Do Tim Keller and Norman Shepherd Live in the Same Neighborhood?

Published on by D. G. Hart38 Comments

galatia Well, the island of Manhattan is about one thousand miles from South Holland, and of course the cultures are universes apart. But harmonic convergence happens.

With apologies to Nick Batzig who pointed this out to me, Tim Keller has an essay on the gospel and the poor at Themelios that echoes Shepherd’s attempt to bring faith and obedience closer together.

Keller writes:

We all know the dictum: “we are saved by faith alone, but not by faith that is alone.” Faith is what saves us, and yet faith is inseparably connected with good works. We saw in Jas 2 that this is also the case with the gospel of justification by faith and mercy to the poor. The gospel of justification has the priority; it is what saves us. But just as good works are inseparable from faith in the life of the believer, so caring for the poor is inseparable from the work of evangelism and the ministry of the Word. . . . We cannot be faithful to the words of Jesus if our deeds do not reflect the compassion of His ministry. Kingdom evangelism is therefore holistic as it transmits by word and deed the promise of Christ for body and soul as well as the demand of Christ for body and soul.

Several times Acts makes a very close connection between economic sharing of possessions with those in need and the multiplication of converts through the preaching of the Word. The descent of the Holy Spirit and an explosive growth in numbers (Acts 2:41) is connected to radical sharing with the needy (2:44–45). Acts 4 is a recapitulation: after the filling of the Spirit, the economic sharing of the people inside the church accompanies the preaching of the resurrection with great power (4:32–35). After the ministry of diakonia is more firmly established, Luke adds, “so the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly” (6:7). Luke is again pointing out the extremely close connection between deed-ministry and word-ministry.

Arguments like this show that the spirituality of the church depends on maintaining the centrality of justification by faith alone, with the call for good works, obedience, or personal righteousness kept at a safe distance from the human propensity for works righteousness. David VanDrunen makes that case about the close ties between the priority of justification to sanctification and two-kingdoms theology particularly well in his recent inaugural lecture, “The Two Kingdoms and the Ordo Salutis: Life Beyond Judgment and the Question of a Dual Ethic,” (WTJ 70 [2008] 207-24). But Keller supplies unintended support because the effort to join faith and obedience in the individual seems inevitably to slide into linking word and deed in the church.

All the more reason why the words of Peter Berger, a secular Lutheran, are worth hearing again:

Any cultural or political agenda embellished with such authority is a manifestation of “works righteousness” and ipso facto an act of apostasy. This theological proposition, over and beyond all prudential moral judgments, “hits” in all directions of the ideological spectrum; it “hits” the center as much as the left or the right. “Different gospels” lurk all across the spectrum. No value or institutional system, past or present or future, is to be identified with the gospel. The mission of the church is not to legitimate any status quo or any putative alteration of the status quo. The “okay world” of bourgeois America stands under judgment, in the light of the gospel, as does every other human society. Democracy or capitalism or the particular family arrangements of middle-class culture are not to be identified with the Christian life, and neither is any alternative political, economic, or cultural system. The vocation of the church is to proclaim the gospel, not to defend the American way of life, not to “build socialism,” not even to “build a just society” – because, quite apart from the fact that we don’t really know what this is, all our notions of justice are fallible and finally marred by sin. The “works righteousness” in all these “different gospels” lies precisely in the insinuation that, if only we do this or refrain from doing that, we will be saved, “justified.” But, as Paul tells us, “by works of the law shall no one be justified.” [Berger, “Different Gospels: The Social Sources of Apostasy,” Erasmus Lecture, January 22, 1987]

Have the Coen Brothers Lost Their Edge?

Published on by D. G. Hart9 Comments

tom reaganAn affirmative answer would be one way of reading the recent piece on Joel and Ethan Coen, the makers of such great movies as Miller’s Crossing, Hudsucker Proxy, and No Country for Old Men at Christianity Today. The neo-evangelical habit is to take the rough edges off Christianity in order to make the faith relevant and agreeable to middle America. That also seems to be what happens when the editors at CT turn a kind eye toward former bad boys of Minnesota. I mean, of the many characters available to him, Josh Hurst, the author of the piece, turns to Marge, the family friendly cop from Fargo. Hurst writes:

That’s a good way to describe the brothers’ opus: a chronic search for truth. Some might argue that the Coens’ world is amoral, but a discerning look reveals morality aplenty. Good and evil stand apart from one another as clearly as black and white—or red and white, in the case of their classic crime story, Fargo. Set against the endless snow of the frigid Midwest, it’s a movie about greed, about a perfect crime gone horribly awry—in short, about the wake of destruction left by one man’s evil ambitions, seen starkly as a crimson trail of blood against the pure white terrain.

But then comes the evangelical smiley face:

Fargo’s heart and soul is local sheriff Marge Gunderson, played in an Oscar-winning turn by Frances McDormand. She’s chipper, [did someone say “chipper”?] pleasant, and very pregnant. She’s deeply affectionate and supportive of her husband, Norm. Their tranquil life contrasts the frenzied greed of the bad guys as much as a drop of blood on the snow. . . . Like Marge herself, the Coens have a longstanding curiosity about matters of morality. But hard as they might try, they can’t seem to shrug off the realities of evil as calmly as their most famous heroine.

Another reading of the Coen’s comes more from Tom Reagan, the punching-bag hero of Miller’s Crossing, than Marge Gunderson, the cop who likely pulled the Coens over a couple times during their youthful indiscretions. Tom repeatedly says, after being told to look into his heart, that you can’t know what motivates anyone, not even yourself. That’s actually fairly compatible with what Protestants know about the ambiguity of moral impulses even among the saints. But it is not the same as, “the heart is desperately wicked, who can know it?”

Granted, the Coens did lose some of their mojo when they indulged Hollywood with Intolerable Cruelty and Ladykillers. Both movies appeared to be parodies of Coen brothers movies, what Hollywood would try to do if it were going to make a movie like Joel and Ethan.

But when you take a movie that features a human leg sticking out of a wood chipper and turn it into a study of purpose and rectitude, you may feel, like the teenager who is embarrassed to find that his parents also like The Who, that the church lady is trying overly hard to live on the edge.

Why Gentlemen Often Prefer Barth

Published on by D. G. Hart6 Comments

bartReformed Protestants are not supposed to believe in coincidence. So when on the same day email brings reflections on worship and they sound such different notes, am I allowed to attribute this to providence?

First came a message from the good folks at Christianity Today with a link to an interview with Bryan Chapell, the president of Covenant Seminary, on his new book about worship, Christ-Centered Worship: Letting the Gospel Shape Our Practice. The odd aspect of the interview was that making worship Christ-centered seemed to be an excuse for making it less theocentric. Of course, one of the hallmarks of Reformed worship was the centrality and transcendence of God, an impulse that cut down on any gimmicks in the service. But in response to a question about the antagonisms driving the worship wars, Chapell responded:

Most worship wars are driven by personal preferences regarding style of music or variance from traditional practices (whether the deacons should wear suits, the doxology should be sung after the offering, or drums are allowed anywhere). These preferences are largely formed by what people grew accustomed to in their early Christian experience. Understanding the history of those practices, and the gospel-goal of the worship service, should make everyone more open to varieties of style and more committed to the mission of worship.

If church leaders try to establish a style of worship based upon their preferences or based upon satisfying congregants’ competing preferences, then the church will inevitably be torn apart by the politics of preference. But if the leadership is asking the missional questions of “Who is here?” and “Who should be here?” in determining worship styles and practices, then the mission of the church will enable those leaders to unite around gospel goals that are more defensible and uniting than anyone’s personal preference. These gospel goals will never undermine the gospel contours of the worship service, but rather will ask how each gospel aspect can be expressed in ways that best minister to those present and those being reached for Christ’s glory.

Reformed Protestants did not used to ask who’s here at worship committee meetings because they knew right off the bat that God is present in worship and the service is first and foremost for him.

The second piece of email relevant to this question of theocentric worship came from Jim Goodloe, the executive director of the Foundation for Reformed Theology. It contained a quotation from Karl Barth on church architecture and its importance for embodying the convictions that pastors and church members bring to worship. Barth wrote:

What should be placed at the center? In my opinion, a simple wooden table slightly elevated, but distinctly different from an “altar.” This would seem to me to be the ideal solution. This table, provided with a movable lectern, should serve at the appropriate time as pulpit, communion table, and baptismal font. (Under whatever form it may be, the separation of the pulpit, the communion table, and the baptismal font only serves to distract attention and create confusion; it is not justified theologically.)

With regard to accessories more or less necessary and which one must mention, the organ and the choir do not have to be within sight of the congregation.

Images and symbols do not have any place in a Protestant church building. (They also only distract attention and create confusion. Not only the congregation gathered for worship, in the strict sense of the word—that is to say, for prayer, preaching, baptism, and Holy Communion, but also and above all the congregation busy in everyday life represents the person and work of Jesus Christ. No image and no symbol can play this role.)

The style, size, and color of doors, walls, and windows, like those of the pews, can and should contribute to the concentration of those who participate in worship, and should direct them toward the message and the devotion which unite them, without necessary recourse to strange ornamentations no matter how “dignified” and “beautiful” they may be.

Granted, comparing these quotations may not be fair to either Chapell or Barth. They were responding to different questions. But what is striking is how much Barth sounds like older sources in the Reformed tradition, while contemporary proponents of Protestant sound more like a Hybels or Warren than even Barth.

Did Someone Say "Cocktails"?

Published on by D. G. Hart1 Comment

calvin in the capitalThe good folks at Christ Reformed Church (URC) in Washington, D.C. are sponsoring a lecture series on — you guessed it — John Calvin. “Calvin in the Capital” is a free speaker series exploring the life and work of John Calvin. Events will be held on Thursday evenings at 7:00 pm, running each week from October 8 – November 12.

Each presentation will be preceded by musical entertainment, and will be followed by a time of cocktails and conversation. The goal is to provide an ample opportunity for guests to interact with speakers and each other in an informal setting.

Speakers include, Rob Norris, Ken Jones, Brian Lee, Glen Hoburg, Darryl Hart, and Robert Godfrey.

The Ecumenicity of American Civil Religion

Published on by D. G. Hart2 Comments

us papal flagsHere is proof of civil religion’s appeal to both sides of the Reformation. What is surprising is that American civil religion was anti-Catholic. Amazing how the culture wars make the anathemas of Trent vanish.

(Thanks to DL for the link.)

Putting Christ's Righteousness in a Lock Box

Published on by D. G. Hart6 Comments

presidentronaldreagan Adult Sunday school students at Calvary OPC (Glenside) had the privilege of hearing Richard M. Gamble, an Orthodox Presbyterian elder at Hillsdale OPC and historian at Hillsdale College speak on the appeal of the “city on a hill” in American civil religion. Lest some think the lesson promoted mixing biblical metaphors with America’s civic faith, Gamble indicated his own discomfort with efforts to underwrite earthly powers with a redemptive purpose. For those who missed the lecture, the following is a quotation from Gamble’s book, War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation:

America’s anointment as the world’s political messiah did not end when demobilized troops returned from Europe in 1919. It did not end with America’s opposition to the Treaty of Versailles, nor with America’s refusal to join the League of Nations. The cumulative product of generations of reflection, experience, and anticipation, the American identity reached too deep and far to have been uprooted in a moment of supposed renunciation. Transcending party politics and most ideological boundaries, nearly all of the language of universality and emancipation, of the “city on a hill” and the world’s rebirth, of light and dark, Messiah and Armageddon, reverberates down to the present moment. Like Woodrow Wilson before them, few modern presidents have been able to resist the allure of America’s global redemptive consciousness. In the 1940s, Franklin Roosevelt planned for a future refounded on four freedoms, freedoms that would prevail “everywhere in the world.” In the fourth of these universal freedoms, freedom from fear, he anticipated a day when “no nation will be in a position to commit and act of physical aggression against any neighbor – anywhere in the world.” In countless speeches from the 1960s through the 1980s, moreover, Ronald Reagan reached back to the earliest metaphors of America’s divine destiny” to reaffirm the nation’s special calling as a “city on a hill.” Combining the Puritan errand with the Enlightenment dream of earthly regeneration, he also embraced Tom Pain’s longing to “begin the world over again.” And on September 11, 2002, George W. Bush, speaking with the colossus of the Statue of Liberty behind him, called America the “hope of all mankind” and appropriated the world of John 1:5 as if they described not just the Incarnation of Christ but the mission of the United States: “And the light shines in the darkness; and the darkness will not overcome it.” To one degree or another and with varying motives and consequences, each of these men continued to speak of the United States as if it were the Salvator Mundi, following a pattern of thought that has endured for more than four centuries.

Mencken Day 2009

Published on by D. G. Hart4 Comments

MenckenTo honor the great American writer and editor born in 1880 on this day in Baltimore, comes the following reflection on conversion:

Converting me to anything is probably a psychological impossibility. At all events, it has never been achieved by anyone, though I have been exposed more than once to the missionary technic of very talented virtuosi. I can’t recall ever changing my mind about any capital matter. My general body of fundamental ideas is the same today as it was in the days when I first began to ponder. I was never religious, and never a Socialist, even for a moment. My aversion to conversion extends to other people. I always distrust and dislike a man who has changed his basic notions. When a reader writes in to say that some writing of mine has shown him the light and cured him of former errors I feel disgust for him, and never have anything to do with him if I can help it. I dislike, more or less, all Calvinists, Communists and other such enemies of season, but I dislike ex-Calvinists and ex-Communists very much more. (From Minority Report, #162)

Was Calvin a Neo-Calvinist or an Evangelical?

Published on by D. G. Hart13 Comments

The punch line is, what’s the difference? Badop bop.

Timothy George, dean of the Beeson Divinity School at Samford University, has a number of articles in a recent issue of Christianity Today that is devoted to John Calvin. George is a very fine historian of the Reformation so the reason for his rendition of Calvin may owe more to his editors and readers at CT than to his training at Harvard University. Still, to make Calvin appealing to American evangelicals, in “John Calvin: Comeback Kid,” George lays on thick the French reformer’s globalizing transformational identity. He writes:

Calvin’s theology was meant for trekkers, not for settlers, as historian Heiko Oberman put it. In the 16th century, Calvinist trekkers fanned out across Europe initiating political change as well as church reform from Holland to Hungary, from the Palatinate to Poland, from Lithuania to Scotland, England, and eventually to New England. . . . Like the Franciscans and the Dominicans in the Middle Ages, Calvin’s followers forsook the religious ideal of stabilitas for an aggressive mobilitas. They poured into the cities, universities, and market squares of Europe as publishers, educators, entrepreneurs, and evangelists. Though he had his doubts about predestination, John Wesley once said that his theology came within a “hair’s breadth” of Calvinism. He was an heir to Calvin’s tradition when he exclaimed, “The world is my parish.”

For some neo-Calvinists the reference to Wesley may be off putting, but not so for evangelicals. But how about one to Walter Rauschenbusch, the father of the Social Gospel? George continues:

And so was the Baptist Walter Rauchenbusch [an heir to Calvin] in his concern for the social gospel, which (as Rauchenbusch used the term) did not mean another gospel separate from the one and only gospel of Jesus Christ. It simply meant that that gospel must not be sequestered into some religious ghetto but taken into the real ghettos and barrios of our world.

Despite disputes over links between Calvin and Wesley or Rauschenbusch, indisputable is George’s claim that swarms of Reformed Protestants went to a lot of places and changed them. Whether this is the genius of Calvinism or simply one part of the Great European Migration is another question. After all, the Lutherans who in the seventeenth century came to Germantown, Pennsylvania, also changed that section of modern-day Philadelphia, but they don’t get credit as transformationalists.

But migrating and establishing towns, villages, and counties is one thing. Teaching about how Christians should regard the present life is another. This is where some historians and neo-Calvinists always seem to stumble with Calvin. For he did not advocate trekking but just the opposite:

Let the aim of believers in judging mortal life, then, be that while they understand it to be of itself nothing but misery, they may with greater eagerness and dispatch betake themselves wholly to meditate upon that eternal life to come. When it comes to a comparison with the life to come, the present life can not only be safely neglected but, compared to the former, must be utterly despised and loathed. [Institutes, III.ix.4]

So much for Calvin the transformer of culture.

What then was Calvin’s advice to pilgrims in this weary world?

. . . lest through our stupidity and rashness everything be turned topsy-turvy, [God] has appointed duties for every man in his particular way of life. And that no one may thoughtlessly transgress his limits, [God] has named these various kinds of livings “callings.” Therefore, each individual has his own kind of living assigned to him by the Lord as a sort of sentry post so that he may not heedlessly wander about throughout life. [III.x.6]

Could it be that Reformed trekkies actually cease to be Reformed when they trek? Could it be that they need to reject Calvin to follow Methodists and Social Gospelers instead? It sure looks that way. In which case, Calvin’s comeback in this 500th anniversary of his birth will likely be thin and short-lived.

Easy Obeyism

Published on by D. G. Hart112 Comments

Over the last several decades discussions of justification among Presbyterians have too often included a remark or two about how salvation is more than justification. When asked to explain the partial nature of justification, interlocutors will talk about the need for sanctification and good works, and sometimes mention the impossibility of entering into glory with any trace or residue of sin. The idea seems to be that some kind of moral renovation is necessary so that believers can be transformed, and once changed, enter into God’s presence in glory.

Whether they know it or not, the ones who make such remarks are sounding a lot like Norman Shepherd, the godfather of purging any whiff of antinomianism from Reformed circles’ (and letting Lutherans bear the odor alone). Those too young to have experienced the controversy of justification at Westminster may not be familiar with many of Shepherd’s writings. But in his infamous Thirty Four Theses he wrote about the necessity of obedient faith, good works, and repentance in relation to faith in ways that tried to guard Reformed doctrines of grace from an easy-believism. To counter implications that follow from the idea that our works do not contribute to our salvation Shepherd wrote statements like the following (Thesis 23):

Because faith which is not obedient faith is dead faith, and because repentance is necessary for the pardon of sin included in justification, and because abiding in Christ by keeping his commandments (John 15:5; 10; 1John 3:13; 24) are all necessary for continuing in the state of justification, good works, works done from true faith, according to the law of God, and for his glory, being the new obedience wrought by the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer united to Christ, though not the ground of his justification, are nevertheless necessary for salvation from eternal condemnation and therefore for justification (Rom. 6:16, 22; Gal. 6:7-9).

The wonder of such an effort to commend good works in such proximity to justification is that it way overestimates the goodness of the believer’s good works. Missing from this conception of good works is any recognition of their filthy rags caliber. The Confession of Faith says that the disproportion between our good works and the glory to come is so great that we “can neither profit, nor satisfy for the debt of our former sins.” In fact, it adds that when we have performed good works we “have but done our duty, and are unprofitable servants.” As much as our good works proceed from the Spirit’s transforming power, they are truly good. But because we do them, our good works “are defiled, and mixed with so much weakness and imperfection that they cannot endure the severity of God’s judgment” [16.5]. Good works that should be condemned – what does that conception of good works do to efforts to tack them or repentance on to justification in order to give us the personal righteousness some say we need to enter into glory?

Clearly Shepherd didn’t have this conception of good works in view when he wrote the next thesis (24) and denied that good works done according to the law or by righteousness derived from the law or from the flesh were truly good. Only works wrought by the Holy Spirit, or that sprang from true faith according to the law and for God’s glory qualified as good works in the biblical sense.

But how do filthy rags qualify as clean? Maybe the answer to that question explains why Calvin taught in his catechism that rather than tacking sanctification on to justification, justification needed to precede and follow sanctification.

Master. – But after we have once been embraced by God, are not the works which we do under the direction of his Holy Spirit accepted by him?

Scholar. – They please him, not however in virtue of their own worthiness, but as he liberally honours them with his favour.

Master. – But seeing they proceed from the Holy Spirit, do they not merit favour?

Scholar. – They are always mixed up with some defilement from the weakness of the flesh, and thereby vitiated.

Master. – Whence then or how can it be that they please God?

Scholar. – It is faith alone which procures favour for them, as we rest with assured confidence on this-that God wills not to try them by his strict rule, but covering their defects and impurities as buried in the purity of Christ, he regards them in the same light as if they were absolutely perfect.

So instead of being on the lookout for antinomianism, maybe the real error is semi-antinomianism – that is, evaluating good works and Christian living apart from the demands of the law. For semi-antinomianism is clearly the perspective needed if someone is going to posit obedience or good works can escape condemnation without the overlay of Christ’s imputed righteousness.

The Federal Vision and the Decalogue

Published on by D. G. Hart8 Comments

I was under the impression that covenant faithfulness was a big part of Federal Vision teaching.

I also thought that Old Testament law was a big part of being covenantally faithful.

So what’s up with this (not a song making fun of Samson but going to see a comic on a Lord’s Day evening)?

In case folks think Old Lifers are humorless, the song is not without its amusement.