anyone understand why a health gospel is not far removed from a wealth version:

2. You are able to proclaim the gospel at a time in life when your listeners are keenly aware that there are serious problems they cannot remedy in their own strength, and there are worrisome risks they must accept. They know they need God’s help, and they want it. . . .

4. Medical evangelism affords the opportunity to tell people about Christ in the context of helping them with no expectation of personal gain. It confirms that their well-being is your motivation in telling them the gospel.

5. Medical work gives credibility to the evangelist. It shows that he not only wants to help his listeners, but that he can help them. If the physical problem can be remedied, then what the physician has to say about the spiritual problem should be worth listening to as well.

On the flip side, someone might be prone to exhibit faith in order to win the attention of the physician. And sometimes missionaries may want to be thought of as compassionate or humanitarian. Whatever happened to mixed motives?

1. Patients strive diligently to come to you. You do not have to go to them, apologizing for invading their privacy or encroaching on their time.

3. You can evangelize a large geographical area–while traveling only a few miles from home. At Marrere, people came from all over the province and from an additional four states as well. Those five provinces represented half the nation.

Congregations and church buildings accomplish the same purpose, even if indigenous peoples who come to church may be interested in gaining the attention of the Western Christians and the benefits that follow.

6. Mission hospitals provide conspicuous testimonies before entire communities of the transforming work Christ accomplishes in Christians. In primitive cultures, the kind of medical care Christians provide stands in marked contrast to the carelessness and lack of compassion that often characterizes other care-givers.

Or, medical missions show the advances that come from studying bodies as natural phenomena. You don’t need a witch doctor to get well. You don’t need a Christian physician either. What you need is a good medical practitioner.

Why spiritualize medicine? And why, in the process, make the means of grace, word and sacrament, common or even inferior?

Meredith Kline’s logic in his minority report is still worth pondering for the ecclesiology on which it is based. Here is an excerpt:

It is now further to be observed that ithe church finds itself in conflict with the most important principles of biblical ecclesiology as soon as it adopts the traditional approach to medical missions, the approach recommended in the committee’s report. It would seem evident that a physician commissioned by the church to devote his full time to performing in the name of the church what is alleged to be an ecclesiastical function is thereby appointed as some sort of officer of the church. Which office he is supposed to occupy is somewhat obscure-the convenient title of “missionary” is bestowed on him and that covers a multitude of problems. Yet, his work does not coincide with that of any of the church officers as described in’the standards of government of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The committee’s report presents his ministry as one of mercy and presumably then he would be, in terms of the committee’s position, a specialized variety of deacon. . . . However, since there is no biblical evidence of deacons or any others practicing ordinaay medicine as an official ecclesiastical function, what the modern church has actually done is to invent the new office of the ecclesiastical medic.

But leaving aside the question of the medical missionary’s official status, there remains the fact that the function of medicine is, according to the committee’s insistence, a properly ecclesiastical function. Therein the committee would find the justification for its policy of medical missions. But if, operating on such assumptions, the church proceeds to commission physicians to practice medicine as an ecclesiastical function, the question at once arises: By what standards is this work to be performed and governed? The church may not abandon responsibility for the nature of the performance of any ecclesiastical function carried out in the church’s name. . . .

Unless, then, the church has lost the third mark of a true churdh and is prepared to disclaim responsibility for exercising disciplinary supervision over its medical work, it will be obliged to adopt a set of standards by which to judge of the medical qualifications of those whom it would appoint and by which afterwards to govern their labors. Such a code of medical practice is, however, not provided in the Word of God.

Presumably, the church will desire to practice medicine according to the present state of the art (that, indeed, becomes the fourth mark of the true church). It will then probably be the latest medical journals that are elevated to the position of standards of the church alongside the Bible. In any case, the Scriptures will no longer be the sole authority and rule in the government of the church. And, of course, there are not available to the church from any source standards of absolute authority and validity for the practice of medicine like the divine norms available to the church in the canon of Scripture for regulating the functions that are indispensably the church’s proper ministry. Thus, when the church usurps to itself from the sphere of human culture the function of medicine, it involves itself in the relativism, the uncertainties, and the fallacies of expert human opinion and repudiates the character of absolute divine authority that is the glory of its true ministry.

Nor is that the end of the dilemma for the church entangled in the medical profession. Such a church must also be ready to submit to the interference of the state in its own proper ecclesiastical functioning in a way clearly prejudicial to the prerogatives of Christ as Head of the church. For the missionary doctor has no license to operate in independence of the civil regulations governing the practice of medicine nor does he have diplomatic immunity from the sanctions of the civil court by which those regulations are enforced. Consequently, the church that commissions him must acknowledge the right of the state to interfere in its government and ministry so far as to determine who is and who, is not qualified to be appointed by the church to one of its own offices or ministries; to establish the particular procedures that the medical appointee must follow in fulfillment of his ecclesiastical ministry; and, in case of malpractice, to inflict temporal penalties on him for his official ecclesiastical shortcomings and virtually to compel his suspension or deposition.

Surely the church that submits to such state interference has thereby removed itself from under the exclusive lordship of Christ as King (in a special sense) of the church. And the church that insists that the practice of medicine is one of its proper divinely assigned functions has no choice but to submit to that kind of state control and in so doing to become guilty of giving unto Caesar that which belongs unto God. (Minutes of the OPC’s Thirty-First General Assembly, 54-55)

Another reason New Calvinists need a doctrine of the church (but won’t find one at The Gospel Coalition).