Another Reason Why Evangelicals Aren't Conservative

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Gordon McDonald, the evangelical pastor and now Leadership editor at large (do editors ever work at medium?) has written in support of the Obama health care bill (hat tip to John Fea). His reasoning has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with Jesus. McDonald is glad for the bill “not because I am a Democrat or a Republican but because I think that Jesus, who seemed to take great interest in health issues, is glad. Looking back on his life among people like us, he often acted as a healer. He seemed to delight in curing diseases, restoring disabled people to wholeness, and rewiring damaged minds. You cannot divorce these encounters from the rest of his public ministry. Health-care was in his frame of reference.”

Methinks McDonald’s humanitarianism gets in the way of his reading of the New Testament. Sure, Jesus healed people. Had he lived longer and not gone to the cross, he could have healed a lot more. And had he yielded to Satan’s temptation to reign over everything, he might have instituted a health care plan better than our president’s. It very well could be that his healings, like his raising of Lazarus, weren’t the point of his ministry but only a sign of the everlasting wholeness and well being that will come in the new heavens and new earth for all who trust in him – healthy and sick, insured or not, Republican and Democrat.

At the same time that McDonald’s compassion clouds his reading of the New Testament, it also harms his discernment about American government. He concludes the piece with several points, numbered presumably to give the effect of policy items:

1. Any effort that is made to bring health benefits to more people (especially the weak, the poor, the children) is an effort with which I want to identify.

2. Anyone whose argument is based simply on the notion that we cannot afford making medical benefits available to more people does not get my ear. The fact is that our country—we the people—can afford it, even if it means that each of us surrenders a few more bucks that we would have spent on things for ourselves. We just have to conclude that compassion in the face of human need is a greater value than accumulating more stuff.

3. Any initiative that makes it possible for the common person to have the same access to medical science as the rich appear to have is one I want to hear about.

On the surface, these ideals look benign. But does he really mean “any” in each of these cases? Certainly, he would not countenance legalizing prostitution as a way to pay for health care insurance. Some restrictions will obviously need to come from the moral law.

And does McDonald really mean to say that the price tag is no object? Has he no sense of the debt that his and my generation is passing on to the next? Usury used to be a sin. Can printing money to balance the books – or at least reduce the debt – be a virtuous enterprise, or healthy for a government that depends on the assent of the governed?

And can McDonald really mean he is willing to level the wealth playing field so that I enjoy the same medical care as Ryan Howard, all-star first baseman for the Phillies? Um, either Howard gets easy access to orthopedists and the Phillies make the playoffs, or he and I both wait in the same waiting room, my knees get the same attention as his elbow, and the Phillies miss the playoffs? That’s an easy decision.

But whatever the difficulties in McDonald’s idealism, his haste to evaluate political events by the What-Would-Jesus-Do standard obscures the political and economic realities of universal health care within an American form of government. A better measure of Obama’s policies – or any president’s – is what would Abe do, or what would Jefferson do, or what would Wilson do? Only by asking secular and political questions first, can believers be faithful to their ultimate Lord. Conversely, by asking the religious and ethical questions first, evangelicals wind up, in Christ’s name (of all things) making a mess of this world.

Forensic Friday: You Say Klinean, I Say Repristination

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In the current issue of the Westminster Theological Journal, William Evans from Esrkine College, has an article offering a taxonomy of the current debates over the doctrine of union. In the repristinationist wing he puts Westminster California. He even specifies that the revisionism of Shepherd and Federal Vision provoked the repristinationist effort. The other group in Evans’ taxonomy is the Biblical Theology wing of Vos, Murray, and Gaffin. Some of these distinctions among Shepherd/FV, WTS, and WSC seem a bit arbitrary since all sides claim to stand within the tradition of biblical theology (was anyone more biblical theological than Kline?). What does separate these groups is the way each wing positions itself in relationship to the past, with Shepherd/FV (Mark Horne’s ransacking of the 17th century notwithstanding) being the most novel, the Biblical Theological group extending back mainly to Vos (with a lot of use made of a particular section of Calvin) and the repristinators endeavoring to recover the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century categories for a stable theological program and church life.

Which leads to the way in which Evans characterizes Westminster California:

The overriding motive here is clear and laudable – safeguarding the Reformation doctrine of justification by grace through faith.

Here, first of all, we find a vigorous defense of the Law/Gospel hermeneutic. If salvation is to be truly gracious, then law and gospel must be distinguished. In contrast to the Revisionists, who view the Law/Gospel distinction as genetically Lutheran rather than Reformed, these figures stress the essential continuity of Lutherans and Reformed on this matter, although the attitude toward law is more positive than one finds among some Lutherans. For example, there is consistent affirmation of the “third use” of the law (i.e., the law of God as a guide for the life of the Christian).

Second, in keeping with this, there is vigorous defense of the conceptual apparatus of later federal orthodoxy, especially the bi-covenantal framework involving a Covenant of Works and a Covenant of Grace. The covenant of works as an instantiation of the law principles is viewed as an essential guarantor of the Law/Gospel distinction. Then, in order to underscore the gracious uniqueness of the New Covenant, the Mosaic Covenant is seen in part as a “republication” of the Covenant of Works. There is also defense of a pre-temporal intratrinitarian Covenant of Redemption or pactum salutis between the Father and the Son, which is viewed as providing a foundation for the Covenant of Grace in theology proper.

What is worth noting, aside from highlighting Evans’ piece, is the omission of the worn out canard that Westminster California is simply channeling Meredith Kline. In point of fact, WSC is trying, as Evans concedes, to hold on to the insights of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As Mike Horton mentioned recently, that sure puts those complaints about Westminster California’s radicalism in a different light.

The Fight Against Tyranny

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Darryl G. Hart continues his teaching series on J. Gresham Machen with a look at Machen’s views about politics and the relation between the church and state.  This lesson was taught at Calvary Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Glenside, PA where Dr. Hart serves as elder.

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Where’s Waldo Wednesday: No Getting Around Antinomianism (if you are monergistic)

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Some union advocates don’t like the theological approach of asking what problem a specific doctrine solves (sorry Matt). But since we are in the arena of salvation, which is supposed to be a remedy for sin, inquiries about effects of certain doctrines, whether doctrinal or personal, seems fair.

So as near as I can tell, one of union’s greatest benefits is that it solves the Roman Catholic charge against Protestants of antinomianism, with added benefit of leaving Lutherans alone to bear the charge. (Why we don’t want to stand by our Lutheran brothers and offer aid and encouragement in a time of need is perhaps an indication of the failed Calvinist battle with spitefulness.) With union we receive justification and sanctification simultaneously, distinctly, without confusion or sequence. This means that we receive both the imputed righteousness and the infused righteousness of Christ. Which also means that we are both legally righteous and personally holy. It’s a win-win, again with the added benefit of leaving Lutherans in the dust of antinomianism since they allegedly don’t configure union this way, don’t receive sanctification at the same time, and so really are antinomian.

The added appeal of the union scheme has to do with the synecdoches of justification and sanctification, namely, faith and works (sorry cnh, whoever you are). If justification is used interchangeably with faith and sanctification with good works, which is a common usage both in the creeds and in the experience of believers, then union would appear to solve the antinomian problem, again by insuring that good works accompany justification and faith. In other words, via union, voila, I can look a Roman Catholic in the eye and tell him, when he accuses me of lacking virtue, “pound sand.” I mean to say, warm and fuzzy Calvinist that I am, “Listen fellow, I’m united to Christ. I’m both righteous in God’s sight and I have good works steaming off my body. Go find a Lutheran.”

Where this scheme breaks down, of course, is that justification and sanctification are both by faith alone. We are not justified by faith and sanctified by good works. In point of fact, justification and sanctification are acts, works of God. He is the one who declares a believer righteous. He is the one who quickens so that the believer lives to Christ.

Instead of solving the antinomian problem, then, union only makes the matter worse. By saying that I am both justified and sanctified simultaneously through union with Christ, the incentives for living a holy life virtually disappear. With the justification priority scheme, good works were a fruit and evidence of saving faith, in which case the believer would examine himself to see if he showed signs of grace. But with union, it’s all good – I am both righteous in God’s sight and I am infused with Christ’s righteousness, so conceivably I don’t need to lift a good works finger.

Now to union’s credit, it does help us see more clearly that justification and sanctification are both equally by faith. It also clarifies that sanctification is as gracious as justification because it is all of God through the application of Christ’s redemption by the Holy Spirit.

But I don’t see how it solves the antinomian problem. Justification, sanctification, and union are all about God’s good works. They are not about mine. So how am I, united to Christ, still not standing there next to my Lutheran friend, just as vulnerable to the Roman Catholic kvetch about antinomianism?

Muslims and Protestants Together?

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Among the many juicy bits of history packed into Philip Benedict’s Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed comes the item about the Ottoman insurgence into the Holy Roman Empire. Turns out the influx of Muslims into formerly Roman Catholic territories was a boon to the Reformed faith, especially in Hungary which gave us the Magyar Reformed Church.

Not only was the church largely decapitated in the central portions of the kingdom (i.e., Hungary), much of the parish clergy fled before the Ottoman onslaught, leaving nearly four-fifths of the localities in Ottoman-controlled regions without parish priests. Finally, the new rulers of the portions of the kingdom had neither the liberty nor the inclination to pursue the campaign against heresy. Ferdinand (Roman Catholic and from the Habsburg dynasty) was so busy with his military campaigns that he had little time to concentrate on the problem of heresy within his lands. Furthermore, he depended heavily on Protestant support within the empire for tax revenue to help fight the Ottomans, which prompted him to favor negotiation over repression in dealing with the problem. The Ottoman authorities looked for religious leaders who might cooperate with them as they strove to organize their control over their recently conquered territories and stem the flight of the population from the region. They were thus prepared to give evangelical preachers a free hand to proselytize so long as they respected Ottoman authority.

. . . . In the Ottoman-controlled regions, wandering preachers had a free hand. Mihaly Sztairai (d. 1575), a Paduan-educated ex-Franciscan who was the chief evangelist of the western portion of Ottoman Hungary, reported to a Viennese correspondent in 1551 that he had been able to preaching throughout the region for the previous seven years. In the process, he claimed, he and his fellows had founded some 120 congregations. (pp. 274, 275)

Now that’s church growth.

Why Evangelicals Aren't Conservative

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Nothing like ending a good political argument by inserting divine wrath into the debate. Arizona’s new laws on illegal immigration are attracting attention on a variety of fronts. One of my favorite radio hosts, Phil Hendrie, who is by no means a conservative (and the funniest man on air), thinks the law is sane even while he thinks that Arizona is not the brightest bulb on the U.S. Christmas tree of states. He has commented specifically on the irony of liberals showing great distrust of the blue-collar, union-abiding workers also known as police, who will supposedly engage in racial profiling to enforce the law. Would liberals assume coal miners or truck drivers or automobile assemblers were as prone to misbehavior as cops? Phil doesn’t think so. And could this distrust of cops be the hangover from the days when liberals were young and radical and referred to police impolitely as pigs (which is not to say that police have not been without their thuggish moments).

And then along comes Jim Wallis (thanks to John Fea), doing his best impersonation of Charles Finney, with a press release calling the Arizona legislation immoral and wicked. (Wallis’ reaction is patently unloving, so much for a charitable read of his fellow citizens’ actions or motives.)

The law signed today by Arizona Gov. Brewer is a social and racial sin, and should be denounced as such by people of faith and conscience across the nation. It is not just about Arizona, but about all of us, and about what kind of country we want to be. It is not only mean-spirited – it will be ineffective and will only serve to further divide communities in Arizona, making everyone more fearful and less safe. This radical new measure, which crosses many moral and legal lines, is a clear demonstration of the fundamental mistake of separating enforcement from comprehensive immigration reform. Enforcement without reform of the system is merely cruel. Enforcement without compassion is immoral. Enforcement that breaks up families is unacceptable. This law will make it illegal to love your neighbor in Arizona, and will force us to disobey Jesus and his gospel. We will not comply.

I had thought that one of the hallmarks of political conservatism is respect for and promotion of the rule of law. This doesn’t mean that every law is good or that laws in the American form of government cannot be repealed or amended. But to say openly and without qualification that a duly constituted polity and its lawmakers need to be disobeyed is not very conservative or, for that matter, very biblical. Wallis seems to suffer the affliction of most evangelicals who, because they believe they know the contents of a higher law (or sense they are inhabited by the Holy Ghost, feathers and all), all lower laws can be disregarded. One wonders whether Wallis has ever considered telling illegal immigrants that living and working somewhere against the laws of that place is disobedient and sinful.

Don’t get me wrong. Evangelicals don’t have to be conservative (they certainly aren’t religiously). Being conservative politically is not the same thing as being Christian and if evangelicals prefer to be biblical rather than conservative, then God bless ‘em. But if they are going to be biblical, they might want to submit fully to God’s word when it says submit to the powers that be. And if they want to be conservative, then they better try a form of political argument that does not rush to inflict divine judgment. An appeal grounded in American law, both state and federal, would be good, for starters.

Update: Jon A. Shields, in his study of the democratic virtues of the Christian Right writes the following:

. . . the vast majority of Christian Right leaders have labored to inculcate deliberative norms in their rank-and-file activitists — especially the practice of civility and respect; the cultivation of real dialogue by listening and asking questions; the rejection of appeals to theology; and the practice of careful moral reasoning. Movement leaders teach theese norms because they have strong pragmatic incentives to do so. Public appeals, after all, are most persuasive when they are civil and reasonable. Movement leaders further ground these norms in scripture. For instance, activists are regularly instructed to practice civility because the Gospels command Christians to love their neighbors, and they are encouraged to be honest because God forbids believers from bearing false witness. (Shields, The Democratic Virtues of the Christian Right [2009], p. 2)

Shields makes this point to contrast the fundamentalist leaders of the Christian Right, like Falwell, from the rank-and-file evangelicals. I can’t imagine a better example of the difference between fundamentalism and evangelicalism than that between Falwell and Wallis. And yet when it comes to style and mixing theology and politics — not to mention the lack of charity for political foes — it’s hard to tell the difference.

Forensic Friday: What Am I Missing?

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I have made this point in the comments on various posts but do not believe I have done so in a post itself. The point is obviously related to the priority of justification to sanctification specifically with regard to the righteousness we possess by faith in Christ.

The doctrine of justification teaches that God accepts us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ, imputed to us and received by faith alone. That would seem to close the case. I no longer fear condemnation – either in this life or the life to come – because by faith in Christ I am now entirely acceptable in God’s sight. With justification comes peace of conscience.

But along comes my unionist friend (I think we’re still friends) and he says that yes, you’re righteous but you still don’t have an infused righteousness. In other words, if I understand correctly, I need to be both justified and sanctified if I am going to avoid condemnation on judgment day.

What I don’t understand is not that sanctification is one of the benefits of the redemption purchased by Christ, or that sanctification is part of salvation, or that those who are justified will also produce fruit and evidence of their saving faith in the form of good works. What I don’t understand is how this construction – you need to be both justified and sanctified – is supposed to be undermine the priority of justification. Here’s why.

In justification I receive all of Christ’s righteousness. In sanctification, I receive only part of his righteousness because in this life, as the Confession of Faith says, sanctification is imperfect and there still abides in me “some remnants of corruption in every part.” (16.2). In other words, sanctification ultimately needs the lift of justification if we are going to cross the threshold of God’s righteous judgment. The righteousness of sanctification being incomplete and imperfect will stand or fall on judgement day depending on whether the righteousness of justification is present – that is, his perfect righteousness is my perfect righteousness.

How this does not make justification prior to sanctification, I cannot fathom. And this intuition is confirmed by chapters on sanctification like Article 24 from the Belgic Confession (“On the Sanctification of Sinners”):

although we do good works we do not base our salvation on them; for we cannot do any work that is not defiled by our flesh and also worthy of punishment. And even if we could point to one, memory of a single sin is enough for God to reject that work.

So we would always be in doubt, tossed back and forth without any certainty, and our poor consciences would be tormented constantly if they did not rest on the merit of the suffering and death of our Savior.

In other words, the pastoral nature of justification and its priority is at the heart of the Reformation. The complete and perfect righteousness of Christ, received by faith alone, is the only reality that will free “the conscience from the fear, dread, and terror of God’s approach, without doing what our first father, Adam, did, who trembled as he tried to cover himself with fig leaves” (Belgic Confession, Art. 23). We don’t look to sanctification in the same way that we do to justification. If we did we would live a life of fear because we know that our personal righteousness is imperfect and incomplete in this life.

Am I clueless?

How Comforting the Intermediate State?

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It is common to hear believers talk about the death of Christians in positive ways. And this is natural since Christians do believe in life after death, and a good life after death does await those who trust in Christ. So we are likely to say about someone who has been suffering physically upon their death that they are now in a better place, free from their misery. Or we say they are better off because they are with the Lord. We will even console ourselves, at least, that the passing of a widow or widower, who had a believing spouse, is in a better place because he or she has been reunited with a wife or husband. I should know, I’ve been using these lines with myself of late having lost both parents (both believers) within the space of a month.

But I have wondered how exactly a soul, that no longer has a body, will recognize another soul. I also sometimes wonder how resurrected bodies will recognize other resurrected bodies. At what vintage do our bodies come back? If an infant dies, is he glorified as an infant? Will that infant grow? If the body of an 80-year old dies, does he come back as a 35-year old? And if you only knew someone when they were 70 plus, and they come back to bodily existence as a young adult, will you actually recognize them in their gloried state? So how much trickier the recognition of other souls, invisible as they are, by other souls, who are also invisible. The mind reels.

In hopes of keeping it real, here is what the Confession of Faith says about “The State of Men After Death” (it means you too, ladies):

The bodies of men, after death, return to dust, and see corruption: but their souls, which neither die nor sleep, having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them: the souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God, in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies. (32.1)

That would seem to indicate that departed souls will “see” and “recognize” God. But it does raise questions about whether they will “see” the face of Jesus. Beholding is not necessarily seeing. And seeing, as we know it, is impossible without eyes.

Maybe union with Christ is the solution. I know that justification by faith alone won’t resolve this one. My pet doctrine has its limits.

Where’s Waldo Wednesday: Has WTS Been Liberated from Its Westminster Captivity?

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This post from a professor at Regent University’s School of Divinity deserves more interaction for what it says about evangelicalism. But for now the following excerpt is worth pondering for ongoing considerations about union with Christ. What is particularly noteworthy, from this oldlifer’s perspective, is how much WTS during the era of union hegemony, has actually embraced many of the qualities to which this charismatic blogger calls evangelicals more generally:

So, if the “New Calvinism” becomes a way of recovering the Reformed emphasis on conversion as an experientially-driven encounter and this, in turn, allows for the on-going role of the charismatic, then I am all for it. Such emphases will allow for greater continuity between Reformed and Wesleyan branches of the evangelical movement rather than continually reviving the antagonism of Old Princeton/Westminster. It is time that evangelicalism, and particularly its Reformed wing, freed itself from its Westminster captivity and begin to recover the notion that the gospel is the wonder-working power of God to alter the interior landscape of the heart, to heal diseases, to liberate from all forms of sin, and to usher in the gifts of the kingdom. When juridical models dominate, their emphasis on legal exchanges occurring in a heavenly court obscures the living reality that regeneration, sanctification, and the charismatic life are. Let the renewal begin.

Biblical counseling at WTS has the concern for the “interior landscape of the heart” covered, the word and deed model of ministry promoted by Tim Keller suggests ways in which Presbyterians pursue the wonder-working power of God in liberating people “from all forms of sin,” and the elevation of union in WTS soteriology has put regeneration and sanctification on a par with the forensic element in salvation. In fact, the emphasis on union, with its concomitant stress on the resurrection and the work of the Holy Spirit in the renovation of the human heart, should warm the spirit-filled soul of this Regent professor. Still, I wonder if he needs to replace his Rolodex on neo-evangelicalism with the Blackberry on contemporary Presbyterianism.

The Fight Against Optimism

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In this lesson, Dr. Hart touches upon Harry Emerson Fosdick, the ordination of liberals, the five fundamentals and the Auburn Affirmation.

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