Against Heresies

Come thou long expected Jesus

2011-12-09T16:59:00.001Z

The tragic essence of Pharisaic piety

2011-11-08T16:25:00.000Z

Where will you find the best expression of the essence of Pharisaic piety?

It lies in what Jesus says about the prayer of the Pharisee in the temple:

God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get. (Lk. 18:11-12)

It is a prayer that makes the wrong comparison because it looks upon a fellow sinner with a sense of elevation. It is a prayer that makes the wrong appeal because it imagines a sense of righteousness that comes from being free from certain sinful acts committed by others. It is a prayer that compounds that wrong appeal by placing confidence in works-righteousness.

But it is still a prayer.

And it discloses the very essence of Pharisaic piety. It makes it's boast not only by a wrong comparison, not only by a wrong appeal, but in the presence of the Holy and Righteous God. Its unseemly piety is expressed coram deo.

It is said that Pelagius taught the following prayer:

Thou knowest, O Lord, how holy, how innocent, how pure from all deceit and rapine, are the hands which I stretch forth unto thee; how just, how unspotted with evil, how free from lying, are those lips wherewith I pour forth prayers unto thee, that thou wouldst have mercy on me.

In that prayer you can hear the same cadences of Pharisaic piety that Jesus spoke of in Luke 18.

The atmosphere of true piety is found in the words of the tac collector: "God, be merciful to me, a sinner."

That same atmosphere can be found in the pastoral counsel of Anselm:

Put all thy confidence in this death alone, place thy trust in no other thing; commit thyself wholly to this death, cover thyself wholly with this alone...

And if God would judge thee say 'I place the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between me and thy judgment...'

And if he shall say unto thee that thou art a sinner, say, 'I place the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between thee and all my sins; and I offer no merits of my own, which I should have, and have not'

If he say that he is angry with thee, say, 'Lord, I place the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between me and thy anger'.

Elsewhere Anselm wrote:

My conscience hath deserved damnation, and my repentance is not sufficient for satisfaction; but most certain it is that thy mercy aboundeth above all offence.

Ambrose also gave expression to the essence of true piety when he wrote these words:

Let no man arrogate anything unto himself, let no man glory in his own merits or good deeds, let no man boast of his power: let us all hope to find mercy by our Lord Jesus; for we shall all stand before his judgment-seat.

Of him I will beg pardon...what other hope is there for sinners?

The Willing Substitute

2011-11-04T11:55:00.000Z

"From now on, wearing his clothes,

I would be treated the way he had been treated."

In 1944 British soldier Denis Avey willingly walked into Auschwitz III. Already a POW he freely exchanged places with a Dutch Jew from the concentration camp. The following is his recollection of that crucial moment:

He closed the door on the turmoil of that hideous construction site and shuffled out of his grimy striped uniform. He threw the thin garments to me and I pulled them on without hesitation. Then I watched as he dragged on my British army battledress, casting looks over his shoulder at the door as he did it.

He was a Dutch Jew and I knew him as Hans. With that simple exchange between the two of us I had given away the protection of the Geneva Convention: I'd given my uniform, my lifeline, my best chance of surviving that dreadful place, to another man.

From now on, wearing his clothes, I would be treated the way he had been treated.

It was the middle of 1944 when I entered Auschwitz III of my own free will.

The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz, p. 3-4

This extraordinary tale of courage, a story that could so easily have been lost to human memory, is but the faintest echo of the decisive moment in the great saga of redemption: that Christ should bear our sin, and that we should be clothed in his righteousness. That he should be treated as our sins deserve, exposed to our merited punishment, and that the Father should see us in the Son of his love, his Beloved, with whom he is well pleased.

As Calvin expressed it:

Christ was put in place of evildoers as surety and pledge -- submitting himself even as the accused -- to bear and suffer all the punishments that they ought to have sustained.

Institutes, 1.2.XVI.10

The nineteenth century Scottish NT scholar George Smeaton was right to state this truth as follows:

The element of substitution, that is, of an exchange of places, constitutes the very core of the atonement; and this is also the Gospel in a single word...

But this substitution was no make-believe, no mere semblance, but a true exchange of places -- the most real of facts. He was accounted as the sinner not by a mere as if He were so, but because he was made sin (2 Cor. 5:21), and hence was treated as a sinner.

Christ's Doctrine of the Atonement, p. 93, 95.

And finally these apposite words came from the pen of Herman Bavinck:

The mystical and moral interpretation of Jesus' suffering and death cannot be maintained if it is not acknowledged beforehand that in a legal sense he suffered and died in our place...

For when it says that Christ, though personally without sin, has been put forward as an expiation to show God's righteousness [Rom. 3:25], has been made to be sin for us [2 Cor. 5:21], became a curse for us [Gal. 3:13], bore our sins in his body on the tree [1 Peter 2:24]...then we can construe the interconnection between all these scriptural pronouncements in no other way than that Christ put himself in our place, has borne the punishment of our sin, satisfied God's justice, and so secured salvation for us.

Reformed Dogmatics Volume 3: Sin and Salvation in Christ, p. 398

Steve Jobs: The Paths of Glory

2011-10-06T11:40:00.001+01:00

"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,

Awaits alike the inevitable hour.

The paths of glory lead but to the grave."

Thomas Gray

"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"

"Si momumentum requiris circumspice"

("If you seek his monument look around you")

The epitaph of Sir Christopher Wren

Counselling and a mind at rest

2011-06-17T10:06:00.000+01:00

The counsel of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones on the subject of counselling quoted in Geoff Thomas' foreword to the new hardback edition of Spiritual Depression: It's Causes and Cure:

Dr. Lloyd-Jones once spoke to a group of doctors about the essentials needed to counsel men and women. He said this:
[The counsellor] is not doing something outside himself. He is giving something of himself and his experience, and there is an exchange taking place between the patient and himself. Hence the most important thing of all in counselling is the character and personality of the counsellor.

What is the greatest essential in a counsellor? I would say that it is a quiet mind, and that he is at rest in himself. You will remember how our Lord put this on one occasion — ‘Can the blind lead the blind? If the blind lead the blind they will both fall in the ditch.’

In other words, if a man is in trouble within himself, and is restless, he is really in need of counselling himself. How can he give useful counsel to another? The first requisite, therefore, in a counsellor is that he himself is possessed of a quiet mind, a mind that is restful. It is at that point, of course, that the importance of the Christian faith comes in.

I am prepared to defend the proposition that no man ultimately can have a quiet mind, a heart at rest, and at leisure from itself unless he is a Christian. He needs to know a true peace within — the peace of God which is able to keep both mind and heart. The patient comes in to see him in an agitated troubled condition, and can detect if there are similar manifestations in the counsellor.

Spiritual Depression

2011-06-17T10:00:00.000+01:00

Geoff Thomas has written a foreword for a new hardback edition of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones' classic book Spiritual Depression: It's Causes and Cure. Here's the start of the foreword:

There was no one in the twentieth century more suited to preach, counsel and write on this subject of spiritual depression than Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. This subject has always been addressed by pastors, but particularly so from the time of the Reformation when the wrappings of human traditions were removed from biblical Christianity.

The Puritan period especially excelled as an age when sermons were life and power, and many kinds of men and women were drawn to faith in the Lord Christ. They brought their past with them into the kingdom of God and were troubled with doubts and periods of darkness. Their pastors became physicians of the soul and learned to deal with various conditions of spiritual desertion and depression and their books on this subject are read today. Dr Lloyd-Jones was a living representative of that tradition. He was exceptionally gifted in dealing with this subject, and Spiritual Depression has done much pastoral good in the last fifty years.

We ministers give it to particular people whom we believe would profit from it. Perhaps we point out to them one of the sermons in the book which we feel could help them. I am especially fond of the message entitled 'That One Sin' and a striking incident recounted there by the Doctor from the days of his ministry in Wales. It has often done homiletical duty for me. Why was Dr. Lloyd-Jones so well-equipped to write on a subject like this?

i] He was such a well-rounded, intelligent, and tender personality.

Although a mighty intellect with a formidable presence, he was accessible and not at all intimidating. There was not a trace of snobbery in him whatsoever; he loathed that sin. He had a particularly blessed marriage. Mrs. Bethan Lloyd-Jones, herself a qualified doctor, came from one of the foremost Calvinistic Methodist families in Wales rooted in the ethos of the local countryside of south Cardiganshire, an evangelical home where warm affection, godly living, the importance of education and reverence for God were prized and natural graces. Her father was an ophthalmic surgeon and her grandfather was one of the leading preachers in Wales who ministered in one congregation in Newcastle Emlyn for half a century, preaching there throughout both the 1859 and 1904 revivals. Mrs. Lloyd-Jones was also a descendant of the Baptist preacher Christmas Evans.

Out of the harmony and affection of that home with the two daughters they were given came the pastoral ministry and counselling that strengthened multitudes. I remember telling the Doctor on one occasion that my parents were moving from South Wales to live just around the corner from us in Aberystwyth, and his face lit up with delight at that news. His family was vitally important to him.

Dr. Lloyd-Jones once spoke to a group of doctors about the essentials needed to counsel men and women. He said this:
[The counsellor] is not doing something outside himself. He is giving something of himself and his experience, and there is an exchange taking place between the patient and himself. Hence the most important thing of all in counselling is the character and personality of the counsellor. What is the greatest essential in a counsellor? I would say that it is a quiet mind, and that he is at rest in himself. You will remember how our Lord put this on one occasion — ‘Can the blind lead the blind? If the blind lead the blind they will both fall in the ditch.’

In other words, if a man is in trouble within himself, and is restless, he is really in need of counselling himself. How can he give useful counsel to another? The first requisite, therefore, in a counsellor is that he himself is possessed of a quiet mind, a mind that is restful. It is at that point, of course, that the importance of the Christian faith comes in.

I am prepared to defend the proposition that no man ultimately can have a quiet mind, a heart at rest, and at leisure from itself unless he is a Christian. He needs to know a true peace within — the peace of God which is able to keep both mind and heart. The patient comes in to see him in an agitated troubled condition, and can detect if there are similar manifestations in the counsellor.

The eight points in the foreword are:

1. He was such a well-rounded, intelligent and tender personality
2. He was utterly committed to the faith of the Scriptures
3. He was a man who maintained the disciplines of private devotion
4. He was a man to whom people went for spiritual help
5. He was a man confident that to grasp the person and work of Christ, the ministry of the Holy Spirit and the ethical demands of the Bible is itself a mighty power to transform people, to elevate, ennoble and enrich their lives
6. He was a man who was prepared to help people in every way that he could
7. He was a man with a lucidity in explaining the human condition
8. He was a man persuaded that the person who had come to seek his counsels had more knowledge of all the circumstances involved than he himself had

You can read the whole thing at The Banner of Truth site

(HT: Heavenly Worldliness)

An ending as tragic as one of his novels

2011-06-15T21:09:00.000+01:00

Here are some fascinating extracts from the closing chapters of Claire Tomalin's biography of Thomas Hardy:

On Boxing Day [1927] he asked for the Gospel account of the birth of Christ and the massacre of the innocents, and also the entries in the Encyclopedia Biblica, remarking when she [his wife Florence] had finished that there was not a grain of evidence that the Gospel was true.

On the final day of his life Tomalin notes the following incident:

Then he dictated to Florence two rough and rude epitaphs on disliked contemporaries. One was George Moore, who had attacked him and was now accused of conceit. The other, ungrammatical but clear in its intentions, went for G. K. Chesterton:

The literary contortionist
Who prove and never turn a hair
That Darwin's theories were a snare...
And if one with him could not see
He'd shout his choice word 'Blasphemy'.

It was his final word against Church doctrine and in favour of rational thinking, exemplified by Darwin -- a magnificent blast from the sickbed.

One of the final comments in the book breathes an air of sadness:

He knew the past like a man who has lived more than one span of life, and he understood how difficult it is to cast aside the beliefs of his forebears. At the same time he faced his own extinction with no wish to be comforted and no hope of immortality.

The contrast between this ending and that of the seventy third psalm could not be more pronounced:

Nevertheless, I am continually with you;
   you hold my right hand.
You guide me with your counsel,
   and afterward you will receive me to glory.
Whom have I in heaven but you?
   And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
   but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

If Abraham had been a Socinian: Foreknowledge, trustworthiness and the sins of the Amorites

2011-06-10T17:10:00.001+01:00

Those who have chosen to deny God's exhaustive foreknowledge, whether in the seventeenth or twenty first centuries, have always been met with able defenders of the Biblical doctrine.

Here is an extract from the Puritan Stephen Charnock's discourse on God's knowledge. Archaic language aside, his foot on the head of this snake remains as forceful as it was in the days when it was thought acceptable for men to have big gold buckles on their shoes.

His truth hath depended on his foresight.

Let us consider that in Gen. 15:16, but 'the fourth generation, they shall come hither again;' that, the posterity of Abraham shall come into Canaan; 'for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.'

God makes a promise to Abraham of giving his posterity the land of Canaan, not presently, but in the fourth generation. If the truth of God be infallible in the performance of his promise, his understanding is as infallible in the foresight of the Amorites' sin: the fulness of their iniquity was to precede the Israelites' possession.

Did the truth of God depend upon an uncertainty? Did he make the promise hand over head, as we say?

How could he with any wisdom and truth assure Israel of the possession of the land in the fourth generation, if he had not been sure that the Amorites would fill up the measure of their iniquities by that time?

If Abraham had been a Socinian, to deny God's knowledge of the free acts of men, had he not a fine excuse for unbelief?

What would his reply have been to God?

Alas, Lord, this is not a promise to be relied upon; the Amorites iniquity depends on the acts of their free will, and such thou canst have no knowledge of. Thou canst see no more than a likelihood of their iniquity being full, and therefore there is but a likelihood of they performing thy promise, and not a certainty.

Would not this be judged not only a saucy, but a blashemous answer?

And upon these principles the truth of the most faithful God had been dashed to uncertainty and a peradventure.

An Old Jedi Mind Trick: Open Theists do not affirm omniscience

2011-06-09T17:16:00.001+01:00

Open theists affirm that God is omniscient. This is not the kind of omniscience that the Christian Church has always confessed (exhaustive omniscience) but a claim that God knows all that it is possible to know. The future, unknowable even to God, is not a part of what may be known. Confessing God to be ignorant of the future is thereby not seen to be an imperfection in God.

This affirmation is about as convincing as buying a cheap Rolex at a car boot sale. The word 'Rolex' isn't enough to inspire confidence that the time piece is the genuine article. Open theists redefine omniscience and then affirm the redefinition. But if you look closely you can see how the magic trick works.

The following quotations from the late Clark Pinnock are taken from his chapter “From Augustine to Arminius: A Pilgrimage in Theology.” He frames his journey, throughout that chapter, in the language of being freed from Calvinist logic. In his new found emancipation he was now able to listen to what the Bible was saying.

A careful reading of the whole chapter, and from the extracts below, reveal, however, that there is a commitment on his part to following the logic of a non-negotiable premise, namely libertarian free will:

Finally I had to rethink the divine omniscience and reluctantly ask whether we ought to think of it as an exhaustive foreknowledge of everything that will ever happen, as even most Arminians do.

I found I could not shake off the intuition that such a total omniscience would necessarily mean that everything we will ever choose in the future will have been spelled out in the divine knowledge register, and consequently the belief that we have truly significant choices to make would seem to be mistaken.

I knew the Calvinist argument that exhaustive foreknowledge was tantamount to predestination because it implies the fixity of all things from"eternity past," and I could not shake off its logical force. I feared that, if we view God as timeless and omniscient, we will land back in the camp of theological determinism where these notions naturally belong.

It makes no sense to espouse conditionality and then threaten it by other assumptions that we make. (Clark Pinnock, “From Augustine to Arminius: A Pilgrimage in Theology” in Pinnock [ed.], The Grace of God and the Will of Man, p. 25)

The same pursuit of consistency, even at the cost of revising divine omniscience can be found in author Richard Rice:

In the earlier part of this discussion we noticed the considerable difficulties encountered by those who seek to reconcile the concept of absolute divine foreknowledge with an affirmation of creaturely freedom. Now we can identify the basic cause of these problems. They arise from the attempt to combine contradictory elements from different views of God, specifically from the attempt to incorporate elements of the Calvinist view of God with the Arminian model.

The concept of absolute foreknowledge retained from Calvinism is incompatible with the dynamic portrait of God that is basic to Arminianism. Absolute foreknowledge--the idea that God sees the entire future in advance--is incompatible with the concept that God interacts with his creatures on a momentary basis.

But we cannot make such changes in our concept of God coherently while clinging to the traditional concept of divine foreknowledge. To be consistent, we must reformulate our understanding of omniscience. (Richard Rice "Divine Knowledge and Free-Will Theism" in Pinnock [ed.], The Grace of God and the Will of Man,p. 133-4)

Compare the position adopted by Pinnock and Rice with the description of the Socinian denial of God's exhaustive foreknowledge found in William Cunningham's Historical Theology Volume 2 (1862).

Summarizing the Socinian argument Cunningham wrote:

That they may seem, indeed, not to derogate from God's omniscience, they admit indeed that God knows all things that are knowable; but then they contend that future contingent events, such as the future actions of responsible agents, are not knowable,--do not come within the scope of what may be known, even by an infinite Being; and, upon this ground, they allege that it is no derogation from the omniscience of God, that He does not, and cannot, know what is not knowable. (Historical Theology Volume 2, p. 173)

Afraid of orthodoxy

2011-06-09T13:38:00.000+01:00

Commenting on Jeroboam's fear of orthodoxy (represented by the house of David and the house of the LORD in Jerusalem, in 1 Kings 12), "that is, orthodoxy focused on a royal person and on an atoning place" Dale Ralph Davis has this stellar footnote:

We rightly trace this person-place scheme straight into New Testament orthodoxy. David's dynasty reaches its crescendo in that rascal Rehoboam's premier descendant, Jesus the Messiah (hence Christology is at the heart of orthodoxy); and Yahweh's temple, where, as Jeroboam stated, they 'make sacrifices', was therefore the place where atonement was made and reaches its fulfilment in the cross.

Orthodoxy revolves around person and place, around Christ and the cross, or, as we might put it, around the person and work of Christ. It is this area of belief that false religion invariably skews.

Unoriginal Discoveries: Hardy, Harry Potter, Augustine and Open Theism

2011-06-08T15:07:00.001+01:00

In Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge (tragically I began reading this in 1992 and finished it in 2010) Elizabeth is reprimanded for her use of dialect words.

In time "she no longer spoke of 'dumbledores' but of 'humble bees' ... when she had not slept she did not quaintly tell the servants next morning that she had been 'hagrid', but that she had 'suffered from indigestion'" (Chapter XX, p. 200 in the Penguin Classics edition).

I'm not the first person to spot the names subsequently made famous by J.K. Rowling.

As an undergraduate I believed that I had some original thoughts about the Trinity only to discover that much deeper thinkers, namely Richard of St. Victor in the thirteenth century and Augustine in the fifth century, had already meditated on the same matters.

True originality is the preserve of a limited number of heretics. But upon closer examination one can usually find evidence of borrowing from philosophical sources. Most of the heresies of today are a rehash of bad old ideas that you can find in the archives of Church history.

Curiously Thomas Hardy has a line or two about open theism in his poem "God's education" (published in 1909). God is the speaker in the final stanza:

He mused. "The thought is new to me.
Forsooth, though I men's master be,
Theirs is the teaching mind."

Heaven and Hell (Doctrine Day)

2011-06-08T14:11:00.000+01:00

What the Bible says about...

Heaven & Hell

This Saturday – 11th June 2011

Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, Swansea

from 10am -3.30pm

Talks from Paul Blackham and David Meredith

Cost £10 (£3 for members)

Crèche facilities and a lovely lunch will be provided

Let me heartily recommend this day conference to you even though there is no vitally important Church History talk, a dangerous omission in my book, and it is sad to see a fine conference going down hill in this way (I'm not bitter about it though).

More info here

Thomas Hardy and the Doctrine of Providence

2011-06-08T13:16:00.000+01:00

"Darkness and silence ruled everywhere around. Above them rose the primeval yews and oaks of The Chase, in which there poised gentle roosting birds in their last nap; and about them stole the hopping rabbits and hares. But, might some say, where was Tess's guardian angel? Where was the providence of her simple faith? Perhaps, like that other god of whom the ironical Tishbite spoke, he was talking, or he was pursuing, or he was on a journey, or he was sleeping and not to be awaked."

Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891)

"What has Providence done to Mr Hardy that he should rise up in the arable land of Wessex
and shake his fist at his Creator?"

Edmund Gosse (1896)

I re-read Hardy's magisterial Tess of the D'Urbervilles last summer some fifteen years after my first exposure to it. For all his invectives against the doctrine of providence, that lie in the text like sermons in miniature, for all his widening of the fissures in Victorian Christianity and undermining of confidence in the God of the Bible, the name of the malevolent deity who causes Tess Durbeyfield to suffer so much at the hands of men is of course none other than Thomas Hardy.

As the author of the tragedy Hardy is both primary cause of all the events and the determiner of how the secondary causes fall out.

When Tess joins in with the laughter directed toward Car Darch, the Queen of Spades, Car singles her out for retribution. Tess, says Hardy, "could not help joining in with the rest" but "It was a misfortune -- in more ways than one." The confrontation is soon followed by the untimely arrival of the would-be rescuer Alec D'Urberville. As they ride off Car's mother remarks that it is "Out of the frying pan into the fire!" Tess will soon be "Maiden no more."

Later in the volume Tess's attempt to reveal her past to Angel Clare, before their marriage, is thwarted by a trivial occurrence. Having slipped her written confession underneath the door of his den at Talbothays she finds it unopened a few days later having "in her haste thrust it beneath the carpet as well as beneath the door." With the revealtion still sealed Hardy comments that "The mountain had not yet been removed."

Hardy's own explanation for invoking the "President of the Immortals" whose work of sporting with Tess ends with her execution, was that it was not uncommon in imaginative prose and poetry for "the forces opposed to the heroine" to be "allegorized as a personality." The offering of the explanation was one thing, the plausibility of the explanation another, especially as so many of his principle characters suffer at the hands of the author.

The observations of Hardy's critic Irving Howe are worth noting:

Because Hardy remained enough of a Christian to believe that purpose courses through the universe but not enough of a Christian to believe that purpose is benevolent or the attribute of a particular Being, he had to make his plots convey the oppressiveness of fatality without positing an agency determining the course of fate ... The result was that he often seems to be coercing his plots ... and sometimes ... he seems to be plotting against his own characters.

A similar assessment has been made by Claire Tomalin in her biography of Thomas Hardy:

To suggest that readers should see that "the President of the Immortals" is meant only to symbolize the forces of society that brought Tess down will not do as a defence. There is something more there, something that makes sport with her sufferings, and making sport with suffering is cruelty.

Given the opaqueness of his bleak fatalism, even though he regarded himself as a meliorist, Tomalin offers the following summary:

Neither Hardy nor anyone else explained where his black view of life came from. I have suggested that something in his constitution made him extraordinarily sensitive to humiliations, griefs and disappointments, and that the wounds they inflicted never healed but went on hurting him throughout his life. In a sense he never got over his loss of Christian belief, which removed hope.

Rapture disappointment

2011-05-21T18:30:00.001+01:00

To those who, mistakenly, thought that the rapture would happen today you'll just have to get over the disappointment. After all it's not as if it's the end of the world.

For an informed Reformed assessment of Harold Camping false prediction go read the thoughts of Kim Riddlebarger

Richard Dawkins won't debate William Lane Craig (updated)

2011-05-14T21:11:00.009+01:00

The Telegraph has noticed the Richard Dawkins has declined to debate with William Lane Craig this Autumn:

"I have no intention of assisting Craig in his relentless drive for self-promotion,” he said.

Some of Prof Dawkins’s contemporaries are not impressed. Dr Daniel Came, a philosophy lecturer and fellow atheist, from Worcester College, Oxford, wrote to him urging him to reconsider his refusal to debate the existence of God with Prof Craig.

In a letter to Prof Dawkins, Dr Came said: “The absence of a debate with the foremost apologist for Christian theism is a glaring omission on your CV and is of course apt to be interpreted as cowardice on your part.

“I notice that, by contrast, you are happy to discuss theological matters with television and radio presenters and other intellectual heavyweights like Pastor Ted Haggard of the National Association of Evangelicals and Pastor Keenan Roberts of the Colorado Hell House.”

Prof Craig, however, remains willing to debate with Prof Dawkins. “I am keeping the opportunity open for him to change his mind and debate with me in the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford” in October, he said.

Prof Craig will be using his UK tour to analyse The God Delusion and to present his own “strong rational grounds” for belief in God.

His tour will include a London conference on the defence of Christianity and a debate in Manchester with the atheist, Peter Atkins, Professor of Chemistry at Oxford University, on the existence of God.

Read the whole thing here

In this video clip from two years ago Dawkins explains why he refuses to debate William Lane Craig:

I would also heartily encourage you to read Cranmer's take on the CV of Richard Dawkins. Whilst I cannot write a blank cheque for everything that is written in the blogs that I link to, I will say that Cranmer never fails to provide stimulating analysis and a model of how to write with style.

Here is a clip of William Lane Craig and Peter Atkins in debate:

"The Reasonable Faith Tour with William Lane Craig" is being sponsored by Premier Radio, UCCF and Damaris.

Provisional Schedule

The details of the tour are still being arranged, and the schedule below will be updated as events are finalised.
17th October 2011 at 7.30pm

Westminster Chapel, London

Premier Christian Radio Debate on the existence of God with a well-known atheist (TBA)

19th October 2011 at 7.30pm

Cambridge

Public lecture on Stephen Hawking's The Grand Design

22nd October 2011 from 9.30am - 5.30pm

Westminster Chapel, London

Bethinking National Apologetics Day Conference

Opening and closing lectures from William Lane Craig. Further lectures from Gary Habermas, John Lennox and Peter J. Williams

25th October 2011 at 7.30pm

Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford

Lecture "Is God a Delusion?" A Critique of Dawkin's The God Delusion

26th October 2011 at 7.30pm

Manchester

Debate "Does God Exist?" with Dr Peter Atkins

"Why isn't there more of this kind of thing being preached from church pulpits? If there were, I'd go more often and I'd stay awake during the sermon!"Comment from a self-confessed irregular churchgoer during the 2007 Reasonable Faith Tour.

For more details, and to book, go here

Preaching Christ from the Old Testament

2011-05-12T17:25:00.000+01:00

Excellent words on this subject from David Murray over at The Gospel Coalition site. He is far clearer on this than the other contributors to the article:

I’m massively encouraged by the church’s renewed interest in preaching Christ from the Old Testament, and especially by the increased willingness to see how Old Testament people, places, events, etc., point forward to Christ. This “types and trajectories” (or redemptive-historical) hermeneutic has many strengths.

However, I’m a bit concerned that an overuse of this tool can give the impression that Christ is merely the end of redemptive history rather than an active participant throughout.

Puritans such as Jonathan Edwards were masters of balance here. In his History of the Work of Redemption, Edwards shows Christ as not only the end of redemptive history, but actively and savingly involved from the first chapter to the last. He did not view Old Testament people, events, etc., as only stepping-stones to Christ; he saw Christ in the stepping-stones themselves. He did not see the need to relate everything to “the big picture”; he found the “big picture” even in the “small pictures.”

I’d also like to encourage preachers and teachers to be clear and consistent on the question: “How were Old Testament believers saved?” The most common options seem to be:

1. They were saved by obeying the law.

2. They were saved by offering sacrifices.

3. They were saved by a general faith in God.

4. They were saved by faith in the Messiah.

Unless we consistently answer #4, we end up portraying heaven as not only populated by lovers of Christ, but also by legalists, ritualists, and mere theists who never knew Christ until they got there. Turning back again in order to go forwards, may I recommend Calvin’s Institutes Book 2 (chapters 9-11) to help remove some of the blur that often surrounds this question.

The Counsel of the Ungodly: Thomas Hardy and the Moule family

2011-05-03T15:05:00.003+01:00

As a teen the great English novelist Thomas Hardy was friendly with the Moule family and their seven impressive sons. Mr Moule was vicar at Fordington, his son Charles became president of Corpus Christi in Cambridge, Handley became Lord Bishop of Durham (I can see his book on Ephesians, squeezed in amongst my commentaries, as I type this) and two others went to China as missionaries.

Thomas Hardy was a year older than Handley Moule but became close friends with Horace Moule, eight years Hardy's senior. Horace became 'Tom's special friend', he was 'the charmer, handsome and gifted' but also 'a tender-hearted son to his mother, writing to her almost every year on the anniversary of the death of the baby brother who had died before he was two'.

Horace had studied at Oxford and Cambridge but failed to gain a degree from either university. Hardy's biographer, Claire Tomalin, describes the changes in Horace's thinking that put him at odds with his upbringing:

Horace introduced Hardy to the newest and cleverest of the weekly magazines, the Saturday Review, London based naturally, in which social issues were discussed and religion treated with small respect. He bought himself books on geology and science that alarmed his father, because they cast doubt on accepted religious ideas, and handed them on to Hardy.

Horace's upbringing had been more robustly Christian than Tom's, but, making his way in metropolitan literary journalism, he could not miss the spread of scepticism, and he was too quick and intelligent to ignore it.

Tomalin also notes the impact of all this on the young Hardy:

Tom's situation was different and easier. Christianity was something he had taken for granted as part of the fabric of everyday life, and Christian theory was never discussed in the family. He read the Bible, he knew all the church services and most of the psalms by heart; indeed, the year was a sequence of church festivals quite as much as it was a sequence of the natural seasons for him.

And he remained a fully practising Christian into the 1860s, but his mind was on the move, and with Horace he began to see that there were questions to be asked and lines of thought to be followed that eroded the old faith. As their friendship ripened, they read the notorious Essays and Reviews of 1860, religious pieces that offended the orthodox by their attacks on doctrine and by their textual criticism of the Bible.

Hardy also claimed to have been an early admirer of Darwin's On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, though it is not clear exactly when he read it, or how much it influenced his thinking at the time. He could well have found his own way along the path towards free thought, but Horace was an encouraging companion on the journey, and with his access to books, guided his steps at many points.

Claire Tomalin, Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man, pp. 54-55

I don't think that it is necessary for me to spell out the implications here. It seems to me self-evident that this was a form of discipleship, and that it possessed many of the elements that we associate with and encourage in that type of relationship. Tragically, in the case of Horace Moule and Thomas Hardy, it was a path along which the younger man was led to follow the counsel of the ungodly.

Concerning the impact of Essays and Reviews (1860), and the climate of plausibility that a new approach to Biblical scholarship brought in, Roger Beckwith made the following remarks:

The ‘accepted results’ of critical study tend to be taken for granted as a basis for one’s own further study, and radical questions are rarely asked about them. When they are asked, and in a public manner, the presumption is against those who ask them, and any attempt the questioners make to turn back the tide of critical opinion is disregarded, as self-evidently perverse. New ideas receive an open-minded reception, but attempts to revive old ideas are, not unnaturally, seen as simply reactionary.

There is more to the clash of orthodoxy and heterodoxy than learning. There is also more to it than spiritual conflict in the lives of individuals. There is also this sociological dimension, and the embedding of new orthodoxies in institutions, guilds and in the public mind. All of which makes the championing of older, historic, mainstream views appear to be little more than a retrograde step, a recrudescence of ideas considered untenable, obsolete and unworthy of re-examination.

Beckwith's conclusion is fitting:

All things considered, therefore, the revolution in Biblical study which began in England with Essays and Reviews, and the similar revolution which preceded it in Germany a hundred years before, is a revolution which did more harm to the Church than good...in so far as it taught us to approach the Bible unbelievingly, it has hindered the mission of the church ever since. It lies at the root of many of the calamities which have afflicted the church in our own day, and from which, until we repent of unbelief, the church will never recover.

How the ideas of the enemies of the Reformation have made a comeback

2011-05-02T10:56:00.001+01:00

Next Saturday, 7th May, I will be giving a church history lecture at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Swansea on:

Heresy Never Dies

How the ideas of the enemies of the Reformation have made a comeback

The enemies of the Reformation in question were the Socinians: deniers of the Trinity, the deity of Christ, original sin, eternal hell, justification by faith alone, penal substitutionary atonement and God's exhaustive foreknowledge.

Faustus Socinus may well be long forgotten but some contemporary evangelicals have found some of the Socinian ideas to be very attractive. They were in their day the Reformed and Puritan nemesis, powerful and influential enemies, and their ideas continue to be plausible and attractive options draining the blood of authentic Christian truth and life.

Last year I gave a lecture on this subject at the Twin Lakes Fellowship focussing on the conceptual link between the contemporary open theists and the Socinian views on God's foreknowledge. The audio is available here I will touch on that again as part of the lecture, but will also take a look at original sin and the atonement.

The lecture is at 4 pm, followed by a tea, and after that I will be preaching at 6 pm. As the church hold this as an open meeting and are expecting visitors I'm sure that you would be very welcome to come along. It will also be my privilege to preach at Ebenezer on Sunday 8th May.

You can find out more about Ebenezer Baptist Church and where to find it here

Heretics and Schismatics

2011-04-27T12:25:00.000+01:00

Augustine eventually came to define heretics as those who "in holding false opinions regarding God, do injury to the faith itself," as distinguished from schismatics, who "in wicked separations break off from brotherly charity, although they may believe just what we believe."

Basil's distinction was only slightly different: heretics were "men who were altogether broken off and alienated in matters relating to the actual faith," and schismatics were "men who had separated for some ecclesiastical reasons and questions capable of mutual solution."

Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition, p. 69

Political heretics

2011-04-27T12:21:00.000+01:00

You can find heretics and heresies everywhere. In the church, outside the church, on the internet, in books, under rocks, inside donuts, the list is almost endless.

There are of course heresies and heretics in the political realm. Their identity is determined by those who define, control, regulate and uphold orthodoxy. A point made by Peter Hitchens.

Russia is no longer an ideological state, externally or internally. It no longer seeks global power, and in some ways is less interested in the minds of its citizens than are 'Western' countries which demand increasing obedience to the formulas of political correctness. In Russia, you may hold what private opinions you like. Just do not challenge the state. In Britain, your private opinions may be reported to the authorities and get you into trouble, even if you believe your actions are part of normal life and you have no wish to challenge the state.

Peter Hitchens, The Cameron Delusion, p. viii

Is there a 'Problem of Forgiveness'? Dissonant voices

2011-04-21T19:23:00.002+01:00

Four voices. Only one of them resembles the tone and accent of the Master.

Faustus Socinus (1578)

As we saw elsewhere Paul likewise instructs us to be imitators of God: just as he forgave our sins through Christ, we should forgive each other, but if God so forgave our sins through Christ, that he yet demanded the punishment of them from Christ itself, what prevents us from seeking satisfaction for ourselves for the offenses of our neighbours?

Brian McLaren (2006)

The traditional understanding says that God asks of us something that God is incapable of Himself. God asks us to forgive people. But God is incapable of forgiving. God can’t forgive unless He punishes somebody in place of the person He was going to forgive. God doesn’t say things to you—Forgive your wife, and then go kick the dog to vent your anger. God asks you to actually forgive. And there’s a certain sense that, a common understanding of the atonement presents a God who is incapable of forgiving. Unless He kicks somebody else.

Steve Chalke (2004)

Is it not strange for Jesus (God incarnate) on the one hand to say ‘do not return evil for evil’ while still looking for retribution himself? Similarly wouldn’t it be inconsistent for God to warn us not to be angry with each other and yet burn with wrath himself, or tell us to ‘love our enemies’ when he obviously couldn’t quite bring himself to do the same without demanding massive appeasement? If these things are true, what does it mean to ‘be perfect…as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matt 5:48)? If it is true that Jesus is ‘the Word of God’ then how can his message be inconsistent with his nature? If the cross has anything to do with penal substitution then Jesus teaching becomes a divine case of ‘do as I say, not as I do’. I, for one, believe that God practices what he preaches!

John Stott (1986)

'Why should our forgiveness depend on Christ's death?'...'Why does God not simply forgive us, without the necessity of the cross?'...'After all', the objector may continue, 'if we sin against another, we are required to forgive one another. We are even warned of dire consequences if we refuse. Why can't God practise what he preaches and be equally generous? Nobody's death is necessary before we forgive each other. Why then does God make such a fuss about forgiving us and even declare it impossible without his Son's "sacrifice for sin"?'

For us to argue, 'We forgive each other unconditionally, let God do the same to us', betrays not sophistication but shallowness, since it overlooks the elementary fact that we are not God. We are private individuals, and other people's misdemeanours are personal injuries. God is not a private individual, however, nor is sin just a personal injury. On the contrary, God himself is the maker of the laws we break, and sin is rebellion against him.

The reason why many people give the wrong answers to questions about the cross, and even ask the wrong questions, is that they have carefully considered neither the seriousness of sin nor the majesty of God.

Character is plot

2011-04-20T18:00:00.000+01:00

Sebastian Faulks' Introduction to his emotionally overwhelming World War I novel Birdsong is full of fascinating insights. He makes a telling remark about 'sitting for hours in small cemeteries' unsure as to what he was looking for but soaking himself in this world 'hoping perhaps to acquire the authority to write about it'.

There is also this vivid remark about his last journey to the continent before setting home to write:

I stood beneath the great arch at Thiepval, where the names of the missing -- not the dead, just those of whom no trace was found -- are like small print footnotes in the sky.

I found his comments about the order of the major elements of the novel thought provoking. He wrote that the major theme was 'How far can you go? What are the limits of humanity?...the answer seemed to be that there were no limits to humanity' (by which he means human depravity). Then came the following about the process of writing:

This is the ideal sequence, I think -- from theme, to event, to character -- though it is seldom this orderly.

And then it struck me that when it comes to the universe we begin with character, or to be precise we begin with three persons, and what follows in the eternal counsels, and through the works of creation and providence in time and space, in the Fall and work of redemption, and stretching forward into eternity, is the outworking of character.

Character is plot on the biggest stage of all, beginning with the pactum salutis and the eternal decrees and from creation to new creation. For upon all his works is impressed and embedded the wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth of the Triune God.

The poignant epigraph that Faulks chose for the book he took from Wilfred Owen's final letter to his mother before he returned to the front lines, where he would die one week before the signing of the Armistice. Owen had chosen some words from Rabindranath Tragore:

When I go from hence, let this be my parting word, that what I have seen is unsurpassable

Now we see in a glass darkly, now we see his glory by faith, then we will behold his glory world without end.

The Meaning of the Cross

2011-04-13T15:55:00.000+01:00

According to the SCM's (the Student Christian Movement) 1919 "Aim and Basis" this is what the cross means:

It is only as we see on Calvary the price of suffering paid day by day by God himself for all human sin, that we can enter into the experience of true penitence and forgiveness, which sets us free to embark upon a wholly new way of life...This is the meaning of the Atonement.

Reading these words afresh it struck me that this statement resonates with several, shall we call them 'Emergentesque' for want of a better word, affirmations of the cross.

This is hardly surprising since the SCM statement is the impulse of a certain caste of heart and mind, and it rests on specific presuppositions concerning God and man, and concerning the breakdown in divine-human relations and how they are to be restored. If those presuppositions are shared we should expect contemporary authors to assemble, using Biblical vocabulary, a message about the meaning of the cross akin to that of the non-Evangelical SCM.

John Stott offered the following observations on this statement in the preface to his book The Cross of Christ:

But we have respectfully to respond that the meaning of the atonement is not to be found in our penitence evoked by the sight of Calvary, but rather in what God did when in Christ on the cross he took our place and bore our sin.

This distinction between an 'objective' and 'subjective' understanding of the atonement needs to be made clear in every generation.

Whilst I agree with what he wrote back in 1986, we should be able to see that the SCM statement has an objective element ("the price of suffering paid day by day by God himself") as well as a subjective one ("we can enter into the experience of true penitence and forgiveness, which sets us free to embark upon a wholly new way of life"). In fact we can say that the SCM statement acknowledges that the objective act of God precedes the subjective response on our part.

The crux of the matter is not the distinction between the objective and the subjective aspects of the atonement but the nature of the objective understanding of the atonement, the meaning of what God did at the cross, why he did it, and why it was necessary for him to do it in the first place.

On this point the SCM position and that of the classical Evangelicalism with its roots in the Reformation really represent two different religions both using the same stock of language. Look at what they are saying about God and his nature, man and his fall, sin and its effects, and you begin to see that no amount of verbal similarity can compensate for the fact that they represent diametrically opposed theologies.

A sort of idolatry

2011-04-08T16:53:00.001+01:00

One of the main deficiencies in writings about hermeneutics is the failure to include a chapter on Satanic interpretations. The devil is after all an interpreter of reality, his words are offered as an alternative explanation of the things that are made (including human nature), and a better explanation of how things work.

Genesis 1-3 is all about interpretation. God interprets reality (1:10, "God called the dry land earth...And God saw that it was good"). The man and the woman are to acquiesce in the interpretation of God concerning the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (2:15-17). The serpent offers a rival interpretation of what God has already interpreted (3:1, 4-5), and so on.

There are plenty of other examples in Scripture of both the link between Satan (and his demons) and heresies, and also the manifestation of Satan's activity in the preaching of false Christ's and false gospels (2 Cor. 11; Gal. 3:1, 1 John), or in other words, false interpretations offered by malevolent interpreters (they shudder at God's existence but oppose his rule and have no love for him). We also need to bear in mind that when Christ is tempted in the wilderness the successive attacks of Satan focus on questions of interpretation ("If you are the Son of God...")

Why has this dimension of hermeneutics failed to get any coverage in evangelical writings about interpreting Scripture? And it really is a failure, this aspect is almost entirely ignored. Does this neglect shed any light on the loss of nerve concerning our confidence in there being a God-given right interpretation accessible to us? Is the Serpent not still whispering "But did God really say"? If we neglect his presence in our thinking on this subject would he have it any other way?

If we confine our thinking about interpretations and interpreters to those offered by mere flesh and blood we are being desperately naive about the whole subject. We need to go back to the beginning and read Genesis with a bit more care.

Here is what Tertullian had to say on the matter:

The same being, possessing still the same genius, both set his heart upon, and succeeded in, adapting to his profane and rival creed the very documents of divine things and of the Christian saints--his interpretation from their interpretations, his words from their words, his parables from their parables.

For this reason, then, no one ought to doubt, either that "spiritual wickednesses," from which also heresies come, have been introduced by the devil, or that there is any real difference between heresies and idolatry, seeing as they appertain both to the same author and the same work that idolatry does.

The consequence is, that every lie which they speak of God is in a certain sense a sort of idolatry.

Prescription Against Heretics, Ch. XL

Straight from the pit of Bell

2011-04-04T17:42:00.000+01:00

It is worth watching Rob Bell's promo video for Love Wins and this sparkling rejoinder from Canon Press back to back. It would be remiss of me not to mention that you really should avoid swallowing Federal Vision theology, it will just have you coughing up blood.

Video 1: Straight from the pit of Bell

Video 2: Wring that Bell

Robbed Hell - C.A.S.T. Pearls Presents from Canon Wired on Vimeo.

Can you sing about retributive justice?

2011-04-04T14:55:00.000+01:00

The Bible contains songs about salvation and songs about judgement (Rev. 15:3-4; 19:1-3). Not of course that they are held far apart, or that you can sing the one and go mute on the other because you only want to sing the nice ones. You can't skip verses about judgement when you sing Exodus 15:1-18.

God's acts of retributive justice are praiseworthy because he is just (Rev. 16:5-6), and because he is just in his holy character we can say 'true and just are your judgements' (Rev. 16:7) and worship him because his 'righteous acts have been revealed' (Rev. 25:4)..

Where did we learn to sing songs about judgement? Surely it is because we have joined the choir that sings a 'new song' about the Lamb slain, who bore the wrath in our place and purchased men for God (Rev. 5:9-10). If you don't want to sing God's praises for his true and just judgements you will also find yourself departing from the original lyrics of that 'new song'.

Our trouble, if we refuse to sing these songs, is that we are like the failed applicants at the audition stage on the X Factor or American Idol. We think we know enough about sin, and the judgement that sinners deserve, that we don't need to be corrected when we are off-key. We think we are pitch perfect already.

Listening to these discordant notes is not an expert behind a desk, but the Composer, Lyricist and Conductor of heaven's songs and heaven's choirs. And he is seated upon a throne.

When it comes to singing and speaking about judgement don't think that you have the right to judge the Judge when you are hitting all the wrong notes.

Today is the day of salvation. Earnestly, winsomely, prayerfully, we plead with people to face up to the reality of judgement and to come to Christ. Their lost condition grieves us and moves us. We long to have them join us in singing the song of the Lamb. But, this day of opportunity will end, and our God will not be unjust when Jesus judges the living and the dead..

The final judgement is not a final act of cruelty but an awesome, public, display of justice. Or, in other words, sinners will be treated as their sins deserve -- 'they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done' (Rev. 20:12, 13; 'He will render to each one according to his works' Rom. 2:6; see also Psalm 62:12; Prov. 24:12; Job 34:11; Jer. 17:10; 32:19; Matthew 16:27).

Here is Augustine's take on the matter:

Now the reason why eternal punishment appears harsh and unjust to human sensibilities, is that in this feeble condition of those sensibilities under their condition of mortality man lacks the sensibility of the highest and purest wisdom, the sense which should enable him to feel the gravity of the wickedness in the first act of disobedience.

Luther was singing from the same hymn sheet:

Since God is a just Judge, we must love and laud his justice and thus rejoice in God even when he miserably destroys the wicked in body and soul; for in all this his high and inexpressible justice shines forth. And so even Hell, no less than Heaven, is full of God and the highest good. For the justice of God is God himself; and God is the highest good. Therefore even as his mercy, so his justice or judgement, must be loved, praised, and glorified above all things.

Is your universalism big enough to include the devil and his angels?

2011-04-04T13:12:00.000+01:00

If you lean toward universalism, because you are so compassionate, just how tender-hearted are you? Will you extend salvation beyond the worst infidels in the human race? Is Satan himself doomed to be saved?

That is the question that Augustine asked of Origen and those like him:

I must now, I see, enter the lists of amicable controversy with those tender-hearted Christians who decline to believe that any, or that all of those whom the infallibly just Judge may pronounce worthy of the punishment of hell, shall suffer eternally, and who suppose that they shall be delivered after a fixed term of punishment, longer or shorter according to the amount of each man’s sin.

In respect of this matter, Origen was even more indulgent; for he believed that even the devil himself and his angels, after suffering those more severe and prolonged pains which their sins deserved, should be delivered from their torments, and associated with the holy angels.

But the Church, not without reason, condemned him for this and other errors, especially for his theory of the ceaseless alternation of happiness and misery, and the interminable transitions from the one state to the other at fixed periods of ages; for in this theory he lost even the credit of being merciful, by allotting to the saints real miseries for the expiation of their sins, and false happiness, which brought them no
true and secure joy, that is, no fearless assurance of eternal blessedness.

Very different, however, is the error we speak of, which is dictated by the tenderness of these Christians who suppose that the sufferings of those who are condemned in the judgment will be temporary, while the blessedness of all who are sooner or later set free will be eternal. Which opinion, if it is good and true because it is merciful, will be so much the better and truer in proportion as it becomes more merciful.

Let,then, this fountain of mercy be extended, and flow forth even to the lost angels, and let them also be set free, at least after as many and long ages as seem fit! Why does this stream of mercy flow to all the human race, and dry up as soon as it reaches the angelic? And yet they dare not extend their pity further, and propose the deliverance of the devil himself. Or if any one is bold enough to do so, he does indeed put to shame their charity, but is himself convicted of error that is more unsightly, and a wresting of God’s truth that is more perverse, in proportion as his clemency of sentiment seems to be greater.

Augustine, De Civitas Dei, 21:17

Lloyd-Jones diaries to be published

2011-04-01T01:31:00.000+01:00

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones was one of the most famous preachers of the twentieth century. In addition to the many published works of his still available, most notably his expository series on Ephesians and Romans, his previously unpublished diaries will soon become available in three volumes.

The first two volumes cover his early years as the minister at Westminster Chapel after the retirement of Campbell Morgan, and continue up until the late 1950s. The third volume, due to published first, covers the crucial controversial years of the 1960s and early 1970s and carries his reflections on the parting of the ways with J. I. Packer and the public controversy with John Stott.

This third volume is being transcribed and should be available twelve months from now. No publisher has been announced but I understand that several large evangelical publishing houses are interested in this project. They would be fools not to be.

A full cup of blessing put to my lips

2011-03-31T17:44:00.001+01:00

"It is not great talents God blesses
so much as great likeness to Jesus.

A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God."

Robert Murray M'Cheyne

Poignant words from the 19th Century Scottish preacher Andrew Bonar written on the 29th May 1869:

Three pictures in my study often rebuke me -- [those] of Robert M'Cheyne , William Burns, and John Milne; and at times the photograph of Samuel Rutherford's tomb suggests to me what coldness of love is in my heart compared with such a man. And the little I have learned from affliction is a constant grief to me.

I got a very awful view of my long life's sinfulness in the evening. I seemed to myself to be one standing amid mercies of every kind, but specially divine grace. The Spirit has been, since my conversion forty years ago, continually putting to my lips full cups of blessing, and I have done little else than just take a few drops and then let the cup pass by!

The Bible day by day; precious sermons; great books of truth; the lives of holy and happy saints; events of providence; all, all these, and my own preaching and the ordinances in which I take part; these, these have each been a full cup of blessing put to my lips; but scarcely ever have I done more than merely taken a sip.

O what have I lost! O what have I lost! My heart sinks within me. I can only once again put my hand on the head of the slain Lamb, and look up.

Andrew A. Bonar, Diary & Letters, p. 279

It's the Exegesis Stupid: Heresy and the Interpretation of Scripture

2011-03-25T08:32:00.001Z

"When it is said that Christ died for our sins,

it means that He bore their punishment."

George Smeaton

If we are to think clearly about heresies we must come to terms with that fact that although some movements explicitly place a rival locus of authority alongside or above Scripture (e.g. Tradition, The Book of Mormon, reason, mystical experiences and revelations) many heresies simply involve the incorrect handling of Scripture.

In doing so these rival authorities may well arbitrate on what Scripture can and cannot teach. The interpretation of Scripture is thereby harmonized with Tradition (written or unwritten), reason, the teaching of The Book of Mormon, or with new revelations from God.

Rather than arising from a true interpretation of Scripture, many heresies impose upon the text of Scripture artificial and unwarranted explanations. At times this problem is exacerbated by the presence of translations that exclude historic orthodox doctrines on dogmatic grounds (e.g. the New World Translation used by Jehovah's Witnesses).

This kind of sleight of hand by translators is, however, a minority report in the story of heresies. It is far more common for the words of Scripture to be given novel interpretations that radically diverge from their actual meaning.

This use of sound words to support unsound ideas is not an exclusively post-canonical phenomenon. One encounters this semantic confusion in 2 Timothy 2:17-18 where Hymenaeus and Alexander believe, teach and confess the doctrine of the resurrection, but not the same resurrection that the Apostle Paul believes, teaches and confesses. The same holds true in the Johannine letters where faith in the real Christ (God incarnate, man divine) is insisted upon by John, and where the false Christs, who retain the right title but not the reality, are exposed and rejected.

The stable nature of the text of Scripture and its individual units (e.g. God, Christ, the Spirit, sin, justification and so on) do not need to be deleted by heretics and other false teachers in order to legitimise their claims. The verses and words of Scripture become carriers of doctrines imposed upon them.

This is why the conflict between truth and error will primarily focus on the exegesis and interpretation of Scripture, dealing with the individual words of Scripture and their location within the units of thought where they are found, the books that they are a part of, the type of literature that they belong to, wider matters of their canonical place, and finally of their harmony with the whole counsel of God. It's the exegesis stupid.

As an example of this it is a plain fact of history that the seventeenth century Socinians who violently denied the penal substitutionary atoning work of Christ did not argue on textual grounds that the phrase 'Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures' in 1 Cor. 15:3 was an interpolation (n.b. in the debates between gender egalitarians and complementarians one of the key texts, 1 Corinthians 15:34-35, is not considered to be part of the original by NT scholar Gordon Fee ).

The Socinians ascribed to this verse a meaning totally at odds with the interpretation that understands its plain meaning to be that as a substitute, the sinless Christ bore the penalty due to his sinful people. In place of this explanation the Socinians claimed that the preposition used by Paul denoted the final and not the meritorious cause of Christ's death. That is to say, 'Christ died for our sins' means that Christ died to remove future sin. The aim of his death was to abolish our future sins, and not to suffer vicariously the punishment for the guilt of our sins.

The Socinian and evangelical interpretations of this text are so widely different as to put before us radically incompatible explanations of the nature of Christ's death, and perceptions of the relationship between his death and our sin. When we think of what it means for Christ to be the Saviour from sin we are no longer on the same page.

Not only do we have divergent and incompatible views of Christ's work but we also have markedly differing views of what it means to have faith in Christ crucified. You cannot alter the doctrine of his cross work without at the same time changing the nature of the subjective response on our part to him.

The Socinians denied the deity of Christ as well as his atoning work. Even if they had affirmed it, as some do who also deny penal substitution, there would still be such a difference between the two conceptions of the saving work of Christ that they would be as alike as night and day.

Driving this Socinian exegesis, as the nineteenth century NT scholar George Smeaton noted, was not an impartial handling of Greek prepositions but a hermeneutic that was fundamentally unwilling to accept that any text in Scripture taught the satisfaction doctrine of the atonement:

To show, however, that it is not simply a matter of interpretation with them, but a forgone conclusion, it may be mentioned that Socinus explicity declared, that were the doctrine of vicarious sin-bearing, and the punishment of one for the sins of another, mentioned not once, but many times in Scripture, he would not believe it; because it could not be.

The open declaration is candid at least; but it is an appeal to reason, not to revelation, and an admission that Scripture is not made the ultimate judge, but only to be interpreted as seems best suited to confirm or dress out a preconceived hypothesis.

The Apostles' Doctrine of the Atonement, p. 208

Dear Church, imagine there's no Hell, it's easy if you try...

2011-03-23T12:17:00.000Z

What the Church believes, teaches and confesses on the basis of the Word of God is constantly under pressure from forces that would alter the substance of that confession.

The external pressure comes from a world that finds Christian truth claims morally and intellectually unpalatable and coercive.

The internal pressure comes from heretics speaking twisted things. These disfigured beliefs, misshapen orthodoxies, sometimes stem from an attempt to Christianize ideas borrowed from elsewhere. So often this baptizing of human wisdom is then coupled with a faulty exegesis of particular texts and an inadequate synthesis of the entire teaching of Scripture on that particular point.

Faulty but plausible exposition and theologizing helps error gain traction, but we will never come to grips with it unless we ask serious questions about the rectitude of the heart.

And so it is when we come to the doctrine of Hell.

The following is taken from the foreword by David F. Wells to Robert Peterson's excellent work Hell on Trial: The Case for Eternal Punishment:

It is always important for us to discern why, at a particular time, certain issues come to the fore and engage the church's attention. Usually the reason for this resolves itself into a choice between two options.

Either the issue arises from within the church, as heretical deviations make their way through its life, leaving trouble and confusion in their wake, or the issue arises from without, as the surrounding culture intrudes worldly expectations and appetites upon the church, robbing it of its vision and conviction.

And there is little doubt in my mind that in the case before us, the uniqueness of Christian faith and the reality of God's abiding judgement upon unbelief, it is our modernized and secularized culture that is principally unsettling the church.

It is, admittedly, difficult to show beyond a shadow of a doubt that the blurring of the edges of faith that is happening within the church today is being fed by these cultural attitudes. But the awkward fact is that the church, for nineteen hundred years, has believed in the uniqueness of Christ, the truth of the Word, and the necessity of God's judgement on the impenitent; and we have to ask why, in the late twentieth century, some or all of these beliefs now seem to have become so unbelievable.

Is it that new exegetical discoveries now cast doubt upon what the church has always believed? Are there new archaeological finds? Is it that the church has simply misread the Bible and done so consistently over so long a period of time?

No, these truths today have become awkward and disconcerting to hold not because of new light from the Bible but because of new darkness from the culture.

Call it a Comeback: Evangelicals, Liberals, and the Problem of Hell

2011-03-16T11:54:00.003Z

In his 1971 IFES addresses on "What is an Evangelical?" Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones referred to the tendency of denominations to so lose their way that they end up becoming institutions whose beliefs, values, and practices run counter to the convictions and vision of their founders. Lloyd-Jones summed it up in the epigrammatical words of Dean Inge, "institutions tend to produce their opposite."

At first blush the thought that evangelicalism could prove itself capable of reproducing, under different circumstances, the virulant strains of liberal theology seems, frankly, implausible. How could those committed to the authority of Scripture and the supernatural Christ of the Bible descend into a world where long held dogmas were routinely thrown overboard?

Part of the answer is in understanding liberalism as a mood, and a mindset, as well as a particular set of denials. Another part of the answer lies in the tension evangelicals constantly feel when they relate the "scandal of particularlity," all those non-negotiable hard edged truths of the Christian faith, to the desires, aspirations, and intellectual and moral boundaries of contemporary culture.

Liberals tried to advance the Christian faith by cutting themselves loose from the offensive doctrines of historic orthodoxy. They put forward an evangelistic strategy that attempted to assuage the emerging intellectual and moral rebellion of Europeans and Anglo-Americans on the run from God, a strategy that was doomed from the start.

They felt the same fears that haunt evangelicals every day: the fear of rejection, irrelevance, loss of influence, being pilloried as intellectual pygmies and dismissed as intolerant cranks. You cannot embrace the doctrines of original sin, judgement, the holiness of God, the authority of Scripture, the necessity of faith in Jesus Christ for salvation, and the eternal misery of the finally impenitent, without getting into trouble with the intelligentsia who act as guardians of morality in the modern world. They don't like and don't want the God of the Bible unless he accommodates himself to their ways and accepts their terms and conditions concerning what is true, good and beautiful.

If Kant baulked at the idea of substitionary atonement because it was an unthinkable idea for rational thoughtful people when he said that:

It is totally inconceivable, however, how a rational human being who knows himself to deserve punishment could seriously believe that he only has to believe the news of a satisfaction having been rendered for him, and (as the jurists say) accept it utiliter [for one's advantage], in order to regard his guilt as done away with...No thoughtful person can bring himself to this faith. (From Religion and Rational Theology, quoted in Michael Horton, The Christian Faith, p. 64, n. 81)

Whoever then will believe in eternal hell without submitting their reasoning and moral calculus to the authority of God as he has spoken in Scripture? Who will hold fast to these truths without the gracious regenerating, illuminating and teaching work of the Holy Spirit? The answer to both questions is no-one.

We will either revise the Scriptural doctrine of hell to make it more palatable and plausible, or else we will selectively dismiss it as a culture-bound primitive belief that we have grown out of. Both are live options for contemporary evangelicals who wish to revive the theological options set out by the older liberals. Either way you can call it a comeback.

For an in depth take on this as it relates to the doctrine of hell you should read the following posts by Al Mohler:

We have seen all this before: Rob Bell and the (Re) Emergence of Liberal Theology

Air Conditioning Hell: How Liberalism Happens

It is also well worth watching Martin Bashir's interview with Rob Bell

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For more on evanglicals following the path of Protestant liberals see:

"Liberalism: A warning from history" (Banner of Truth online article)

"The Emerging Church and the Cultural Captivity of the Gospel" (Affinity online article adapted from the chapter in Reforming or Conforming? Post-Conservative Evangelicals and the Emerging Church)

Are you sure that you want to be a theologian?

2011-03-12T00:43:00.001Z

It is all too easy for our interest in theology to be little more than a love of intellectualism applied to the being of God.

It is all too easy for that interest to show itself in a display of knowledge and argument about the relationship between various doctrines and ideas.

It is all too easy to play the part of the learned philosophic thinker even when using the grammar naturally suited to the humbled believer.

It is all too easy to transplant theology from the rich soil of thinking and living before God, alongside his people and under Christ's cross, and to try and make it grow in an environment free not only from sunshine and rain, but also from storms, and darkness and frost.

This crucial point is well made by Mike Horton:

Luther wrote, "It is by living, no--more--by dying and being damned to hell that one becomes a theologian, not by knowing, reading or speculating." We learn on the road, as pilgrims making our way to the City of God through the trials, burdens, questions and fears of our own hearts as well as the world around us.

We learn truly of God's providence as we suffer, of God's forgiveness in our sins, of the resurrection of the dead as we lie dying.

Luther's poignant but hyperbolic statement does not mean that we do not need to read or study, but that even as we do this, it is more like looking for urgently needed rescue than contemplating urgent truths.

We do theology on our knees, calling on the name of our Redeemer. Yet precisely because our God is so great, our situation so dire, and our salvation so full and free, theology is indispensable to piety.

The Christian Faith, p. 111

The heart of sophisticated unbelief

2011-03-11T14:03:00.000Z

I'm reading through Mike Horton's stimulating new tome The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims On the Way (a mere 990 pages if one chops off the glossary and indices). There is a fascinating footnote (p. 64, n.81, to be precise) with some representative extracts from Immanuel Kant.

Note the following from Religion and Rational Theology:

It is totally inconceivable, however, how a rational human being who knows himself to deserve punishment could seriously believe that he only has to believe the news of a satisfaction having been rendered for him, and (as the jurists say) accept it utiliter [for one's advantage], in order to regard his guilt as done away with...No thoughtful person can bring himself to this faith.

That is Enlightenment man showing incredulity toward the atonement.

What lays at the very heart of sophisticated unbelief?

An attempt to deny the claims of God. The exclusion of God's assessment of our condition by nature and as a result of sin, the silencing of the voice from heaven in favour of our own meditations on our nature, identity and capacities. The declaration that man and not the living God will have the final say as to what is right, true and good.

At the epistemic level Kant located himself on the side of the serpent. The thoughtful and rational person, in Kant's vision, is too good to need saving, and certainly too thoughtful to flee to Christ and his cross for refuge, even if he is deserving of punishment. Instead of bowing his head before the claims of the Heavenly King we are confronted with a resistance at every turn against the external pressure of God's revelation.

Horton sums it up perfectly:

Kant, therefore, saw with great clarity the correlation between one's presuppositions about the human predicament and religious epistemology. None of the Enlightenment figures wanted knowledge for invoking the name of God (i.e., the gospel), because they did not believe they needed to be saved. (p. 110)

The truth of hell should fill us with traumatic awe

2011-03-09T15:39:00.007Z

Twenty years ago the veteran evangelical theologian J. I. Packer gave an address on "Hell and Human Destiny" in Cardiff. Packer set out the biblical teaching on hell and responded to the annihilationist teaching of John Stott as well as several other prominent evangelical Anglicans. I heartily recommend that you listen to it.

One of the most helpful aspects of the address, given Rob Bell's explanation of the meaning of aionos, is that Packer discusses the meaning of the word at length and comments on its use in several NT texts.

The audio is available for download here

One of the most frequently read posts on this blog is an article of mine published by the Evangelical Magazine, "Hell: Separation from God's Presence?"

A few years I interviewed Robert Peterson of Covenant Seminary, who has written so helpfully on the doctrine of hell. Here is an extract from the interview:

Why has there been a willingness by some evangelicals in the last one hundred years or so to accept and embrace annihilationalism?

Though some annihilationists insist that the Bible alone has motivated their rejection of the historic doctrine, others admit that emotional considerations have played a part. Without judging the motives of individuals, my opinion is that the intellectual and emotional climate of our times has more to do with the move away from some historic doctrines, including that of hell, than many realize.

In an increasingly pluralistic culture, it is politically incorrect to hold that people who do not trust Christ as Lord and Savior, will suffer everlasting torment in body and soul. But that is exactly what the Bible teaches. (For a recent defense of exclusivism, the view that one must hear and believe the gospel of Christ in this life to be saved, see, C. W. Morgan and R. A. Peterson, Faith Comes by Hearing: A Response to Inclusivism (InterVarsity, 2008.)

Perhaps the candid response of one employee of an Evangelical publisher, when asked what she thought of a book featuring a debate between traditionalism and annihilationism, reflects the default mode of many: “I certainly hope that annihilationism is true!” It is not our place to hope that certain things are true with reference to the things of God. It is our place to humbly receive the Word that God has given. That means restraining our curiosity where the Word is silent. And that means believing and obeying God’s truth even if we don’t like it.

Two orthodox doctrines that became immediate targets for “liberated” human reason in the Enlightenment—original sin and eternal conscious punishment for the lost—are not my favorites. But the Word of God teaches them and so I am obligated to receive them as true and to live accordingly.

I am afraid that too many people today reach conclusions as to what they believe concerning the Christian faith on the basis of their feelings and desires rather than the teaching of Scripture. As J. I. Packer remarked some years ago, “If you want to see folk damned something is wrong with you!” Of course this is true, but Packer went on to say that some of God’s truth is hard and one such truth is the Bible’s teaching concerning eternal hell.

It seems to me that the hard words of D. A. Carson are correct: “Despite the sincerity of their motives, one wonders more than a little to what extent the growing popularity of various forms of annihilationism and conditional immortality are a reflection of this age of pluralism. It is getting harder and harder to be faithful to the ‘hard lines’ of Scripture” (The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism [Zondervan, 1996], 536.). But the Lord requires nothing less of us than, by his grace, to be faithful.

In your experience what has been the status of the doctrine of hell among church members and in the thinking of those training to be pastors?
I have been active in local evangelical churches for forty years and in the training of pastors for thirty. Unfortunately, in my experience, the doctrine of hell has been neglected among church members and even in the thinking of those training to be pastors.

The words of Lesslie Newbigin are truer today than when he penned them in 1994: “It is one of the weaknesses of a great deal of contemporary Christianity that we do not speak of the last judgment and of the possibility of being finally lost” (“Confessing Christ in a Multi-Religion Society,” Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 12 [1994]: 130–31, quoted in Carson, The Gagging of God, 536).

Part of the blame should be placed at the feet of evangelical pastors, whom surveys show have been slow to teach and preach what the Bible says about hell. My study of hell in the mid-1990’s brought me to repentance because I was personally guilty of such neglect.

My experience has been that if we can bring hell to evangelicals’ minds and hearts, if we can move it from being a passive to an active doctrine, then they will begin to pray about their lost friends and loved ones as never before. That in turn motivates them to share the gospel as the Holy Spirit leads. And that produces fruit in terms of spiritual growth in the lives of the evangelists and salvation for some of those evangelized.

How should the doctrine of hell be preached?

It should be preached by pastors who have a deep sense of Christ’s redeeming them from hell (see Sinclair B. Ferguson, “Pastoral Theology: The Preacher and Hell,” in Hell under Fire, 219–37). Such pastors must prayerfully, lovingly, and faithfully share the message of Jesus, the Redeemer of the world, and his apostles that those who die in their sins will suffer “eternal punishment” (Matt. 25:46), even “the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might” (2 Thess. 1:9).

At times I have found it impossible not to weep as I speak of Christ suffering the pains of hell, of drinking the cup of God’s wrath for us, so that we do not have to do so. The Bible’s message of hell is a topic worthy of study, but in addition, it has to be something that moves us to action—to repentance, when we consider what our sins deserve; to prayer, out of compassion for the lost; to worship, when we consider what Christ endured to redeem us; and certainly, to witness, when we desire for others to know our great God and Savior.

Doomed to be Saved: The Problem of Universalism Today

2011-03-09T12:06:00.000Z

From J. I. Packer:

If all people are, in the title of a 19th Century tract, 'Doomed to be Saved', then it follows that the decisiveness of decisions made in this life, and the urgency of evangelism here in this life, are undermined. Other ways of loving your neighbour here in this life may now be considered as perhaps more important than seeking to win him or her to Christ. And it is no accident that keenness on the social gospel, so-called, and universalist theology have gone hand in hand. (p. 171)

This is a doctrine of salvation through, and out of, the state which the New Testament refers to in one place as 'perdition', in another place as 'eternal destruction', and in another as 'eternal punishment'. It is an unqualified and unlimited optimism of grace. Sin is a reality, hell is a reality: but God's grace is going to triumph in the end. (p. 176)

Collected Shorter Writings Vol. 1

Rob Bell, Hell, and the wisdom of Augustine

2011-03-09T10:04:00.001Z

A couple of years ago I was chatting to a friend about the differences between online responses to theological debates and those found in print. We were discussing the mud flung by N. T. Wright at the authors of Pierced For Our Transgressions. By the time printed journals and evangelical newspapers had offered their comments and observations on that particular disturbance in the Force, the unrest about it in the blogosphere had well and truly come to an end.

Now it is Rob Bell's turn to trigger the sound of the air raid warning in much the same way as Steve Chalke did over penal substitution a few years back. The doctrine under scrutiny has altered, but the reaction to it is very much along the same lines. Whenever an article of orthodox Christian belief is questioned, challenged, or denied, whenever a well established biblical truth is "exposed" by a well known evangelical author or speaker as if all along we have been hoodwinked about what Jesus really meant, there is a twin response made by those seeking to defend the truth.

To begin with, aberrations from orthodoxy call for careful analysis, exposition and refutation. The merits of an opposing position need to understood, fairly presented, and weighed. Parts of an author's proposal need to be considered in the whole context of that work, or in other words, read in context. This is all part and parcel of evaluation and refutation. In the case of Rob Bell's Love Wins we have little to go on until the book has been published, read and digested.

Until then, despite all the noise, we will not have much to engage with. What is he saying? How is he interpreting Scripture? What is he rejecting? What conclusions has he drawn? How will this affect the lives of those who embrace his teaching? Provocative trailers aside, what is the substance of his position? We will know much more when we have read the book. I have read a few chapters of Love Wins, but I would like to read them in the context of the whole book.

Doubtless too there needs to be a frank look at the quality of the arguments, and the exposition of Scripture and logic that underpins them, aside from the personality and media image that accompanies them. Bad and insubstantial arguments can travel a long way on the strength of the personality advocating them and not because of their inherent worth.

The second response offered when someone is moving away from orthodoxy and taking others with them, is the presentation of a clear statement, exposition, and defense of the particular truth under attack. In addition to blog posts, articles, lectures and sermons appearing on the doctrine of hell it would not surprise me to see some new books and multi-author volumes too. Not that we lack helpful resources.

For some time evangelicalism has adopted a culture of plausibility concerning the eternality and justice of hell, and has never come to terms with that fact that useful men can wreak havoc when they depart from sound doctrines. However, we have not lacked men who have kept their nerve and refuted the arguments of the deniers of eternal punishment.

Fresh attacks on old truths, provided that they are of sufficient weight, do present us with an opportunity to look at the roots of a doctrine and our own precision and nuance in stating it. We can always do a better job of articulating the truth, especially when our contemporary popular expositions of it are connected with the confessional and theological heritage of the church.

Finally, here is the wise counsel of Augustine on the benefits of heresies:

This predestination of the saints is certain and manifest; which necessity afterwards compelled me to defend more diligently and laboriously when I was discussing the subject in opposition to a certain new sect. For I have learned that every separate heresy introduces into the Church its peculiar questions, which call for a more diligent defence of the Holy Scripture, than if no necessity of defence well and the e had arisen.

For what was it that compelled me to defend, in that work of mine, with greater copiousness and fuller explanation those passages of the Scriptures in which predestination is set before us? What, but the starting up of the Pelagians, who say that the grace of God is given to us according as we render ourselves deserving of it?

From On the Blessing of Perseverance, quoted by Calvin in De Aeterna Predestinatione Dei (1552). The English translation by Henry Cole is found in Reformed Cofessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation Volume 1: 1523-1552 (compiled by James T. Dennison, Jr.), p. 706-7

The real absence of Jesus from the pages of the Old Testament

2011-02-22T15:46:00.001Z

Now I want to remind you, although you fully knew it,

that Jesus,

who saved a people out of the land of Egypt,

afterward destroyed those who did not believe.

Jude 5 (ESV)

Most contemporary evangelicals adopt an approach to the doctrine of God in the Old Testament that is functionally modalist, or unitarian. God is regarded as a person, with only a vague inkling, insufficient for its time, that within the Godhead there is a plurality of three distinct divine persons.

The Word of God and the Wisdom of God are taken to be personifications rather than persons, and the descriptions of the Spirit in personal terms (being grieved, instructing, and giving rest, see Neh. 9:20; Isa. 63:10, 14) are not given sufficient attention, even though they are every bit as important in establishing the personal nature and agency of the Spirit as the Pauline texts in 1 Cor. 2:13 and Eph. 4:30. It is surely undeniable that in the Old Testament the work of the Spirit is the work of a divine person.

In the great Isaianic prophecies concerning the Messiah, who is he anointed with (11:1-3)? Who sends the Messiah and the Spirit (42:1; 48:16; 61:1)? Can we afford to think of this Spirit anointing in vague or impersonal terms when Isaiah also tells us that the Spirit give the people rest and that they grieved him in the wilderness (63:10-14)?

Is it not that case that Messianic Servant is described in terms reserved for deity ("high and lifted up" 52:13, see the use of this phrase in 6:1 and 57:15) whilst at the same time Isaiah tells us of his true and lowly humanity (49:1-7; 52:12-14; 53:2, 5, 9, 11 etc.)?

It may be more helpful to think of these great Isaianic prophecies as movie trailers for the gospels, giving us glimpses ahead of the release date, of the words and works of the principal actors in the drama of redemption. The prophets were not telling a cryptic tale about the denouement of God's dealings with Israel, they were looking for the Christ, anointed with the Spirit and sent by God. They had the privilege of projecting onto the screen the snapshots of revelation that foresignified Christ to come.

On the subject of Christ in the Old Testament here, again, is Irenaeus in Against Heresies:

For he who has brought in the end [of the law] has himself also brought in the beginning; and it is he who does himself say to Moses, "I have surely seen the affliction of my people which is in Egypt, and I have come down to deliver them;" it being customary from the beginning with the Word of God to ascend and descend for the purpose of saving those who were in afflication. (4.12.4)

But when he terms the disciples "the friends of God," he plainly declares himself to be the Word of God, whom Abraham also followed voluntarily and under no compulsion, because of the noble nature of his faith, and so became "the friend of God" [Jas. 2:23]. But the Word of God did not accept of the friendship of Abraham, as though he stood in need of it, for he was perfect from the beginning ("Before Abraham was," he says, "I am"), but that he in his goodness might bestow eternal life upon Abraham himself, inasmuch as the friendship of God imparts immortality to those who embrace it." (4.13.4)

In this manner, therefore, did they also see the Son of God as a man conversant with men, while they prophesied what was to happen, saying that he who was not come as yet was present, proclaiming also the impassible as subject to suffering, and declaring that he who was then in heaven had descended into the dust of death. (4.20.8)

And the Word spake to Moses, appearing before him "just as one might speak to his friend." (4.20.9)

However, it was not by means of visions alone which were seen, and words which were proclaimed, but also in actual works, that he was beheld by the prophets, in order that through them he might prefigure and and show forth future events beforehand. (4.20.12)

The Gospel Coalition and Irenaeus on Christ in the OT (1)

2011-02-17T19:16:00.000Z

Over at the Gospel Coalition site there is an essential starter kit for preaching Christ from the OT made up of resources by contemporary and modern authors. It is worthwhile to turn back the clock to the second century and to look at Irenaeus of Lyon's essential starter kit for knowing Christ in the OT as he wrestled with the Gnostic heretics.

Throughout the following extracts from Irenaeus two foundational points are being made.

1. With regard to revelation, it is impossible to know God aright unless he is revealed to us in and by the Son. This foundational truth is not something that holds true from the time of the incarnation.

2. The Son appears personally in the OT to reveal God, to reveal the gospel beforehand through the prophets, to be the object of faith, and to rescue his people.

As far as Irenaeus was concerned the OT patriarchs could not have penned a volume with the title The Jesus We Never Knew.

Here are some extracts from his magisterial work Against Heresies (from whence this blog derives its title):

Here [Psalm 110:1] represents to us the Father addressing the Son; he who gave him the inheritance of the heathen, and subjected to his all his enemies. Since, therefore, the Father is truly Lord, and the Son truly Lord, the Holy Spirit has fitly designated them by the title of Lord.

And again, referring to the destruction of the Sodomites, the Scripture says, "Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah fire and brimstone from the LORD out of heaven" [Gen. 19:24]. For it here points out that the Son, who had been talking with Abraham, had received power to judge the Sodomites for their wickedness.

And this does declare the same truth [Psalm 45:6-7]...For the Spirit designates both of them by the name of God--both him who is anointed as Son, and him who does anoint, that is, the Father. (Book 3: Ch. 6: Sect. 1)

And again, when the Son speaks to Moses, He says, "I am come down to deliver this people" [Ex. 3:14]. For it is he who descended and ascended for the salvation of men. Therefore God has been declared through the Son, who is in the Father, and has the Father in himself. (3:6:2)

On John the Baptist's relationship to Christ and the OT prophets he wrote:

For all the other prophets preached the advent of the paternal Light, and desired to be worthy of seeing him whom they preached; but John did both announce [the advent] beforehand, in a like manner as did the others, and actually saw him when he came, and pointed him out, and persuaded many to believe on him, so that he did himself hold the place of both prophet and apostle. (3:11:3)

On the personal appearance of Christ in the OT Irenaeus says the following:

And the Word of God himself used to converse with the ante-Mosaic patriarchs, in accordance with his divinity and glory; but for those under the law he instituted a sacerdotal and liturgical service. (3:11:8)

Christ himself, therefore, together with the Father, is the God of the living, who spake to Moses, and who was also manifested to the fathers. (4:5:2)

[Abraham]...followed the Word of God, walking as a pilgrim with the Word, that he might [afterwards] have his abode with the Word. (4:5:2)

Since, therefore, Abraham was a prophet, and saw in the Spirit the day of the Lord's coming, and the dispensation of his suffering, through whom both he himself and all who, following the example of his faith, trust in God, should be saved, he rejoiced exceedingly. The Lord, therefore, was not unknown to Abraham, whose day he desired to see; nor again was the Lord's Father, for he had learned from the Word of the Lord, and believed him. (4:5:5)

"No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; nor the Father, save the Son, and those to whom the Son shall reveal him" [Matt. 11:27]. For "shall reveal" was not said with reference to the future alone, as if then [only] the Word had begun to manifest the Father when he was born of Mary, but it applies indifferently throughout all time. (4:6:7)

With reference to John 8:56 he wrote:

For not alone upon Abraham's account did he say these things, but also that he might point out how all who have known God from the beginning, and have foretold the advent of Christ, have received the revelation from the Son himself; who also in the last times was made visible and passible... (4:7:2)

And here are some more extracts:

Therefore have the Jews departed from God, in not receiving the Word, by imagining that they could know the Father [apart] by himself, without the Word, that is, without the Son; they being ignorant of that God who spake in human shape to Abraham, and again to Moses, saying "I have surely seen the affliction of my people in Egypt, and I have come down to deliver them" [Exodus 3:7-8]. (4:7:4)

"For if you had believed Moses, you would also have believed me; for he wrote of me" [John 5:39-40] [saying this] no doubt, because the Son of God is implanted everywhere throughout his writings: at one time, indeed, speaking with Abraham, when about to eat with him; at another time with Noah, giving him the dimensions [of the ark]; at another, inquiring after Adam; at another, bringing down judgement upon the Sodomites; and again, when he became visible, and directs Jacob on his journey, and speaks with Moses from the bush. And it would be endless to recount [the occasions] upon which the Son of God is shown forth by Moses. [4:10:1]

Family fun with John Calvin

2011-02-15T16:26:00.001Z

I discovered today, whilst reading a very popular book on the atonement (it's on page 170), that James Arminius was in fact the son-in-law of John Calvin. I also discovered that Theodore Beza was Calvin's son-in-law too.

Just imagine the fun the three of them must have had debating limited atonement. I bet they teased him a lot, "Go on old boy tell us what you really think, stop messing about with all that ambiguous use of 'the world', and 'all'." But I am sure that John just chuckled to himself and said "Wouldn't it be funny if several centuries from now people debated what I really thought about the matter."

Taking an anachronistic approach to questions of historical theology really isn't that funny. But claiming that Arminius and Beza married Calvin's daughters (not that he had any) is frankly absurd. I don't think that there was much by way of checking sources on those two claims.

An uneasy bed for a dying man's conscience

2011-02-15T11:48:00.000Z

In his letter vindicating 'The Doctrine of Justification from the Unjust Charge of Antinomianism', Robert Traill put forward four points tho recommend the Reformed doctrine of justification. Consider what he had to say in his third point about it's suitability to the frame of mind necessary when we approach God:

Men may think and talk boldly of inherent righteousness, and of its worth and value; of good works, and frames and dispositions: but when men present themselves before the Lord, and have any discoveries of his glory, all things in themselves will disappear, and be looked upon as nothing.

No man can stand before this holy Lord God, with any peace and comfort, unless he have God himself to stay upon. His grace and mercy in Jesus Christ, can only preserve a man from being consumed. Hence we see the difference betwixt mens (sic) frame in their disputes and doctrine about these points, and their own sense and pleadings with God in prayer. (p.269)

Traill's fourth recommendation is the litmus test of the death bed, that place where good works flee away and where a lifetime's sins of omission and commission are churned up in the memory. Traill's observations are not only helpful in putting forward the need to rest and rely on Christ alone but also in spelling out the tawdry and unstable alternatives:

Consider how it is with the most holy and eminent saints when dying. Did you ever see or hear any boasting of their works and performances? They may, and do own, to the praise of his grace, what they have been made to be, what they have helped to do or suffer for Christ's sake.

But when they draw near to the awful tribunal, what else is in their eye and heart, but only free grace, ransoming blood, and a well ordered covenant in Christ the Surety? They cannot bear to hear any make mention to them of their holiness, their own grace and attainments.

In a word, the doctrine of conditions, qualifications, and rectoral government, and the distribution of rewards and punishments, according to the new law of grace, will make an uneasy bed to a dying man's conscience; and will leave him in a very bad condition at present, and in dread of worse, when he is feeling, in his last agonies, that, the wages of sin is death, if he cannot by faith add, but the gift of God is eternal life, through Christ Jesus our Lord. (p. 270-1)

Theology at high altitude

2011-02-14T01:46:00.000Z

This post is a short addendum to the four previous ones on Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears' criticisms of the eternal generation of the Son (and procession of the Spirit). Compare their words with those of W. G. T Shedd written in 1887.

Driscoll and Breshears

The whole attempt to define the eternal relations in the immanent or ontological Trinity seems misguided...God has given us no revelation of the nature of their eternal relations. We should follow the command of the Bible: "The secret things belong to the LORD our God" and refuse to speculate...begotten unavoidably implies a beginning of the one begotten. That would certainly lend support to the the Arian heresy that the Son is a created being and not the Creator God.

For these reasons it is best to omit the creedal terms "begotten" and "proceeds" from our definition of the Trinity. Our authority is not in creeds but in Scripture. We stand with the universal Trinitarian definition of the church to confess that God is one God, eternally existing in three persons, Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. (Doctrine, p. 27-28)

The following from W. G. T. Shedd shows us, at the very least, that there is nothing new about the proposal being put forward in Doctrine:

In some sections of Christendom, it has been contended that the doctrine of the Trinity should be received without any attempt to establish it's rationality and intrinsic necessity. In this case, the tenets of eternal generation and procession have been regarded as going beyond the Scripture data, and if not positively rejected, have been thought to hinder rather than assist faith in three divine persons and one God.

But the history of opinions shows that such sections of the church have not proved to be the stongest defenders of the Scripture statement, nor the most successful in keeping clear of the Sabellian, Arian, or even Socinian departure from it.

"Introductory Essay" to Augustine's De Trinitate, in Philip Schaff [ed.], Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Vol. III, p. 3 (Emphasis added)

The chief of sinners

2011-02-12T03:44:00.000Z

Every believer's experience witnesses to this, that every one that believes on Jesus Christ, acts faith as the chief of sinners. Every man that sees himself rightly, thinks so of himself, and therein thinks not amiss. God only knows who is truly the greatest sinner, and every humbled sinner will think that he is the man.

Robert Traill, The Doctrine of Justification Vindicated, p. 262-3

We all preach justification by faith

2011-02-11T15:16:00.001Z

One of the most basic lessons we need to learn about doctrinal errors is that they so often involve mutually exclusive interpretations of the same biblical and theological vocabulary used by the orthodox. Before I illustrate this point it is worth teasing out some implications.

If a mutually exclusive interpretation of the word justification occurs, within the context of a shared ecclesiastical or para church basis of faith, then that body, organisation, institution or grouping has a verbal unity in appearance only.

There is no substantial agreement when parts of the whole mean different things by the set of words adopted as the standard for the whole. On the surface you think that you are looking at unity. But when you look more closely at what lies beneath you begin to realise that people really do mean very different things even when they have signed up to the same form of words.

An almost bizarre example of this doctrinal confusion is that of the Henry Sloane Coffin, pastor of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church and associate professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York:

In subscribing to the Westminster Confession of Faith Coffin did not believe that he was accepting the doctrines stated in the Confession. Rather, as he later maintained, "The formula [of subscription] means to me that under the supreme authority of Christ I receive the Confession as setting forth in seventeenth century thought and language the principle doctrines which have grown out of and foster the religious experience of protestant evangelical Christians, and which it is my privilege to teach in the best thought and speech at my command for those to whom I minister." (Longfield, The Presbyterian Controversy, p. 85-6)

When conflict arises between opposing parties because there are real differences of interpretation despite the presence of an agreed set of words the most helpful way forward can take two forms.

1. You have to ask whether a particular interpretation is a clear departure from the intended meaning of the framers of the original document.

2. It may be necessary to ask if the wording of the original document needs expanding, not to add any new truth, not to move on in a direction contrary to the original, but as the best way to clarify the true meaning of the original by identifying and rejecting new errors.

Extra words and a fuller confessional statement may be needed because the original words have been hijacked. As Augustine pointed out long ago, "It is underneath these few words, therefore, which are thus set in order, that most heretics have endeavoured to conceal their poisons" (A Treatise on Faith and the Creed, Chapter 1)

Whether the first or second of these routes is followed, and they are not mutually exclusive, they represent a desire to avoid the Humpty Dumpty syndrome:

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

One of the effects of this kind of confusion over words is that it can make controversies drag on for much longer than they need to. Another effect is to make the work of discernment by church members that much harder. They hear sound words and need to discern whether those sound words are being used in unsound ways.

Here is Traill's assessment of this issue with regard to justification by faith alone:

That we are justified by faith in Jesus Christ, is so plainly a New Testament truth, that no man pretending never so barely to the Christian name, denies it. The Papists own it; and the Socinians, and Arminians, and all own it. But how different are their senses of it?

And indeed you cannot more speedily and certainly judge of the spirit of a man, than by his real inward sense of the phrase, (if you could reach it), A sinner is justified by faith in Jesus Christ.

Some say, that faith in Jesus Christ justifies as it is a work...as if it came in the room of perfect obedience, required by the law. Some, that faith justifies, as it is informed and animated by charity. So the Papists who plainly confound justification and sanctification.

Some say, that faith justifies, as it is a fulfilling of the condition of the new covenant...they will have this faith to justify, as it hath a principle and fitness in it to dispose to sincere obedience.

The plain old Protestant doctrine is, that the place of faith in justification is only that of a hand or instrument, receiving the righteousness of Christ, for which only we are justified. So that though great scholars do often confound themselves and others, in their disputations about faith's justifying a sinner; every poor plain believer hath the marrow of this mystery feeding his heart; and he can readily tell you, that to be justified by faith, is to be justified by Christ's righteousness, apprehended by faith.

The Doctrine of Justification Vindicated, p. 259

Via media?

2011-02-11T13:32:00.001Z

A pearl of theological wisdom from Robert Traill (1642-1716):

Usually such men that are for middle ways in points of doctrine, have a greater kindness for that extreme they go half-way to, than for that which they go half-way from.

A Vindication of the Protestant Doctrine concerning Justification and of its Preachers and Professors from the Unjust Charge of Antinomianism, in a letter from the author to a minister in the country, p. 253

What is and isn't at stake in a theological street fight

2011-02-11T11:40:00.001Z

In a theological street fight we all know that what is at stake is the truth.

That is why those concerned to defend orthodoxy seek to make clear that there is a Truth War (MacArthur), No Place For Truth (Wells), that some views are Beyond the Bounds (Piper/Taylor/Helseth), and so on. Of course what is at stake is never, strictly speaking, the truth. God's truth is not vulnerable to the well meant or malicious assaults of those in error, it is simply impervious to attack. Even in the face of overwhelming numbers one can afford to say "contra mundum? -- so what?"

The reality of God, Christ, sin, salvation, heaven and hell are never affected by the denials and distortions of heretics, false teachers and the theologically clueless. What is affected is not the reality of these things but their perception and reception by those who in the face of truth ought to be humble receivers and not arbitrators of what is doctrinally acceptable. Ironically as much as those waving a long goodbye to orthodoxy often complain about conservatives playing the part of the doctrine police, that is in fact exactly what those in serious error are seeking to do.

Objectively the status of the truth never alters. It cannot be moved, shaken, disturbed or overthrown. Subjectively, in the minds of men, it will either be affirmed, believed, taught, proclaimed, defended, clarified and made the rich fuel of devotion, or else it will be denied, hated, misrepresented, slandered, attacked, and kicked around as if it were expendable.

Does this make a difference? Knowing that truth endures, despite the folly of it's detractors, makes a real pastoral difference. In the thick of controversy you can afford to whisper to yourself "Don't forget, the Lamb wins, the earth will be covered with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."

On this subject consider the wise words of Bruce Ware with which he opened his fine polemic book God's Lesser Glory:

Divine providence as a reality is ever steady, stable, steadfast, sure and strong. Would that this were true for divine providence the doctrine. Divine providence as a doctrine is in great turmoil. Theological earthquakes shake its foundation. This is no time for the weak-kneed and spineless to traverse its volatile terrain.

As goes the doctrine of divine providence, so go vast portions of our entire doctrine of God and with it our conception of God's glory. But again, do not fear. The glory of God as a reality is vast, boundless, infinite, splendour-filled and wondrous. As such, the glory that is God's alone is absolutely unshaken and undiminished by human proposals that would seek to make finite what is infinite, bounded what is boundless, and humanlike what is, eternally and uniquely, God's own.

Yet, our conception of the glory of God will be shaped largely by our understandings of his nature, his perfections, his sovereignty, his wisdom, his knowledge, his moral holiness and goodness, and through all of this his providence...while the turmoil over how best to formulate the doctrine of divine providence affects not a whit the actual greatness and glory of God (he is who he eternally is regardless of what anyone says of him!), this turmoil has an enormous impact on Christian thought and life. To get it wrong here is to create a thousand related problems, both theological and practical. (p. 13)

Choosing speakers well (part the first)

2011-02-10T15:37:00.000Z

This is a follow up to yesterday's tongue in cheek post about why it appears that there aren't that many good preachers in the former British colonies now known to all as the United States of America. Tongue in cheek because I know that there are plenty of good preachers, but that isn't necessarily reflected in the remarkably small pool of speakers from which Reformed conferences fish. In actual fact there are several pools, reflecting different shades and networks of the Reformed and Calvinistic world, and some speakers move more naturally than others from pool to pool.

At its best this does reflect the fact that whilst all word ministers are gifts of grace to the church we recognise that God raises up some men and ministries to become particular blessings to the whole church. These men may or may not be the ones invited to all the conferences, but it would be wrong to despise such gifts and to succumb to the tall poppy syndrome. Furthermore, not all ministers of the word have the gifts for such events, but some do and we benefit a great deal from God's work in them and through them.

At its worst it is hard to see how a celebrity preacher culture is any different to the myopic vision about Christian leaders grossly exhibited by the Corinthians. As the Puritan Richard Baxter once said "I am a pen in the hand of God, and what praise is due to a pen?" Here in old Blighty whilst there is often little risk of an over the top appreciation of conference speakers I do think that we have something to learn from some of our American cousins about open warm appreciation of preachers.

I have been in enough conference planning meetings to know that there are several factors when it comes to selecting speakers. No doubt there is the financial risk and fear of small numbers if we don't go for the big name who will draw a crowd. The fact of the matter is that many conferences can make decisions because of financial pressures. The logical long term effect of this is to reduce the pool of well known speakers even further and to perpetuate the idea that the already recognised big names are the only ones worth going for.

I also know that some conferences deliberately seek to give both opportunities to younger ministers and exposure to a wider audience, or to introduce some speakers known to the organisers to a new constituency. One of the blessings of the latter is the fostering of real catholicity. All of this is good. The problem lies in the fact that so often our choices are coloured by our own prejudices and preferences, our spiritual immaturity and climate, and we run the risk of feeding unworthy agendas and missing out on real blessings.

Whether we like it or not the danger of ubiquitous conferences, live streamed and available to download, is that a blessing can swiftly become a curse. I am glad to live in an age where online riches are so freely available, but the big name, big budget, big audience conference has fast become the main event. For all the antipathy Calvinists may feel about liturgical church calendars we have one of our own, the para-church conference circuit. Is that a fair point? Look at the coverage given to the matter in the blogosphere.

Besides which there are probably far too many conferences anyway, and far too many that subtly undermine local churches even if they say that their mission is to serve 'The Church'. A feat that is easy to do in the abstract but which bears almost no relation to honouring real churches apart from mega ones.

Justification and the Law of God

2011-02-09T16:09:00.000Z

What did Jesus obey? For whom did he obey it?

If you deny that law has any reference to Gentiles, are you not forced to conclude that Jesus neither kept it for their sake, nor is his obedience imputed to them for their justification.

All of which makes me wonder whether varies stripes of New Covenant theology have the capacity to unravel the doctrine of imputation.

Why aren't there many decent preachers in America?

2011-02-09T15:49:00.000Z

Can anyone answer that question?

I mean, it's a big country, but if you look at the Reformed conference line ups the preaching pool is pretty small because the same names appear all the time.

A Time to Blog: 12 Things that God is teaching me

2011-01-29T17:04:00.000Z

My God has a good and gracious purpose in all the pain and sorrow that I experience in this life.

1. He is teaching me to put less and less confidence in myself, in what flesh and blood and human wisdom can do

2. He is teaching me that here there is no continuing city and that I should seek the one that is to come whose Builder and Maker is God.

3. He is teaching me to live with a much longer term vision than I often do, a longer term vision that is frequently suffocated by my sinful desires and the pressing in of the technological and rebellious world on my internal life

4. He is teaching me that man should never live by listening to the evil whisperings of Satan, and that only the promises of the Word can drown out his lies

5. He is teaching me that all things come not by chance but by his Fatherly hand

6. He is teaching me that I have much to repent of

7. He is teaching me that without Jesus Christ I can do nothing

8. He is teaching me that he is gracious and compassionate, and that those being renewed in his image bear his likeness and imitate his ways

9. He is teaching me that in his great compassion he knows my frame and remembers that I am dust

10. He is teaching me that all that I have is really his and not mine, that he gives and he takes away, and that therefore I should bow my head before his sovereign greatness and worship him

11. He is teaching me that the faithful prayers of his people are his ordained means of lifting up my soul when I am downcast

12. He is teaching me that his grace is sufficient for me and that his power really is made perfect in weakness, even though I don't want to feel weak

And all these things he has been teaching me not while I have been sat at a desk, or in a lecture theatre, but while I have been watching the slow turning of the hands of a clock, when I have been staring into the dark in the early hours, and when I have been wrestling with my fears sat quietly by the side of a hospital bed.

Have I learned all these lessons?

Not yet

Thank you for praying for Kezia

2011-01-22T12:45:00.000Z

Nine days ago Kezia had a brain tumour removed. Today she is at home for the day. The photo was taken an hour ago. We hope that on Monday or Tuesday he will be discharged from Alder Hey. To those of you who read this blog and have prayed for her she says "thank you." The Lord is gracious and compassionate.

Kezia's operation

2011-01-20T09:30:00.001Z

You will never find Jesus so precious as when the world is one vast howling wilderness. Then He is like a rose blooming in the midst of the desolation,

--a rock rising above the storm.

Robert Murray M'Cheyne

As a family we are profoundly thankful that Kezia's surgery on Thursday 13th January has been successful. The tumour has been removed with only a tiny speck remaining on the hypothalamus (removing this would have done some damage and left Kezia with some further significant health problems).

At this stage no further treatment is required and there will be an MRI scan in three months. We also await further eye tests to assess whether the damage to her peripheral vision will have improved. As the tumour has caused significant damage to her pituitary gland and stalk Kezia is on daily medication to replace these hormones and will also need daily injections of growth hormone. There is also the matter of managing her diabetes insipidus (the other diabetes).

When I left the hospital yesterday it was hard to believe that she was up and walking around, full of good humour, and dressed in her own clothes just six days after major surgery. We are hopeful that she will return home much sooner than anticipated, indeed her surgeon is happy to send her home now but the endocrinologists have some more work to do.

Whilst this has been a severe trial for us as a family we continue to be deeply encouraged by the prayerfulness and practical care of God's people locally and internationally.

Exodus Reloaded

2010-12-24T08:35:00.000Z

From the archives...

You don’t usually need a TV guide to know what films are on over Christmas. Every year, without fail, there are some classic films that return to our screens. It just wouldn’t be Christmas without The Wizard of Oz, The Sound of Music, or It’s a Wonderful Life.

There are two seasonally shown films that strike a chord with the events recorded in the second chapter of Matthew’s gospel. They are The Great Escape and The Italian Job. The latter is that classic British movie with Michael Caine and Noel Coward, but starring three Mini Coopers. More recently another film with the same name, loosely based on the original, was released.

A remake rarely lives up to the original. That observation, however, does not hold true for Matthew chapter two. In fact we will miss Matthew’s point unless we see that the events surrounding the birth of Jesus are in fact a remake of Old Testament events that surpass the originals.

A lesson in history

The connections between the OT Matthew 1-2 are obvious if we take a bird’s eye view of these chapters. We start off with a lesson in history. Matthew shows us the fulfilment of a promise made to Abraham and the descent of the crown through the line of David (1:1-17). We need to know that Jesus is descended from this particular family, a royal family. Matthew tells us about the birth and infancy of Jesus in five sections. Each section has a passage from the OT that is being fulfilled. The sections are:

Matthew 1-2	OT passage
1:18-25	Isaiah 7:14 ‘all this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet’ (v22)
2:1-12	Micah 5:2 (2 Sam 5:2) ‘for this is what the prophet has written’ (v5)
2:13-15	Hosea 11:1 ‘and so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet’ (v15)
2:16-18	Jeremiah 31:15 ‘then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled’ (v17)
2:19-23	‘So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: “He will be called a Nazarene”.’ (v23)

With this overview in place we can focus in on some of the details.

The king who opposes God’s Son (Matt. 2:1-16)

When Matthew shows us what happened when the Magi met Herod we are witnessing a remake of the opening chapters of the book of Exodus.

The remake has some surprising reversals. For one thing the OT has consistently portrayed the magicians and wise men of the nations as the bad guys who always come second when they clash with God’s people. Witness the power encounter between the magicians of Pharaoh’s court and Moses and Aaron (Ex. 8:7,18). Fast forward to the time of Daniel and we see the same outcome (Dan. 2:1-16,25-28). Yet here in Matthew 2 the Magi have greater insight than the Jews. They are coming to worship the Christ. Herod, even with the knowledge he has of the Messiah’s birth, seeks to destroy him.

A further reversal of roles unfolds in Herod’s decree to slaughter all the male children in Bethlehem aged two and under (2:16). Whilst this may ring true to what we know of Herod’s character we are also meant to see in his attitude and actions an echo from the OT. Herod, king of the Jews, is playing the part of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. This takes us back to Exodus 1:15-22. Herod is doing what Pharaoh did in opposition to God and His people.

But there is more. Even though Matthew has five sections where the prophets, or the words of the OT are said to be fulfilled, these do not exhaust his OT references. Some of the connections are subtle. We have seen in the actions of Herod an echo of the actions of Pharaoh. We can also see a further reference behind the words in verses 19-20:

After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead’. So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel.

Compare Matthew’s account with the words of Exodus 4:19-21:

Now the LORD had said to Moses in Midian, ‘Go back to Egypt, for all the men who wanted to kill you are dead’. So Moses took his wife and sons, put them on a donkey and started back to Egypt. And he took the staff of God in his hand.

In the original it was Moses who had to flee Egypt and was later told to return. In the remake it is the land of Israel, not Egypt, that they have to flee from, and the land of Israel that they are eventually told to return to. Everything has been reversed. Israel has become Egypt, and Herod has become Pharaoh.

This is a shock and a warning. This is a sign of judgement on Israel. This is also a sign of things to come. We see here the pattern of rejection for Jesus who will deliver His people. Indeed Moses the redeemer was rejected by Israel and welcomed by the nations (Ex. 2:1-22; Acts 7:35) foreshadowing what would happen when the true Redeemer would come. This is also a sign of hope. God is safeguarding the Saviour, just as he did with Moses.

Hunting down heretics this Christmas

2010-12-23T23:27:00.001Z

I have acquired a helper. In fact I told Kezia that I was going to train our new puppy to hunt down heretics, to which she replied "What's a heretic?"

So you see, I'm not so obsessed with heretics that my children have learned the Heretical alphabet (A is for Arian, Anthropomorphite and Anabaptist, B is for...) and know their Ebionites from their Samosatians. The dog however is in training to track down anti-trinitarians of all descriptions, Nestorians and Eutychians.

Remember, a heretic is not for life but should be excommunicated after the second admonition.

Christmas had made the bitterest foes friends

2010-12-23T17:54:00.001Z

The following is an extract from a poignant letter written by Private Frederick W. Heath about the Christmas Armistice in 1914:

Jumping up onto the parapet, a few of us advanced to meet the on-coming Germans. Out went the hands and tightened in the grip of friendship. Christmas had made the bitterest foes friends.

Here was no desire to kill, but just the wish of a few simple soldiers (and no one is quite so simple as a soldier) that on Christmas Day, at any rate, the force of fire should cease. We gave each other cigarettes and exchanged all manner of things. We wrote our names and addresses on the field service postcards, and exchanged them for German ones. We cut the buttons off our coats and took in exchange the Imperial Arms of Germany.

But the gift of gifts was Christmas pudding. The sight of it made the Germans' eyes grow wide with hungry wonder, and at the first bite of it they were our friends for ever. Given a sufficient quantity of Christmas puddings, every German in the trenches before ours would have surrendered.

And so we stayed together for a while and talked, even though all the time there was a strained feeling of suspicion which rather spoilt this Christmas armistice. We could not help remembering that we were enemies, even though we had shaken hands. We dare not advance too near their trenches lest we saw too much, nor could the Germans come beyond the barbed wire which lay before ours. After we had chatted, we turned back to our respective trenches for breakfast.

All through the day no shot was fired, and all we did was talk to each other and make confessions which, perhaps, were truer at that curious moment than in the normal times of war.

You can read the whole thing in The Independent

We Three Kings

2010-12-23T17:27:00.000Z

From the archives

Matthew 1-2 tells the story of three kings.

These kings are not however the ones known in the West, from the eighth century on, as Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar. The visitors from the East were Magi, not kings. No, Matthew 1-2 tells the story of King David, King Herod and King Jesus. They are the three kings in the narrative.

King Herod may well be the king of Israel but he acts like Pharaoh king of Egypt. Joseph must flee Israel for Egypt, and later return there just as Moses did in Exodus 4. There is a great reversal theme in Matthew 2 as Israel and Egypt swap identities, and as we realise that Israel is a nation under judgment.

This reversal theme extends itself to the Magi. The wise men and magicians of the nations always come off badly in the Bible in comparison to God's people. Witness the court of Pharoah in Genesis 41 and the inability of the magicians to interpret his dream. It was God who gave Joseph the understanding of the dream. Fast forward to the contest between Moses, Aaron and the magicians, and the same story is told.

This unfavourable comparison continues with Daniel in Babylon. Again we see that God gives his people insight. The magicians, sorcerers and enchanters are unable to gain access to Nebuchadnezzar's undisclosed dream (Daniel 2:1-11). Daniel, however, seeks God and God, in his mercy, reveals the dream and the interpretation. No wonder that Daniel then confesses that to God belong wisdom and might, for:

he gives wisdom to the wise
and knowledge to those who have understanding;
he reveals deep and hidden things;
he knows what is in the darkness,
and the light dwells with him.

What does this have to do with Matthew 2 and the Magi? The situation has now been reversed. The pattern established in Scripture has been turned on its head. We find Gentile magicians behaving like Israelites, and Israelites behaving like Gentiles. The Magi have more insight, more wisdom, and they come to worship Christ the King.

Thou who wast rich beyond all splendour

2010-12-22T13:54:00.003Z

"His self emptying was not a single loss or bereavement,
but a growing poorer and poorer,

until at last nothing was left him
but a piece of ground where he could weep

and a cross whereon he could die."

Abraham Kuyper

Jesus is both God and man, having two natures in one person. Scripture emphasises this, in part, by telling us what he became, and in doing so also telling what he was before that. The Shorter Catechism helpfully expresses this truth in the twenty first question and answer (emphasis added):

Q. 21. Who is the Redeemer of God’s elect?
A. The only Redeemer of God’s elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who, being the eternal Son of God, became man, and so was, and continueth to be, God and man in two distinct natures, and one person, forever.

2 Corinthians 8:9; Phil. 2:7; and John 1:14 lie behind the words of Maxentius (below), and the first of these verses lies behind the anecdote about the Welsh nineteenth century preacher David Morgan:

We do not confound the diversity of natures, howbeit we believe not what you affirm, that Christ was made God; but we believe that God was made Christ. For he was not made rich when he was poor; but being rich, he was made poor, that he might make us rich.

He did not take the form of God when he was in the form of a servant; but being in the form of God, he took on him the form of a servant. In like manner, he was not made the Word when he was flesh; but being the Word, he was made flesh.

On 23rd December 1858, David Morgan ministered at Pen-llwyn and his preaching had a marked prophetic quality:

In the middle of his sermon he startled his audience by suddenly exclaiming, 'If any of you tonight deny the deity of the Son, I have nothing better to tell you than what Morgan Howell, Newport, shouted on Lampeter bridge, "Though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor. He became poor when He came to Bethlehem; tell me, when was He rich?"'

This remark was utterly irrelevant to the preacher's subject matter, and no one could conjecture whence it came, and wither it went. The mystery was solved in the after-meeting, for among the converts were three Unitarians...whose presence in the service was quite accidental, and certainly unknown to the preacher.

The tumour is benign

2010-12-21T18:57:00.001Z

We had a phonecall from Kezia's surgeon this afternoon to confirm that her tumour is benign.

We will return to Alder Hey on the 4th January for an MRI scan and a meeting with the surgeon to discuss the plan for the next step of sugery and treatment.

We are profoundly thankful and deeply touched that so many friends and churches have been praying for us around the UK and all over the world.

Kezia is fighting fit at the moment, eating heartily, talking constantly, and brimming over with energy. The improvement in her general health is remarkable. She has also adjusted very well to her daily regime of medication (tablets are easy to take when you can have them with Galaxy chocolate).

Christmas and the Providence of God

2010-12-20T14:11:00.000Z

Yesterday morning I preached from Ruth 1 on the time when Christmas seemed to hang by a thread and how God by his providence was providing, upholding, governing and directing people, nature, and history in order to bring his Son into the world.

We never preach in a vacuum. The personal context is always significant as well as the experiential context of the congregation.

You can download it here

When the riddles are not resolved

2010-12-17T13:59:00.000Z

God has called his children, this side of heaven, to live by faith and not by sight, to live looking for a city with enduring foundations, and to live by his promises and not by exhaustive explanations.

I found these reflections by Herman Bavinck, on the grace of God in the gospel and the providence of God in the world, really helpful:

In the case of the Christian, belief in God's providence is not a tenet of natural theology to which saving faith is later mechanically added. Instead, it is saving faith that for the first time prompts us to believe wholeheartedly in God's providence in the world, to see its significance, and to experience its consoling power...the Christian has witnessed God's special providence at work in the cross of Christ and experienced it in the forgiving and regenerating grace of God, which has come to one's own heart.

And from the vantage point of this new and certain experience in one's own life, the Christian believer now surveys the whole of existence and the entire world and discovers in all things, not chance or fate, but the leading of God's fatherly hand.

Special revelation is distinct from general revelation, and a saving faith in the person of Christ is different from a general belief in God's government in the world. It is above all by faith in Christ that believers are enabled -- in spite of the riddles that perplex them -- to cling to the conviction that the God who rules the world is the same loving and compassionate Father who in Christ forgave them all their sins, accepted them as his children, and will bequeath to them eternal blessedness.

In that case faith in God's providence is no illusion, but secure and certain; it rests on the revelation of God in Christ and carries within it the conviction that nature is subordinate and serviceable to grace, and the world [is likewise subject] to the kingdom of God.

Thus, through all its tears and suffering, it looks forward with joy to the future. Although the riddles are not resolved, faith in God's fatherly hand always again arises from the depths and even enables us to boast in afflictions.

Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 2: God and Creation, p. 594-5

To which I say, "Amen."

Why do they hate Aslan so? Polly Toynbee on the repugnancy of the atonement

2010-12-15T11:40:00.001Z

One from the archives:

The columnist Polly Toynbee wrote an article in The Guardian on 5th December 2005 with the rather acerbic title “Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion.”

I will spare you the full extent of her invective against the Christian imagery found in C.S. Lewis' children's stories. But among her numerous thorny remarks the following stood out:

Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls. Did we ask him to?

Perhaps the most obvious thing to say by way of explanation about her choice of adjective, is that it is indicative of a heart wedded to the wisdom of this passing age. It is as straightforward a statement of aversion and distaste at the very notion of a substitutionary atonement as one could wish to find. And yet, to those who hold to the presuppositions laid out by Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:18-2:8, it hardly comes as much of a surprise.

It stands in marked contrast to the expression of the regenerate heart that sees in the cross both the wisdom and power of God. Of all the great confessions of faith perhaps it is the Belgic Confession (Q. 26) that best verbalizes the sentiments of the regenerate mind:

If, then, we should seek for another mediator who would be favorably inclined toward us, whom could we find who loved us more than He who laid down His life for us, even while we were His enemies? And if we seek for one who has power and majesty, who is there that has so much of both as He who sits at the right hand of God and to whom hath been given all authority in heaven and on earth?

And what should we make of her question? Of course we did not ask Christ to die for us. None of us wanted him to.

This is a point underlined, as it were in thick marker pen, time and again on the pages of the Bible. From Isaiah's description of Christ as despised and rejected by men (Isaiah 53:3) all the way to Paul's retrospective description of Christian believers as being ungodly and enemies toward God (Romans 5:6, 10).

In the book of Judges there is the pattern of apostasy, oppression from enemies, and cries to God for relief from this misery. In his grace God raises up judges who save the people of God from the hands of their oppressors. Judges 13 seemingly opens with this same pattern. Israel has turned from God to their evil ways, and God has handed them over to the Philistines. But the pattern ends there. Just when we expect to hear a cry to God for relief and rescue there is nothing but silence.

When the Angel of the Lord announces the birth of Samson, who will begin to save Israel from the Philistines, it is therefore clear that this is an act of sheer grace on God's part. God sent them a Savior, even though they did not ask him to. The span of time between the book of Judges and that column in The Guardian may have spread over several millenia, but chronology cannot cover up the similarities that exist.

The very glory of the atonement is that Christ died for his enemies. We were not seeking after a Saviour from heaven, but running and hiding from the God who is really there. As Paul reminded the Colossians, it was for those who were hostile in their minds toward God that Christ hung on the cross. It was by that death that he made peace and effected reconciliation with God (Colossians 1:19-22).

Like Polly Toynbee, I never asked him to do this. That he did it at all is all to the praise of his glorious grace.

Not by chance

2010-12-14T15:17:00.002Z

Great providence of heaven--
What wonders shine
In its profound display
Of God's design:
It guards the dust of earth,
Commands the hosts above,
Fulfils the mighty plan

Of his great love

The kingdoms of this world
Lie in its hand;
See how they rise or fall
At its command
Through sorrow and distress,
Tempestuous storms that rage,
God's kingdom yet endures
From age to age

Its darkness dense is but
A radiant light;
Its oft-perplexing ways
Are ordered right.
Soon all its winding paths
Will end, and then the tale
Of wonder shall be told
Beyond the veil.

David Charles, 1762-1834;

Translated from the Welsh by Edmund Tudor Owen

Article 7:

Of God's Providence
in the Preservation and Government of the World

Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Confession of Faith

(1823)

God, in his wise, holy, and righteous providence,

upholds and governs

all creatures and their actions.

His providence extends over

all places,

all events,

all changes,

and all times.

His providence, in its operation,
is full of eyes to behold,

and
powerful to perform,

and
makes all things work together for good

to them
that love God.

It overrules the sinful actions of men;

nevertheless,

it neither causes nor occasions the sinfulness of any of them.

An update on Kezia

2010-12-06T22:00:00.001Z

Our youngest daughter Kezia (9) was diagnosed with a brain tumour on 24th November and underwent surgery on Thursday 2nd December. The operation went well. The tumour has been drained and decompressed and we will wait and see if this improves her eyesight (her peripheral vision has been damaged). The surgeon will wait until the New Year before deciding on the exact procedure to remove the solid parts of the tumour. Either way she will have long term health issues because the tumour has been affecting her pituitary gland and all those complex and delicate mechanisms that regulate thirst, water balance etc. All being well Kezia will return home tomorrow.

Kezia is just remarkable. She has not complained once and has taken all of this in her stride. For us as parents there have been many tears and tremendous relief when we saw her in the recovery room. We are profoundly grateful for the expertise, medical facilities and care at Alder Hey in Liverpool, and for the support of family and friends locally and from across the world.

Above all we are profoundly thankful for the sustaining grace of God. I cannot express this better than in the words of Q & A 26 of the Heidelberg Catechism:

That the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who of nothing made heaven and earth with all that in them is, who likewise upholds, and governs the same by His eternal counsel and providence, is for the sake of Christ, His Son, my God and my Father, in whom I so trust as to have no doubt that He will provide me with all things necessary for body and soul; and further, that whatever evil He sends upon me in this troubled life, He will turn to my good; for He is able to do it, being Almighty God, and willing also, being a faithful Father.

Martin

Truly, this doctrine brings immeasurable comfort to us

2010-12-01T10:01:00.000Z

The Belgic Confession

Article 13

About the Providence of God

We believe that this Most High God, after He created all things, did not in the least hand them over to fate or the rule of fortune, but continually rules and governs them according to the precept of His sacrosanct will so that nothing may happen in this world apart from His decree and ordination.

Neither is it possible to say that God is the author of or the guilty party in the evils that occur in this world. For both His power and goodness lie widely open as immeasurable and incomprehensible, and His work and proceedings are sacredly and justly determined and executed, although both the Devil and the wicked unjustly act.

Truly, whatsoever He does, having exceeded human constraints, we do not wish to inquire about these things pryingly and beyond our constraints. In fact, on the contrary, we nevertheless humbly and reverently adore the hidden and just judgments of God. For it is enough for us, as disciples of Christ, to learn no more than that which He Himself teaches us in His Word, without transgressing the limits that we regard as lawful.

Truly, this doctrine brings immeasurable comfort to us. For from it we know that nothing happens to us by fortune, but only all things by the will of our heavenly Father, Who truly keeps watch for us with fatherly care, having subjugated all things unto Himself so that not even a hair our head (which have all been numbered down to the individual one) can be plucked out, nor can the smallest chick fall to the ground, apart from the will of our Father.

And so we thoroughly rest in this, acknowledging that God restrains the devils and all our enemies, just as curbed with whips, so that no one is strong enough to hurt us apart from His will and good permission.

Our Great God and Saviour Jesus Christ

2010-11-30T10:33:00.000Z

On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples
   a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,
    of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.
And he will swallow up on this mountain
   the covering that is cast over all peoples,
    the veil that is spread over all nations.

He will swallow up death forever;
and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces,
   and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,
    for the LORD has spoken.

Isaiah 25:6-8

Sovereign Ruler of the skies
Ever gracious, ever wise
All my times are in Thy hand
All events at thy command

He that formed me in the womb
He shall guide me to the tomb
All my times shall ever be
Ordered by his wise decree

Times of sickness, times of health
Times of poverty and wealth
Times of trial and of grief
Times of triumph and relief

Times the tempter's power to prove
Times to taste a Saviour's love
All must come, and last, and end.
As shall please my heavenly Friend.

Plagues and deaths around me fly.
Till he bids I cannot die:
Not a single shaft can hit
Til the God of love thinks fit.

O Thou gracious, wise and just
In Thy hands my life I trust
Thee, at all times, will I bless
Having Thee, I all possess

John Ryland

Christ is a well of life: an update on Kezia's condition

2010-11-28T09:15:00.001Z

As a family we are quite overwhelmed by all the messages of support that we have received from all over the world, for the many people who are praying, and for the offers of practical support from our own congregation, and from friends and churches in Liverpool.

We are also profoundly grateful for the way in which Kezia is coping with all of this. She will be readmitted to Alder Hey on Monday and her operation is scheduled for Thursday. We have met her surgeon and he is regarded as one of the finest in the UK, if not the finest, when it comes to operating on the rare type of brain tumour that she has.

David Meredith wrote to me and said that he hoped and prayed that what we have learned and experienced in the light will stay with us in the dark. May it be so for these are deep and dark waters. But as I said to Kezia last week, it is wonderful that God is our God, that is what he has promised to be, he is the God of the Covenant. We know where our only comfort in life and in death lies.

Continue to pray for us

Here are some words that I have found helpful in the past and continue to draw encouragement from.

Robert Murray M'Cheyne:

You will never find Jesus so precious as when the world is one vast howling wilderness. Then He is like a rose blooming in the midst of the desolation,--a rock rising above the storm.

Samuel Rutherford:

If there were ten thousand, thousand millions of worlds, and as many heavens full of men and angels, Christ would not be pinched to supply all our wants, and to fill us all.

Christ is a well of life, but who knoweth how deep it is to the bottom?

And the following gem is also from Rutherford:

Grace tried is better than grace, and it is more than grace; it is glory in its infancy

John Owen:

Our beholding by faith things which are not seen, things spiritual and eternal, will alleviate all our afflictions,--make their burden light, and preserve our souls from fainting under them. Of these things the glory of Christ..is the principal, and in a due sense comprehensive of them all. For we behold the glory of God himself "in the face of Jesus Christ."

He that can at all times retreat unto the contemplation of this glory, will be carried above the perplexing prevailing sense of any of these evils, of a confluence of them all.

It is a woful kind of life, when men scramble for poor perishing reliefs in their distresses. This is the universal remedy and cure,--the only balsam for all our diseases. Whatever presseth, urgeth, perplexeth, if we can but retreat in our minds unto a view of this glory, and a due consideration of our own interest therein, comfort and supportment will be administered to us.

From the preface to the reader, "Meditations and Discourses on The Glory of Christ," in The Works of John Owen Volume 1, p. 278

Calvin on salvation in Christ:

When we see salvation whole,
its every single part
is found in Christ,
And so we must beware
lest we derive the smallest drop
from somewhere else.

For if we seek salvation, the very name of Jesus
teaches us that he possesses it.

If other Spirit-given gifts are sought--
in his anointing they are found;
strength--in his reign;
and purity--in his conception;
and tenderness--expressed in his nativity,
in which in all respects like us he was,
that he might learn to feel our pain:

Redemption when we seek it, is in his passion found;
acquittal--in his condemnation lies;
and freedom from the curse--in his cross is given.

If satisfaction for our sins we seek--we'll find it in his sacrifice;
and cleansing in his blood.

If reconciliation now we need, for this he entered Hades.
To overcome our sins we need to know that in his tomb they're laid.
Then newness of our life--his resurrection brings
and immortality as well comes also with that gift.

And if we also long to find
inheritance in heaven's reign,
his entry there secures it now
with our protection, safety, too, and blessings that abound
--all flowing from his royal throne.

The sum of all is this:
For those who seek
this treasure-trove of blessing of all kinds
in no one else can they be found
than him,
for all are given
in Christ alone.

Quoted in Sinclair Ferguson, In Christ Alone, p. 7-8

And finally, Louis Berkhof on Christ as our High Priest:

It is a consoling thought that Christ is praying for us, even when we are negligent in our prayer life; that He is presenting to the Father those spiritual needs which were not present to our minds and which we often neglect to include in our prayers; and that He prays for our protection against the dangers of which we are not even conscious, and against the enemies which threaten us, though we do not notice it. He is praying that our faith may not cease, and that we may come out victoriously in the end.

Pray for us

2010-11-25T07:18:00.000Z

Yesterday our youngest daughter Kezia (9) went for an MRI scan. The doctors discovered a large brain tumor, which is pressing on the pituitary gland. Kezia is currently in hospital in Wrexham and will be transferred today to Alder Hey children's hospital in Liverpool where the neurosurgeons will assess her and operate.

As old as dirt

2010-11-24T06:36:00.006Z

In an article that appeared in The Biblical Repertory and Theological Review in the year 1833, Archibald Alexander translated a large section of N. Arnold's refutation of the Racovian Catechism. Alexander saw the relevance of the older Reformed response to the Socinians as he wrestled with the emerging theological errors of his own day. He saw that heresy never dies and concluded:

One thing must have struck the reader as remarkable, namely, that the modern arguments, by which error attempts to defend her cause, are precisely the same as those employed for centuries past. We know, indeed, that those who now adopt and advocate these opinions, greatly dislike this comparison of modern theories with ancient heresies, and denounce it as invidious.

But why should it be so considered? Or why should they be unwilling to acknowledge the conformity of their opinions with those of ancient times, when the agreement is so manifest, not only in the doctrines themselves, but in the arguments and interpretations of Scripture, by which they attempt to support them?

All you need for Christmas is the Trinity

2010-11-23T18:28:00.000Z

Well, that's the title of a sermon I preached a few years back.

But this post is not about a sermon, it is about two day conferences for ministers happening next year hosted by the Evangelical Movement of Wales.

We don't have a title as of yet but here are the essential details so far:

The day conferences will be on the Trinity with three sessions on the Father, the Son and the Spirit (yes, in that order) and the implications and applications of the Tri-unity of God for worship, prayer and pastoral ministry. Each session will be 45 minutes long followed by around 15 minutes for questions.

Our speaker is Prof. Douglas F. Kelly (Richard John Professor of Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary). Doug Kelly is the author of several books including Systematic Theology Vol. 1: The God Who is, The Holy Trinity (Mentor: Christian Focus, 2009)

Concerning the doctrine of the Trinity Augustine wrote that "In no other subject is error more dangerous, or inquiry more laborious, or the discovery of truth more profitable" (De Trinitate 1.3.5). Directly or indirectly every Christian belief is rooted in and connected to the doctrine of the Trinity. It is the most important doctrine of the Christian faith.

With apologies to Martin Luther, of the doctrine of the Trinity it should be said that "we cannot know it too well, preach it too often, and we need to beat it into our heads continually."

What could be better for ministers of the gospel than spending the day contemplating and adoring the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, who are the same in substance and equal in power and glory?

The dates for your diary are:

Monday 28th February 2011 in Bala (for those in North and Mid Wales, Liverpool, Manchester, Shrewsbury, the West Midlands etc.)

Tuesday 1st March 2011 in Bridgend (for those in South Wales, Bristol, Worcester and the South West)

But if you want to come from further afield we won't stop you.

There will be a charge for the days. Drinks will be provided, you can bring your own lunch or buy locally (or order at the conference centre if you are coming to the day in North Wales).

Tearing up truth by the roots

2010-11-23T06:15:00.000Z

To confess that God exists,

and at the same time to deny that he has foreknowledge of future things,

the most manifest folly...

For one who is not prescient of all future things is not God.

Augustine

The Puritan Stephen Charnock, in evaluating the implications of the denial of God's exhaustive foreknowledge of the future free acts of his creatures, and underlining Augustine's remarks, said that in the book of Isaiah "God submits the being of his deity to this trial" and that "If God foreknows not the secret motions of man's will, how can he foretell them? If we strip him of the perfection of prescience, why should we believe a word of Scripture predictions? All the credit of the word of God is torn up by the roots."

In Scripture, from the temptation in the Garden to the temptations in the wilderness, Satan has always sought to cast doubt on the veracity of God's word. The stakes are very high. Open theism gives us a portrait of God that is distorted, misleading, seductive and destructive. It stands opposed to the clear testimony of the Church down through the ages and jeopardizes confidence in God's total truthfulness.

If we cannot trust that God is true to his word, that every word of God will prove true, we cannot trust him at all.

There is no shallow end

2010-11-22T08:00:00.004Z

Before I learned to swim I would always look for the shallow end of the pool. When it comes to the doctrine of God there is no shallow end:

His judgements are unsearchable (Rom. 11:33)
His ways are inscrutable (Rom. 11:33)
No one has known his mind (Rom. 11:34)
No one has been his counsellor (Rom. 11:34)

His greatness is unsearchable (Psalm 145:3)

His understanding is unsearchable (Isa. 40:28)

Heaven, even the highest heaven cannot contain him (1 Kings 8:27)

He inhabits eternity (Isa. 57:15)

From everlasting to everlasting he is God (Psalm 90:2)

The depths of God are searched by the Spirit, and the Spirit comprehends the thoughts of God (1 Cor. 2:10-11)

No one has seen God, God the only begotten, who is at the Father's side, has made him known (John 1:18)

The love of Christ surpasses knowledge (Ephesians 3:19)

Until and unless the weight of God's infinite being is straining your thoughts to breaking point, until and unless you have felt the finitude of your mental powers in contemplating the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, you have not even begun to fathom the unfathomable depths of the One, Living, True, and Triune God.

When we say that Jesus existed "pre" his incarnation, we do not mean he preceded it by any finite amount of time. The Son of God preexisted his incarnation the way that the Creator preexisted creation: infinitely.

Preexistence may be easy to say, but that one little syllable, pre-, is a quantum leap from Here to There, from time to eternity. Before you have finished that syllable, you have left behind everything measurable and manageable.

Fred Sanders, Embracing the Trinity, p. 85

Atonement and the altar on Mount Ebal: Joshua 8 (Guest post)

2010-11-22T06:48:00.000Z

The following is a guest post by the Rev. Dr. Paul Blackham

The roots of the events in Joshua 8 go right back to the curses and blessings of Deuteronomy 27. Moses commanded the people to stand on the two mountains of Ebal and Gerizim, to build an altar on Ebal, the mountain of curses, and to declare all those things that would bring the curses down on them.

Deuteronomy 27:12-15, 19, and all the way down to verse 26.

When you have crossed the Jordan, these tribes shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph and Benjamin. 13 And these tribes shall stand on Mount Ebal to pronounce curses: Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan and Naphtali.

The Levites shall recite to all the people of Israel in a loud voice:

“Cursed is the man who carves an image or casts an idol — a thing detestable to the LORD, the work of the craftsman’s hands — and sets it up in secret.”

Then all the people shall say, “Amen!”… [onto verse 19]

“Cursed is the man who withholds justice from the alien, the fatherless or the widow.”

Then all the people shall say, “Amen!”… [then right down to verse 26]

“Cursed is the man who does not uphold the words of this law by carrying them out.”

Then all the people shall say, “Amen!”

This is exactly what happened in Joshua 8. The entire ancient church, made up of natural Jewish people as well as those who had joined the church from the surrounding nations, all gathered at the chosen mountains.

Joshua 8:30-33 – “Then Joshua built on Mount Ebal an altar to the LORD, the God of Israel, as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded the Israelites. He built it according to what is written in the Book of the Law of Moses — an altar of uncut stones, on which no iron tool had been used. On it they offered to the LORD burnt offerings and sacrificed fellowship offerings. There, in the presence of the Israelites, Joshua copied on stones the law of Moses, which he had written. All Israel, aliens and citizens alike, with their elders, officials and judges, were standing on both sides of the ark of the covenant of the LORD, facing those who carried it — the priests, who were Levites. Half of the people stood in front of Mount Gerizim and half of them in front of Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the LORD had formerly commanded when he gave instructions to bless the people of Israel.”

Notice first that the altar was built on the mountain of curses, Mount Ebal.

Breaking the covenant of the LORD God brings a curse. If we do not love our Glorious LORD with all we have and love everyone else as we should then we show that we have rejected His life and love. When Adam and Eve originally refused to obey God's voice there were deep consequences. A curse fell upon them – cursing the land, their relationships, their bodies and their destiny. There is no life or health, no love or joy if we do not trust Jesus. Rejected by the earth and rejected by heaven, the cursed sinner hangs in the air with nowhere to go but the corruption of death.

The altar was built on Mount Ebal because this holistic curse can only be broken through the blood and fire of atoning sacrifice. Under the curse the only hope is the sacrificial altar, the blood poured out for atonement. No other remedy had any place on Mount Ebal.

Notice second that the altar had to be built with “uncut stones, on which no iron tool had been used.” Iron tools are all about human ability and human arrogance. The Philistines were the masters of iron tools [1 Samuel 13] and it was symbolic of human power. This altar could not be built with human power or pride. It needed to be as free of human input as possible, because there is nothing that any of us can do to remove the curse against our sin. Yes, an altar is needed, but this has nothing to do with human religion or human offerings. We can do nothing to escape the curse of death and emptiness that lies upon us.

We need an altar, but we need a sacrifice that we cannot provide.

Now, all this is set alight by the events in the first part of Joshua chapter 8. The city of Ai was under the curse of the Living God. Their constant and worsening rejection of His ways had grown worse every generation until the time for judgement had arrived. Under the curse they faced the fiery day of judgement under Joshua.

Joshua 8:28-29 – “Joshua burned Ai and made it a permanent heap of ruins, a desolate place to this day. He hung the king of Ai on a tree and left him there until evening. At sunset, Joshua ordered them to take his body from the tree and throw it down at the entrance of the city gate. And they raised a large pile of rocks over it, which remains to this day.”

That curse to be proclaimed on Mount Ebal was first vividly and frighteningly displayed in the judgement on Ai. Deuteronomy 21:22 declared, “anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse”. The crucified man is rejected by the earth and rejected by the heavens, the curse of sin obviously displayed in his dead body. So, Joshua crucified the king of Ai and then rolled the stones over his body outside the city gates, and there was no rolling away of the stones on the third day. Those stones remain there to this day.

The curse of sin has a terrible power and once it has dragged us into death, there is no escape. The God-forsaken death is death at full strength. There were no second chances for the king of Ai. His cursed death represented the death of everyone in the city of Ai: cursed, rejected and condemned.

If the altar on Mount Ebal, made without human tools, shows the way that even such a terrible curse can be broken, then it is preaching to us of the cursed and crucified Man, the Divine Messiah, who took the full force of that curse in His own God-forsaken death and then having exhausted its full measure rolled away the stones over His crucified body and walk out to a curse-free resurrection life of righteousness and joy.

From the Finger of God: The biblical and theological basis for the threefold division of the law

2010-11-19T18:11:00.001Z

This looks very interesting. Christian Focus have just released Philip Ross' From the Finger of God: The biblical and theological basis for the threefold division of the law

This book investigates the biblical and theological basis for the classical division of biblical law into moral, civil, and ceremonial. It highlights some of the implications of this division for the doctrines of sin and atonement, concluding that theologians were right to see it as rooted in Scripture and the Ten Commandments as ever-binding.

More here

"A book of great relevance with an immensely important message for the contemporary church, From the Finger of God is to be welcomed with open arms. It is a fine example of careful, readable biblical, theological, and historical scholarship that leads to deeply satisfying conclusions."

Sinclair B. Ferguson ~ Senior Minister, First Presbyterian Church, Columbia, South Carolina

"Philip Ross has dealt with issues lying near the heart of the Christian life (and indeed, of the healthy functioning of any human society) in this careful, fair, and, at times, humorous (or at least, entertaining and attention-holding) study of the continuing validity of God's law... I will be frequently referring to his volume in my classes, and warmly commend it

Douglas F Kelly ~ Richard Jordan Professor of Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte, North Carolina

"The question dealt with in this book is the relationship between the laws and requirements of the Old Testament and those of the New. Are these still obligatory on the New Testament Church? In dealing with this question the author suggests a threefold classification, and provides a very full analysis of the arguments in favour of that classification from many authors down through the centuries, as well as of those who write against that classification. I commend it to all who wish to live by the Scriptures."

Lord Mackay of Clashfern ~ Retired Lord Chancellor & Patron of the Lawyers Christian Fellowship

"This book is a valuable contribution to discussion about the question of the nature of the unity of biblical law in the context of the diversity of its threefold historical function. It demonstrates how the finality of the person and work of Christ is the crux of the matter and how the atonement has law as its background. A readable presentation of the biblical data relevant to the subject that leaves no stone unturned."

Paul Wells ~ Professor of Systematic Theology at Facult' Libre Theologie Reformee in Aix-en-Provence, France.

"Like me, you may never have thought that the division of the Law into the categories of civil, ceremonial and moral needed prolonged enquiry. When you read this book you will be glad that Dr. Ross thought otherwise. The book would be worthwhile if only for the discussion of the Decalogue or of the fulfilment of the Old Testament in the New , but there is something for the Bible lover on every page, as well as a demanding but readable opening up of a huge area of biblical enquiry, that takes us with profit from Genesis through to the Lord Jesus and his apostles. A real and rewarding mind-opener."

Alec Motyer ~ Well known Bible expositor and commentary writer

"In recent times, little has weakened biblical theology more than the tendency to collapse all the rules and statutes of the Old Testament into one uniform corpus of law material. In this timely and extremely helpful study, Dr Philip Ross demonstrates not only that the division of the law into moral, civil and ceremonial categories arises out of a natural reading of the biblical text, but that its adoption in Patristic, Reformed and Puritan literature shows it to have been the orthodox position of the church. To lose this confessional distinctive is to drive an unbiblical wedge between the Testaments, and to eviscerate the gospel itself. Unless the moral law is still in force, how can we define sin? And unless we can define sin, what gospel can we preach? Dr Ross's work is an important corrective to much misunderstanding on the nature and place of God's law in the Bible, and a reliable guide both to the primary and secondary literature on the subject."

Iain D Campbell ~ Minister, Point Free Church of Scotland, Isle of Lewis

"It is a given for scholars in a variety of allied disciplines (e.g., biblical studies, systematic theology, Christian ethics) that the ancient Christian distinction between the civil, ceremonial, and moral laws is without foundation. Philip Ross dissents from the consensus and he does so thoughtfully, lucidly, and wittily. Those who are new to the question and those are willing to reconsider their views will find in Ross an able guide through the labyrinth."

R. Scott Clark ~ Professor of Church History and Historical Theology, Westminster Seminary, Escondido, California

"This is one of the most important theological books to be published for several years. And it is a book which is desperately needed and which should be read by pastors and church leaders worldwide as a matter of urgency."

Eryl Davis ~ Head of Research, Wales Evangelical School of Theology, Bridgend, Wales

"Elegantly written, this work is an impressive achievement in biblical studies combining systematic clarity with exegetical analysis."

Theodore G. Stylianopoulos ~ Archbishop Professor of Orthodox Theology and Professor of New Testament (Emeritus) Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, Brookline, Massachusetts

"In this remarkable work Dr. Philip Ross studies the threefold Division of the Law as traditionally held by the Reformed, Orthodox and Catholic Churches and establishes this framework to be scripturally based. Ross's study is a welcome contribution to this topic especially in the context of challenges to this formulation from several modern authors who reject it as non-biblical, challenges which this study effectively refutes. This study is to be commended not only for its scholarly rigor but also for its ecumenical relevance."

George Keerankeri, S.J., ~ Reader in Sacred Scripture, Vidyajyoti College of Theology, Delhi

Following error back to its lair

2010-11-19T14:06:00.001Z

What difference would it make if we seriously thought about the origins of false doctrines?

It is vitally important to realise that heresies do not originate in the minds of men and women. Ultimately heresy originates with the devil.

When the apostle Paul takes the Corinthian church to task for tolerating false teachers he compares their approach to the deception of Eve by the serpent (2 Cor. 11:3). But the deception in the Garden is more than a useful illustration. The super-apostles at Corinth are the servants of the devil disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.

Similarly Paul warned Timothy about “deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons” (1 Tim. 4:1), and of false teachers who are caught in the snare of the devil (2 Tim. 2:24-25). After all the devil is the father of lies (John 8:44). One of the English Puritans said that the devil never lets the wind blow for too long in the same direction.

Invoking this category to account for theological aberrations is hardly a way to win friends. However, to ignore it is to close our eyes to the clear testimony of Scripture concerning false teaching.

Wayne Grudem has provided a helpful reminder on this point:

After reading such verses [2 Peter 2:1; Jude 3-4], we might wonder if any of us have the same kind of heart for purity of doctrine in our Christian organisations, and the same sort of sober apprehension of the destructiveness of false doctrine, that the New Testament apostles had in their hearts. If we ever begin to doubt that false teaching is harmful to the church, or if we begin to become complacent about false doctrine, thinking that it is fascinating to ponder, stimulating to our thoughts, and worthwhile for discussion, then we should remind ourselves that in several cases the New Testament specifies that the ultimate source of many false teachings is Satan and his demons.

In Beyond the Bounds, p. 342

Atonement and the sin of Achan: Joshua 7 (Guest post)

2010-11-19T12:45:00.001Z

The following is a guest post by the Rev. Dr. Paul Blackham.

The deep truth of one man standing for the whole people is powerfully and fearfully revealed in Joshua chapter 7. See how the chapter begins:

The Israelites acted unfaithfully in regard to the devoted things; Achan son of Carmi, the son of Zimri, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took some of them. So the LORD’s anger burned against Israel.

One man acted unfaithfully to the LORD. One man took plunder from the sack of Joshua for his personal treasure. Achan alone disobeyed the LORD’s instructions. Yet, we are told “Israel acted unfaithfully in regard to the devoted things” and “the LORD’s anger burned against Israel”.

Here we see one of the deepest truths in the Bible displayed in the clearest possible terms. One of the most foolish claims that we make in our fallen mess is that each person must stand alone, that the actions of others have nothing to do with us. In a highly individualistic age this gets even stronger. Today we even find people who call themselves Christian yet are not part of a local church family. They imagine that they stand completely alone before the Living God, that their atonement is a purely personal, individual transaction.

The story of Achan is a great reminder of the fact that we are joined together as a body. The actions of one effects us all, for good or ill. The Living God did not create us as a conveyor belt of individual items, but he created a human family that would stand or fall together.

He deliberately created us so that the actions of one man could have decisive effects for all.

Achan had sinned. He secretly hid away the plunder that was devoted to the LORD alone. His secret sin publically corrupted the whole community. His actions brought guilt on the whole people and had already cost people their lives. When 36 Israelite soldiers were killed in the defeat at Ai, Joshua knew that the LORD was no longer with them. When he enquired of the LORD he received a very straight answer.

Joshua 7:10-12 – “The LORD said to Joshua, “Stand up! What are you doing down on your face? Israel has sinned; they have violated my covenant, which I commanded them to keep. They have taken some of the devoted things; they have stolen, they have lied, they have put them with their own possessions. That is why the Israelites cannot stand against their enemies; they turn their backs and run because they have been made liable to destruction. I will not be with you anymore unless you destroy whatever among you is devoted to destruction.”

Israel has sinned. Israel has lied. Israel has violated the covenant. Why? Because in the community there was a man who had done these things. The covenant was broken by one man and the LORD was no longer with them because of this one man.

As the story unfolds we see how his whole family were caught up in his sin, probably sharing his greed and his hatred of the LORD and His ways. Why didn’t his family run away from him when they knew what he had done? What Achan had secretly done was fully known to the LORD God and in verses 14-18 the target of condemnation narrows down until it is fixed squarely on Achan. Can we imagine what it was like as the tribe of Judah was selected, then the clan of Zimri is selected and then the families are narrowed down to the guilty one. Why didn’t Achan repent long before he was found out? That is the nature of our unbelief and sin. We will not come into the light but instead we cower in the darkness of our guilt and shame.

When the lights were switched on and Achan and his family were revealed, how could the situation be fixed? How could atonement be made? If the covenant with the LORD had been violated, then what would it take to restore it? Would it be enough to say sorry? Would it be enough to simply do the right thing with the stolen plunder? No. Atonement requires more than mere repentance or restoration. When we violate the LORD’s covenant, when we offend against His Holy Majesty, when we stand before Him with our corruption and guilt rotting around us, it is not enough to regret what we have done and it is not enough to attempt to patch up the mess we have made. The cleansing and healing required is very costly.

Only death, only blood, can cleanse away the decaying death of our guilt and sin.

It is in the blood and fire of sacrificial atonement that our sin and corruption is put to death. What can turn away the fierce anger of a Living and Infinite God? What can pay Him off? What can soothe the angry heart and mind of such a God?

We might not like it. We might prefer to imagine a thoroughly civilised ‘god’ who likes to deal with problems in a round table discussion, with compromises made on both sides. We might like a genteel, polite religion with no blood, no sweat and no tears… and yet, when we face the sheer filthy evil of our greed and violence before the Living God, when we feel the desperate darkness of our world, when we are falling into the decay of our own death moments from facing our Maker, surely then we know the value of a blood and fire atonement that reaches to the very depths and soothes even the heart of that Most Holy One who inhabits eternity.

Joshua 7:24-26 – “Joshua, together with all Israel, took Achan son of Zerah, the silver, the robe, the gold wedge, his sons and daughters, his cattle, donkeys and sheep, his tent and all that he had, to the Valley of Achor. Joshua said, “Why have you brought this trouble on us? The LORD will bring trouble on you today.” Then all Israel stoned him, and after they had stoned the rest, they burned them. Over Achan they heaped up a large pile of rocks, which remains to this day. Then the LORD turned from his fierce anger.

Achan brought trouble on Israel. The guilt and sin of the whole community was focused on him. One man had brought the sin onto the people and now this one man carried the sin away from the people. As that one man was killed and burned, it was as if the LORD’s anger against that sin was focused and satisfied.

The end of verse 26 is incredible. The LORD’s covenant had been violated and He was rightly angry about this. Yet, through the death of troublesome Achan He showed us, once again, that His own Man, His own Messiah, really would be able to take on the sins of the whole world and turn away, once and for all, the fierce anger of the Most Holy God against all our sins.

The ancient promise of atonement through the one Seed from the earliest days of Genesis was given a powerful if disturbing illustration in the death of Achan.

Hell, Annihilation and Human Destiny: J. I. Packer (audio)

2010-11-17T12:15:00.000Z

This is a re-post, and an important one at that...

In 1991 J. I. Packer delivered a lecture in Cardiff on "Human Destiny." In that lecture he gave a survey of the New Testament teaching on hell and responded to the annihilationist position advocated by John Stott, Phillip E. Hughes and Michael Green.

I sat in the audience, a theologically lightweight sixteen year old, and was far too clueless to take in the significance of what, and who, I was listening to. Since then I have listened to the cassette recording many, many times. I trust that you will find it informative, sobering, and a means of grace to motivate you in your love for God and commitment to evangelism.

The audio file can be downloaded here.

The lecture begins with some very warm words about Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones and post-war Welsh Evangelicalism before Packer "bites the bullet" on the big issues of human destiny.

My thanks to Glenn Smethurst for his techie work. I also want to thank the Evangelical Movement of Wales for the use of the recording.

The EMW site has a number of audio sermons available to listen to, including those by Ted Donnelly, Don Carson, Geoff Thomas, Doug Kelly, Hywel Jones, and Sinclair Ferguson.

They also have a sermon by Douglas MacMillan (1933-1991), Free Church of Scotland minister and professor of Church History at the Free Church College, "My Spirit shall not always strive with man" from Genesis 6:3 which you can listen to here.

Atonement and the Justice of God

2010-11-16T06:48:00.001Z

The following is a guest post by Rev. Dr. Paul Blackham. Paul was the Associate Minister for Theology at All Souls, Langham Place and did his doctorate on the Puritan Thomas Goodwin.

It is said that in ancient Rome a murderer was punished by having their victim’s body strapped to their back until it had rotted away. More relevantly, the Bible views us as already dead, already decaying into the darkness due to our rejection of the One who is our Light and Life.

Our offences – our selfishness and sin - are like death clinging to us and this kind of death never just falls away with the passage of time. We might wish these things would go away. We might regret them with every fibre of our being. We might weep away our sleepless nights aware of what we have done, of who we are. Yet, none of these regrets or tears can ever cut that body of death away from us. Or else we might laugh it off, filling our hearts and minds with the sights and sounds of work, friends, family and entertainment. When the stench of that body of death clinging to us gets too strong, we may simply turn up the volume on our work and entertainment. Yet, it never goes away.

Nothing we can ever do, nothing we can ever feel or resolve, no therapy or drug, no holiday or mid-life crisis or personal trainer or year out can ever take the corruption away. From the very beginning we were warned that sin means death, and we can never change that equation.

Clinging to us, rotting on us, polluting us at every point is our own moral and spiritual corruption. When, sooner or later, this corruption is also manifested in our physical flesh, then the process is complete: our sin has paid its wage and dragged us down to the eternal, burning rubbish tip in the outer darkness, far from the eternal home of righteousness, goodness and life.

We need to begin with these stark images because we cannot understand the Bible’s presentation of atonement as long as we see it in the superficial psychological terms that we are so used to. So many of the discussions of forgiveness or atonement in our modern culture are so self-centred and merely therapeutic – as if the purpose of forgiveness is a selfish thing, setting ourselves free from hatred or bitterness.

There is some truth in that. If we refuse to forgive, if we show no mercy, then we will be shown no mercy on the Day of Judgement. If we carry our hatred and bitterness around with us then the evils done to us carry on and grow with each passing day. Yes, all that has deep truth, but it is not taking us into the heart of atonement.

There are three aspects of justice or righteousness that we will focus on: two of them involve us and one of them completely excludes us.

First, the justice of God means that He is ready to forgive us, so we are to forgive those who do wrong to us. We share in God’s justice when we forgive and restore those who have sinned against us, when we forgive as we have been forgiven.

Isaiah 30:18 – “The LORD longs to be gracious to you; He rises to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice.”
Psalm 33:5 – “The LORD loves justice: the earth is full of His unfailing love.”

Second, the justice of God means that He helps those who cry out to Him in need, so the local church is to be a haven for the widows and the orphans, the hungry and the broken, the sick and the imprisoned. Righteousness and justice flow out when the victims of sin are shown practical love and mercy.

Isaiah 1:17 – “Seek justice. Encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.”
Zechariah 7:9 - This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. In your hearts do not think evil of each other."

Yet, the third level of justice belongs to the LORD God alone.

Micah 5:15 – “I will take vengeance in anger and wrath upon the nations that have not obeyed me.”

Nahum 1:2 – “The LORD is a jealous and avenging God; the LORD takes vengeance and is filled with wrath. The LORD takes vengeance on his foes and maintains his wrath against his enemies.”

Romans 12:19 – “Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.”

1 Samuel 24:12 – “May the LORD avenge the wrongs you have done to me, but my hand will not touch you.”

The LORD God alone can bring the destroying and final vengeance on evil. Jesus, as the Judge of the World, alone punishes sin and brings His terrible judgement on humanity. Yes, we might say that through governments and rulers He allows a small measure of this punishment to be meted out even in this present age, but He reserves to Himself the true Day of Justice when all our offences, all our corruption, the body of death that clings to us, is condemned and punished for all eternity.

The LORD’s justice cares for the needy and He longs to bring repentance and forgiveness to those who do evil… but there will finally be a day when He will bring vengeance against the wicked. Within the Bible itself the focus of atonement is on that third category of justice.

The terrible crisis that faces the world, far more than all the troubles we have with each other, is that we are sinners in the hands of an angry and Living God. As Jesus said, we do not need to fear those who can harm us only in this passing life, but our greatest fear needs to be of the One whose angry judgement can throw us into the eternal punishment of Hell. The most urgent need for the world is to find peace with the Most Holy God who we are at war with.

When atonement is made, when God’s own blood has taken away our offensive sin, then we forgive as we have been forgiven and the love of God in our hearts bubbles over into very practical compassion and justice for those in need.

Putting creeds and confessions to work

2010-11-15T08:52:00.001Z

There is an urgent need for a deeper awareness of historical theology in the life of the Church. For all our technological advances, for all the progress made in the mission of the Church, for all our concerns to speak meaningfully to our own generation and to engage with its unbelief we simply cannot afford to neglect the history of the transmission of Christian truth down through the centuries.

The great creeds and confessions can help us at this point. They stand as a lasting legacy of what is important, what is worth believing and what must be fought for and handed on to future generations. We are prone to the same errors that have arisen in the past and we can learn a great deal from the churchly confessions and classic theological works in order to identify what is discordant with the biblical historic Christian faith and how to deal with it.

The question that faces contemporary Western evangelicalism is whether it really has the spiritual appetite for sound doctrine. Indifference to sound doctrine does not make error go away, it merely makes us ignorant of its dangers and careless about its presence.

As much as creeds and confessions are boundary markers and safeguards against error, and as much as fuller confessions are a greater aide to preserving and proclaiming the truth, they are ultimately insufficient defenses against false teachings.

Their inadequacy stems from a human factor. The testimony of Church history is clear. False teachers take the words of creeds and confessions but alter the sense and meaning of those words. Likewise creeds and confessions must be upheld by those concerned to defend the truth. Men must have the stomach for a fight and not allow the words of creeds and confessions to be given multiple meanings so that parties in the church can make them mean whatever they want them to mean.

Accepting doctrinal ambiguity whilst at the same time giving credence to a clear confessional statement and identity is an ideal environment for heresies to incubate in.

Engaging with popular culture

2010-11-11T14:57:00.001Z

The following article by Ted Turnau appeared in the Evangelical Magazine September/October 2010. I think that it is worth a read. Ted Turnau is a professor at the Anglo-American College, Prague, and at the Centre for Media Studies at Charles University.

On being as wise as serpents

Ted Turnau

Why and how Christians should engage popular culture

One of the issues that has perennially dogged the Christian church is the issue of how to relate to the culture that surrounds us, especially popular culture. Are we to separate from it, in order to preserve our purity? Or should we go along with the flow, so we can better relate to those in the culture. Both options have their strong points – maintaining purity is essential, as is relating to those who have no place for Christ in their lives. But both miss the mark, biblically speaking. The Bible supports neither a knee-jerk rejection of culture, nor an uncritical acceptance of it. We are to be both as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves (Matt. 10:16), both engaged with our culture and distinctive from it. It could hardly be otherwise.

If the people we seek are immersed in the surrounding culture, in its worldview and worship, then obviously we must understand that culture if we are to speak to the concerns of their hearts. But just as obviously, we cannot simply uncritically imbibe the surrounding culture so that we blend in, chameleon-like. We cannot simply share their system of life and worship, for we would have nothing distinctive to offer. How do we maintain this balance? We must intentionally and critically engage the surrounding culture, especially culture that has the widest impact: popular culture. Here are a few practical points on Christian engagement of popular culture.

Whatever else popular culture is, it is not trivial, because it is an expression of faith and worship.

Not too long ago, I watched Andrea Arnold’s gritty estate-drama Fish Tank (2009). The lead character, the young, frustrated Mia, lives for hip-hop dancing. Her life is infused with its rhythms, its lyrics of urban despair. In a sense, her dance training is a form of worship, her grasping at salvation. It is the same with all popular culture: they are all, ultimately, forms of worship. We need to see them as expressions of non-Christian faiths, non-Christian worldviews. Popular culture is, in this sense, like a mission field in your own home town.

Not all popular culture is equally meaningful.

Even though popular culture is not trivial (it represents an alternate form of worship and belief), some pieces of popular culture are more worthy of attention than others. Much popular culture can be ephemeral, like bubbles in a can of soda. But there are other pieces that have real depth, real staying power. If you find keeping up with popular culture too much, find a few artists working in popular culture who have the ability to really tap into the spirit of the age. Thom Yorke of the band Radiohead is one such, as is the television writer/producer Joss Whedon (creator of various sci-fi/fantasy series), or David Simon (creator of The Wire). Pay attention to the musicians, writers, and directors who make a difference. These are the ones who produce works of depth and meaning. They could be called ‘cultural leaders’. They lay paths that the rest of the culture follows.

Not every piece of popular culture is appropriate for engagement.

If we are to be wise as serpents and remain innocent as doves, we need to be careful not to put ourselves (or our children) in the path of temptation. Hard and fast rules are not typically helpful here. Rather, we need to know the idols of the heart that we ourselves are attracted to, where we are weak, territory that ought to remain off-limits for us. We also need to think through issues such as age-appropriateness, which will be different for different children. It is important to engage popular culture, but we must do so without compromising our walk with the Lord.

Popular culture works by creating imaginative landscapes for us to inhabit.

Popular culture works not by blurting out a message, but through appealing to the imagination. A television show does not simply convey a message, such as ‘Life is meaningless, so have all the fun you can while you can’. Rather, it tells a story in which someone discovers the ‘truth’ of that message; it tells it in a style that underlines that message, and it invites us along for the journey. Popular culture works indirectly, suggestively, not like a slogan at a political rally, but like a poem or a song. It draws you in and gets under your skin. Therefore, you must be intentional in your approach to popular culture so that you understand its effects on the imagination (including the imaginations of your friends and neighbours).

When thinking about a piece of popular culture, it pays to know the tricks of the trade.

Engaging popular culture means exploring the imaginative world, exploring the details of the stories it tells, the styles that it exhibits or fashions for us. That means you should try to understand how popular cultural producers do what they do. If you are considering a movie, think about things such as lighting, camera angle, shot selection, music, and so forth. If you are thinking about a song, pay attention to chords, rhythm, genre, instrumentation, as well as the lyrics. By paying attention to these details, you become more familiar with the imaginative landscape that the popular work invites you to inhabit.

Every piece of popular culture is a complicated mixture of grace and idolatry.

There is no piece of popular culture so banal or twisted that it does not contain some glimpse of God’s grace. And there is no piece of popular culture so pure and profound that it does not contain an invitation to idolatry. Popular culture appeals to non-Christians for a reason, namely, they sense some of God’s beauty, power and goodness in it. This is what theologians call ‘common grace’ – fragments of grace that God spreads to everyone – even those who will never come to believe. As Paul says in Acts, these gifts of God are ‘testimony’ to God’s being and character (see Acts 14:17). Popular culture contains such ‘fragments of grace’ woven into the very fabric of the popular cultural song, movie, television show, book, etc. But in non-Christian popular culture, these fragments of grace are bent to serve false gods. In fact, the idols presented in popular culture become persuasive for non-Christians (and sometimes Christians) precisely because of the attractiveness of those glimpses of God’s grace.

For example, James Cameron’s summer blockbuster Avatar (2009) won accolades for its stunning visual effects, and rightly so. The digital artistry created a beautiful and fascinating alien world filled with realistic and delightful creatures. It served to remind us of the real and delightful creatures God has made. In this way, the film served as a reflection of God’s creative artistry, and ultimately, the beauty and power of God Himself. But the film bends that fragment of grace into the service of pagan nature worship (the nature deity ‘Eywa’). Likewise, all meaningful and attractive popular culture succeeds by drawing its audience in with such reflections of God’s beauty, while putting those grace fragments into service to another god.

Think carefully about how to undermine the idol, and how the gospel applies to the piece of popular culture you’re sharing with friends.

Popular culture often uses ‘grace fragments’ to steer the imagination towards an idol. Think of ways that the idol shows itself to be inadequate and false, and how the Christian worldview and the riches of the gospel offer a better alternative.

Look for occasions where you can experience popular culture together with friends and family (both Christian and non-Christian).

My wife and I host movie discussion nights for my students every fortnight. You may not want to do something so formal, but you should seek out opportunities to experience popular culture together with people you care about. Listen to the music your children listen to. Go see a movie with friends. Invite friends over for dinner and a few episodes of your favourite television series on DVD. Open up your homes and your lives to be shared with family, friends and neighbours.

If we carefully consider the popular culture that surrounds us, we can develop biblical wisdom that neither dismisses it nor blindly accepts it. Such a wisdom that is ‘in the world, but not of the world’ can be very attractive to non-Christians who need Christ, but cannot see what difference He can make. By engaging popular culture, we can speak of Christ in a language familiar to them. And that can make all the difference.

The Crystal Goblet and the Wine: We were made to memorise

2010-11-10T19:39:00.001Z

Scott Clark has a delightful story about three year old Samuel Chelpka who has memorised Billy Collins' poem "Litany."

Take a look at the video and interview on ABC News here

If you are observant you can see a copy of G. I. Williamson's The Westminster Shorter Catechism: for study classes on the shelf behind Samuel and his mum

Scott has some great reflections on the story here

You should also check out David Murray's video clip "How to memorize: ten fast facts" here

Letter to the Pope: We are not heretics

2010-11-08T12:44:00.001Z

In 1869 the aged Professor Charles Hodge of Princeton Seminary wrote a letter to Pope Pius IX "explaining why the Presbyterian church was declining an invitation to send a representative to the Vatican Council of 1870" (David Calhoun, Princeton Seminary Vol 2: The Majestic Testimony, p. 32).

You can read the full text of the letter at the Banner of Truth Trust site, the first part of the letter is below:

To Pius the Ninth, Bishop of Rome,

By your encyclical letter dated 1869 you invite Protestants to send delegates to the Council called to meet at Rome during the month of December of the current year. That letter has been brought to the attention of the two General Assemblies of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. Those Assemblies represent about five thousand ministers and a still larger number of Christian congregations.

Believing as we do, that it is the will of Christ that his Church on earth should be united, and recognizing the duty of doing all we consistently can to promote Christian charity and fellowship, we deem it right briefly to present the reasons which forbid our participation in the deliberations of the approaching Council.

It is not because we have renounced any article of the catholic faith. We are not heretics. We cordially receive all the doctrines contained in that Symbol which is known as the Apostles' Creed. We regard all doctrinal decisions of the first six ecumenical councils to be consistent with the Word of God, and because of that consistency, we receive them as expressing our faith. We therefore believe the doctrine of the Trinity and of the person of Christ as those doctrines are expressed in the symbols adopted by the Council of Nicea AD321, that of the Council of Constantinople AD381 and more fully that of the Council of Chalcedon AD451.

We believe that there are three persons in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are the same in substance and equal in power and glory. We believe that the Eternal Son of God became man by taking to himself a true body and a reasonable soul, and so was, and continues to be, both God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever.

We believe that our adorable Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is the prophet who should come into the world, whose teachings we are bound to believe and on whose promises we rely. He is the High Priest whose infinitely meritorious satisfaction to divine justice, and whose ever prevalent intercession, is the sole ground of the sinner's justification and acceptance before God.

We acknowledge him to be our Lord not only because we are his creatures but also because we are the purchase of his blood. To his authority we are bound to submit, in his care we confide, and to his service all creatures in heaven and earth should be devoted.

We receive all those doctrines concerning sin, grace and predestination, known as Augustinian, which doctrines received the sanction not only of the Council of Carthage and of other provincial Synods, but of the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus AD431, and of Zosimus, bishop of Rome.

We therefore cannot be pronounced heretics without involving in the same condemnation the whole ancient church.

Neither are we schismatics. We cordially recognize as members of Christ's visible Church on earth, all those who profess the true religion together with their children. We are not only willing but earnest to hold Christian communion with them, provided they do not require, as conditions of such communion, that we profess doctrines which the Word of God condemns, or that we should do what the Word forbids. If in any case any Church prescribes such unscriptural terms of fellowship, the error and the fault is with that church and not with us.

But although we do not decline your invitation because we are either heretics or schismatics, we are nevertheless debarred from accepting it, because we still hold with ever increasing confidence those principles for which our fathers were excommunicated and pronounced accursed by the Council of Trent, which represented, and still represents, the Church over which you preside.

The most important of those principles are: First, that the Word of God, contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only infallible rule of faith and practice. The Council of Trent, however, pronounces Anathema on all who do not receive the teachings of tradition pari pietatis affectu (with equal pious affection) as the Scriptures themselves. This we cannot do without incurring the condemnation which our Lord pronounced on the Pharisees, who made void the Word of God by their traditions (Matt. 15:6).

Read the rest here

No Country For Old Doctrines: Why Driscoll & Breshears reject the eternal generation of the Son of God

2010-11-05T14:20:00.003Z

Below is the fourth post looking at Driscoll & Breshears' rejection of the eternal generation of the Son of God.
You may wish to read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3

In their book Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears identify the classical, creedal doctrines of the eternal generation of the Son and the eternal procession of the Spirit as doctrines that Christians should not believe.

They give three reasons for this:

The whole attempt to define the eternal relations in the immanent or ontological Trinity seems misguided.

First, God has given us no revelation of the nature of their eternal relations. We should follow the command of the Bible: "The secret things belong to the LORD our God" and refuse to speculate.

Second, the Apostles' Creed defines the Son as "begotten, not made." The point was that something begotten was of the same substance as the one who does the begetting. But the term "begotten" could never be defined with any clarity, so it was of little use.

Third, begotten unavoidably implies a beginning of the one begotten. That would certainly lend support to the the Arian heresy that the Son is a created being and not the Creator God.

For these reasons it is best to omit the creedal terms "begotten" and "proceeds" from our definition of the Trinity. Our authority is not in creeds but in Scripture.

We stand with the universal Trinitarian definition of the church to confess that God is one God, eternally existing in three persons, Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. (p. 27-28)

The best way to face up to this bold approach, and let's face it anyone who wishes to tippex out some of the clauses found in the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, the Chalcedonian Definition, and the Reformed Confessions is being pretty bold when it comes to doctrine, was exemplified by Samuel Miller in his book Letters on the Eternal Sonship of Christ (1823):

No man will ever forfeit my esteem or affection, by kindly and respectfully calling me to re-investigate any article in my creed, however long since I may have supposed it to be settled.

To begin with there some points of clarification that need to be made.

The phrase "Begotten, not made" is not, as Driscoll and Breshears claim, found in the Apostles' Creed. It is found in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed.

The "universal Trinitarian definition of the church" is surely to be found in these ecumenical creeds. They really are the old country, and these creeds include the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son.

How then can Driscoll and Breshears claim to stand with the "universal Trinitarian definition of the church" at the very same time as they are deleting doctrines from those universal Trinitarian definitions? To make this claim is somewhat muddle headed to say the least.

I'm not entirely convinced that Driscoll and Breshears have really got to grips with the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son. They are clearly bothered by it and attempt to dissuade readers of it's credibility in Vintage Jesus and Doctrine. However, there seems to be little attempt to adequately describe it on its own terms, even if they then choose to reject it. In particular I think that their arguments are lacking when it comes to "judging, as of infinity" upon these matters.

Their discussion shows little awareness of the care, precision, and nuance found in the creedal articulation of the doctrine. For example, they say that:

The Bible says the Father sent the Spirit to conceive Jesus in the womb of Mary. Jesus is therefore referred to as the "only begotten [monogenes] Son." Theologians extended this begetting in history back into the eternal Trinity and posited that the Son is eternally begotten of or generated by the Father. (Doctrine, p. 27)

This is an inadequate statement on biblical, theological and historical grounds.

Jesus is not referred to as the only begotten Son because of the virginal conception. The Chalcedonian Definition carefully distinguishes between the Son being begotten by the Father before the ages, and his humanity begotten of Mary.

That he is called the only begotten Son we owe not to Luke's account of his conception but, at the very least, to John's use of monogenes (John 1:14, 18; 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9). Indeed the Son was sharing the Father's glory before the world began, and was sent into the world as the Son in order that he should be its Saviour (John 17:5; Gal. 4:4; 1 John 4:9). In other words, the Sonship of the Son of God was not conferred upon him by virtue of his incarnation or resurrection

Having laid out their objections to the doctrine, do these objections carry sufficient weight to overturn the creedal affirmations about the Son being begotten by the Father before all worlds?

1. God has given us no revelation of the nature of their eternal relations

This is simply not true. Were it not for the presence of this language in Scripture it is hard to see how anyone would have arrived at the doctrine of eternal generation.

Furthermore, the language of begetting is not confined to Jesus' incarnation or redemptive work but appears in Scripture in connection with the Son's relationship with the Father. It is used in John 1:14, 18 where it clearly stands in contrast to the spiritual rebirth of believers as children of God, which itself is contrasted with normal physical begetting. Believers are the children of God, but the Word is the monogenes of the Father. As Letham rightly says "it is impossible to eradicate the idea of begetting from this description."

Nor, as Driscoll and Breshears allege, is this doctrine the result of speculation, as if we had a revelatory blank concerning the eternal relationships in the Trinity and attempted to fill it (as if we were at liberty to do such things) by projecting on to the Trinity revelatory data drawn from the begetting of Jesus by Mary.

To be clear as to where they do stand, unlike those writers who affirm the eternal deity and distinct personality of the second person in the Trinity (designating him as the eternal Logos) but who deny that the Sonship of the second person of the Trinity is an eternal Sonship, Driscoll and Breshears affirm that the names Father, Son and Holy Spirit are eternal.

2. The term "begotten" could never be defined with any clarity, so it was of little use

Concerning this lack of clarity Driscoll and Breshears may mean one of two things.

They may be referring to the -genes ending and whether it is related to the verb ginomai, and so indicates kind ("one and only"), or the verb gennao, and so indicates to beget or give birth ("only begotten"). If this is their meaning then perhaps they are saying that we shouldn't base a doctrine on a contested word.

They may be referring to the use of the word in relation to the persons of the Godhead, and therefore in what sense one could be said to be begotten by the other when they are both co-equal and co-eternal, and therefore that it is unclear how the word could apply to the relationship between God the Father and God the Son.

I am at a loss to explain, because their discussion is so concise, as to exactly when this lack of clarity was discovered and when the redundancy of the word was recognised. I could understand their thinking a little better if they said that "the term 'begotten' cannot be defined with any clarity, and so is of little use." However, because they use the past tense I am uncertain as to what period in church history they are referring to.

Although it is true to say that understanding mongenes as "only begotten" has fallen out of favour in the last one hundred years this has, by no means, been a universal phenomena. That aside it is worth considering what Robert Letham has said on this subject:

The Greek fathers understood monogenes in these Johannine passages to mean "only begotten." Were they less qualified to determine its meaning than people living nearly two millennia later who speak a different language? (The Holy Trinity, p. 388).

For more on the testimony of the early fathers see the relevant chapters in Samuel Miller's Letters on the Eternal Sonship of Christ. For more on the exegetical issues involved you may wish to read Lee Iron's helpful paper on "The Eternal Generation of the Son."

3. "Begotten" unavoidably implies a beginning of the one begotten

This is the crux of the matter. In addition to the third reason for rejecting eternal generation given in Doctrine ("begotten unavoidably implies a beginning of the one begotten. That would certainly lend support to the the Arian heresy that the Son is a created being and not the Creator God.") in Vintage Jesus they argue that:

But if the Son is really begotten, it certainly sounds like we are headed into a cultish, Mormon-like understanding of a God who fathers children. Worse yet, it would also mean that rather than being eternal, the Son had a beginning, which is a core tenet of the Jehovah's Witness cult. (p. 102)

In the above quotation it appears that they are assuming that the only "real" generation that we can conceive of is creaturely. They are also assuming that the term generation is to be applied univocally and not analogically. Michael Horton has a very helpful explanation of this point:

When we assert certain predicates of God, based on God's own self-revelation, we use them in one of three senses: univocally, analogically, or equivocally.

If we say that the predicate "gracious" means exactly the same thing, whether in God or a creature, we are using "gracious" univocally. At the other end of the spectrum, if we say that by using the predicate we are ascribing something to God whose appropriateness is unknown to us, we are using it equivocally. If, however, God is said to be "gracious" in a way that is both similar and dissimilar to creatures, we say it is analogical.

For instance, when we acknowledge that God is a "person," (MD: or better "three persons") do we really mean to say that he is a person in exactly the same sense as we are? When we follow Scripture in using male pronouns to refer to God, do we really believe that he is male?

Unless we are willing to ascribe to God (in a univocal sense) all attributes of human personhood, predications must be analogical.

(Michael Horton, "Hellenistic or Hebrew? Open Theism and Reformed Theological Method" in Beyond the Bounds, p. 209-10)

Human generation involves a beginning of existence, a beginning of the one begotten. Human generation also involves a time when a father is not a father, for a father becomes a father when he begets a son. But when we are thinking about the eternal generation of the Son of God we are not thinking about these things in a creaturely way, even if we are using, as we must, anthropomorphic language.

Carefully consider the distinctions involved in this offered by Herman Bavinck:

In using these terms we are of course speaking in a human and hence an imperfect language, a fact that makes us cautious. Yet we have the right to speak this language. For just as the Bible speaks analogically of God's ear, eye, and mouth, so human generation is an analogy and image of the divine deed by which the Father gives the Son "to have life in himself."

But when we resort to this imagery, we must be careful to remove all associations with imperfection and sensuality from it. The generation of a human being is imperfect and flawed. A husband needs a wife to bring forth a son. No man can ever fully impart his image, his whole nature, to a child or even to many children...But it is not so with God. (Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 2, p. 308)

We must, accordingly, conceive that generation as being eternal in the true sense of the word. It is not something that was completed and finished at some point in eternity, but an eternal unchanging act of God, at once always complete and eternally ongoing. Just as it is natural for the sun to shine and for a spring to pour out water, so it is natural for the Father to generate the Son. The Father is not and never was ungenerative; he begets everlastingly. (RD Vol 2, p. 310)

Conclusion

In my estimation the crux of the matter as to why Driscoll and Breshears have problems with the eternal generation of the Son and wish to jettison this creedal, catholic, and historic biblical doctrine is not because of the meaning of monogenes. Their diffidence stems from a misconception about the implications of begetting for God, a failure to articulate how the language applies to the eternal Father-Son relationship with similarity, but a greater degree of dissimilarity, when it is used of human father-son relationships.

Gregory of Nyssa spoke well and wisely on this very point:

Again when it interprets to us the unspeakable and transcendent existence of the Only-begotten from the Father, as the poverty of human intellect is incapable of receiving doctrines which surpass all power of speech and thought, there too it borrows our language and terms him "Son,"--a name which our usage assigns to those who are born of matter and nature.

But just as Scripture, when speaking of generation by creation, does not in the case of God imply that such generation took place by means of any material, affirming that the power of God's will served for material substance, place, time and all such circumstances, even so here too, when using the term Son, it rejects both all else that human nature remarks in generation here below,--I mean affections and dispositions and the co-operation of time, and the necessity of place,--and, above all, matter, without all which natural generation here below does not take place.

But when all such material, temporal and local existence is excluded from the sense of the term "Son," community of nature alone is left, and for this reason by the title "Son" is declared, concerning the Only-begotten, the close affinity and genuineness of relationship which mark his manifestation from the Father. (Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, Book II:9)

An update of sorts

2010-11-04T17:25:00.002Z

Currently reading:

Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy (Very enjoyable so far)

A. C. Grayling, Scepticism and the Possibility of Knowledge (Grayling can turn sentences into lead and overload the most simple of arguments with a tiresome superfluity of words)

R. W. Dale, The Atonement (I'm looking at the shift in language from the "Church doctrine" of the atonement to that of "theories")

George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (Maybe this time I will actually finish it)

Bryan Chapell, Christ-Centered Preaching (A real tonic)

Currently lecturing on:

The Doctrine of God (Five sessions for the North West Partnership Training Course. Today we did the Creator-creature distinction and analogical knowledge)

Currently preaching on:

"Knowing God" (Galatians 4:8-20)

"The Covenant of Circumcision" (Genesis 17)

Upcoming speaking engagements:

The New Pastors Conference (15-17th November, Bala, North Wales)

Banner of Truth Borders Conference (19th-20th November, Carlisle...in the North of England)

Upcoming blog posts:

"No Country for Old Doctrines: Three reasons why Driscoll & Breshears reject the eternal generation of the Son of God"

"Don't get your exegesis from Baal: John Walton on the Angel of the Lord in the Book of Genesis"

Very thankful for:

Not being hurt in a car crash in Swansea

The kindness of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Swansea for providing me with a driver (see above, hats off to Daf Taylor) so that I could preach at John Orchard's induction service.

John Orchard becoming the new pastor of Grace Church, Bridgend (formerly Broadlands Evangelical Church)

Mike Partridge becoming a pastor at Rock Baptist Church, Cambridge

Pete Campbell being called at the new pastor of Capel Fron, Penrhydeudraeth (Where, incidentally, Bertrand Russell is buried. In his case it was Penrhyn-died-a-death)

When the Gospel gets personal

2010-10-21T13:56:00.000+01:00

Martin Downes (TUESDAY Evening Acts 24 : v 24 - 27) EMW ABERYSTWYTH Wales 2010 from Evangelical Movement of Wales on Vimeo.

This summer I preached one evening at the Evangelical Movement of Wales Aberystwyth Conference. The text is from Acts 24. There were around 1 500 in the Great Hall that evening, hence the shifting camera angles as I look up to the galleries.

Not even half baked: Breshears & Driscoll on Christ being the eternally begotten Son

2010-10-18T14:53:00.003+01:00

I'm returning to an issue previously discussed at Against Heresies. You may wish to read the following posts in addition to this one:

Begotten before all worlds? Is Driscoll right to reject the eternal generation of the Son?

The Unbegotten Son? Is Driscoll right to reject the the eternal generation of the Son of God?

Discussing the creedal, catholic, doctrine of the eternal generation or begetting of the Son of God, Driscoll and Breshears (in their book Vintage Jesus) say the following:

There has been a raging controversy in the church about this term. Many see it as referencing the Trinitarian relation between the eternal Father and the eternal Son. The emphasis is that the Son is begotten not made. When I beget a son he is of the same essence as I am. But if I were to make a son, like a robot, he would certainly be entirely different from me. (p. 102)

We are not told when this raging controversy took place, what the different parties believed, and who those parties were. What we do know is that the formal stating of the doctrine of the full deity and distinct personality of the Son of God, and of his eternal relationship with the Father, can be found in the ecumenical creeds. These symbols freely describe the Son as eternally begotten of the Father:

The Nicene Creed states that we believe in:

One Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

The Athanasian Creed follows this:

For the right faith is that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man. God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and man of substance of His mother, born in the world.

The same teaching is upheld by the Definition of Chalcedon which in addition distinguishes the begetting of the manhood of Jesus from Mary from the eternal begetting of the Son by the Father:

As regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.

All of which gives the distinct impression that this is a settled controversy, as far as orthodoxy is concerned.

Unlike these creeds the doctrinal statement of Mars Hill Church has no affirmation of the eternal generation of the Son. Nor for that matter is there an affirmation of this doctrine in the statement of faith and teaching position document of Western Seminary where Gerry Breshears teaches systematic theology.

Driscoll and Breshears then add the following comments:

But if the Son is really begotten, it certainly sounds like we are headed into a cultish, Mormon-like understanding of a God who fathers children. Worse yet, it would also mean that rather than being eternal, the Son had a beginning, which is a core tenet of the Jehovah's Witness cult.

Perhaps we would be heading into a cultish direction if the Son were in fact a creature, if he were not the eternal Son of God. Maybe we would be well on the way to Cultville if we ignored the Creator-creature distinction and thought that the terminology of 'begetting' applied to the Father-Son relationship in the Godhood in exactly the way that it applies to human father-son relationships in time and space.

For the cults the very fact that he is called the Son reduces his status, and not the fact of his eternal generation. If he is called the Son doesn't that somehow, by sheer possession of the title, make him less than the Father? Does it not imply creation, that he has a beginning?

I fail to see how claiming that he is 'begotten' makes any difference when it comes to those who seek to diminish the ineffable glory of the Son of God. Why isolate the language of begetting and generation and quibble over it when it belongs to the same category of language as father and son. Why is 'begotten' problematic when 'Son' isn't? For the cults all of these words are taken as indicative of creaturehood. And of course they are wrong to do so.

Look again at the first sentence:

But if the Son is really begotten, it certainly sounds like we are headed into a cultish, Mormon-like understanding of a God who fathers children.

What does 'really' mean in that sentence? Are we to suppose that 'really' in this sentence is synonymous with literally? 'Really' as opposed to what? 'Metaphorically' perhaps? Is 'begetting' only real if it done by creatures? What about divine Sonship? Has he always been the Son? Is God really a Father if he has always had a Son?

It sounds as if to be 'really begotten' is only conceivable to Driscoll and Breshears if it applies at a creaturely level. Can Christ not be eternally begotten and that count as a real begetting? Samuel Miller, one of Princeton Seminary's first professors, remarked, on this precise point:

No one, I suppose, ever thought of contending for the literal sense of these terms, in reference to the persons of the Trinity; that is literal, when measured by their common, earthly sense. Their meaning, on this great subject, is not natural, but supernatural and Divine, and, of course, beyond the reach of our minds.

I fear that what is missing with Driscoll and Breshears, in terms of approaching this subject, is the right starting point for thinking about God.

We must begin with God. We must begin with what God has said. We must remember that although he is infinitely exalted above all that he has made, and that the finite cannot comprehend the infinite, God has stooped down to speak to us on our level. We must remember that all and not part of God's verbal revelation is anthropomorphic, or else we could not grasp any part of his communication to us.

The point is surely clear, and this is why I find their squeamishness about Christ being the eternally begotten Son so half baked. When God tells us about himself, the paternal and filial language that he uses applies to himself as God in a way that is does not apply to us as creatures with direct equivalence.

Surely we are not tripped up by the free use in Scripture of God's arm, hand, eye, ear and mouth being referred to as if those words carried direct equivalence when used of God and man? When God smelled the aroma of Noah's sacrifice are we to think that he really has a nose? Why would we stumble then at 'begotten'? Why do Driscoll and Breshears isolate it and make it into a special case?

Furthermore, we will not fall into the error they warn us about in their second sentence, 'Worse yet, it would also mean that rather than being eternal, the Son had a beginning, which is a core tenet of the Jehovah's Witness cult', if we are clear about the right starting place for thinking about God, the Creator-creature distinction, and how we are to understand the proper application of analogical language.

The eternal begetting of the Son of God does not mean that he has a beginning, and it lends no support to Arian ideas ancient or modern. The words of protest on this point, written by Samuel Miller in 1823, are worth repeating:

I will...once more say that I protest utterly against attaching to the terms in question, any of those carnal and grovelling ideas which the same terms excite when applied to the affairs of men.

I hope to return to this issue by interacting further with the reasons for rejecting the eternal generation of the Son in Doctrine: What Christians should believe, and by taking up the exegetical case for this creedal truth. I'm also hoping, time permitting, to take a look at John Owen's exposition and defense of eternal generation, against the Socinians, in Vindicae Evangelicae (vol. 12 in the Banner edition of Owen's works), and also at the Princetonian Samuel Miller's work Letters on the Eternal Sonship of Christ.

The ineffable glory of the Son of God

2010-10-16T14:15:00.000+01:00

Some brilliant comments all the way from the fourth century, courtesy of Hilary of Poitiers in Book Three of his De Trinitate:

A virgin bears; her child is of God.
An infant wails; angels are heard in praise.
There are coarse swaddling clothes; God is being worshipped.

The glory of his majesty is not forfeited when he assumes the lowliness of flesh.

He who upholds the universe, within whom and through whom are all things, was brought forth by common childbirth;

He at whose voice Archangels and Angels tremble, and heaven and earth and all the elements of this world are melted, was heard in childish wailing.

The Invisible and Incomprehensible, whom sight and feeling and touch cannot gauge, was wrapped in a cradle...He by whom man was made had nothing to gain by becoming man; it was to our gain that God was incarnate and dwelt among us.

...the proper service of faith is to grasp and confess the truth that it is incompetent to comprehend its Object.

On understanding the eternal relationship between the Father and Son he says:

If anyone lays upon his personal incapacity his failure to solve the mystery, in spite of the certainty that Father and Son stand to each other in those relations, he will be still more pained at the ignorance to which I confess.

I, too, am in the dark, yet I ask no questions. I look for comfort in the fact that Archangels share my ignorance, that Angels have not heard the explanation, and worlds do not contain it, that no prophet has espied it and no Apostle sought for it, that the Son himself has not revealed it.

Time then itself is His [Christ's] creature