Category: Miscellany

Fair and Balanced

Published on by D. G. Hart31 Comments

From our Canadian correspondent comes word of a 1926 New York Times headline that reported on one of J. Gresham Machen’s sermons about the condition of American Protestantism.

Church Teaching Scored–Professor Machen Says the World Is Full of
Quack Remedies For Sin–Calls for More Pessimism

Not many people — believers or not — find pessimism inspiring. But at Old Life pessimism is our bread and butter because, as Machen observed, Christianity is the religion of the broken heart. Maybe the sentimentalists over at the Gospel Coalition would have a better read on angry Calvinism if they understood better the depressing disposition that animates Protestants who belong to Reformed churches.

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.

Not Nevin or Edwards but Kuyper is the Answer

Published on by D. G. Hart94 Comments

Nelson Kloosterman has a blog and is using it to promote the thought of Abraham Kuyper among other topics neo-Calvinistic. No surprise there. Admittedly, Kuyper, the Reformed transformer-of-all-trades, master of none, was an impressive figure and blessed with much sound and wise counsel about a variety of matters with which contemporary believers wrestle. If Old Life appears to be critical of Kuyper, it stems as much from the unbecoming adoration he receives as it does from questions about the limits of world-and-live viewism.

And it is here that Kloosterman is useful to illustrate the problem. A few weeks back he quoted from Kuyper’s book on common grace (translated from the Dutch, of course) about the Genesis flood. Kloosterman’s point was that we need to make room for legitimate differences of opinion about such matters as the nature of the flood. The reason seems to be Kuyper. Since he did not follow conventional literalist interpretations about Genesis, so we need to make room for a diversity of perspectives on hot-button issues. One does wonder if this extends to Christian schools. Here’s the Kuyper quote:

An esteemed correspondent has objected to our position that the flood most probably did not cover the entire globe, and in connection with this, that predatory animals perhaps remained alive elsewhere in the world.

Let it be stated immediately that we attach very little importance to this dispute. Our only interest was to emphasize the significance of the protection of humanity against predatory animals.

For the rest, we note that Scripture itself says that “the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered” (Gen. 7:19), after which Scripture mentions the highest mountain, Mount Ararat. Nevertheless it is clear that numerous mountains were higher than Ararat.

In the second place, that not all the animals were destroyed appears from the fact that since the flood consisted of water, the fish could not have been killed, but rather received a rare and rich prize of human and animal corpses.

Third, numerous fossils have been found in the earth’s depths, fossils of animals that did not belong to this time period.

Fourth, it is indeed true that in Genesis 8:17 we read that all the animals had to leave the ark, but a literal interpretation of this presents us with insoluble difficulties. Suppose there were eight people, together with a small number of horses, cattle, camels, sheep, goats, etc., and you let loose two lions, two tigers, two hyenas, two snakes, two wolves, two bears, and many more. How could people have defended themselves at this point? What did those animals live on? Would not the entire small stock have been killed within a short time? Were you to say that Noah and his sons might have been animal tamers, or that God might have restrained the predatory animals at that point so that they didn’t attack people, we would certainly admit that these were possible, but precisely at that point justice is not being done to Genesis 9:5.

In any case, we are facing difficulties here that arise from the brevity of the narrative. One person can posit this, while another can posit that, and those opinions should be permitted. But Genesis 8 and 9 are revealed to us not to have a dispute about them. The main point here involves God’s ordinances given to the new human race.

But then along comes another quote from Kuyper, supplied by Kloosterman, which calls for a distinctly Christian contribution to questions about science and faith. Again from the work on common grace, again translated from the Dutch:

The life of particular grace does not stand by itself, but has been placed by God amid the life of common grace. Since Holy Scripture is definitely not limited to opening up for us the way of salvation, but has been given also to enrich common grace with new light, for those who confess that Word not to make this higher light to shine upon the arena of science, which belongs to the field of common grace, constitutes deficient devotion to duty.

What is hard to understand is that many who attempt to follow Scripture on science, and so regard Genesis as more authoritative than the findings of geology, would not be friendly to Kuyper’s views on the flood. I mean, if we are to use special revelation to interpret general revelation when it comes to politics and society, why not when it comes to geology and biology? And yet, Kloosterman regularly denounces 2k for not letting Scripture be the norm for interpreting natural law.

I am struggling to find the coherence in Dr. K’s view, except that it all seems to go back to Kuyper.

Interview on Christ the Center

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Darryl G. Hart visited Christ the Center to speak about his new book Between the Times: The Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Transition, 1945-1990.

The audio and video of the interview is available at http://reformedforum.org/ctc184/.

Mark Driscoll Has Some 'Splaining To Do

Published on by D. G. Hart83 Comments

A story about megachurch multi-site projects at Christianity Today contains an arresting quotation from the Mars Hill corporation. Driscoll’s church is planning to plant a church in Portland, Oregon and the justification runs as follows:

The city of Portland is known for many things, but the gospel of Jesus is nowhere on the list.

Let’s see, when I think of Seattle, does the gospel come to mind? Not really. All I can think of are corporations — Starbucks, the McDonalds of coffee, Red Hook beer, now part of one of the consolidated breweries, and Microsoft, the company responsible for inserting bullet points whenever I hit the indent key while using MS Word. I used to think of the Supersonics but that was before the National Basketball Association caved to the greed of one of its franchise owners.

All in all, the gospel is not one of the associations I make with Seattle. Maybe Mark Driscoll should turn Seattle into the Jerusalem of the Pacific Rim before setting up shop in Portland (where even congregations with ties to Tim Keller exist).

Which Father, Whose Children?

Published on by D. G. Hart22 Comments

(TMI alert) I am inclined to follow the pattern established by my father in the Hart home of listening to Christian radio on the Lord’s Day. Since I listen to the regular radio during the week, listening to the “other kind” of radio on Sundays is a way to set the day apart. My wife believes it is a way to drive her batty. (Truth be told, it depends on how we’re getting along.)

So far I have now been through two shows on June 19, 2011, and wouldn’t you know, the theme is fathers and their responsibilities. (Why do mothers receive piles of gratitude on their day, but fathers hear challenges to own up to their responsibilities. It’s as if Mothers Day is gospel, and Fathers Day is law.)

The irony of the evangelical liturgical calender used to be much sharper three decades ago before Advent or Lent had become attractive to low church Protestants thanks to the growth of publishing on “spiritual disciplines.” A Reformed speaker could make some hay with the observation that Protestants won’t observe Reformation Day but they will devote Sundays in May and June to mothers and fathers. Back then Reformed Protestants in the Dutch tradition would also refer sometimes to their pastor as “dominie,” adding yet another layer of uncertainty about devoting one Sunday to earthly fathers. Now, with the liturgical turn by many Protestants, even some Reformed, the church calendar and Hallmark moments are speed bumps of front-end alignment ruining proportions on the way to lectio continuo preaching. But despite the appeal of churchly observances — it’s really neat to have an Advent Wreath — evangelicals will not let an annual Lord’s Day devoted to motherhood or fatherhood go. (At least, the Baylys are about motherhood and fatherhood ALL THE TIME.)

(Make it three shows in a row. Now I’m hearing Charles Stanley talk about what fathers have to do to keep their children in the faith — and he even worked in a shot at smoking and drinking.)

Don’t get me wrong. God blessed me with a remarkable father whose memory I cherish. But as a godly man he knew that Sundays were not about him or other men with children. He knew that Sundays were the day of only one father, the first person of the Trinity.

So here is a father’s day thought to keep it all in perspective:

What is thy only comfort in life and death?

That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.(emphasis added for Hallmark customers)

Oldlife.org 201: Wit and Sarcasm

Published on by D. G. Hart51 Comments

The first installment in this series about this blog was to clarify what a blog is. One aspect that I did not mention was that the more successful blogs are provocative – that is, they agitate readers and that’s why people come back. The most successful blogger in the world arguably is Andrew Sullivan, the former editor of the New Republic, and his blog is hardly tepid.

This leads to the second point in need of clarification. Oldlife.org is the on-line presence of the Nicotine Theological Journal. Long before provocations started at this blog, the editors and authors of the NTJ were provoking readers and library patrons in hopes of thinking through the implications of Reformed faith and practice today, with a little levity and sarcasm thrown in. The editors’ inspiration was partly Andrew Sullivan whose time at the New Republic made it one of the most thoughtful, rancorous, and witty magazines on politics and culture at the time. But Sullivan was not the only inspiration. Other authors who wrote on serious matters with wit and sarcasm that provided models for the NTJ were Richard John Neuhaus, P. J. O’Rourke, Joseph Epstein, H. L. Mencken, and Calvin Trillin.

None of these sources, readers may object, are Reformed. Which raises the question whether Reformed authors may engage in wit and sarcasm when pursuing their convictions. Well, the answer is yes. If you spend much time in the polemical writings of the Old School and Princeton theologians, you will find a fair amount of wit and sarcasm. Here are a couple examples, the first from Charles Hodge after a seven-round dogma fight with Edwards Amasa Park (named for Jonathan Edwards – ahem) over theological method and the nature of Calvinism:

It is a common remark that a man never writes anything well for which he has “to read up.” Professor Park has evidently labored under this disadvantage. Old-school theology is a new field to him; and though he quotes freely authors of whom we, though natives, never heard, yet he is not at home, and unavoidably falls into the mistakes which foreigners cannot fail to commit in a strange land. He does not understand the language. He find out “five meanings of imputation!” It would be wearisome work to set such a stranger right at every step. We would fain part with our author on good terms. We admire his abilities, and are ready to defer to him in his own department. But when he undertakes to teach Old-school men Old-school theology it is very much like a Frenchman teaching an Englishman how to pronounce English. With the best intentions, the amiable Gaul would be sure to make sad work with the dental aspirations.

The second comes from Benjamin Warfield in one of the last pieces he ever wrote, an article objecting to the latest proposal (1920) to unite the largest Protestant denominations in the United States:

Now it is perfectly obvious that the proposed creed contains nothing which is not believed by evangelicals. and it is equally obvious that it contains nothing which is not believed by Sacerdotalists – by the adherents of the church of Rome for example. And it is equally obvious that it contains nothing which is not believed by Rationalists – by respectable Unitarians. That is as much as to say that the creed on the basis of which we are invited to form a union for evangelizing purposes contains nothing distinctively evangelical at all; nothing at all of that body of saving truth for the possession of which the church of Christ has striven and suffered through two thousand years. It contains only “a few starved and hunger-bitten” dogmas of purely general character – of infinite importance in the context of evangelical truth, but of themselves of no saving sufficiency. So far as the conservation and propagation of evangelical religion is concerned, we might as well for a union on our common acceptance of the law of gravitation and the rule of three.

By the way, these were a couple of quotes readily available from Hodge and Warfield. If you go farther into their works, along with those of Old Schoolers like Dabney and Thornwell you will find many more examples, sometimes of laugh out loud proportions.

One last source of inspiration for Oldlife.org and the NTJ is – duh – J. Gresham Machen. He did not show a lot of wit or sarcasm in his writings. But his polemics were nonetheless blunt, so much so that many who believed charity to be the only Christian virtue considered Machen mean and beyond the pale. But it is precisely Machen’s candor and warrior spirit that is worthy of emulation. The following is from a piece he wrote for an inter-faith gathering on the relations between Christians and Jews:

The fact is that in discussing matters about which there are differences of opinion, it is really more courteous to be frank – more courteous with that deeper courtesy which is based upon the Golden Rule. For my part, I am bound to say that the kind of discussion which is irritating to me is the discussion which begins by begging the question and then pretend to be in the interests of peace. I should be guilty of such a method if I should say to a Roman Catholic, for example, that we can come together with him because forms and ceremonies like the mass and membership in a certain definite organization are, of course, matters of secondary importance – if I should say to him that he can go on being a good Catholic and I can go on being a good Protestant and yet we can unite on common Christian basis. If I should talk in that way, I should show myself guilty of the crassest narrowness of mind, for I should be showing that I had never taken the slightest trouble to understand the Roman Catholic point of view. If I had taken that trouble, I should have come to see plainly that what I should be doing is not to seek common ground between the roman Catholic and myself but simply to ask the Roman Catholic to become a Protestant and give up everything that he holds most dear.

. . . So to my mind the most inauspicious beginning for any discussion is found when the speaker utters the familiar words: “I think, brethren, that we are all agreed about this . . .” – and then proceeds to trample ruthlessly upon the things that are dearest to my heart. Far more kindly is it if the speaker says at the start that he sees a miserable narrow-minded conservative in the audience whose views he intends to ridicule and refute. After such a speaker gets through, perhaps I may be allowed to say that I regard him as just as narrow-minded as he regards me, and then having both spoken our full mind we may part, certain not as brothers (it is ridiculous to degrade that word) but at least as friends.

None of this is to suggest that Oldlife.org pulls off the wit, sarcasm, polemics, or bluntness of the writers who have inspired this endeavor. It is only to point out that the tone and style of Oldlife.org is not over the top.

Still Here and Disappointed to Be

Published on by D. G. Hart19 Comments

Back when many Americans were worried about the effects of changing from nineteen to twenty in the dates of computers’ operating systems I took some pleasure in observing how such care could turn into hysteria. I do not say this to my credit since it is unbecoming to take delight in the discomfort of others. But if Y2K was supposed to be as cataclysmic as the hawkers of bottled water, batteries, and dried beans said, then I figured there was not much hope for the Harts. Either we would die of starvation or gunshot wounds (after approaching a neighbor’s house in search of hospitality). But I knew we couldn’t stock enough food and water or fire wood to subsist longer than it would take to patch back together the world’s highly centralized network of computers, information, and commodities.

So to make light of the situation, I found a soup recipe for dried navy beans and prepared an article for the Nicotine Theological Journal in which I advised those Y2K preparers who had acquired too many bags of beans and too many cases of bottled water how to use the recipe to begin to reduce the piles of subsistence provisions stacked in their basements. I still regard this piece as one of the more funny in the history of the NTJ, but at the time I confess that I wrote with a sense of nervous amusement. I had heard enough predictions about the problem of changing digits within operating systems to be relatively certain that Y2K was a hoax. I sure hoped it was, and I sure thought it would be funny – all that stockpiling for end-of-civilization living – if it turned out to be. But I was sufficiently chary to be denied genuine hilarity until the morning of January 1, 2000 when I woke up to find that the coffee maker worked, the computer booted up, and the car started.

Judgment Day 2011 has invited lots of people, Christian and not, to engage in the kind of ridicule I experienced at the time of Y2K. Predictions about May 21, 2011 even caught the attention of sports-talk-radio hosts who framed questions running the gamut of audience demographics from which woman listeners would most want to sleep with before the end of the world – more the spirit of Fat Tuesday than that of preparation for meeting one’s maker – or which injured member of the Phillies should start the last game before the rapture. As risible as the prediction of the last chance for saving faith before divine retribution was, I was also wary and less than confident that Harold Camping was wrong. I was especially wide awake around 5:52 pm last Saturday as I drove east on I 80 in Pennsylvania and listened to a story on NPR about the pet care service offered to those believers who would leave their cats and dogs to be with the Lord. Not only did I experience a measure of disgust at the thought of people profiting from this prediction as well as the gullibility of rapture believers. But I also worried what road conditions would be like should Camping turn out to be right and I was left behind.

The problems with Judgment Day 2011, as compared to Y2K, are more numerous and go beyond feelings of apprehension, gullibility, charity, or disgust. I was convinced that Camping was wrong to pick a date. I still find it hard to believe that people would listen to his apocalyptic siren call after he got it wrong seventeen years ago, though I’m sure Camping had and still has a numerological explanation. I was also pretty certain that Camping was mistaken about the mechanics of Christ’s greeting his saints. I had grown up in a dispensationalist church and was familiar with the idea of a rapture, and I spent too many long nights without sleep after watching the movie “Thief In the Night.” But since I am a bit of an agnostic about the specifics of how human history will end, I couldn’t be certain that a rapture was completely out of order.

But what would happen if judgment day didn’t, especially to the devoted who had prepared for the end of the world in a very different way from Y2K? I do grieve for those believers who went to bed Saturday night seriously disappointed and wonder if they still trusted God after such a let down. I hoped that they would find genuine rest and comfort and take some hope from attending the means of grace on the following Lord’s Day. Maybe these sad saints would go back to the churches they had left behind when Camping condemned the institutional churches as apostate.

And what about Family Radio stations? Did they have programming planned and loaded into computers to keep going after the rapture? Or would the stations be silent? Would the Family Radio website still be up? And did the executives of Family Radio contract with some broadcasting version of Eternal Earth-Bound Pets to insure that some unbelieving radio engineers and website administrators would be available to keep their broadcasts and Internet sites going?

But I was most curious about my own reaction (all about me, right?). When I was an eleven-year old and the Israeli’s were beating the dickens out of the Arabs during the Six-Day War, my congregation heard lots about the end of the world. After all, “signs of the times” were indicating that the Lord’s return was any day. As a budding adolescent I was deeply disappointed by the news. I still had yet to experience dating, driving, high school, and marriage and sex were at least a decade away. I wasn’t sufficiently sanctified to consider that a day with the Lord might even be better than a night of conjugal bliss.

But Judgment Day 2011 had a very different effect, possibly the signs of middle-age or maybe an indication of spiritual growth. I personally wanted Camping to be right. Of course, I still have projects going and plans for time with family and friends that I would regret to see unfulfilled. But since I do pray often the Lord’s prayer, and since the second petition calls for us to pray for the hastening of the kingdom of glory, I don’t think that believers should necessarily find unbelievable the idea that Christ is coming on a specific day. The specification itself is wrong, but I couldn’t help but wonder if Camping could turn out to be right even if his method and tactics were wrong. Wouldn’t it be one of the great ironies – and redemptive history is filled with such reversals of human expectations – if the end of the world did in fact happen in an amillenial way rather than in a dispensationalist manner on May 21? After all, no one knows the time or the hour, which means that Camping still could have been wrong and that Christ could have come on May 21 without a rapture. Plus, Christians are supposed to hope for the Lord’s return, so could I really root against Camping? And what of those who jeered Noah, John the Baptist, or even Christ himself during his first advent? I didn’t want to be guilty of human expectations that put Christ into a box that would prove Camping and his followers to be a charlatan and boobs.

So here we are on May 23, Family Radio is still broadcasting (though I haven’t heard any explanations yet), and the website is still up though the numbers counting down the days until the end of the world are gone and the entire website has received a facelift. Sports-talk-radio hosts are still commenting on what they did or did not do on Saturday evening – one suggested to friends at 5:55 pm drinking up since a rapture would mean not having to pay the bar tab (a patently illogical piece of wisdom since if the drinkers kept drinking they would not have been raptured and would face the judgment of settling their bar tab). Some people are breathing a sigh of relief, others are still scratching their heads over the gullibility of Christians and their strange ways of interpreting the Bible. And some, if they are like me, are disappointed that the day for which believers are supposed to long, and the joy that will take place at the marriage supper of the Lamb, did not happen. Instead, it is back to work, plans, friends, family, vacations, paying bills, changing litter boxes, mowing grass, and sipping overpriced coffee. We live in a good world, but oh how much better the world to come will be.

Should Regeneration Make Christians Wiser?

Published on by D. G. Hart18 Comments

One week after Mr. Laden’s death, different websites are taking the pulse of readers to see what they think. Two that came my way by way of email were polls conducted by Christianity Today and the History News Network. I have to say that judging the polls simply on the basis of their questions, the folks without (or with hidden) religious conviction come closer to ascertaining the significance of Mr. Laden’s death than the folks who are born-again.

Here is CT’s set of questions:

What is your reaction to the death of Osama bin Laden? (check all that apply)

I am thrilled he is dead.

Justice is served.

I am less excited than I thought I would be.

I am concerned about the overly jubilant reactions.

I wish he had been brought to trial.

There are still evil people in the world.

Something else

This is how HNN framed their poll:

In the late 1990s Osama Bin Laden declared war on the United States. In 2001 he ordered the 9/11 attack. Now he’s dead. What impact will his death have?

Question 1: How big an event is this?
Marks the end of terrorism against us.
Marks the beginning of the end.
Won’t have much of an impact.

Question 2:
Are you worried about a retaliatory attack?
Worried a lot.
Worried a little.
Not worried at all.

Question 3:
Show pictures of his corpse to prove he’s dead?
Yes.
No.

Question 4:
This will unite us again.
For a short while at least.
For a long while.
Not much at all.

Question 5:
Obama deserves credit for bin Laden’s death.
Yes.
No.
Not sure.

Question 6:
This will help Obama win in 2012
Yes.
No.
Not Sure.

Given evangelicalism’s dependence on the conversion experience, I should not be surprised that Christianity Today asked so many questions about its readers’ feelings. But what on earth does a Christian’s reaction to Mr. Laden’s death have to do with the terrorist organization he funded and ran, or with the peace and security of this world’s societies? As for this event’s theological significance, perhaps the pollsters at Christianity Today could have assessed evangelical beliefs about hell and universalism by posing questions about Mr. Laden in the light of Rob Bell’s new book.

Old Life on Facebook

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In conjunction with Dr. Hart’s recent return to Twitter, the Old Life Theological Society has created a Facebook page. It is true, some old schoolers do in fact have Facebook accounts. Like the page and find out who those seven people are.