Category: Westminster

The Spirit of Machen Lives at Westminster California

Published on by D. G. Hart20 Comments

witherspoon bldgTo honor and mark the thirtieth anniversary of the seminary where police do enforce jaywalking laws, to offer some encouragement to the faculty and staff who labor and the students who study there, and to remind readers about the point of Westminster Seminary come the following paragraphs from the institution’s first convocation. Of course, J. Gresham Machen was the author and speaker, the date was September 25, 1929, and the place was downtown Philadelphia (woot!). The ceremonies took place at the Witherspoon Building on Walnut Street, which was the home of the Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath School Work (one of downtown Philadelphia’s more ornate facades). The school itself was located at 1528 Pine Street.

Westminster Theological Seminary, which opens its doors today, will hardly be attended by those who seek the plaudits of the world or the plaudits of a worldly church. It can offer for the present no magnificent buildings, no long-established standing in the ecclesiastical or academic world. Why, then, does it open its doors; why does it appeal to the support of Christian men?

The answer is plain. Our new institution is devoted to an unpopular cause; it is devoted to the service of one who is despised and rejected by the world and increasingly belittled by the visible church, the majestic Lord and Savior who is presented to us in the Word of God. From him men are turning away one by one. His sayings are too hard, his deeds of power too strange, his atoning death too great an offense to human pride. But to him, despite all, we hold. No Christ of our own imaginings can ever take his place for us, no mystic Christ whom we seek merely in the hidden depths of our own souls. From all such we turn away ever anew to the blessed written Word and say to the Christ there set forth, the Christ with whom then we have living communion: “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life”. . . .

[The] pathway of sacrifice is the pathway which students and supporters of Westminster Seminary are called upon to tread. For that we can thank God. Because of the sacrifices involved, no doubt many have been deterred from coming to us; they have feared the opposition of the machinery of the church; some of them may have feared, perhaps, to bear fully the reproach of Christ. We do not judge them. But whatever may be said about the students who have come to us, one thing can certainly be said about those who have come – they are real men.

No, my friends, though Princeton Seminary is dead, the noble tradition of Princeton Seminary is alive. Westminster Seminary will endeavor by God’s grace to continue that tradition unimpaired; it will endeavor, not on a foundation of equivocation and compromise, but on an honest foundation of devotion to God’s Word, to maintain the same principles that the old Princeton maintained. We believe, first, that the Christian religion, as it is set forth in the Confession of Faith of the Presbyterian church, is true; we believe, second, that the Christian religion welcomes and is capable of scholarly defense; and we believe, third, that the Christian religion should be proclaimed without fear or favor, and in clear opposition to whatever opposes it, whether within or without the church, as the only way of salvation for lost mankind. On that platform, brethren, we stand. Pray that we may be enabled by God’s Spirit to stand firm. Pray that the students who go forth from Westminster Seminary may know Christ as their own Savior and may proclaim to others the gospel of his love.

The Westminster Hermeneutic Apparently Infects Kerux

Published on by D. G. Hart6 Comments

syringe

And apparently, readers of the current review haven’t read very deeply in the journal. But a handy gadget at Kerux’s website reveals some items of note.

First this article by Scott Clark on John 2:13-22, on Christ’s cleansing of the Temple.

One lesson taught is the end of the theocratic arrangement in Israel:

It is ironic that those who were to care for God’s resting place, the place symbolic of God’s covenantal communion with his people, should be so insensitive to Jesus’ actions and words. What the priestly aristocracy does not realize is that by opposing Jesus, the temple guardians are opposing the temple itself! As in the garden and in the theocracy, God’s people have again desecrated God’s temple. Not only have they polluted piety for profit, but they fail to recognize the very purpose for which the temple stands–it is a house for God. We know this because they failed to recognize God when he came to the temple!

Because they lacked the Spirit, the Jews completely misunderstood Jesus to be speaking about the temple in which they were standing. Jesus is saying that his body is the temple. He is the “true” or the “real” temple (Jn. 6:32,33). Jesus’ temple supersedes the Herodian temple. Jesus’ and John’s words explain his act of cleansing the temple. Jesus is prophetically foreshadowing the final destruction of the temple. . . .

[T]he Jerusalem temple is an unsatisfactory habitation for our God. Like everything else connected with the old covenant, the temple is an incomplete expression of God’s grace. To redeem us, God must tabernacle in our flesh (Jn. 1:14). In this way the destiny of the temple is bound to the destiny of the Christ.

We also learn from Clark about the importance of holiness after in the new covenant:

God’s requirements for the holiness of his dwelling place have not been watered down in the new covenant. In fact they are greater. Coexisting with the other “living stones” (1 Pet. 2:5) joined together to become a “dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (Eph. 2:21) means even greater holiness than that of the old covenant. We no longer have to watch Moses go to the tent to meet with God; he has come to us in his Son and now in his Spirit.

Clark even affirms the importance of union with Christ:

Not only are we God’s temple, but we still have a religious life in the temple. For the evangelist, to truly be in the temple is to be in Christ because he is the true temple. John wrote his gospel to the end that we might find ourselves standing in the temple (Jn. 20:31; Col. 3:3). To be in the temple is to be in communion with God. It is to have intimate, personal fellowship with God. Whoever is united by the Spirit to the ascended Lord is now in the true, heavenly, Spirit-filled, temple and worships truly.

Perhaps even more arresting than Clark’s meditation was David VanDrunen’s essay in Kerux on the culture wars. Since WSC continues to receive demerits for not being hard on crime, and apparently the Kerux review hints at this (only a few have actually seen the review because the print run is so small, and those who have read it have yet to finish it), VanDrunen’s piece, “Biblical Theology and the Culture War,” is particularly worthy of notice.

Here is one point that VanDrunen makes during his reflections on Jeremiah 29:

This brief look at biblical theology should teach us a number of things about this battle. Most important of all, it teaches us that the culture war rages in Babylon, not in the Promised Land. A number of other important considerations arise from this. For one thing, it reminds us that in any of our cultural struggles we are not to set as a goal the annihilation or even the radical transformation of society. The existence of Babylon is completely legitimate. This is a particularly relevant message for Americans especially to heed. America is portrayed as the Promised Land so often—it is the hope of the world, the shining city on the hill, with liberty and justice for all. It is the refuge for the teeming masses of distant shores yearning to be free. It is a land of never before attained prosperity and military strength. America certainly is a great land, and patriotic affections are good and healthy. But it is not paradise, and never was. And neither is any other place on earth. To view any earthly land as the Promised Land is to set our sights both too high and too low at the same time: too high for our nation’s prospects and too low for what the Promised Land really is. People wage culture wars in Babylon, and to whatever extent they win or lose, Babylon continues to be just that—Babylon! It will not be annihilated, and it will not be transformed into something else.

To understand this is to put things into perspective. If the America of 50 or 100 or 200 years ago was Babylon, and if the America of the next generation, apart from the outcome of this culture war, will still be Babylon, should we not conclude that culture wars really are not won or lost, at least not absolutely? Living in Babylon by definition implies living outside of Paradise in a land which does not in any special way belong to the church, and as such is more or less filled with injustice, immorality, and any number of other depravities which motivate the culture warriors. As long as the church has lived in Babylon, it has been involved in cultures with marks of degeneracy. And as long as it continues to live here, it will face the same thing. It is only at Christ’s return that wicked culture and its supporters will be abolished completely: “God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels” (2 Thess. 1:6-7). The culture war has been raging for ages and it will not end until Christ returns. Why do we so often act as if the 1960’s, with the corresponding rise of the drug culture and sexual promiscuity, marked the beginning of this war? Perhaps the battle rages more fiercely and more visibly now, but even Christians living in Norman Rockwell America should have realized the existence of the culture war—the same culture war which rages around us now. As a wise man long ago observed, there is nothing new under the sun.

Does this mean that fighting the culture wars is wrong? VanDrunen says, “of course not.” But if Christians do fight in those battles they need to do so with a proper understanding of the stakes involved:

God commanded the people in Jeremiah 29 to seek the peace and prosperity of the city in which they lived, and this applies to us as well. We know that a nation with increasing numbers of cocaine-addicts, abortions, thefts, child-abuse cases, illiterates, etc., etc., will not retain desirable levels of peace and prosperity for long. Therefore we do have an obligation to do things which will, if not eliminate such things, at least substantially reduce their rate of occurrence. The peace and prosperity of our society, not to mention our personal peace and prosperity, depend on it. And the political sphere certainly is one of the institutions of culture which will make its indelible stamp on the peace and prosperity of the society. Christians therefore should have an interest in the political process when their form of government allows it, as ours does. To turn our backs on politics would mean to turn our backs in part to the command of God to seek the peace and prosperity of our nation. We may debate amongst ourselves which political positions to promote and how much emphasis should be given to the political process, but the interest and involvement in politics which we see among the “religious right” is in itself a good thing. But, it must always be accompanied by the realization that we are participating in the politics of Babylon. What should we hope to gain by our cultural, including political, activity? Only a relatively better life for society, ourselves, and our children in the years to come than what we would otherwise face. We seek not the destruction of our enemies, but simply a modestly better society which in the future will face exactly the same kinds of threats and require the same sort of opposition. Perhaps we can turn America back to the culture of the 1950’s. But the 1960’s will always follow.

Our first hope naturally is for the peace and prosperity of our nation. But perhaps we should be secretly pleased when these turn into disorder and depression. We have noted how many Christians today yearn for the days of public virtue present years ago in our nation’s history. It seems that there is little doubt that as far as public virtue goes America has seen better days. But when we see how such memories distort the biblical understanding that we live in Babylon, when we see how they cause our hopes to seek fulfillment not in the next world, but in this, when we see how they paint a falsely idyllic picture in our minds which we ignorantly project into the future, does it not make us at least wonder how much good such relatively peaceful and prosperous days really do. If God answered our prayers and blessed our cultural efforts by bringing us days of unparalleled peace and prosperity, would that not in itself be a tremendous temptation to set our sights no higher than Babylon? Are not days such as ours good reminders of what Babylon really is—a pagan, depraved, and hopeless place over which an angel from heaven will one day shout: “Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great” (Rev. 18:2)? The Israelites were apparently satisfied with the peace and prosperity of Babylon— only a tiny fraction of them returned to the Promised Land when the opportunity came. Will we as a church do any better?

Yes, let us pray for the peace and prosperity of our land for the sake of the physical well-being of ourselves and our children. But let us also be thankful for God’s often disappointing answers for the sake of the spiritual well-being of his church.

Articles such as these make Kerux worthwhile reading, especially for those inclined to read it along with the Talmud.

(By the way, the Nicotine Theological Journal‘s policy is never to turn on its contributors.)

Fire Season May be Over, But Not Open Season on Westminster California

Published on by D. G. Hart26 Comments

fire signWSC appears to be the pimply, skinny, dorky kid at the beach on whom the buff guys kick sand in order to impress the babes. Remarkable indeed is the constant stream of criticism that seems to throw cautions about charity and slander to the wind. WSC is apparently so obviously egregious that committed (or maybe should be committed) Reformed Christians can ignore what goes on at the other Reformed seminaries.

So in addition to the recent assertion that Horton denies the gospel, the ongoing critique and misrepresentation of the two kingdoms, and a petty review of a publicity piece by WSC on Christian education, now comes a lengthy negative review in Kerux of a book edited by WSC faculty on the Mosaic covenant that has our good CRC pastor, Rabbi Bret, gleeful over the opportunity to kick a little more sand at his favorite target. (Whether Bret is obsessive is open to debate, but of all the items in his index, the Radical 2k Virus has 202 entries — and some think I’m obsessed with Keller. The next most frequent subject is government. Warning: pastor Bret is a Theonomist who ran for office on the Constitution Party ticket – does the Constitution actually mention the Lord?)

(By the time of this posting, WSC seems to have attracted more attention from Pastor Bret than the birth of our Lord:

Kerux Throws The Gauntlet Down By Challenging The “Escondido Hermeneutic” 12/21

Kerux Sounds Five Bell Fire Alarm Against Raging Fire That Is “Escondido Hermeneutic” 12/22

Dr. R. Scott Clark … Your Snide Reply To Kerux Has Been More Then Amply Answered 12/25

Kerux & Its Five Alarm Fire — Drivers Beware “The Escondido Hermeneutic” is a Falling Contradiction Zone 12/26

Escondido Hermeneutic and Natural Law Theory 12/27)

The tension between the U.S. Constitution and the idea of a theonomic state is only the beginning of the inconsistencies that afflict our good CRC pastor, and his posts about the latest “dirt” on WSC are no exception to the rule of “look for no coherence in my views.” Bret writes:

The Reformed Church is living in hazardous times. We are betwixt the hammer of Federal Vision and the anvil of the R2K Escondido hermeneutic. And if that weren’t enough we are being crushed from the left and the right with postmodern theologies and the continued chickification of the Church. D. Martyn Lloyd Jones (The Doctor) used to say that truth was a knife’s edge and that one could easily fall off either side. God grant us wisdom and perseverance to pass on the faith once and delivered to the saints to the generation that comes behind us. God grant us grace to defeat all heterodox theologies.

But then Pastor Bret backs up and begins to hedge:

the hour may well be to late to roll back this theology. Already acolytes of Escondido are pushing their agenda in Church courts in a jihad against Federal Vision. Ironically, I agree that Federal Vision, in its more feral forms, needs to be removed from Reformed Churches. What I am concerned about though is that many of those who are leading the way in eliminating this Federal Vision disease have a equally potent disease that should it become the majority report will enervate Reformed Theology, the Reformed Church, and individual Christian lives every bit as much as if Federal Vision were to become triumphant.

So let’s get this straight. WSC is opposed to Federal Vision Theology, and so is pastor Bret. But then, let’s sure hope that WSC doesn’t prevail against FV because WSC is as bad as FV. But if WSC is opposed to FV, why is it as bad as FV? Dunno.

Pastor Bret apparently has not considered that WSC’s teaching on justification is closely bound up with two-kingdom theology, as David VanDrunen recently argued in his inaugural lecture. In fact, in Bret’s own reaction to the Manhattan Declaration you see a laudable concern to protect the gospel from social activism. On the occasion of that statement, Bret wrote:

I believe the MD does a good job of articulating Christian ethics. However, I also believe that Colson and others are fuzzing theological identity for the sake of pursuing a Christian moralism that will not survive if it is not built upon the foundation of a Theological identity that clearly advocates faith alone.

As I have said before I believe in co-belligerence, but I believe in it only when it is of a nature where all parties realize going in that we are only agreed on the very thin slice of whatever it is we are standing together on and that our agreement ends at the water’s edge of Biblical definitions of the essence of the Christian faith.

So did Mike Horton, one of Bret’s favorite targets, get any credit for taking a similar position on the Manhattan Declaration? No. Is pastor Bret capable of recognizing that a strong affirmation of the centrality of justification is the basis for opposing all forms of “works righteousness,” even the ones performed by members of the Constitution party? Not apparently.

One other possible point of convergence between pastor Bret and WSC is the ticklish matter of women’s ordination in the CRC. Now, I suppose – charitable guy that I am – that Bret is opposed to women in office even though he ministers in a communion that ordains women to the office of elder and pastor. Bret is opposed to feminism in most forms (and used to show up at the Bayly Brothers blog to second their targeting of most forms of female insubordination). Well, wasn’t WSC the institutional face of opposition to women’s ordination in the CRC? But will pastor Bret give WSC any credit for its positive positions?

So let’s tally up the WSC’s scorecard.

They get an A from pastor Bret on FV.

They get an A from him on statements like the Manhattan Declaration when those affirmations apparently compromise the gospel.

They get an A for opposing women’s ordination.

That averages out to a final grade of – you guessed it – F. Boy, theonomists are a demanding lot.

Meanwhile, the inconsistencies are not pastor Bret’s alone. Kerux’s review is particularly opposed to the teaching of Meredith Kline even though Kline wrote for Kerux when he was alive and may have been responsible for giving the journal early on some much needed credibility. In addition, the flack heading toward WSC from N. Indiana fails to recognize the substantial common ground upon which both sides stand regarding the need to defend the centrality of justification in current theological discussions as opposed to the non-existent or weak responses from elsewhere. That leaves FV as the only consistent critic of WSC. Sometimes it is good to be known by your enemies.

But the jaw-dropping dimensions of pastor Bret’s anomalous shout out to Kerux needs to be appreciated. As mentioned above, pastor Bret is a theonomist, which is why some of us refer to him as the CRC Rabbi. Kerux is decidedly committed to the biblical theology of Vos and Ridderbos. Kerux readers contemplate the heavenlies; they don’t look for Constitution Party candidates to codify divine law into American policy and legislation. Indeed, Kerux follows an approach to theonomy similar to Meredith Kline’s, which means that Kerux, not only having gotten its start at WSC, shares with WSC a commitment to biblical theology and opposing the confusion of kingdoms that accompanies flawed eschatology. Where Kerux stands on the controversy over justification post-Shepherd is another matter, and that may be the source of Kerux’s opposition to WSC (despite the good work of WSC faculty on the OPC report on justification.) And that would put pastor Bret in the very awkward position of looking for support against R2kV from folks who disagree with him on theonomy and on justification.

The mind melts, not from fires at WSC, but from the hot air that bellows forth to assail that spindly kid on the beach in southern California.

Erdman’s Passive-Aggressive Step-Grandson-in-Law

Published on by D. G. Hart68 Comments

ErdmanJohn Frame faced a choice. He could have reviewed Mike Horton’s book, Christless Christianity, or he could have abstained. He could have critiqued Horton’s indictment of Joel Osteen. He also could have offered his own critique of Osteen. Even if he disagreed vigorously with Horton, he could have let it go out of a sense of living with the eccentricities of a former colleague and a minister in a church with whom his own communion is in fellowship.

But Frame decided to write a lengthy review in which Horton’s assessment comes off as more theologically flawed than those whom Horton critiques.

On the one hand, according to Frame, Horton is wrong about contemporary evangelicalism:

Speaking, perhaps presumptuously, for “the American church,” let me attempt a reply. For what it is worth, my own perception of American evangelicalism is very different from Horton’s. My observation is anecdotal (just like his, in the final analysis), but based on around 55 years of adult observation in many different kinds of churches including the much maligned mega-churches. In most every evangelical church I have visited or heard about, the “focus” is on God in Christ. There has been something of a shift over the years in what Horton would call a “subjective” direction. But that is best described not as unfaithfulness, but as a shift toward more application of Scripture to people’s external situations and inner life. There is a greater interest in sanctification (not just justification), on Christianity as a world view, on believers’ obligations to one another, on love within the body of Christ, and in the implications of Scripture for social justice.

I don’t see this as wrong, or unbiblical. Indeed, I think this general trend is an improvement over the state of affairs fifty years ago. Scripture is certainly concerned about these matters, and we ought to teach and learn what it has to say.

(By the way, Frame thinks that Horton shares this outlook primarily with secular critics of American religion. But Frame does not acknowledge that conservative Protestants like David Wells and Carl Trueman, or moderate to liberal Protestants such as Douglas Webster, William Willimon, and Stanley Hauerwas agree with Horton more than Frame.)

On the other hand, Frame thinks that the basis for Horton’s critique is theologically defective:

Horton’s alarmism is persuasive to many people, and I have been moved to try to show them their persuasion is premature. The problem is that the yardstick Horton uses to measure the American church’s allegiance to Christ is not an accurate yardstick. Or, to drop the metaphor, Horton measures the American church with a defective theology.

He comes on to the reader as a generic Protestant Christian with a passion for the historic doctrines of the atonement and of justification by faith alone. He writes engagingly. Naturally, then, other Protestants tend to resonate to his arguments. But Horton is not just a generic Protestant or even a generic Reformed theologian. He holds certain positions that are not warranted by the Reformed Confessions and which in my mind are not even Scriptural.

Frame is fully within his duties as a theology professor to review critically the book of another theologian, even one who apparently shares his theological tradition. But he is on shaky ground when he has faulted folks like Horton at other times for being Machen’s Warrior Children, that is, for needlessly criticizing those within the Reformed household. According to Frame:

The Machen movement was born in the controversy over liberal theology. I have no doubt that Machen and his colleagues were right to reject this theology and to fight it. But it is arguable that once the Machenites found themselves in a “true Presbyterian church” they were unable to moderate their martial impulses. Being in a church without liberals to fight, they turned on one another.

For some reason, John Frame thinks he is not a pugilist even after writing reviews like his of Horton (not to mention that the Warrior Children piece contained several punches, some below the belt). If he had a better understanding of “the Machen movement, Frame might realize that every controversy has more than two sides. In the 1920s, the alternatives were not simply conservatives like Machen or liberals like Harry Emerson Fosdick. In between were evangelicals like Charles Erdman who needed to decide whether to agree with conservatives and oppose liberals, or find a way to avoid controversy and work for the unity of the church, even to the point of keeping people who were not Calvinistic in the fold. Erdman never thought that his case for unity was controversial or contested. He thought Machen was extreme and temperamentally defective, and Erdman, an acknowledged evangelical, threw Machen under the bus. In so doing, Erdman made room in the Presbyterian Church for Machen’s enemies.

Blame it on the tri-perspectivalism, but Frame does not see that his notion of evangelical unity does not make room for Horton or other confessional Protestants who critique born-again Protestantism. Does Frame mean to embrace Osteen more than Horton? He may not. But if he doesn’t, why not write his own review of Osteen, instead of waiting to rip Horton’s critique?

John Frame is in denial about being a warrior. But at least he is correct about his family ties to Machen.

"Office Hours" at Westminster California

Published on by D. G. Hart1 Comment

Not to be confused with the BBC show, “The Office,” and not to confuse David Brent with W. Robert Godfrey (though sometimes I wonder), Westminster California is starting a podcast entitled “Office Hours.” Season One features interviews with Godfrey and Julius Kim. A preview of the season is now available, complete with instructions and incentives for subscribing.

Now the only question is whether R. Scott Clark is more like Tim or Gareth.

Did They Really Study at Westminster?

Published on by D. G. Hart6 Comments

Some of us have thought that the problems at WTS went beyond whether or not Pete Enns believed in biblical inerrancy. A series that Daniel Kirk is writing on the structure of the universe shows why those concerns were and still are valid. (Thanks to Art Boulet for the tip about Kirk’s series.)  Professor Kirk studied at WTS in the 1990s, went on to do a Ph.D. in NT at Duke, and now teaches at Fuller.

In part six of this series, Kirk contends that Westminster Confession theology so emphasizes the law, and the non-biblical covenants of works and grace, that Israel is really a historical fiction that has no place in Reformed theology other than a “place holder” until Christ comes. It’s all about Adam and Christ; Israel is supposedly an afterthought. Continue reading “Did They Really Study at Westminster?” →

Incoherence or Sentimentality

Published on by D. G. Hart9 Comments

Reed DePace has a thoughtful post at Greenbaggins on the inerrancy debate to which Pete Enns was a catalyst.  His point is that the defenders of Enns are incoherent.  The reason is the following syllogism to which Enns’ defenders resort:

1. The Bible contains non-incidental errors.
2. The Bible itself is inerrant.
3. This is not a contradiction.

DePace goes on to worry about the effects of such an incoherent argument on the church:

If I find your arguments incoherent, what do you think the average layperson hears when they read what you’ve written? One of you recently actually said, in the same paragraph, the Bible has errors, and the Bible is inerrant. (A fair paraphrase.) The context of those statements did not remove the onus present in this summary.

Brothers, assume for a second your position is right, and it will be a blessing to the Church in the future. Does not the significance of the subject (the only rule for faith and practice, THE source of spiritual food for the people of God) necessitate more care and caution on your parts?

Not to take away from DePace’ s legitimate point and concern, I wonder if the problem has less to do with incoherence than it does with sentimentality — namely, attaching more sentiment to an object of affection than is fitting.  In this case, it would be clinging to a high view of Scripture even though it has all the earmarks of other books from the ancient near east. 

Actually, what passes for sentimentality here was for J. Gresham Machen an instance of mysticism, and he believed that it fueled much of liberal Protestant piety and its unwillingness to abandon the religion of the Bible.   In What is Faith? Machen wrote:

Mysticism unquestionably is the natural result of the anti-intellectual tendency which now prevails; for mysticism is the consistent exaltation of experience at the expense of thought. . . . In particular, those who discard theology in the interests of experience are inclined to make use of a personal way of talking and thinking about God to which they have no right. . . . All personal communion seems to be a simple thing: yet it is in reality very complex.  My friendship for a human friend, for example, depends upon years of observation of my friend’s actions.  So it is exactly in the case of the communion of the Christian with his God.  The Christian says: “Lord, thou knowest that we are on the same old terms.”  It seems very simple and very untheological.  But in reality it depends upon the whole rich content of God’s revelation of Himself in the salvation which He has provided through His Son. . . . The experience of the real mystic, then, as distinguished from that experience of direct contact with God in the depths of the soul which is popularly called mysticism — the latter being of course a part of all vital religion — is not Christian experience; for Christian experience is a thoroughly personal thing; the Christian holds fellowship with a Person whom he knows.

Which raises the question — do the advocates of a messy Bible really know and pray to a messy God?  Or do they overcompensate for their understanding of the Bible with a piety grounded in a deity who reveals himself reliably and truthfully?  If so, it would qualify as plundering the Israelites.

Neo-Conn-versation vs. Paleo-Conn-versation

Published on by D. G. Hart1 Comment

The legacy of Harvie Conn, home and foreign missionary for the OPC, and longtime member of the WTS faculty, is less contested than it should be. A blog, though dormant of late, has been dedicated to preserving Harvie’s insights about contextualization and globalization. One former WTS Old Testament professor has also recently been posting a series of Conn quotations on mission and theology that were somehow the inspiration for appropriating Ancient Near Eastern Studies in OT interpretation (imagine how a paper on missions would go over at the Society of Biblical Literature).

Despite these progressive appropriations of Conn, another side of the man exists, the one that informed his efforts first as a home missionary for the OPC in Stratford, New Jersey. The following quotations come from “Where is Everybody Sunday Night?” Presbyterian Guardian (March 15, 1959).

One of the thorns in the flesh that plagues every home missionary is the Sunday evening service. From what I’ve heard, it also gives many a sleepless night to other pastors as well. Actually, the Sunday evening service isn’t the problem. The problem is: where are the people at the Sunday evening hour set for meeting in God’s house? Why do people make a habit out of not coming? . . . .

Remember the blessedness of being in God’s house on all His day. Look at what the man with the withered hand would have missed if he had skipped church the time Jesus was there to heal him. Anticipate the added blessing of the evening hour. Ask yourself if you are hungering and thirsting for truth. If you are, why aren’t you present also Sunday night to be filled? Or maybe your appetite isn’t what it ought to be, but it will increase if you go where the food is being served! Jesus said that the Sabbath was made for man. It is for our use and blessing.

Makes me wonder if I could take theological progressivism better from someone who kept the entire Lord’s Day holy.

Which Came First, the Theology or the Exegesis?

Published on by D. G. Hart22 Comments

Ken Schenck has been conducting a series of interviews with Pete Enns, formerly of Westminster Seminary and author of the controversial, Inerrancy and Inspiration.

In the second stage or interactions, Schenck asks Enns what he would say to those who think the Old Testament scholar is not a very good Calvinist.  Enns responded:

Just what it means to be Reformed has been a debated issue and the struggle continues to see who will win the right to define it. There are those who think of the Reformed faith—better, a particular articulation of the Reformed faith (19th century Princeton, for example)—as the only true expression not only of the Reformed faith but also of Christianity. Indeed, as some I know have put it, the Reformed faith (narrowly defined) is understood as “Christianity come into its own,” and that the Reformed “hold the truth in trust” for other traditions.

This is tragic, and if this is what it means to be Reformed, then I am not Reformed. If, however, one understands the Reformed faith as a particularly insightful and deep tradition that hits upon numerous biblical and theological issues with clarity and gospel-fidelity—even to the extent that other traditions will be richer for the interaction—BUT that is also, by virtue of its location in particular historical/cultural circumstances, as prone to sin and error as anything else under the sun, and is therefore in need of regular critical evaluation, then, yes, I am Reformed. The Reformed faith is for me, in other words, a means to Christian truth rather than the sum total of Christian truth.

Aside from what this says about Enns’ own understanding of the tradition in which he found himself as a student and professor at Westminster or even what it means to be situated within a theological and ecclesial tradition, it raises an interesting question about the priority of convictions and academics.

It would be impossible to imagine one of Enns’ predecessors at Westminster,  E. J. Young, for instance, rejecting the narrow construction of Reformed Protestantism.  Is the difference between Enns and Young that they approach the critical questions of Old Testament studies differently and then reach alternate understandings of being Reformed?  Or is it that Enns and Young started out with different views of being Reformed which then lead them to approach Old Testament scholarship with alternate — I believe the word is — “trajectories”?

Continue reading “Which Came First, the Theology or the Exegesis?” →