Two Kingdom Tuesday: When the Light of Nature Brightens

Published on by D. G. Hart254 Comments

For the critics of natural law and two kingdoms who think the light of nature needs the lift of special revelation to be discernible, comes a sensible essay by one of my favorite writers, Joseph Epstein. The occasion for the piece published in the Weekly Standard was the presentation by a professor at Northwestern University that involved a sex act, performed in front of undergraduate students. Epstein himself taught for many years at Northwestern while editing the American Scholar and has first-hand knowledge of the demise of academic standards and even common sense within Northwestern and higher education more generally.

Not only is Epstein’s article worth reading for its diagnosis of the problems that afflict universities and colleges, but it also demonstrates that people who are not regenerate have the capacity for moral discernment.

Consider the following:

When I began teaching at Northwestern in 1973, the smoke had not yet cleared from the student revolution. I recall at the time hearing gossip about a teacher who was sleeping with one of his students, and when I checked with a friend on the faculty, he confirmed that it was likely true. “Do many younger professors sleep with their undergraduate students?” I asked this same friend. “I don’t know many who don’t” was his rather casual reply.

Does sleeping with one’s undergraduate students come under the shield of academic freedom, or was it instead an academic perk, or ought it, again, to be admonished, if not punished by dismissal? Although a youngish bachelor at the time, I eschewed the practice myself, chiefly because I thought sleeping with one’s students was poor sportsmanship—fish in a barrel and all that—and my own taste happened to run to grown-up women; I also thought it was, not to put too fine or stuffy a point on it, flat-out wrong. I wondered, too, if in its taking unfair advantage—a teacher after all has the power of awarding grades to students—it wasn’t an obvious violation of academic freedom, and not merely crummy.

Why would Reformed Protestants not want to encourage such wisdom and conviction by insisting that Epstein first take out his copy of the Hebrew Scriptures before commenting on conditions at his old campus?

Can Redeemer Presbyterian Church Be Redeemed?

Published on by D. G. Hart88 Comments

The bloggers over at Mere Orthodoxy linked to an article by Tim Keller on the size and culture of congregations which still has me scratching my head. Originally published in 2006 in The Movement, and then again by one of the Vineyard Church’s publications, now it reappears in Redeemer’s City to City on-line magazine.

The head scratching part may also reveal my Bible-thumping past. But when a minister of the Word talks about the church wouldn’t you expect more references to Scripture than sociological hunches? Take, for instance, Keller’s nonchalant observation that size is a given and cannot be changed:

Every church has a culture that goes with its size and which must be accepted. Most people tend to prefer a certain size culture, and unfortunately, many give their favorite size culture a moral status and treat other size categories as spiritually and morally inferior. They may insist that the only biblical way to do church is to practice a certain size culture despite the fact that the congregation they attend is much too big or too small to fit that culture.

Now I am loathe to grant an inch to biblicism, but why wouldn’t the teaching of Scripture at least provide a greater check on congregational culture than the fixedness of size? For instance, if a pastor is called to perform the tasks that Paul gives to Timothy – you know, the pastoral epistles? – then if a congregation becomes too big or too small for a man to carry out those divinely appointed tasks, then perhaps the pastor and session need to reconfigure the congregation so the pastor can do what God has called him to do.

But when Keller describes the senior pastor of a large (400-800)-to-very-large congregation (above 800), the biblicist impulse is hard to suppress. He writes:

The larger the church, the more important the minister’s leadership abilities are. Preaching and pastoring are sufficient skills for pastors in smaller churches, but as a church grows other leadership skills become critical. In a large church not only administrative skills but also vision casting and strategy design are crucial gifts in the pastoral team.

The larger the church, the more the ministry staff members must move from being generalists to being specialists. Everyone from the senior pastor on down must focus on certain ministry areas and concentrate on two or three main tasks. The larger the church, the more the senior pastor must specialize in preaching, vision keeping and vision casting, and identifying problems before they become disasters.

This may be a digression, but does the bit about large churches nurturing specialists say anything about ministers of the Word — what Machen called, specialists in the Bible — sticking to Scripture rather than dabbling in sociology, even ecclesiastical sociology?

At the same time, where in the Word does it say anything about pastors as vision keepers? Or leadership for that matter? Pastoral authority held by an undershepherd is one thing, leadership is twentieth-century management-speak. So what exactly is biblical or true about these ruminations on size dynamics within a congregation? Again, I’m all for the light of nature and godly (even unregenerate) wisdom. But without some kind of biblical reflection on pastoral ministry, these ideas are even less compelling than pious advice.

The part of Keller’s article that has me scratching the other side of my scalp is his bold admission of the problems that attend very large congregations.

Of course the very large church has disadvantages as well:

Commuting longer distances can undermine mission. Very large churches can become famous and attract Christians from longer and longer distances, who cannot bring non-Christians from their neighborhoods. Soon the congregation doesn’t look like the neighborhood and can’t reach its own geographic community. However, this is somewhat offset by the mission advantages and can be further offset by (a) church planting and (b) staying relentlessly oriented toward evangelism and outreach.

Commuting longer distances undermines community/fellowship and discipleship. Christians coming from longer distances are less likely to be discipled and plugged in to real Christian community. The person you meet in a Sunday service is less and less likely to be someone who lives near you, so natural connections and friendships do not develop. This can be somewhat offset by an effective small-group system that unites people by interest or region.

Diminished communication and involvement. “A common pattern is for a large church to outgrow its internal communication system and plateau . . . as many people feel a loss of the sense of belonging, and eventually [it declines] numerically.” People are no longer sure whom to talk to about things: in a smaller church, the staff and elders know everything, but in a very large church, a given staff member may know nothing at all about what is going on outside his or her ministry. The long list of staff and ministries is overwhelming. No one feels they can get information quickly; no one feels they know how to begin to get involved. This can be offset by continually upgrading your communication system. This becomes extraordinarily important
in a very large congregation.

Displacement. People who joined when the church was smaller may feel a great sense of loss and may have trouble adjusting to the new size culture. Many of them will mourn the loss of feeling personally connected to events, decision making, and the head pastor. Some of these “old-timers” will sadly leave, and their leaving will sadden those who remain in the church. This can be offset by giving old-timers extra deference and consideration, understanding the changes they’ve been through, and not making them feel guilty for wanting a different or smaller church. Fortunately, this problem eventually lessens! People who joined a church when it had 1,500 members will find that not much has changed when it reaches 4,000.

Complexity, change, and formality. Largeness brings (a) complexity instead of simplicity, (b) change instead of predictability, and (c) the need for formal rather than informal communication and decision making. However, many long-time Christians and families value simplicity, predictability, and informality, and even see them as more valuable from a spiritual standpoint. The larger the church, the more the former three factors grow, and many people simply won’t stand for them.

Succession. The bigger a church, the more the church is identified with the senior pastor. Why? (a) He becomes the only identifiable leader among a large number of staff and leaders of whom the average member cannot keep track. (b) Churches don’t grow large without a leader who is unusually good in articulating vision. This articulation then becomes the key to the whole church. That kind of giftedness is distinctive and is much less replaceable even than good preaching. This leads to the Achilles’ heel of the church—continuity and succession. How does the pastor retire without people feeling the church has died? One plan is to divide the church with each new site having its own senior pastor. Lyle Schaller believes, however, that the successors need to be people who have been on staff for a good while, not outsiders.

This is a perplexing passage since, first, it seems to reflect the dynamics at Redeemer NYC (especially the part about the problems of succession — who will fill Keller’s shoes, Marc Driscoll?). In other words, Keller would know these problems first hand. Second, of all the other church cultures he describes, from the house congregation to the very large one, he does not devote a separate space to the problems inherent in these other sized churches. Keller does, to be sure, comment on ways that the other churches need to change if they are to become very large, in which case, being smaller is implicitly a disadvantage. (But if you’re in a place like Hillsdale, Michigan, with a population of 8,000, how could you ever become very large without putting all the other congregations out of business?)

Furthermore, Keller does mention the advantages of very large congregations. One of these is the following:

“Research and development” for the broader church. Again, the larger church is usually a good place for new curriculum, ministry structures, and the like to be formulated and tested. These can all be done more effectively by a large church than by denominations, smaller churches, or parachurch ministries.

But I thought that was the point of belonging to a denomination. After all, Great Commission Publication, the joint-effort of the OPC and the PCA, does precisely what Keller here suggests of the very large church. And what is more, they do so under the oversight of the General Assembly, which is, if you read your Bible aright, the God-appointed way to try new curricula. The assemblies of the church are, in fact, “ministry structures” in their own right.

So with all of the defects of the very large church, why is its size a given? And if Redeemer is experiencing the difficulties Keller describes, why do so many congregations want to be Redeemer-like. Maybe small is not just beautiful but – dare I say – biblical.

Did Warfield Make the World Safe for Piper?

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Are Lutherans different from Reformed Protestants? Duh! The odd aspect of the arguments that distinguish Lutheranism from Reformed Protestantism is that the arguers don’t seem to be so conscientious when it comes to Baptists. Are Baptists Calvinistic? Some are. Lots aren’t. So when it comes to drawing distinctions among Protestants why the urge to draw lines between Reformed and Lutherans and not between Reformed and the uncles of Baptists, the Puritans?

Of course, contemporary discomfort with Lutherans among Reformed Protestants and Calvinistic Baptists is not new. Benjamin Warfield, who rarely strayed in his judgments, was also inclined to draw a distinction between Lutheranism and Reformed Protestantism. He did so by observing the tendency of Lutherans to stress justification by faith in contrast to the Reformed impulse to push beyond faith and its benefits to the underlying circumstances of justification. Here is how Warfield put it (thanks to Scott Clark via Timothy):

Just as little can the doctrine of justification by faith be represented as specifically Lutheran. It is as central to the Reformed as to the Lutheran system. Nay, it is only in the Reformed system that it retains the purity of its conception and resists the tendency to make it a doctrine of justification on account of; instead of by, faith. It is true that Lutheranism is prone to rest in faith as a kind of ultimate fact, while Calvinism penetrates to its causes, and places faith in its due relation to the other products of God’s activity looking to the salvation of man. And this difference may, on due consideration, conduct us back to the formative principle of each type of thought. But it, too, is rather an outgrowth of the divergent formative principles than the embodiment of them. Lutheranism, sprung from the throes of a guilt-burdened soul seeking peace with God, finds peace in faith, and stops right there. It is so absorbed in rejoicing in the blessings which flow from faith that it refuses or neglects to inquire whence faith itself flows. It thus loses itself in a sort of divine euthumia, and knows, and will know nothing beyond the peace of the justified soul. Calvinism asks with the same eagerness as Lutheranism the great question, “What shall I do to be saved?” and answers it precisely as Lutheranism answers it. But it cannot stop there. The deeper question presses upon it, “Whence this faith by which I am justified?” And the deeper response suffuses all the chambers of the soul with praise, “From the free gift of God alone, to the praise of the glory of His grace.” Thus Calvinism withdraws the eye from the soul and its destiny and fixes it on God and His glory. It has zeal, no doubt, for salvation but its highest zeal is for the honour of God, and it is this that quickens its emotions and vitalizes its efforts. It begins, it centres and it ends with the vision of God in His glory and it sets itself; before all things, to render to God His rights in every sphere of life-activity.

Several items are worth noting in this quotation. First is Warfield’s notion that Reformed Protestantism is not content with faith alone but embarks upon a deeper quest to find the origins of this faith. He does not explain here what this quest looks like, but his could be an argument in favor of the kind of introspection that experimental Calvinists like Edwards and Piper favor.

A second curious feature of Warfield’s contrast is the idea that Lutheranism emphasizes justification while Reformed Protestantism stresses the glory of God. This suggests common view in some union with Christ circles that Lutheranism manifests an anthropocentric view of Christianity (e.g., man’s salvation) that contrasts with Reformed Protestantism’s theocentric outlook (e.g., God’s glory). After all, an oft-made contrast between Heidelberg (which is considered a catechism that made concessions to Lutheranism) and Westminster is that the former catechism begins with man’s “only comfort” while the Shorter Catechism begins with “God’s glory” as man’s chief end.

The danger in this contrast so far – man’s salvation vs. God’s glory – is that Lutherans had good reasons for not becoming absorbed with God’s glory. Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation was a forceful warning to theologians who were tempted to identify God’s glory with outward and external signs or forms. In other words, writ large in Luther’s theology is the idea that God’s ways are not man’s, and so God may not actually glorify himself the way that man expects. The cross is folly. Preaching is weak. Christians are poor and humble. In which case, God saves an unlikely people through surprising means. And that may also mean that God’s glory is not always as glorious as human beings expect it.

If God’s glory can be a complicated affair, then perhaps Warfield is wrong to draw the contrast between Lutheranism and Reformed Protestantism the way he does. If Lutherans actually believe in God’s glory but are also aware that it comes in surprising ways, then maybe Reformed Protestants need to learn a thing or two about how to be truly theocentric. The Lutheran theology of the cross could teach Reformed Protestants a measure of humility in their self-ascribed ability to locate God’s glory in every nook and cranny of the created order. Reformed might also consider that Lutherans understand better than Reformed triumphalists and experimental Calvinists that God’s glory is nowhere more on display, at least in this world, in the justification of sinners. After all, if man is the crown jewel of the created order and if Christ took on human form to save fallen sinners, then contra Warfield, we may not need to go much beyond justification and man’s salvation in seeing the glory of God.

If this is so, then Reformed Protestants may need to be content with the glory that is revealed in the cross and the salvation it yields instead of yielding to the temptation to find God’s glory in human powers of discernment. If Reformed Protestants followed the lead of Lutherans more, we might be spared many of those neo-Calvinist efforts to show the “Christian” meaning of calculus, Shakespeare, or Dutch history.

So while the game of saying that Reformed highlight God’s glory and Lutherans stop with justification sounds theocentric, it may turn out to be an unintended example of anthropocentricity in which believers try to prove their own godliness by discovering God’s glory through forced interpretations of general and special revelation. Perhaps Lutherans are the truly biblical ones who rest content with the glory that God has revealed in the salvation accomplished by Christ for weak and poor sinners. What could be more glorious than that!

The Church Is Revival

Published on by D. G. Hart32 Comments

Why are the people who long for and advocate revivals so negative? What I mean is that the desire for revival appears to breed a fair amount of discontentment. Church members aren’t godly or zealous enough, the pastor isn’t evangelistic enough, the church is too small – these are the sorts of criticisms that are just beneath the surface of calls for an outpouring of God’s Spirit upon his too cold and casual people.

To be sure, Christians can be cold and casual about matters of faith. After all, saints are still sinners and so prone to various spiritual afflictions that impede sanctification. But why do churches have to engage in extraordinary ways of displaying their commitment to Christ? Why do evangelistic rallies, intense meetings of small groups, suffusing water cooler banter with God-talk, numerous conversions, or visible displays of piety (such as listening to inferior Christian music) constitute a work of God? Why doesn’t the weekly worship by word and sacrament, or a regular meeting of session, presbytery, or General Assembly count as a work of God’s Spirit? Why can’t genuine Christian piety be ordinary?

In the case of the church, what is ordinary is actually extraordinary. If you start with the supposition that people are sinners and in rebellion against God, and then find a gathering of believers for a worship service, you may actually think that something remarkable has happened in the lives of these people. And if you consider that most Americans don’t know how to sing independently of singing along with the radio or Ipod, and then you see people on Sunday holding hymnals singing praise to God, you may actually be struck by how extraordinary congregational song is. And if you think about the history of the Christian church and recognize how prone she is to error and unfaithfulness, and then you find a communion that is orthodox in its teaching and sane in its worship, you may be tempted to think that you have experienced a taste of heaven.

And yet, revivalists and the believers who support them are never so impressed by the church in her ordinary ways. Such discontent may actually breed churches filled with malcontents. And yet, in one of the bigger ironies of church history, the revivalists are the ones considered to be the most devout and the most loving when in fact it is the opponents of revival who are actually marked by charity and patience, fruit of the Spirit last I checked, in their dealings with this entity we know as the church militant.

Desiring God or Faith in Christ?

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I am falling behind on responses to the last post — the hazards of moving and orchestrating a relocation. TMI alert! But — dare I say — I am still leading family worship, pious Reformed Protestant that I try to be (TMI warning!), and this morning encountered the following from Martin Luther. It strikes me that this understanding of faith, and its different measures among the saints, is way more reassuring than the ecstasy that may accompany desiring God. Not to be missed is that Luther rightly favors the object of faith over the act of faith. The same, I would argue, could be said about charity or any of the other fruits of the Spirit.

In this Christian brotherhood no man possesses more than another. St. Peter and St. Paul have no more than Mary Magdalene or you or I. To sum up: Taking them all together, they are brothers, and there is no difference between the persons. Mary, the Mother of the Lord, and John the Baptist, and the thief on the cross, they all possess the selfsame good which you and I possess, and all who are baptised and do the Father’s Will. And what have all the saints? They have comfort and help promised them through Christ in every kind of need, against sin, death, and the devil. And I have the same, and you, and all believers have.

But this also is true, that you and I do not believe it so firmly as John the Baptist and St. Paul; and yet it is the one and only treasure. It is the same as when two men hold a glass of wine, one with a trembling, the other with a steady hand. Or when two men hold a bag of money, one in a weak, the other in a strong hand. Whether the hand be strong, or weak, as God wills, it neither adds to the contents of the bag, nor takes away. In the same way there is no other difference here between the Apostles and me, than that they hold the treasure firmer. Nevertheless, I should and must know that I possess the same treasure as all holy Prophets, Apostles, and all saints have possessed.

Desiring God Enough?

Published on by D. G. Hart174 Comments

I have nothing personal against John Piper. I believe him to be basically sound theologically, though I wish he were a confessional Reformed Protestant. And his earnestness is truly impressive. I do not sense that he is faking what he says or preaches.

Maybe that is why, a Nathaniel Kahn’s aunt says in My Architect, “I don’t get his numbah.” Piper is well known for admiring Jonathan Edwards, and for nurturing a Calvinist constituency among young evangelicals who sing praise songs. That could be a welcome development, except when you read the fine print.

I am currently working on a chapter for a volume on Edwards and have the assignment of covering the recent recovery of Edwardsian theology and piety. In the chapter are sections on John Gerstner, Richard Lovelace, Iain Murray, and — of course — Piper. I need to admit that Edwards leaves me a little cold, which is obviously the opposite of the desired effect. The introspection that reading works like Religious Affections cultivates is not one that lets this sinner feel very good about his progress in mortification of the self.

But for some reason, Edwards’ odd combination of theocentric vision and preoccupation with the inner recesses of the heart resonates– strike that, enthralls — Piper. Still, even the Minneapolis pastor’s best efforts to appropriate Edwards for contemporary believers misses the mark of my weary soul. Here’s is an example from Piper’s reprint of Edwards’ The End for Which God Created the World:

The essence of authentic, corporate worship is the collective experience of heartfelt satisfaction in the glory of God, or a trembling that we do not have it and a great longing for it. Worship is for the sake of magnifying God, not ourselves, and God is magni?ed in us when we are satis?ed in him. Therefore, the unchanging essence of worship (not the outward forms which do change) is heartfelt satisfaction in the glory of God, the trembling when we do not have it and the longing for it.

The basic movement of worship on Sunday morning is not to come with our hands full to give to God, as though he needed anything (Acts 7:25), but to come with our hands empty, to receive from God. And what we receive in worship is the fullness of God, not the feelings of entertainment. We ought to come hungry for God. We should come saying, “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Ps. 42:1-2). God is mightily honored when a people know that they will die of hunger and thirst unless they have God. (God’s Passion for His Glory, pp. 40-41)

As I have indicated, I find this hard to understand since it sounds like worship is about God but then I read this and start to wonder if I am experiencing God’s glory. And if I am not, then I am in trouble because I am not sufficiently interested in God’s glory. But how can I be sufficiently interested if I need to check how deeply God’s glory goes into the depths of my soul?

I am not writing this sarcastically. I am seriously curious why this kind of piety is attractive to so many evangelicals. And if someone can give me e-counsel about my spiritual torpor, then we should all give a big thanks to God’s providential care in raising up Bill Gates.

Man Crush

Published on by D. G. Hart17 Comments

No man should be belittled for having special affection for another man. Whether David and Jonathan’s friendship (in the Bible, not “Friends”) qualifies as a man crush is debatable, and so is whether their relationship might baptize the kind of attraction that a man has for another man, not sexual but bordering on smitten.

I myself have had any number of man crushes on both colleagues and celebrities. In the latter category I would now have to place Gabriel Byrne who stars in the HBO series, “In Treatment,” and is one of the few actors who can sustain interest on screen even when not doing anything, or in the case of his character as a psychotherapist, simply listening to patients. He first enthralled me as Tom Reagan in the Coen Brothers homage to “The Godfather,” “Miller’s Crossing,” a rare gangster hero who prevails not by overcoming his adversaries but by enduring the most beatings.

If I had written this two weeks ago, my nomination for man crush then would have been Garry Shandling, the comedian who created, wrote, and starred in one of the most underappreciated television series, “The Larry Sanders Show.” This was HBO’s first television series and it was both a tribute to Johnny Carson and the format of the late-night talk show and a humorous and poignant expose of the egos and antics that go into producing these shows. For anyone interested in the phenomenon of celebrity, “Larry Sanders” is a must.

My most abiding man crush is for Phil Hendrie, the best (and only) real talent on radio, who takes the political talk show and turns it on its head by functioning as both host and guest (with made up voices). The joke is not merely the callers who think the interview is real, but also the situations and characters that Phil creates — such as Ted Bell, owner of Ted’s of Beverly Hills steakhouse, who thinks he can flip off a van driver sporting a Jesus fish because Christians are supposed to turn the other cheek. It is radio theater at its best, and with three hours a day, available on-line, it is far more impressive how much comedic material one man can produce compared to an entire television series that employs hundreds to produce as much material for one season (13 hours) as Phil does in one week of broadcasts.

All of this is to say that I understand man crushes and see no reason for embarrassment in admitting to them. But sometimes man crushes are embarrassing. The latest case comes with the announcement from the editor of Kerux that the journal of biblical theology, where they put the Vos in Vossian, will no longer be printed but will be published on-line. In his introduction to the last print issue of Kerux, James Dennison goes on about Geerhardus Vos in ways that appear to take a man crush from a special fondness to an odd obsession. He writes:

. . . these pages have wonderfully developed the legacy of Vos in ways which would have both pleased and surprised him. Surprised him in the wealth of original contributions ranging through the history of doctrine – patristic, medieval, Reformation and modern: all these remarkable contributions endorsing, advancing, encouraging historic Christian orthodoxy – catholic, evangelical and Reformed. Pleased him in that new methods of penetrating the inspired Word of God have been applied in these pages. However haltingly or inadequately, nevertheless the advances God in his providence has granted to his church in our time have been plundered )aka robbing the Egyptians) in the interest of unpacking treasures of old and new which are locked in the mind, heart and Word of God.

I am not sure that a journal should be edited according a desire to please and surprise a deceased – even if highly regarded – theologian. I am even less sure that an editor should be so impressed by his own accomplishments in bringing such brilliance into print.

The kicker is the paragraph preceding Dennison’s adulation of Vos and Vos’ adulators. In a surprisingly candid admission of dangerous ideas and articles published in Kerux under his watch, Dennison unwittingly calls into question his own abilities as an editor:

Most of the contributions to this journal over twenty-five years have been insightful. . . . A few, however, deceived us, using the pages of this journal for their own ends and agenda. Their heterodoxy, even edgy ‘heresy’, has subsequently been revealed as, like Demas, they departed from us, even with contempt. It is increasingly clear that many who have sworn by the name of Geerhardus Vos haven’t the faintest notion of what he stood for. These charlatans, who have padded their bibliographies and footnotes with references to his works, have demonstrated over and over again that they are incapble of reading primary documents without skewing those documents to their own bogus schemes. They are users and users are losers. Their character is as insufferably self-centered as any classic egoist: ‘empty vines, they bring forth fruit unto themselves.’ Vos has no real place in their thinking because they constantly seek to re-image him in themselves. But when what they preach and what they write and how they act is placed against the portrait of this unassuming giant, they show themselves to be dishonest, arrogant and vicious. They are the acid which corrodes Reformed Biblical Theology, for the game is all about them and not at all ultimately about Christ.

Good to see that ultimately Kerux is about Christ and the gospel, but readers of this editorial have to be thinking, editor edit thyself. For if users are losers, what are editors who publish losers? Posers? Apparently, veneration of Vos is not a reliable guide to matters biblical theological. Not recognizing this may be the best indication when a man crush has crossed that fine line separating affection from obsession.

Kuyperians and Theonomists, Say "Hello" to the Old School Presbyterians

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I continue to be amazed by the decibels of hostility and venom heaped upon 2k. From bloggers like Nelson Kloosterman, James K. A. Smith, David Koyzis, Doug Wilson, Steven Wedgeworth, Rabbi Bret and the Bayly Bros., to your average and pseudonymous commenters at various Reformed blogs, many Reformed Protestants and evangelicals believe that 2k theology is either foreign because it is Lutheran or unbiblical because it exempts God’s law from part of life and nurtures dualism.

But for anyone who has spent time with Old School Presbyterians and Old Princeton Seminary, 2k feels comfortable like an old shoe, and that’s because one of the Old School’s hallmark doctrines, the spirituality of the church, is basically the Presbyterian version of 2k.

David Coffin, pastor of New Hope Church (PCA) in Fairfax, Virginia, recently preached on the doctrine of the spirituality of the church. A link to the first sermon is here. It is well worth hearing and filled with numerous quotations that neo-Calvinists and their theological cousins, theonomists, Federal Visionaries, and Erastians, have yet to fit into their schemes of denying dualism and making Christ Lord of every square inch, like the following from Calvin, who is commenting on Christ’s response to a request to settle a property dispute between two brothers (Luke 12:13):

Our Lord, when requested to undertake the office of dividing an inheritance, refuses to do so. Now as this tended to promote brotherly harmony, and as Christ’s office was, not only to reconcile men to God, but to bring them into a state of agreement with one another, what hindered him from settling the dispute between the two brothers? There appear to have been chiefly two reasons why he declined the office of a judge. First, as the Jews imagined that the Messiah would have an earthly kingdom, he wished to guard against doing any thing that might countenance this error. If they had seen him divide inheritances, the report of that proceeding would immediately have been circulated. Many would have been led to expect a carnal redemption, which they too ardently desired; and wicked men would have loudly declared, that he was effecting a revolution in the state, and overturning the Roman Empire. Nothing could be more appropriate, therefore, than this reply, by which all would be informed, that the kingdom of Christ is spiritual. . . .

Secondly, our Lord intended to draw a distinction between the political kingdoms of this world and the government of his Church; for he had been appointed by the Father to be a Teacher, who should “divide asunder, by the sword of the word, the thoughts and feelings, and penetrate into the souls of men, (Hebrews 4:12,)” but was not a magistrate to divide inheritances. This condemns the robbery of the Pope and his clergy, who, while they give themselves out to be pastors of the Church, have dared to usurp an earthly and secular jurisdiction, which is inconsistent with their office; for what is in itself lawful may be improper in certain persons. . . .

P.S. If Dutch-American Calvinists want to write off nineteenth-century American Presbyterians, fine. But don’t be surprised if those Presbyterians descendants remind you that it was the Presbyterians at Princeton that domesticated Kuyper and Vos for American Protestants. Without Benjamin Warfield, Abraham Kuyper and Geerhardus Vos would still be available only in Dutch.

Where's Waldo Wednesday: Reformed Monopoly? II

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Augustus Hopkins Strong (1836-1921) was arguably the greatest Baptist theologian in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. He presided over Rochester Theological Seminary. His theology textbook was almost as popular among evangelical seminarians before 1950 as Charles Hodge’s was among Presbyterian students. The following comes from Strong’s Systematic Theology.

The Seven Togethers

“The Seven Togethers” sums up the Scripture testimony with regard to the Consequences of the believer’s Union with Christ: 1. Crucified together with Christ – Gal. 2:20. 2. Died together with Christ – Col. 2;20. 3. Buried together with Christ – Rom. 6:4. 4. Quickened together with Christ – Eph. 2:5. 5. Raised together with Christ – Col. 3:1. 6. Suffers together with Christ – Rom. 8:17. 7. Glorified together with Christ – Rom. 8:17. Union with Christ results in common sonship, relation to God, character, influence and destiny.

Imperfect apprehension of the believer’s union with Christ works to the great injury of Christian doctrine. An experience of union with Christ first enables us to understand the death of sin and separation from God which has befallen the race sprung from the first Adam. The life and liberty of the children of God in Christ Jesus shows us by contrast how far astray we had gone. The vital and organic unity of the new race spring from the second Adam reveals the depravity and disintegration which we had inherited form our first father. We see that as there is one source of spiritual life in Christ, so there was one source of corrupt life in Adam; and that as we are justified by reason of our oneness with the justified Christ, so we are condemned by reason of our oneness with the condemned Adam.

(a) Union with Christ involves a change in the dominant affection of the soul. Christ’s entrance into the soul makes it a new creature, in the sense that the ruling disposition, which before was sinful, now becomes holy. This change we call Regeneration. . . .

(b) Union with Christ involves a new exercise of the soul’s powers in repentance and faith; faith, indeed, is the act of the soul by which, under the operation of God, Christ is received. This new exercise of the soul’s powers we call Conversion (Repentance and Faith). It is the obverse or human side of Regeneration. . . .

(c) Union with Christ gives to the believer the legal standing and rights of Christ. As Christ’s union with the race involves atonement, so the believer’s union with Christ involves Justification. The believer is enti­tled to take for his own all that Christ is, and all that Christ has done; and this because he has within him that new life of humanity which suffered in Christ’s death and rose from the grave in Christ’s resurrection, –in other words, because he is virtually one person with the Redeemer. In Christ the believer is prophet, priest, and king. . . .

(d) Union with Christ secures to the believer the continuously transforming, assimilating power of Christ’s life, –– first, for the soul; secondly, for the body, –– consecrating it in the present, and in the future raising it up in the likeness of Christ’s glorified body. This continuous influence, so far as it is exerted in the present life, we call Sanctification, the human side or aspect of which is Perseverance. . . .

(e) Union with Christ brings about a fellowship of Christ with the believer,–– Christ takes part in all the labors, temptations, and sufferings of his people; a fellowship of the believer with Christ,–– so that Christ’s whole experience on earth is in some measure reproduced in Him; a fellowship of the believers with one another,–– furnishing a basis for the spiritual unity of Christ’s people on earth, and for the eternal communion of heaven. The doctrine of Union with Christ is therefore the indispensable preparation for Ecclesiology, and for Eschatology. . . .

Toxic Religious Assets

Published on by D. G. Hart10 Comments

Americans don’t pay much attention to the National Council of Churches anymore. In my classes when I ask students if they have heard of the NCC I usually receive blank stares. (For what it’s worth, not many students or Americans pay much attention to the National Association of Evangelicals.) Back in the day, memos from the NCC were even more important than blog posts at the Gospel Coalition are today. After all, the NCC’s membership consisted of all the largest and historic Protestant denominations, and most of the nation’s political officials, corporate executives, and professors were members of those denominations.

One NCC publication that still merits attention is the annual Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches. It not only contains useful information on denominations — their history, location, contact data — but also it reports the latest membership statistics for practically all denominations (someone needs to buy a copy to see if they include Networks).

Here are the latest figures on the top 25 denominations in the United States:

1. The Catholic Church, 68,503,456

2. Southern Baptist Convention,16,160,088

3. The United Methodist Church, 7,774,931

4. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 6,058,907

5. The Church of God in Christ, 5,499,875

6. National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc, 5,000,000

7. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, 4,542,868

8. National Baptist Convention of America, Inc., 3,500,000

9. Assemblies of God, 2,914,669

10. Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), 2,770,730

11. African Methodist Episcopal Church, 2,500,000

11. National Missionary Baptist Convention of America, 2,500,000

13. The Lutheran Church– Missouri Synod (LCMS), 2,312,111

14. The Episcopal Church, 2,006,343

15. Churches of Christ, 1,639,495

16. Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, 1,500,000

17. Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, Inc., 1,500,000

18. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, 1,400,000

19. American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A., 1,310,505

20. Jehovah’s Witnesses, 1,162,686

21. United Church of Christ, 1,080,199

22. Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), 1,076,254

23. Christian Churches and Churches of Christ , 1,071,616

24. Seventh-Day Adventist Church. 1,043,606

25. Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc. 1,010,000

Two observations:

1) So much for transformationalism: the next time the emergents, hipsters, missionals, urbanists, and neo-Calvinists want to talk about how they are change-agents in both the church and society they should look at the numbers and sober up.

2) Trust but verify: how many of these figures are accurate? I mean, how do you have a nice round number, like 5 million in the case of the National Baptist Convention, and expect people to suppress doubt? In fact, one of the consequences of the separation of church and state is that no government agency keeps statistics on churches. That means that compilers of data like the NCC depend on churches to supply accurate figures. As if.

Not only is it possible for churches to inflate their membership statistics for the sake of self-justification, but how many communions actually purge their membership rolls, let alone practice discipline? Even on my session we find we have members still on our rolls who have moved and either have not sent in new church information or have moved on because they are no longer active in church. Since erasing someone from the roll is a serious matter, we make every effort possible to inquire with someone about their current church affiliation or level of religious observance before erasure. But since finding a member after several moves and changes of address is very difficult, church rolls tend to be larger than the real number of members even in congregations where officers try to have accurate numbers.

One can only imagine the bloat that afflicts membership in denominations like the United Church of Christ that claim the mixed heritage of John Winthrop, Lyman Beecher, John Williamson Nevin, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Jeremiah Wright.