At Least Theonomists Are Consistent (well, maybe not)

Published on by D. G. Hart21 Comments

I participated yesterday in my first interview on my new book (all about me, remember), From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin, yesterday on a local Detroit Christian radio station. The host was gracious but unfortunately we talked much less about the book than about his and my own differences over theology and politics. One take-away from the exchange was that many evangelicals, if this host is representative, think they are political conservatives simply because they are conservative Christians. No matter that American conservatives have been discussing the boundaries of the Right for over fifty years in such outlets as the National Review, Modern Age, or the American Conservative, a conversation led initially by the likes of William F. Buckley, Jr. and Russell Kirk. I actually invoked Michigan’s own Kirk yesterday, twice. And I don’t think it had any effect. Evangelicals seem to believe they are conservative because they follow the Bible and it doesn’t faze them that folks like Kirk and Buckley let the Bible seldom if ever enter into their considerations of conservatism.

The most frustrating part of the interview was the phenomenon I have repeatedly observed here and at other blogs — the appeal to Scripture selectively. As readers might well imagine, the interviewer was opposed to abortion and gay marriage, as am I, and believed that biblical teaching should be followed by the U.S.A. I responded with a question about the commandments that precede the sixth and seventh (fifth and sixth for the Protestant-challenged) and the answer distinguished between America as a republic and not a theocracy. Evangelicals believe that their designs have nothing to do with theocracy even when they follow a book that does describe a polity that at the very least had theocratic aspects.

The frustration escalated when I brought up the example of Michele Bachmann who is receiving questions about the place of her husband in the White House should she win the election. Biblical teaching does require women to submit to their husbands and so journalists, whether for gotcha reasons or not, do have plausible reasons for asking how Bachman’s evangelical faith would square her political power with the Bible’s call for wifely submission. (This is the same kind of question, by the way, that journalists put to Morman and Roman Catholic politicians who seemed to be under obligation to authorities in competition with the U.S. Constitution.) The response, quite sensible, was to distinguish the spiritual aspects of Bachman’s life from her political responsibilities. But if you can do that with Bachmann’s marriage, why can’t you do so with the civil institution of marriage more generally? After all, if biblical teaching demands that marriage be between a man and a woman (which it does lest anyone think I’ve gone soft), why aren’t evangelicals also calling for policy and legislation that would enforce biblical teaching about divorce, or about the way Paul describes the relationship between a husband and a wife? Also, if you are going to appeal to the Bible for certain aspects of public policy, is it really bad form for journalists to inspect Scripture to see how far such appeal will take a candidate? Saying that suggestions that evangelicals are theocrats is silly just isn’t much of a defense.

But if you believe in natural law or that the light of nature does reveal certain ethical norms, then it is possible for evangelicals to oppose gay marriage and abortion without appealing to Scripture and bringing up that unfortunate business about women wearing hats.

During the interview I did think that theonomists are more consistent than your average evangelical. Theonomists want all of the Bible to inform public policy, and I also suspect that theonomy gained a hearing in the 1980s as the more consistent, philosophically and theologically compelling, critique of secular politics and secular humanism than what folks like Jerry Falwell and Francis Schaeffer were offering.

And then I actually picked up a book by Greg Bahnsen and had to scratch my head about such consistency. For some reason, Bahnsen was eager to follow Old Testament teaching but drew the line at jihad. Not even general equity could prompt him to embrace God’s reasons for the Israelites purging the promised land of the pagan tribes. “The command to go to war and gain the land of Palestine by the sword,” Bahnsen wrote, “is not an enduring requirement for us today.” How this squares with Bahnsen’s earlier assertion that “God’s law as it touches upon the duty of civil magistrates has not been altered in any systematic or fundamental way in the New Testament,” is a mystery. [By This Standard, pp. 5, 3] After all, the command to go to war against the pagan tribes was hardly a local circumstance but a reflection of God’s holy and righteous opposition to sin and unbelief and a revelation of how he will punish it.

The take away is that the world of biblical politics is filled with inconsistencies. Of course, we all have our problems. But evangelical politicians should at some point not be surprised but expect to receive questions about where the appeal to the Bible begins and ends, that is, in which areas they are prepared to be 1k and in which domains they will follow 2k teaching. Until both Christians and secularists receive such an explanation, political biblicists will continue to be exasperated and exasperating.

What's Good for the Immanentizer is Good for the Post-Millennialist

Published on by D. G. Hart46 Comments

Alan Jacobs pushes back against Andrew Sullivan’s recent denunciation of Christianism. According to Sullivan:

Christians will look back on this period, I believe, with horror. The desire to control others’ lives and souls through politics is so anathema to the Gospels it will one day have to be exposed and ended. Until then, we just have to keep our spirits up and attend to our own failures as Christians, which, of course, are many.

Jacobs thinks he has the perfect antidote to Sullivan, and his name is Martin Luther King, Jr. Jacobs seems to think that King was doing what today’s Christians are doing, namely, arguing for conformity between the law of God and the laws of the United States:

[King] could have stayed in his prayer closet instead of politicking; he could have attended to his own failures as a Christian, which of course were many; he could have forgiven white Southerners instead of judging them. But no. He became an “outside agitator,” marching into ordinary American communities and telling them that their local laws, and indeed in some cases federal laws, were not to be obeyed — and why? Because they conflicted with the law of God! Notice the arrogance with which he associates his cause with God Himself. He even asserts that “human progress” only happens when “men [are] willing to be co-workers with God.” His whole vision for America is Christian and Biblical through and through: in his most famous speech he simply identifies the American situation with that of the Biblical Israel: “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; ‘and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.'” Talk about “the desire to control other people’s lives and souls”!

Well, I’ll take the bait. King’s immanentized political theology and identification of the United States with Israel was as bad as Jerry Falwell’s or now Rick Perry’s. That doesn’t stop Jacobs who explains, “After all, Dr. King’s faith commitments were at least as encompassing in their scope, as universal in their claims, as publicly political as Rick Perry’s . . .” Thinking of the United States as the New Israel is wrong no matter who is doing it and no matter what the cause.

But Jacob’s comparison is far fetched for at least three reasons. First, the Christian or Religious Right has not faced the same sorts of obstacles that African Americans did and IN some cases still do. Trying to glom evangelical politics on to the Civil Rights movement is just plain bad form (and this is from someone who doesn’t care for the increased power of the federal government that came with Civil Rights legislation). Second, King was not running for president. sponsoring a prayer rally around the same time that you are contemplating entering the Republican bid for the presidential nomination is almost as tacky praying before a NASCAR race and thanking the Lord for a “smoking hot” wife. Third, King’s appeal was much more common at a time when mainline Protestants dominated public life and appealed to Christian theology for social reform. For some reason, evangelicals don’t seem to understand that the United States has changed a lot since 1963, along with the etiquette governing public speech about the United States as a Christian nation. If not everyone, including the media elites, believes the United States to be a biblical polity, then maybe you don’t bring up the Bible if you want to persuade the media elites. Maybe also you don’t pray in public with a humongous U.S. flag at your back.

One last point: when Christians enter the public square and start using theology for political purposes, Christian doctrine always, always, always suffers. It happened with the Social Gospel. It happened with Martin Luther King, Jr. It happened with Reinhold Niebuhr. And it’s happening with Rick Perry. Consider the following from a report about the recent prayer rally:

The lineup of speakers at The Response reflect the impact of new charismatic and Pentecostal movements, especially those emphasizing spiritual warfare and round-the-clock prayer and worship, and which have produced another sort of army. That one is not particularly intrigued by the horse race of politics, but rather focused more exclusively on the supremacy of Jesus and preparing for his return.

That caused some controversy for the organizers of Perry’s event, which included speakers and endorsers who follow the New Apostolic Reformation. The NAR’s strident language of spiritual warfare and emphasis on prophecy, signs, and wonders, has drawn scrutiny. But it has the same dominionist aims of the old religious right, even while employing some new rhetoric.

The NAR has also drawn criticism from conservative evangelical “discernment” ministries that consider it heretical—a criticism that Response organizers dismissed. A week before The Response, Marsha West, a conservative writer and editor of the website Email Brigade, wrote a scathing blog post; which she published on the website of Response host the American Family Association, and which was subsequently taken down. West complained that the NAR, which she considers unbiblical, was involved in The Response.

West told me in an email that she was “thoroughly disgusted with Christian Right leaders who have joined forces with a group that is, by definition, a Christian cult. Because of CR leader’s lack of discernment, the NAR is now becoming mainstream.” (According to her website, West also considers Mormonism, the emergent church, new age spirituality, word of faith, homosexuality, and more to be unbiblical.) In the NAR, she particularly identified Mike Bickle of the International House of Prayer, who played a big role in The Response. “[T]hese people are what the Bible calls ‘false prophets’… not true Christians,” West wrote. When I asked Garlow [Jim Garlow heads Newt Gingrich’s nonprofit, Renewing American Leadership]about West’s complaint, he shrugged it off, saying that he was not familiar with the term New Apostolic Reformation, even though he knew its founder, Peter Wagner. “I have a lot of confidence in him spiritually,” Garlow said of Wagner.

“There are a lot of theological differences here, but we’re focusing on one issue: Jesus,” Garlow added. “It’s not about whether Perry becomes president, it’s about making Jesus king.”

Does Jacobs actually believe Garlow? Can he not see that Sullivan is just a little bit justified in being skeptical about today’s “Christian” politics?

Who's Radical Now?

Published on by D. G. Hart53 Comments

The Brothers Bayly are persistent in besmirching two-kingdom theology and its proponents but their latest swipe is rich indeed. They have reprinted a mysterious piece (impossible to find anywhere else on the Net) about the enormities of the Obama administration. Nathan Ed Schumacher is the author and Tim Bayly’s foreword runs ever charitably as follows:

This piece . . . demonstrates that the silence of Emergent and R2K men in the face of the wickedness and oppression in our public square is of the same fabric. Fear of man is a principle that knows no boundaries.

I keep wondering why fear of God pertaining to the ninth commandment, you know one of those laws that the Baylys would seem to want to prevail in the public square, does not inform the way these fellows write about Christians — not to mention officers — in the church. But I digress.

Schumacher, it seems, had a conversation with a graduate of a seminary on the West Coast – hmmm – about the woes of the nation and why more ministers were not speaking publicly about such matters. Schumacher contended with the seminary graduate that the difficulties facing the United States were not simply political but moral in nature. But the seminarian responded that the church should only speak to spiritual matters. Schumacher responded:

Here we have a spirituality radically disconnected from morality – an ethereal religion not connected to historic Christianity and its application of ethics to the real world. What kind of “spirituality” or theology is this that can disregard morals, ethics, and God’s Law and even silently abide open murder?

So what is Schumacher talking about when it comes to immorality in the United States? It turns out that morality is closely tied to politics.

We live in an astonishing time in America where the President is making open war domestically on the Constitution, and openly making unlawful wars internationally – such wars outlawed by the Constitution and long vested by the Rule of Law as war crimes and open murder – and formally recognized as such by the Nuremberg trials. When a President publicly usurps the Constitution, making an open show of violating its limits on exercising power, whether it be by his making illegal war, giving secret orders, punishing American soldiers for exposing truth, building secret prisons, operating torture chambers, running kidnapping operations (rendition), publicly asserting his right to kill American citizens with no trial or process, openly publicly stealing money via “bailouts”, taxing in violation of the Constitution, openly violating the Bill of Rights, creating illegal Federal agencies and programs, etc., ad nausem, then what does that mean according to the Principles of Law? It means, without question, that he has invoked the Law of Belligerents against the American people by acting as a belligerent upon the American people themselves, because publicly assaulting their Constitution is, in fact, an assault upon them. In other words, the President is openly making war upon the American people by these belligerent actions – actions which are open, public, and undeniable. If you don’t understand this, you are not paying attention. Our Constitution formally defines this as treason.

Schumacher’s solution is for the church to call a synod:

It is long past time for church Officers to convene formal and official church councils and synods all across this land to address the open lawlessness and public sin and crimes of what passes for “our government”- and to address the way forward. Nevertheless, it is probable that they can be expected to refuse to do this – and likely that they will always have a long list of lofty “spiritual reasons” as to why they cannot accept responsibility. But if church Officers, who are the official voices of moral authority, refuse to do this then there is a deafening silence and they cannot expect to be found faithful – and the rest of us will suffer the continuing consequences of their dereliction of duty – praying that God will raise up some “Thomas Beckets” who are jealous for the church, the Law of God, and who will have the courage to say “No” to our present political “king”.

In the comments on this post, the Baylys add a curious wrinkle to the clear overreach (clear according to what follows below). When one commentator brought up the example of the apostle Paul who did not seem to be overly upset by the rule or policies of Caligula, Tim and David ever lovingly responded:

. . . we don’t need to see it happening constantly with the Apostle Paul or John the Baptist or Jesus or Augustine or Calvin or Edwards or Machen in order to know that the R2K men are wrong when they oppose the church and her officers standing against theft, oppression, rampant gross immorality, the repudiation of the rule of law, and the massive bloodshed of the slaughter of hundreds of millions of wee ones.

When you find yourself arguing that John the Baptist is no model for pastors today, you should wonder whether, just maybe, your cowardice has gotten the best of your faith.

Two aspects of this response are striking. The first is the Bayly habit of hitting below the belt – that is, questioning masculinity rather than formulating an argument. The second is that the Bible really does not need to be our guide because the existing evils are so enormous. Paul, Jesus, and the rest of the apostles may not have led protests against their societies, but their silence is only an opening for the Baylys’ shouting. Never mind that a cardinal conviction of Reformed Protestantism is that officers in the church, whether individually or collectively, need a biblical warrant for using their authority.

I do wonder why the Baylys do not recognize how partisanly political their moral hectoring looks. It is not as if Obama is the first president to abuse the powers of the Constitution or propose questionable economic policies. Can the Baylys or Schumacher remember the former president’s apparent disregard for the Constitution in the Gulf War, the Medicare bailout, or the Patriot Act? Do they not know that Christians on the Left opposed Bush in terms remarkably similar to the way they castigate Obama, thus making party affiliation more than biblical interpretation the basis for moral posturing?

I also wonder if the Baylys have ever heard of the United States Civil War and the debates that Old School Presbyterians had over support for the federal government. The 1860s was a time of grave national crisis also driven by a hotly disputed moral issue and the Old School General Assembly of 1861 decided to address the matter through the clumsy Spring Resolution. Here we have a church doing exactly that for which Schumacher calls and the Baylys approve — an Assembly addressing a moral and political question. And yet, Charles Hodge, a man who voted for Lincoln, believed secession was treasonous, and that treason was immoral, opposed the church taking a stand on matters that literally broke the United States apart. Hodge wrote:

. . . a man who acts on the theory of secession, may be justly liable to the penalty of the civil law; he may be morally guilty in the sight of God; but he has committed no offense on which the church can take cognizance. We therefore are not inconsistent in asserting, 1. That secession is a ruinous political heresy. 2. That those who act on that doctrine, and throw off allegiance to the Constitution and the Union, are guilty of a great crime; and, 3. That nevertheless they are not amenable in this matter to the church. The question whether they are morally guilty, depends on the question whether their theory of the constitution is right. If they are right, they are heroes; if they are wrong, they are wicked rebels. But whether that theory is right or wrong it is not the province of the church to decide.

The reason why the church cannot decide such political and constitutional matters, even when morality is involved, is that the Bible does not address these topics. Hodge explained:

The church can only exercise her power in enforcing the word of God, in approving what it commands, and condemning what it forbids. A man, in the exercise of his liberty as to things indifferent, may be justly amenable to the laws of the land; and he may incur great guilt in the sight of God, but he cannot be brought under the censure of the church.

What the Baylys (as well as most critics of the spirituality of the church) miss is the distinction between morality and authority. The Baylys go knock-kneed whenever a 2k person suggests that a moral truth should not necessarily be advocated by the church. The Bayly logic seems to be that if it is right, then all authority must be used to execute the right. But biblical teaching would also prompt questions about who has authority to enforce the good. Just because I believe drivers who pass me on the right are wrong does not mean that I have power to pull those drivers over and lock them up in our basement. The Baylys desire to marshal the church’s power behind their interpretation of the Constitution (and their assessment of the culture wars) comes dangerously close to ecclesiastical vigilantism: the church can and should do whatever is right and not bother with the technicalities such as the confession of faith or Book of Church Order. Ironically, then, in the Baylys’ twisted logic, the very constitution of the church becomes expendable in the defense of the United States Constitution.

A related point that the Baylys miss is how radical their views are compared to the supposed radicality of 2k. Charles Hodge was by no means the most vociferous proponent of the spirituality of the church. But he could see the folly of positions like the Baylys on good 2k grounds. Hodge was not a radical and neither are 2k proponents. In contrast, the Baylys’ disregard for the constitution of their church and the teachings of their confession of faith several steps down the road to anarchy.

And they call 2kers antinomian? Call again.

If You Can't Stand the Polemic, Get Out of the Calvinist Kitchen

Published on by D. G. Hart38 Comments

An arresting little wrinkle in the current popularity of Calvinism among those who don’t baptize their infants and sometimes speak in tongues (and don’t belong to a Reformed church — redundant, I know), is the notion that Calvinists are mean. Justin Taylor is apparently on vacation and has bloggers filling in for him. Jared Wilson’s number came up on Wednesday and he tried to explain the stereotype of the “graceless Calvinist” (would Mr. Wilson actually refer to Americans of Polish descent in such a stereotypical manner?). Such exhibitions of pride are exceedingly disappointing to Wilson:

. . .gracelessness is never as big a disappointment, to me anyway, as when it’s found among those who call themselves Calvinists, because it’s such a big waste of Calvinism. Why? Because it’s a depressing irony and a disgrace that many who hold to the so-called “doctrines of grace” are some of the most graceless people around. The extent to which your soteriology is monergistic—most Calvinistic nerds know what I’m talking about here—is the extent to which you ought to know that your pride is a vomitous affront to God.

What is odd about this comment is that Wilson seems to show a similar gracelessness in calling out Calvinists. (Hasn’t every husband figured out a euphemism for observing a weight gain in his wife?) Wilson knows that gracelessness is wrong and so apparently doesn’t need to be gracious in pointing it out. He does not seem to consider that some Calvinist polemics may stem from a sense of error as deeply felt as Wilson’s. If Wilson knows that gracelessness is obviously wrong, maybe Calvinists also know that Arminianism is profoundly wrong. In which case, Wilson attributes Calvinist gracelessness almost entirely to character, not the most flattering or gracious interpretations of Reformed orneriness.

Also odd is Wilson’s perseverance in identifying with Calvinism, since the man to whom that moniker points was no slouch when it came to invective. For instance, here’s an excerpt from Calvin on the relationship between the Old and New Testaments:

. . . although the passages which we have collected from the Law and the Prophets for the purpose of proof, make it plain that there never was any other rule of piety and religion among the people of God; yet as many things are written on the subject of the difference between the Old and New Testaments in a manner which may perplex ordinary readers, it will be proper here to devote a special place to the better and more exact discussion of this subject. This discussion, which would have been most useful at any rate, has been rendered necessary by that monstrous miscreant, Servetus, and some madmen of the sect of the Anabaptists, who think of the people of Israel just as they would do of some herd of swine, absurdly imagining that the Lord gorged them with temporal blessings here, and gave them no hope of a blessed immortality. Let us guard pious minds against this pestilential error, while we at the same time remove all the difficulties which are wont to start up when mention is made of the difference between the Old and the New Testaments. By the way also, let us consider what resemblance and what difference there is between the covenant which the Lord made with the Israelites before the advent of Christ, and that which he has made with us now that Christ is manifested. (Institutes II.10.1)

Hide the Anabaptists and their unbaptized children.

Of course, we could chalk this type of polemic up to the parlance of Calvin’s time, when such vituperation was common in the academy and the church. But if that’s the case, why does Wilson not give modern-day Calvinists a similar benefit of the doubt? He concedes that other groups of believers exhibit gracelessness. And if he watches CNN or Fox News, he may also become familiar with invective in the culture at large, all of which might suggest that Calvinists don’t have a corner on meanness.

Or maybe if the young Calvinists actually read Calvin, they would come to understand that some doctrines and practices really are worthy of polemics, and some faulty ideas and forms of devotion really are harmful.

Either way, it is clearly odd to identify with Calvin who was capable of getting agitated and then object to Calvinists when they become animated. Calvinism would appear to be the wrong label. Again, why not Particular Baptist?

I could take some comfort from Wilson’s explanation of Calvinistic gracelessness:

. . . the problem is not the Reformed theology, as many of my Arminian friends will charge; it’s not the Calvinism. No, the problem is gospel wakefulness (which crosses theological systems and traditions), or the lack thereof. A joyless Calvinist knows the mechanics of salvation (probably). But he is like a guy who knows the ins and outs of a car engine and how the car runs. He can take it apart and put it back together. He knows what each part does and how it does it. A graceless Calvinist is like a guy who knows how a car works but has never driven through the countryside in the warm spring air with the top down and the wind blowing through his hair.

This is a curious analogy since it suggests that nice Calvinists conceive of the Christian life as a joy ride. This is not exactly the way that Calvin thought of our life in this world, which he likened to being on look out at a sentry post. But jarring analogies aside, what happens to the guy with the wind-blown hair when the universal joint goes on his Thunderbird? Or a little less dramatic, does the fellow who likes to take the car out for rides through the country need to worry about filling up the tank (or even about the environmental consequences of fossil fuel)? Maybe Wilson’s analogy is entirely apt. The young and restless ones don’t want to be bothered with fixing cars or refilling the tank, and as stereotypical youngsters they regard parents who say that teens should attend to these things are mean. That difference might go along way to explaining the difference between a gospel coalition and a Reformed communion.

Christ and Whatever

Published on by D. G. Hart31 Comments

This video has been making the rounds and it reminded me of how inexact the current evangelical understanding of culture is. Many assume that culture is everything that the church or religion is not and so Christianity and culture need to be brought into a coherent relationship. The problem is that this understanding of culture is about as precise as the adolescent quip “whatever.”

For instance, here is an on-line dictionary definition of culture:

1. the quality in a person or society that arises from a concern for what is regarded as excellent in arts, letters, manners, scholarly pursuits, etc.
2. that which is excellent in the arts, manners, etc.
3. a particular form or stage of civilization, as that of a certain nation or period: Greek culture.

In other words, culture used to refer generally to the arts, education of a liberal variety, morals, manners, and languages. This definition arose chiefly in the eighteenth and nineteenth century when European nations were caught up with their superiority over barbarian continents and peoples. That’s not meant to be a swipe against the notions of higher, lower, and middle-brow cultures. It is to suggest that we are using the word today when talking about “the transformation of culture” in a different way than it was originally employed. Since language is essential to culture, the idea of transforming English or Dutch or Swahili according to — what, Christian rules of language? — makes about as much sense as transforming culture.

What is not used nearly as much — in fact, seldom — by evangelicals is the phrase “civil society” and this is much closer to what people mean when they talk about transforming culture. Civil society refers to all of those spheres of life outside control by or regulation from the state. It is comprised of clubs, community organizations, schools, and voluntary associations of all kinds including churches, for starters. And what characterizes civil society, as opposed to culture, is pluriformity and diversity. A healthy civil society is one in which people form distinct associations to address separate parts of human existence. A Kuyperian might be tempted to speak of sphere sovereignty when thinking about civil society but in a healthy society voluntary associations far outnumber the spheres.

But what is particularly frustrating about contemporary appeals to culture and its need for transformation is that the Bible fails to yield a definition of culture or describe a Christian one for that matter. The notion of culture is much later than Hebrew or Christian times and the concept is simply absent in Scripture. That sure is an oddity if Christians are more then ever agitated to Christianize the culture.

Of course, the remedy, as usual, is to read the likes of a Russell Kirk, T. S. Eliot, or Joseph Epstein on culture and what makes for a wholesome one, and let the Bible speak for itself about matters of faith and practice. Authors who do not go to the Bible for the details of a healthy culture do go to another divinely revealed book whether they know it or not — general revelation. If evangelicals spent more time reading secular authors on culture, and less time trying to find cultural patterns or norms in holy writ, they might deflate the scope of culture and find less reason to transform it. And that in turn might elevate the importance of word, sacraments, and prayer.

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.

Machen Day 2011

Published on by D. G. Hart9 Comments

I am not sure if our favorite PCA blogger had J. Gresham Machen’s birthday in mind when he posted a piece on the fortunes of Machen’s kind of confessionalism within the PCA, but it was good preparation for today’s festivities. The same goes for Westminster Seminary California which has released Scott Clark’s interview with me about Machen’s legacy and the chapter I wrote for W. Robert Godfrey’s festschrift, a recording that may put party-goers quickly to sleep.

But whether these resources were designed to highlight today’s anniversary, the following may provide reasons for donning party hats and blowing horns:

There are entirely too many denominations in this country, says the modern ecclesiastical efficiency expert. Obviously, many of them must be merged. But the trouble is, they have different creeds. Here is one church, for example, that has a clearly Calvinistic creed; here is another whose creed is just as clearly Arminian, let us say, and anti-Calvinistic. How in the world are we going to get the two together? Why, obviously, says the ecclesiastical efficiency expert, the thing to do is to tone down that Calvinistic creed; just smooth off its sharp angles, until Arminians will be able to accept it. Or else we can do something better still. We can write an entirely new creed that will contain only what Arminianism and Calvinism have in common, so that it can serve as the basis for some propose new “United Church.” . . . .

When we pass from these modern statements to the great creeds, what a difference we discover! Instead of wordiness we find conciseness; instead of an unwillingness to offend, clear delimitation of truth from error; instead of obscurity, clearness; instead of vagueness, the utmost definiteness and precision.

All these differences are rooted in a fundamental difference of purpose. These modern statements are intnded to show how little of truth we can get along with and still be Christians, whereas the great creeds of the church are intended to show how much of truth God has revealed to us in His Word. (“Creeds and Doctrinal Advance”)

Young, Restless and Lutheran?

Published on by D. G. Hart77 Comments

If you read Collin Hanson’s book on the young Calvinists you will discover that of Dort’s five points the young and restless ones affirm at most two of the five. You will also see that what drives young Calvinists has less to do with the five points of Calvinsim than with one big point – the sovereignty of God. The youthful interest in being Reformed seems to stem primarily from expressions about the glory of God – thanks to John Piper channeling Jonathan Edwards – that present to late adolescents and young adults an image of God much bigger and grander than anything they had encountered in evangelical preaching and teaching. (I could get snarky and ask what Bible have these “converts” to Calvinism been reading, but I’ll resist mainly.)

But why is an affirmation of divine sovereignty Reformed? It is just as much Lutheran as it is Reformed. It is in fact basically true of Christianity to affirm the sovereignty of God. That business in the Nicene Creed about “maker of heaven and earth” does point in the direction of a divine being sufficiently powerful to create everything and then govern and maintain it all.

So why don’t we call the new evangelical resurgence of interest in divine sovereignty Lutheran instead of Reformed? After all, there is nothing about the young and restless that is explicitly Reformed other than the Jonathan Edwards is My Home Boy t-shirts (and Edwards, for all his genius, is not exactly the standard for Reformed Protestantism).

One explanation may be evangelicals mistakenly think of themselves as Reformed because they are following the lead of Reformed Protestants themselves. The latter are more inclined to think of themselves as evangelical than as Reformed. In turn, this tendency cultivates an atmosphere where Reformed Protestants look, speak, and act like evangelicals. In which case, the reason that evangelicals don’t consider themselves Lutheran – though they do affirm as much of Lutheranism as they do of Reformed Protestantism – and don’t make Martin Luther is My Home Boy t-shirts is that Lutheranism is not a comfortable environment for evangelicals.

Evidence of this tension comes from Kevin DeYoung’s recent interview with the Lutheran pastor, Paul T. McCain (sounds pretty Scottish and not very German). To the question of whether Lutherans consider themselves part of American evangelicalism, McCain responded:

I do not think that most Lutherans consider themselves to be American Evangelicals. We tend to think of ourselves first, and foremost, simply as Lutheran Christians. I must say in light of the fact that conservative Lutherans do have a single book by which they can identify themselves, doctrinally, we find trying to nail down precisely what “Evangelicalism” is a bit like an exercise in nailing jello to a wall, and that kind of gives us the heebie-jeebies. That’s a technical term.

And in a follow up question about differences between Reformed and Lutheran Protestants, McCain had this intriguing response:

We are keen on emphasizing the proper distinction between God’s Law, that shows us our sin, and God’s Gospel, that shows us our Savior and we emphasize God’s objective work through both His Word and His Sacraments. The “S” word makes our Evangelical friends very nervous, but we hold and cherish the Sacraments and really believe that God works saving faith by the power of His promising Word through Baptism. We also believe that the Lord’s Supper is our Lord Christ’s own dear body and blood, actually under, with and in the bread and wine, for us Christians to eat and drink, and that through it we receive forgiveness and life, and wherever there is forgiveness and life, there is salvation.

Now, of course, Lutherans and Reformed disagree on the Lord’s Supper and have ever since 1529. But why are Reformed Protestants any more appealing to evangelicals than Lutherans on sacramental grounds. After all, Reformed Protestants also have sacramental teachings and practices that would scare evangelicals if they ever went beyond the first question and answer of the Shorter Catechism. Does baptism come to mind? Plus, the Reformed churches’ teaching on the Supper – from the Belgic Confession to the Westminster Confession – is no more agreeable to most evangelicals (whoever they are) than the Book of Concord.

So again I find it very strange that many seem to think that Reformed and evangelical go together when as many wrinkles exist between these expressions of Protestants as between evangelicals and Lutherans. Could it be that if Reformed Protestants were as serious about being Reformed as Lutherans have been about being Lutheran the young and restless would simply be content with calling themselves Baptist?

Kingdom Sloppy: A Big Bowl of Wrong

Published on by D. G. Hart34 Comments

Readers of Oldlife may think I am too hard on Kuyper and neo-Calvinism. I know of one reader and commenter who regularly replies that I am just pointing out errors but that neo-Calvinism in its purity is — well — pure. Another respondent has admitted to some flaws along the way but nothing inherently erroneous about neo-Calvinism per se.

And then I receive a deluge of examples that suggest neo-Calvinism is not simply prone to abuse by a few of its proponents. Instead, repeatedly, neo-Calvinism blurs the distinctions between the church and culture (what we used to call the world), and consistently does not recognize the fundamental difference between redemption and cultural activity. Herewith some examples (and I have the good Dr. K. to thank for several of them).

The first comes from James K. A. Smith in an article he wrote for Pro Rege in which he tried to argue for more of a liturgical component for neo-Calvinism. (I actually think Smith has a point, especially when he conceives of a church-college as a worshiping community in which liturgy should be at the center of campus life.) But to defend his view, he observes a tendency within neo-Calvinism (and he is pro-neo-Calvinist) that is precisely what Old Lifers detect in Kuyperianism:

Kuyper has been inherited in different ways in North America, yielding different Kuyperianisms. While Zwaanstra suggests that “ecclesiology was the core of [Kuyper’s] theology,” one quickly notes that it is the church as organism that is the “heart” of his doctrine. This emphasis, coupled with some other emphases in Kuyper, led to a strain of Kuyperianism that actually had little place for the church as institute in its understanding of Christian engagement with culture. Indeed, there have even been strains of Kuyperianism that have been quite anti-ecclesial. On the other hand, Kuyper himself clearly saw a crucial role for the church as institute and devoted a great deal of his time, energy, and gifts to its welfare and reform.

Next comes a quotation, which also came to my attention through Dr. K., which seems to run rough shod over distinctions between redemption and creation, such that Bach, bordeaux, and republican governments become the fruit of the Spirit.

Reformational Christians are not very accustomed to relating the working of God’s Spirit to nature and to culture. The under-appreciation of the broader work of the Spirit betrays an incorrect vision of the relationship between nature and grace. Here, too often the point of departure involves an antithesis between the general and the special working of the Spirit. Only the latter is saving.

For the Reformation, grace is not opposed to nature, but opposed to sin. By grace, a person does not become super-human, but genuinely human. Grace restores and redeems nature, but it adds nothing new to nature. “The re-creation is not a second, new creation. It introduces no new substance, but is essentially reformatory,” according to Herman Bavinck. . . .

The Bible connects the work of the Spirit also to the gift of art. That applies to devotional music, to be sure. But architects and visual artists like Bezalel and Oholiab were also filled with the Spirit of God in order to be able to do their creative work [Ex. 31.6; 36.1-2; 38.23].

Christians may pray for the working of the Holy Spirit in their own lives, but also for the corruption-restraining working of the Spirit in society. That working extends to the meetings of literary guilds, of the advertising review council, and of the film rating commission. Where the Holy Spirit is absent, the demons of terror have free reign.

Therefore the church prays for the world this petition as well: “Veni creator Spiritus”—Come, Creator Spirit! (Dr. H. van den Belt, “Focus op bekering mag zicht op vernieuwing aarde niet ontnemen,” Reformatorisch Dagblad [13 June 2011])

We can see where such blurring leads when we look at a new initiative at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. I learned about this one thanks to the ever watchful eyes of the Brothers Bayly. (It should also be mentioned that the good Dr. K. seems to approve of Tim Keller because of the New York pastor’s use of Kuyper.)

The Center for Faith and Work at Redeemer PCA/NYC is hosting a conference this fall on the gospel and culture. The vision for this conference sounds like this:

“And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem,coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” Rev 21:2

In this great climax of redemption, we get a glimpse of where all of history is moving, and the scope of God’s redemptive purposes extends far beyond what we could have ever imagined. God is at work preparing his bride, and this bride is a holy city—a city designed and built by God Himself. God has intimately invited us into this redemptive story, and when we understand how the story ends, the way we see and engage the city around us changes. When we begin to realize that God cares for New York City, in all of its dimensions and sectors, our eyes become opened to see His love and care for all that we often overlook. Our hope for this conference is that you will begin to see how real the gospel is in every inch of our city and to leave with a renewed sense of purpose and calling as you see hope-filled glimpses of the great City of Peace that is to come.

What is striking about this understanding of the gospel in the city is that the gospel seems to be there even if the church isn’t proclaiming the gospel or transforming the culture. It sounds like this wing of Redeemer believes that the gospel is already there in NYC and so Christians need to become more sensitive to it so they can see how God is at work everywhere. So much for needing to transform the city. The church needs to be culturalized.

To add plausibility to this interpretation, consider that one day of the conference will be devoted to “glimpses,” that is, a “cultural event (1) based in New York City, (2) experienced in community, (3) which points toward evidence of God’s glory and Sovereignty over all things.” Conference participants may gain a glimpse by engaging in one of the following suggested activities:

STARTER IDEAS — Food Tour · Metropolitan Museum · BAM · NYPhil · Brooklyn Heights History Walk · Brooklyn Bridge Architecture Walk · The Morgan Library · Times Square “Branding” Walk · Off B’way · Carnegie Hall · City Opera · City Ballet · IFC · Angelika · Lincoln Square Cinema · Jazz @ Lincoln Center · Fashion Show · Joyce Dance · B.B. King’s · NY Historical Society · The MET · Rockwood Hall · Living Room · 92nd St.

I have had some very good meals in NYC. They were better temporally than the meal of the Lord’s Supper that I now eat weekly at our OPC congregation (though the bread made by the pastor’s wife is very good!!). But I never suspected that when dining on Osso Bucco I was actually experiencing the coming of the kingdom of grace or the relishing the fruit of the Holy Spirit. And I don’t think it is necessarily fundamentalist to distinguish peace, love, and joy from the creations of Winslow Homer and Woody Allen.

In which case, if the gospel can be construed so broadly, and if Kuyperianism has a tendency for the church as organism to outrun the church as institute, why won’t neo-Calvinists exert a little internal regulation and pot down the excess? For that matter, do the Allies at the Gospel Coalition really endorse Redeemer church’s understanding of the gospel and culture?

The culture cannot be saved — only created beings with souls can. But if you are in the habit long enough of thinking that cultures can be saved, then perhaps you start to adjust your understanding of the gospel and find salvation in the culture that you deem civilized (or hip).

Kingdom Sloppy: Michele Bachmann and Her Interpreters

Published on by D. G. Hart20 Comments

Mollie Hemingway, our favorite Lutheran journalist, over at GetReligion has alerted readers to a Lutheran slur against Michele Bachmann (who grew up in the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod — who knew? — which is a communion to the right of the Missouri Synod). Mollie herself does not think much of Lutheran theology stuck with Michele:

I’m a confessional Lutheran. Ostensibly, Michele Bachmann was a member of a more conservative but also confessional Lutheran church body. And for years, whenever I heard her speak, she never sounded even mildly Lutheran to me. The “the Lord put it on my heart” type language. The “the Lord anointed me” stuff. This is not how Lutherans speak, although I won’t bore you with all of the why. Her other affiliations have always been more evangelical than Lutheran, going back decades.

But the point of Mollie’s piece is a story in The Atlantic which attempts to make Bachmann look bad because of her former church’s teaching (chances are the reporter could not find a confession or creed from Bachmann’s current church):

Michele Bachmann is practically synonymous with political controversy, and if the 2008 presidential election is any guide, the conservative Lutheran church she belonged to for many years is likely to add another chapter due to the nature of its beliefs—such as its assertion, explained and footnoted on this website, that the Roman Catholic Pope is the Antichrist.

Mollie responds:

Now, as anyone who knows anything about church history can tell you, the papacy is not a feature of Protestantism. And if you followed the Reformation or knew anything about the abuses of Pope Leo X or the anathemas of the Council of Trent, it’s not really newsworthy that the reformers looked at what Scripture says are the marks of the anti-Christ and basically said “yep — the papacy has those.” What makes the church to which Michele Bachman was once joined slightly different is that while most Lutheran church bodies will talk about the historical context into which they were made, the Wisconsin Synod says that basically they’re still Protestants who still don’t believe in the papacy and still think it sits in opposition to the Gospel of Christ.

And, again, if you don’t know that Catholics and Protestants have very strongly held different views on whether the papacy is on the whole a really good or really bad institution, you should repeat 8th grade or whatever.

The irony, of course, is that if the reporter had studied Lutheran theology further, he would have discovered a doctrine of the kingdoms what would allow a political candidate to affirm that the pope is the anti-Christ and also promise to serve Roman Catholic citizens according to the laws of the United States. In fact, there is a better chance that Bachmann’s studies with Francis Schaeffer, not the teaching of WELS, make her less flexible in negotiating the the claims of Christ’s lordship over greatest nation on God’s green earth.