Clearword Church Coming to Bloomington!

Published on by D. G. Hart963 Comments

And it is going to build at the corner of South Endwright and West Gifford Roads, just down the street from where Tim Bayly struts his stuff as a godly, manly promoter of praise bands.

Actually, this is a fabrication, but I do wonder what Tim, who wonders where the Escondido men are — here’s one answer — would think of a rival church right down the road from his congregation. Tim recently tried again to tarnish the reputation of two-kingdom folks by asserting that someone like me would oppose Archbishop of Nigeria’s recent decision to form a diocese in Indianapolis.

Anglican bishops from Africa are violating parish boundaries here in these United States, planting orthodox Christian parishes where the presiding Anglican/Episcopal authorities have betrayed the faith. Is this good or bad?

Ask Darryl Hart and his fellow Escondidoites and it’s bad… Right? After all, this is the sort of thing that was done by Anglicans like Whitefield during the Great Awakening, and Darryl and his fellow Orthodox and Old Light Presbyterians oppose such violations of proper ecclesiastical boundaries. . . .

For myself, though, I’m not holding my breath waiting for Old Presbyterians to mount a campaign against men like Nigeria’s Anglican Archbishop Nicholas Okah for trampling on the proper local Anglican authorities here in Indianapolis.

Unlike Tim, I believe that the United States is and should be a free country. Unlike Tim, I don’t pine for the days of Calvin’s Geneva when civil magistrates would have run out of town priests and pastors who had come ministering without an invitation. Unlike Tim, I know what my response would be to this situation — which is, what happens in the Anglican church stays in the Anglican church.

And unlike Tim, I know that the Old Siders he disparages actually reacted the way that Tim Bayly would if a new church started right down the road, and if the new pastor said that members at Clearnote Fellowship should leave their congregation to worship at Clearword Church because Tim Bayly was an unregenerate hypocrite (which is what Gilbert Tennent said about Old Siders). I don’t know for sure, but I suspect Tim would exhibit some of his manliness and not sit by while a fellow minister called him names or took away his flock.

Funny how if you look at something you thought you understood, you end up identifying with the people whom you denigrate.

Paradigms within Paradigms

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In an effort to show that OldLife is not unaware of developments in the Roman Catholic world and to help Called to Communion folks shed their own romantic understandings of Rome, I offer a few reflections from John W. O’Malley on differences between Vatican II and the Council of Trent. I had the privilege of taking a class from O’Malley, a leading Roman Catholic historian, during my days at Harvard Divinity School when he was teaching at Weston School of Theology. The quotations to follow come from “Trent and Vatican II: Two Styles of Church,” From Trent to Vatican II: Historical and Theological Investigations (OUP, 2006):

Trent and Vatican II dealt not only with different issues in quite dissimilar historical circumstances, or deal with and/or avoided the same issues in the same or different ways. They were different cultural entities. In this regard, Vatican II was not only unlike Trent but unlike any council that preceded it.

We are dealing, in other words, with two significanlty different modles of council. True, within Catholicism the continuities almost always outweigh the discontinuities. But Trent and Vatican II, when viewed in the large, are emblematic of two fundamental, interrelated, but notably different traditions of the Western Church. Those traditions are the juridical or legislative-judicial and the poetic-rhetorical. They both have their origins in the Greco-Roman world of antiquity and antedate the advent of Christianity.

O’Malley is here playing off the different ways in which each council communicated. Trent issued anathemas and called for crusades. It asserted church authority and hierarchy in response to the dangers posed by both Protestants and Ottomans. It echoed the precision and order of Thomism and scholasticism where the church had neat and definite beliefs that needed to be affirmed, or else. In contrast, Vatican II avoided condemnations for engagement with the modern world. Instead of issuing condemnations, Vatican II spoke in terms of praise and congratulations. Rather than pounding the table, the 1960s bishops wanted to engage in persuasion. And instead of invoking the precise formulations of scholasticism, Vatican II followed the Ressourcement movement of trying to recover the early church fathers as an alternative to Thomism.

He continues:

In adopting a new style of discourse for its enactments, the Council thus effected a shift of momentous import. . . . It is perhaps fitting to conclude with one of the most radical of those ramifications. Vatican II was, indeed, unlike any council that preceded it. In fact, by adopting the style of discourse that it did, the Council in effect redefined what a council is. Vatican II did not take the Roman Senate as its implicit model. I find it difficult to pinpoint just what the implicit model was, but it was much closer to guide, partner, and friend than it was to lawmaker and judge.

If O’Malley is right, and I dare someone to question his historical insights, this puts CTC in a pickle. Those called and calling like the authority of Trent and Vatican I, when Rome assumed an authoritarian posture, the one that supposedly answers the diversity and confusion of Protestantism. At the same time, CTCers often invoke the early church fathers which Rome appropriated through de Lubac’s Ressourcement efforts. But as O’Malley suggests, these two phases of twentieth-century Roman Catholicism two exist uneasily side by side. It is hard to be judicial, laying down the law, and rhetorical, trying to persuade. This may explain why Protestants are unsure of their status. We thought we were condemned, but now were only separated brothers.

Either way, the folks at CTC do not seem to acknowledge these different sides of Rome. Maybe Called to Communion should be renamed Called to Confusion.

Where's the Boeuf?

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Via Justin Taylor comes Mark Dever’s top-ten list on the factors that spawned the New Calvinist phenomenon (given Tim Keller’s precise definitions, I’m loathe to describe the young and restless as a movement). Here’s the list (each one receives a separate post at Dever’s blog):

1. Charles H. Spurgeon
2. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
3. The Banner of Truth Trust
4. Evangelism Explosion
5. The inerrancy controversy
6. Presbyterian Church in America (PCA)
7. J. I. Packer
8. John MacArthur and R. C. Sproul
9. John Piper
10. The rise of secularism and decline of Christian nominalism

Before offering an OldLife perspective, it is worth noting that Dever buries his lead by ranking John Piper at number nine. My impression, after reading Collin Hansen’s book, is that Piper and Desiring God (DG, you know, not always about me) is largely responsible for turning Millenials into Jonathan-Edwards-is-my-homeboy T-shirt wearing evangelicals. Dever agrees even if number nine doesn’t reflect the agreement:

When all those seminarians and ministers in their 20’s stood up at Together for the Gospel in April of 2006, if I couldn’t give a 10-part answer, but if I had to give a 2-word human explanation for their presence there, I know what two words I would utter: “John Piper.”

What is curious about this list, with all due respect (going Hollywood alert) to my friend, Mark Dever, is how culturally and historically thin it is. Granted, as an OPC elder, I am surprised that the PCA (nos. 4 and 6) gets more credit than my own communion and its influential scholars such as Machen, Van Til, Young, Murray, Stonehouse, Kline, VanDrunen, Fesko, and even — dare we say — Trueman.

But denominational bragging rights aside, the list is decidedly Anglo-centric and recent. Nothing on the list suggests the sixteenth-century origins of Reformed Protestantism in Zurich and Geneva, nor the huge contribution that French-speaking Protestants made in the initial phases of Calvinism (Calvin, after all, was not English). Nor does this list acknowledge the remarkable nature of the Dutch Reformation, both in its hiccups and fits during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and in its modern phase guided and inspired by Abraham Kuyper. And not to be discounted is the influence of Scottish Presbyterianism (though Banner of Truth is in Edinburgh) again in the initial phases of reformation, a presence at the Westminster Assembly, and the important struggles of the nineteenth century in which Thomas Chalmers figured so prominently. This does not begin to admit the important influences on American Calvinism by immigrants from these various communions who settled in North America and established denominations and schools to propagate the Reformed faith. Princeton Seminary would surely be high on such a list, as would its step-child, Westminster. So too would be the Dutch-American contribution from western Michigan.

All of this raises a question about how well the New Calvinism represents the Old Calvinism. Does it stand in continuity or is it really new? And if new, how much might it need to learn from the old, especially if wearing the Calvinist badge? If most of your sources of influence and inspiration come from the twentieth century when a theological tradition is four hundred years older, and if it draws largely on the English variety of experimental Calvinism without listening to French, German, Dutch, Scottish, and Swiss voices, you may be guilty of selling a Wendy’s hamburger when you could be serving Julia Child’s boeuf bourguignon.

Do People Still Read Keller?

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I am beginning to wonder if Tim Keller’s remarkable run of influence is beginning to expire. The reason for wondering is his recent post — an excerpt from his new book, Center Church — at the co-allies’ blog. Although Keller’s failure to be the Presbyterian minister his credentials say he is aggravate the bejeebers out of me, this time his call for a gospel movement seems tired, bordering on #sotenminutesago. It used to be that a megachurch in New York City receiving favorable press coverage in both religious and secular publications was novel. Now it’s not. Does anyone get excited about Willow Creek anymore? Or does Bill Hybels look in comparison to Rob Bell the way Larry David Lucille Ball does to Lucille Ball Larry David? At a certain point, Keller’s cheerleading for the modern metropolis and Redeemer’s cutting edge ministry sounds stale.

In this case, though, Keller himself sounds fatigued. The reason may be that the only way he can conceive of transforming the city is to concoct a set of hoops and ladders that only the Navy Seals could negotiate. According to Keller, a gospel movement requires three things: a contextual theological vision, church planting and church renewal movements (that’s only one thing even though its a mouthful and a bit redundant — you need a movement to have another movement), and specialized ministries. Here’s where tiredness sets in, at least for readers:

Based in the churches, yet also stimulating and sustaining the churches, this third ring consists of a complex of specialty ministries, institutions, networks, and relationships. There are at least seven types of elements in this third ring.

1. A prayer movement uniting churches across traditions in visionary intercession for the city. The history of revivals shows the vital importance of corporate, prevailing, visionary intercessory prayer for the city and the body of Christ. Praying for your city is a biblical directive (Jer 29:4-7). Coming together in prayer is something a wide variety of believers can do. It doesn’t require a lot of negotiation and theological parsing to pray. Prayer brings people together. And this very activity is catalytic for creating friendships and relationships across denominational and organizational bounderies. Partnerships with Christians who are similar to and yet different from you stimulates growth and innovation.

2. A number of specialized evangelistic ministries, reaching particular groups (business people, mothers, ethnicities, and the like). Of particular importance are effective campus and youth ministries. Many of the city church’s future members and leaders are best found in the city’s colleges and schools. While students who graduate from colleges in university towns must leave the area to get jobs, graduates form urban universities do not. Students won to Christ and given a vision for living in the city can remain in the churches they joined during their school years and become emerging leaders in the urban body of Christ. Winning the youth of a city wins city natives who understand the culture well.

3. An array of justice and mercy ministries, addressing every possible social problem and neighborhood. As the evangelicals provided leadership in the 1830s, we need today an urban “benevolent empire” of Christians banding together in various nonprofits and other voluntary organizations to address the needs of the city. Christians of the city must become renowned for their care for their neighbors, for this is one of the key ways that Jesus will become renowned.

4. Faith and work initiatives and fellowships in which Christians from across the city gather with others in the same profession. Networks of Christians in business, the media, the arts, government, and the academy should come together to help each other work with accountability, excellence, and Christian distinctiveness.

6. Systems for attracting, developing, and training urban church and ministry leaders. The act of training usually entails good theological education, but a dynamic city leadership system will include additional components such as well-developed internship programs and connections to campus ministries.

7. An unusual unity of Christian city leaders. Church and movements leaders, heads of institutions, business leaders, academics, and others must know one another and provide vision and direction for the whole city. They must be more concerned about reaching the whole city and growing the whole body of Christ than about increasing their own tribe and kingdom.

Who can stand in that great day? What congregation of any means is capable of maintaining members who not only have the financial resources to pay for the church staff all of these ministries require? But after these folks have worked hard for their incomes and given to the church, do they have time to volunteer for all the additional work that this movement requires? If I were a church planter (I am sort of but I understand Hillsdale is unimportant in the world of ministering to global cities), I’d close Keller’s book and look for another model.

The funny thing is that the pastoral epistles provide an alternative (not to mention the Protestant Reformation’s success in European cities) and the way to advance the kingdom of grace is not nearly as arduous as what Keller prescribes. Granted, the preaching of the word may not produce a self-sustaining movement that will rock the earth’s biggest cities. But for some reason, Paul did not peg the value of the kingdom of grace according to the gospel’s reception among city dwellers.

The Sin Paradigm

Published on by D. G. Hart88 Comments

Jason Stellman and the crew continue to debate the merits of an agape or list paradigm, as Bryan Cross described them way back when. What I find hard to fathom is the plausibility of the so-called agape paradigm if human sinfulness really is as profound as Christianity and Judaism have taught. If human beings really are dead in trespasses and sins, as Paul describes them in Ephesians 2, the agape paradigm doesn’t make a lot of sense. We might cooperate with grace all we want, we might do works that show a genuine faith, but what if we still have a sinful nature? This was part of the doubt that haunted Luther.

Rome’s own teaching on the fall would suggest the implausibility of the agape paradigm. The Baltimore Catechism, for instance, is none too cheery about the prospects of human goodness:

45. Q. What evil befell us on account of the disobedience of our first parents?
A. On account of the disobedience of our first parents, we all share in their sin and punishment, as we should have shared in their happiness if they had remained faithful.

46. Q. What other effects followed from the sin of our first parents?
A. Our nature was corrupted by the sin of our first parents, which darkened our understanding, weakened our will, and left in us a strong inclination to evil.

This is not as strong as Heidelberg:

Question 8. Are we then so corrupt that we are wholly incapable of doing any good, and inclined to all wickedness?
Answer: Indeed we are; except we are regenerated by the Spirit of God.

But it is not that far off. Both talk about corruption of human nature and an inclination to evil.

The Baltimore Catechism also teaches the need for a perfect savior who can satisfy God’s wrath for sin:

84. Q. What lessons do we learn from the sufferings and death of Christ?
A. From the sufferings and death of Christ we learn the great evil of sin, the hatred God bears to it, and the necessity of satisfying for it.

Again, this resembles the logic of Heidelberg:

Question 12. Since then, by the righteous judgment of God, we deserve temporal and eternal punishment, is there no way by which we may escape that punishment, and be again received into favour?
Answer: God will have his justice satisfied: and therefore we must make this full satisfaction, either by ourselves, or by another.

Where Rome and Protestants differ, then, is whether Christ fully satisfies for all of a sinner’s sin. According to the Baltimore Catechism:

Q. 801. Why should we have to satisfy for our sins if Christ has fully satisfied for them?
A. Christ has fully satisfied for our sins and after our baptism we were free from all guilt and had no satisfaction to make. But when we willfully sinned after baptism, it is but just that we should be obliged to make some satisfaction.

In contrast, Heidelberg teaches:

Question 60. How are thou righteous before God?
Answer: Only by a true faith in Jesus Christ; so that, though my conscience accuse me, that I have grossly transgressed all the commandments of God, and kept none of them, and am still inclined to all evil; notwithstanding, God, without any merit of mine, but only of mere grace, grants and imputes to me, the perfect satisfaction, righteousness and holiness of Christ; even so, as if I never had had, nor committed any sin: yea, as if I had fully accomplished all that obedience which Christ has accomplished for me; inasmuch as I embrace such benefit with a believing heart.

This may seem fairly elementary to anyone who knows the differences between Roman Catholics and Protestants. But the extent and depth of sin seems to be a category not sufficiently considered in the ongoing debates about how we become right with God, whether by faith alone or by a faith that has within it charity of love which will produce good works and will unite us with God. Those wonder-working aspects of the agape paradigm do not address the real problem of sinfulness and God’s just demand for a perfect righteousness. We may love till we’re blue in the face, but given our sinfulness and the ongoing sin in believers’ lives, how do we know if we have really loved enough?

Maybe the agape paradigm is right. If it is, we’re all toast.

More Paradigmatic Fun

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Bryan Cross should quit while he’s unfalsified. I believe it was over at Green Baggins that Cross linked to one of his pieces at Called to Communion in which he tried to account for second-order differences between Roman Catholics and Protestants when interpreting the Bible. Not only do both sides come to antagonistic interpretations of the text, but they also approach Scripture differently:

In general, Protestants think differently about how to go about interpreting Scripture than do Catholics. When trying to understand the meaning of a passage in Scripture, Catholics have always looked to the Tradition; we seek to determine how the Church has understood and explained the passage over the past two millennia. We look up what the Church Fathers and Church Doctors have said about the passage. By contrast, Protestants typically do not turn first to the Church Fathers when seeking to understand the meaning of a passage or term in Scripture that is unclear. Protestants generally turn to contemporary lexicons and commentaries written by contemporary biblical scholars whom they trust. Only rarely, and perhaps as a final step, do they turn to the Church Fathers. The common form of the Protestant mind is ready to believe that the Fathers often got Scripture wrong, and to use their own interpretation of Scripture to ‘correct’ or critically evaluate the Fathers. That kind of a stance toward the Fathers does not dispose Protestants to be guided by the Fathers in their interpretation of Scripture. In short, the Catholic approach sees the Fathers and the councils as the primary guide to interpreting Scripture, while the Protestant approach sees the lexicon and contemporary academic commentaries [that one trusts] as the primary guide to interpreting Scripture, and that by which the Fathers’ theology and interpretation of Scripture are critically evaluated.

Cross goes on to account for this difference (and here verges into no-history land):

The explanation of the Catholic approach to Scripture lies in its ecclesiology, its understanding of the Church as a family extending through time back to Christ and the Apostles, and perpetually vivified by the Holy Spirit. And this understanding of the Church as a family spread out through many generations, has methodological implications with respect to interpreting Scripture. Here’s why. If you were to come into my home, you would understand many things said in my family, because you speak the same language that our broader society speaks (i.e. English). But you would not understand some things that we say to each other, because you would not have the inside-the-family point of view. You wouldn’t get the inside jokes, the allusions to past family events you hadn’t experienced. You would not have the internal lived experience of my family as the fuller context of our present communication with one another. To understand fully our intra-family communication, you would have to live with us for quite some time, learn our in-house catch words, the events and habits and stories that form the mutually understood background against which we expect our speech-acts to be understood when we communicate to each other.

Sorry to sound so ad hominem, but this is just plain silly. Entering the home of Bryan Cross is a very different matter from trying to understand Irenaeus. It sounds soothing and very family friendly. Who wouldn’t want to enter a religious communion where we are all siblings, know family dynamics, have assigned times for going to bed and taking out the garbage, and have parents who never make mistakes. Please, please, please sign me up for that.

But as family friendly as this form of communication may be, it will not do when trying to understand texts written almost two millenia ago in languages that (or at least versions of them) are in critical condition. If Bryan wants to understand Cyprian, chances are he is going to need to rely on a host of non-family members, people who teach ancient languages, compile lexicons, craft reliable and authoritative editions of texts, and — get this — historians who know something about social conditions in early Christianity. Believe it or not, a lot of these folks are not Roman Catholic and so aren’t members of Bryan’s family. He may want to restrict the study of the fathers to Roman Catholics (the Eastern Orthodox will want some input on this), but if he does he will be able to understand Tertullian about as well as your average high school graduate understands Plato.

And then lo and behold, even one of the church councils, the one held in Vienne in 1311, revealed the need for the lexical and historical investigation that supposedly prevents Protestants from being called to communion. Simply being part of the family would not allow editors of papal enclyclicals on-line to know exactly which parts of the council were constitutional:

In the third session of the council, which was held on 6 May 1312, certain constitutions were promulgated. We do not know their text or number. In Mueller’s opinion, what happened was this: the constitutions, with the exception of a certain number still to be polished in form and text, were read by the council fathers; Clement V then ordered the constitutions to be corrected and arranged after the pattern of decretal collections. This text, although read in the consistory held in the castle of Monteux near Carpentras on 21 March 1314 was not promulgated, since Clement V died a month later. It was pope John XXII who, after again correcting the constitutions, finally sent them to the universities. It is difficult to decide which constitutions are the work of the council. We adopt Mueller’s opinion that 38 constitutions may be counted as such, but only 20 of these have the words “with the approval of the sacred council”.

Not a big point, maybe. But if Cross is going to be so presuppositional — I mean, paradigmatic — about the ways that divide western Christians, he might want to check his theories against historical reality every once in a while.

What's the Big Deal?

Published on by D. G. Hart63 Comments

Carl Trueman is rightly confused about the allies of the gospel making such a big deal of complimentarianism. I’ll see him a confusion and raise him a bewilderment — why are professional historians so worked up about David Barton? For weeks, nay, months academics hounded the God-and-country amateur historian, who sees faith writ large everywhere in the American founding (like some seminary presidents we know). For a summary of some of the objections, go here and here. And when word came that Thomas Nelson was recalling Barton’s book on Jefferson, The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson, one might have thought that Lyndon Baines Johnson had just signed the Civil Rights Act. So seemingly controversial had Barton become that Marvin Olasky, editor-in-chief of World magazine, believed he needed to create distance between his own understanding of the United States and Barton’s:

We report in our current issue—and plan to report again in our next—about a controversy between two groups of Christian conservatives (also see “Lost confidence,” by Thomas Kidd, Aug. 9). On one side are David Barton and his many readers. Barton has provided a useful service for many years in fighting the left’s interpretations of history. On the other side are other Christian conservatives who point out what they believe are inaccuracies in Barton’s work. Left-wing historians for years have criticized Barton. We haven’t spotlighted those criticisms because we know the biases behind them. It’s different when Christian conservatives point out inaccuracies. The Bible tells us that “iron sharpens iron,” and that’s our goal in reporting this controversy. As the great Puritan poet John Milton wrote concerning Truth, “Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?”

Olasky goes on to observe that historians have not been so obsessed with another popular and flawed account of U.S. history, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. Olasky has a point but it is not entirely accurate. This summer the History News Network ran a poll among its readers on the “Least Credible History Book in Print.” For most of the time that people responded, Zinn led the pack. But when editors made the final tally, Barton surpassed Zinn by nine votes (650 to 641). In which case, if this poll is representative, academics can spot a bad book on the left and on the Christian fringe (to call Barton the right is an injustice to conservatism). Do Christians have as good a track record of acknowledging bias among their favorite writers on politics, history, and economics?

And yet, the question remains whether professional historians have sought to have Zinn’s book recalled? I am actually not sure whether historians wanted to see Barton’s book removed from the marketplace. Thomas Nelson likely made its decision to pull The Jefferson Lies for economic as much as scholarly reasons. Even so, considering all the bad books that publishers print, I am still befuddled by the large and concerted critique of Barton. I get it. He’s on Glenn Beck. But how many academics listen to or watch Beck? Thomas Nelson is a big and profitable trade press. But how many academics receive the company’s catalog? Barton’s ideas are silly and irresponsible. So are Zinn’s, right?

So I guess I really don’t get it. It seems to me the free market makes a lot of bad products available including books. What’s one more?

Rome, 2K, and the Limits of W-W

Published on by D. G. Hart42 Comments

Readers may recall the post last week that referred to Fr. McCloskey’s hope for a Christian America through Roman Catholicism. Two-kingdom proponents would likely want to advise McCloskey to tread cautiously with this idea of a Christian nation since Christianity itself admits of no Christian nation (except Old Testament Israel) and the record of Christian politics is not so Christian.

A fairly recent story adds reasons for further caution. It contrasts the two vice-presidential candidates, Joe Biden and Paul Ryan, both of whom are Roman Catholics and are at odds with their church’s teaching. If he holds to the planks of the Democratic Party’s platform on abortion rights, he is obviously in opposition to Roman Catholic morality. And Ryan’s budget plan has generated lots of criticism for being antithetical to Rome’s social teaching. The report observes how Biden and Ryan represent different generations and segments of Roman Catholicism in the United States.

Catholicism is complicated, says Deal Hudson, a Catholic strategist for the Republican Party. It can’t be pigeonholed as conservative or liberal. He says that, increasingly, the divisions within the Catholic faithful are sharpening — and this race reflects that.

“These two vice presidential candidates represent the old and the new in the Catholic church in the United States,” Hudson says.

Biden comes from a more traditional generation of Catholics, says Stephen Schneck, a political scientist at Catholic University of America.

“This is the Catholicism of our old ethnic neighborhoods, and our union halls, and St. Christopher medals on the dashboard sort of thing,” Stephen says.

It is a working-class Catholicism, he says, where the Mass and the rosary are part of the warp and woof of daily life in places such as Scranton, Pa., Biden’s boyhood town. As Biden said when he visited Scranton in 2008, “This is where my family values and my faith melded.”

Those values — of the cop, the fireman, the union leader — placed Catholics solidly in the Democratic camp for decades. Schneck, who co-chairs Catholics for Obama, says these Catholics tend to have a positive attitude toward government.

“Think about John Kennedy’s famous ‘ask not’ lines here,” Schneck says. “For that generation of Catholics, it’s a recognition that government and civil society have a profoundly positive role to play.”

But that generation now has moved on, says Robert George, a conservative Catholic and professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University.

“We have a younger generation of Catholics who are more conservative, especially on moral and cultural issues,” he says.

George says these younger Catholics — who are sometimes called “intentional Catholics” — tend to be more committed to conservative parts of Catholic doctrine. Many, like Ryan, 42, came of age during the papacy of John Paul II. They see themselves in Ryan, who opposes same-sex marriage and abortion except when the mother’s life is in danger. In fact, Ryan sponsored a “personhood bill” that would define a fertilized egg as a human being.

At the very least, this kind of diversity within the church in the United States should undermine the notion that Roman Catholicism is going to save the country. It is proof once again of the wide spectrum of believers in fellowship with an infallible bishop. It may also recommend two-kingdom theology to Roman Catholics (who should already know it if they read Augustine). Salvation only comes from the Lord. A decent and orderly society comes from basic notions of right and wrong, hard choices by civil authorities, and honest and hard-working citizens. It’s not rocket science. Nor is it the new heavens and new earth.

Why We Need More Redemptive Historical Preaching

Published on by D. G. Hart87 Comments

To avoid the sanctimony of those who slander redemptive historical preachers.

Tim Bayly needed to vent and took aim at redemptive historical preaching. The occasion for the outburst is not entirely clear. One reason is that the Baylys have little tolerance for anyone who doesn’t share their convictions. Another may be that Tim is preparing for an upcoming Clear Note conference on preaching. It seems that at this conference Tim is planning to do to the disciples of Ed Clowney what David did to Goliath.

In response to a professor who warns about isolating biblical narratives from the overarching narrative of salvation, Tim slashes and burns:

Holding David up as a hero is to isolate this narrative from the flow of redemptive history? Really? “Only a boy named David, only a little sling” is out the window now? Everyone all through church history has been wrong to speak well of David’s courage and faith? We must only speak well of God’s power and plan? To hold David up as an example to the young men and little boys of the church is to “isolate” the story of David and Goliath “from the flow of redemptive history?”

Bunk and double bunk.

Well, how much bunk is involved in explaining to those little boys who sing about David and his sling what they should think of David and his prurient thoughts about a certain bather named Bathsheba? How do you explain to the child who collected all of Bobby Barry Bonds baseball cards that the all-time home run leader cheated? Maybe avoiding heroes in the Bible is a good idea.

But the problem with redemptive historical preaching goes deeper:

The failure of men who take pride in being Christ and Gospel-centered isn’t that they’re wrong in affirming how types and examples point to Christ. Reading, teaching, and preaching Christ in all of Scripture is foundational. Obvious.

Their failure is that they deny the morals and virtues of the types and examples–the flesh and blood of history, if you will. It’s as if no one is capable of loving David as a man and desiring to be like him while also loving the God Who made him as he was and worked through him to accomplish his sovereign decrees, including the very public execution of blaspheming Goliath, the very public vindication of His Name resting on Israel, the eventual replacement of King Saul with this man whose Davidic Line would end with our Messiah, and so on.

To speak of courage and faith together does not tie even, or especially, very young boys’ brains in knots. They get it. God has made man capable of amazing intellectual feats and those feats are often seen at their most brilliant in little people who haven’t yet had blinkered professors tell them they can’t think that way. Those possessing wisdom rather than degrees are fully capable of thinking both ways at the same time, and for intellectuals to tell them that they must choose one way and delete the other from their mind, also deleting all those obvious paths criss-crossing between both ways, is for professors of hermeneutics and exegesis to chain Scripture to the same pulpits the Roman Catholics had chained it to back at the time of the Reformation.

Well, tell this to the apostle Paul who could claim all sorts of bona fides in the virtue and courage sphere of Old Testament heroes and called those qualities rubbish:

. . .though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. . . (Phil. 3:4-9)

Paul seems to be wary, as redemptive historical preachers are, of putting confidence in human ability to keep the law, to be moral, even to be heroic. That kind of esteem for human morality has a tendency to lead people not to trust in Christ but to look to themselves and their own righteousness.

In fact, if Tim Bayly had listened to more redemptive historical preaching, he would not only be saved from a lack of charity, but he might regard his own moral posturing for what it is — double bunk.

What the Cats Missed this Week

Published on by D. G. Hart55 Comments

I am a fan of Canadian cinema and a lover of cats. This combination made Good Neighbors a reasonably good pick. The movie is set in Montreal and is film noir lite, with cats playing important parts in the story line. I could have done without the slasher aspect of a couple scenes, aging metrosexual that I am. But still worthwhile.

I also took a look at the original movie version of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American. It is set in 1950s Saigon and explores dimensions of the civil war that will entice the United States to fight communism in Southeast Asia. Greene’s depiction of American idealism and naivete about foreign policy is particularly astute, though it may also stem from resentment that the Brits are no longer running the world. This is a better movie than the remake, though Craig Armstrong’s soundtrack for the 2002 version may tip the scales in the other direction.

For anyone who cares about Breaking Bad, I took another try at episode five of season one. I began to see a little more of the appeal. But I also identified two reservations that may prevent me from jumping on the BB bandwagon, and they are related. First, unlike The Wire, Breaking Bad has no urban credibility. I understand it is not supposed to be set in a city or in the Northeast. But without an urban dimension, the show so far lacks an edge. Meth in the suburbs just doesn’t grip the way that heroine in the city does. And this leads to the second reservation. The show has no obvious sense of place. If Breaking Bad doesn’t want to tap the rhythms and sense of Baltimore drug-running, or the New Orleans music scene (Treme), fine. But how about giving us a feel for the Southwest? Maybe I have not paid close enough attention, but I have not yet identified the actual city, suburb, or state in which the show takes place. For (all about) me, without this sense of place, Breaking Bad will always come up short compared to The Wire.

One last comment. Isabelle and Cordelia do not sleep through my listening to Phil Hendrie, the funniest man in North America. I subscribe to his website and so can stream his shows whenever I want, which is usually at the end of the day before dinner. It a talk-radio show where Phil is the voice both of the host and guest who talk about a crazy premise and elicit flabbergasted callers who think the interview is real. He has almost 60 different characters, from Margaret Grey, a syndicated columnist who writes “A Little Bird Told Me,” to Jay Santos, a Brigadier General in the Citizens Auxiliary Police. Phil does three hours of comedy gold every weeknight, which means he does more material in one week than Larry David does in an entire season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Anyone interested should know that Phil now has a free website where people can listen to clips from old shows. I also hear that you can make Phil Hendrie a radio station at Pandora.com.