Hills on which to die

The latest edition of the Founders Journal contains an interview that I did with Dr Tom Ascol.  The interview is taken from Risking the Truth: handling error in the church (Christian Focus, 2009).

Here's a taster:

How should a minister keep himself from bitterness and pride when engaged in controversy?

First of all, a minister ought to try to avoid controversy. Sadly, there often is a perverse desire to battle that tends to well up in a minister who is fully committed to proclaim and defend the truth of God's Word. When that is coupled with the abundant distortions of truth that prevail today, a man very easily could find himself doing little else than engaging in controversies. A minister must learn to distinguish those hills on which he is prepared to die from all others and choose his battles carefully. Prayer, Scripture and godly counsel help in this effort.

Secondly, a man must recognize that in the heat of any controversy his greatest challenge lies within his own heart. One of the Puritans said that the temptations that accompany controversy are greater than those that accompany women and wine. Bitterness and pride are only two of them. John Bunyan recognized this and addressed it very graphically with his character, Valiant for Truth, in Pilgrim's Progress. Study the account of that man's bloody battle and remember that the three enemies that left him bruised and battered all resided within his own soul!

On a practical note, I try to remember that the truth for which I am contending commands me to love the one with whom I contend. It does not matter if he is a Christian brother or not, since Jesus tells us to love even our enemies. If I allow myself to become vengeful or bitter or arrogant toward my disputants then I am violating the very truth which I profess to defend in the controversy. It would be better for me to remain quiet and let others better suited to represent Christ and His cause take up the battle. It would be best for me to become such a person.

Also, I try to remember that in controversies my goal should be to win people and not arguments. It is easy to hang people on their words by pointing out every misstatement and accusing them of meaning what they genuinely did not intend to communicate. If I see something more clearly and accurately than my "opponent," then it is only by the grace of God and I should not allow myself to believe or act like it is because I am smarter or better in any way than he is.

Finally, I ask my wife and a few trustworthy men to watch me carefully when I am engaged in controversy and to point out to me where I am exhibiting pride, thoughtlessness or lack of love. God has used them to help me see what I would not have seen otherwise.

What practical steps should be taken by preachers to "watch their life and doctrine closely"?

Recognize that this admonition is given to us for a reason. Every preacher should remember that better men than we will ever be have fallen into grievous sin and error. Ministers need the gospel as much as anyone and we must learn to live by the grace of God in Jesus Christ every day. We need to deal with our sin daily and trust Christ for forgiveness daily. We must fight against every tendency to resign ourselves to professionalism in ministry. As Robert Murray M' Cheyne said, "My people's greatest need is their pastor's personal holiness." Dealing daily with our hearts before the Lord is not optional. This work does not compete with my ministry, it is a vital part of my ministry.

Using trustworthy catechisms and confessions can help guard our doctrinal commitments. Such documents are not infallible, but they provide guardrails which we should overrun, if ever, only with great caution and clear biblical warrant.

You can read the whole thing here

Remythologizing Theology: Kevin Vanhoozer interviewed by Guy Davies

My old pal Guy Davies recently interviewed Kevin Vanhoozer about his new book Remythologizing Theology. My mother's maiden name was McAndrew and I don't mind telling you that when I saw the price of the book my Scottish blood yelped.

Here's a taster:

GD: What is your main aim in this book?

KV: For years I’ve felt that the doctrine of God was a relatively weak spot in evangelical theology. Then open theism happened and my suspicions were confirmed.

One major aim, then, is to provide a retooling of classical theism that takes into account the concerns of open theists – in particular, the integrity of God’s loving relationship to the world – while simultaneously maintaining what I take to be the correct Reformed emphasis on divine sovereignty.

Another aim is to scrutinize the oft-heard claim in contemporary theology that God’s love entails divine suffering.

GD: What do you mean by "remythologizing theology"?’

KV: I don’t mean “mythologizing again”! “Remythologizing” pertains first and foremost not to myth but “mythos,” Aristotle’s term for dramatic plot.

I’m using “remythologizing” as a contrast term to Bultmann’s demythologizing. Where Bultmann fails to take seriously either the Bible’s depictions of God’s acts or the Bible as the product of God’s authorship, remythologizing starts: with God as one who speaks and acts, the latter often by way of speaking.

Remythologizing is a proposal for “first theology,” a way of thinking God and Scripture together. Specifically, it views God’s being on the basis of God’s acts, especially his communicative acts. God is as God does, and God does as God says.

Remythologizing theology is all about speaking well of God on the basis of God’s own speech. To remythologize theology is to set forth the ontology of the one who speaks in Scripture, the one whom Scripture is also about.

GD: What do the words of the subtitle, Divine Action, Passion and Authorship, say about your attitude towards the impassibility of God? Isn't he a being "without body, parts or passions"?

KV: The sub-title alone does not make a statement but announces a theme. The question of God’s suffering – that is, his ability to be affected by human creatures – is a red thread that runs throughout the book. If Nicholas Wolterstorff is right in comparing classical theism to a seamless garment where one loose thread spells the unraveling of the whole, then divine impassibility makes for an excellent case study.

Remytholgizing Theology is a minority opposition report on the “new orthodoxy” of divine suffering. While I want to take the biblical depictions of God’s dialogical interaction with human beings seriously, I don’t want to pull God down to the creaturely level.

The challenge, then, is to specify to what the biblical descriptions of God’s emotions actually refer. There is not much on the meaning of divine emotions in the history of theology. Classical theists tend to take this language as anthropomorphic; open theists tend to take it literally.

I had to resist the temptation simply to choose one side rather than the other. The prior question is: what is a divine emotion? I do provide an answer, but the water in that pool is a bit too deep to dive into here.

You can read the whole thing here

I'm working my way through, at the second attempt, Vanhoozer's The Drama of Doctrine. Maybe the first time the extended imagery failed to make a vivid impression on me, then again haven't you found that a book you just couldn't get in to proved to be rewarding a few months or years later?

Here is a sentence from the Introduction that made me rub my eyes a few times:

With regard to the overarching theatrical model, the theologian is best associated not with the director (this role is best reserved for the Holy Spirit and for those ministers the Spirit gifts and equips to be assistants) but with the dramaturge, the person responsible for advising the director on how best to understand and perform the script (chap. 8).

I know what he means, but it sounds a lot like "Kevin Vanhoozer, Research Professor of Systematic Theology and Special Advisor to God the Holy Spirit."

Dealing with heresy in the Church: the Issues, etc. interview

If you are interested you can have a listen to the interview I did with Issues, etc. on dealing with heresy in the Church here. Nice to have a bit of Coldplay for the introduction too. Take a look at the other interviews that they recently conducted.

Todd, the host, asked some great questions, some of them would make for great discussion starters for small groups.

An interview on the doctrine of Scripture with Greg Beale (3)

The following interview with Professor Greg Beale is taken from Risking the Truth: Handling Error in the Church

In February 2011 Greg Beale will be one of the speakers at the Affinity Theological Study Conference on the doctrine of Scripture. Other speakers include Carl Trueman, Daniel Strange, Martin Downes and Hywel Jones.

Part 1: The exegetical foundations of inerrancy

Part2: Dealing with denials and criticisms of the doctrine of inerrancy

Part 3: The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism

What have been some of the contributing factors to what you have called the 'erosion' of inerrancy in evangelicalism?

There are a number of factors. One has to do with the well-known term ‘postmodernism’. What I mean by that term is the essential notion that truth is relative, and as that has come to be baptized within evangelicalism, especially in the United States, there is a focus away from the notion that the Scriptures are the inerrant Word of God and a focus on the Spirit coming to give every person a particular message through the Scriptures that may not have been originally intended. Hence, original inspiration is not that necessary or, at least, it comes to be seen as not so important.

Indeed, for the evangelical postmodernist, we no longer live in the former apologetic age. We live now in an age of experience where we want to meet the living God. We must not be so concerned about the inerrant propositions of Scripture. ‘Propositions’ almost has become a naughty hermeneutical word. We are told we should be concerned only with the God we meet who reveals His presence in Scripture. That is the kind of ethos that I think has worn away at the idea of inerrancy in evangelicalism.

Together with that there is another angle of the postmodern influence, and that is the notion that we moderns should not judge ancient peoples, i.e. the peoples who wrote the Bible, by our standards of what we believe is true and what is false. They may have had different standards. We should not impose our modern standards on these ancient peoples. For example, it is claimed that the synoptic gospels may indeed contain historical contradictions. That does not mean that the synoptic writers, and their readers, would have thought that they were contradictions and that they were false.

It is this kind of argument that you hear again and again, and this begins to touch even closer to the notion that truth is relative, especially from one age to another. That is one factor in the erosion of inerrancy in evangelicalism, even at some of our traditional evangelical institutions.

Secondly, there is a sociological phenomenon. Beginning at least thirty years ago, and increasingly today, evangelicals have been doing doctoral work in Old and New Testament and theology. One reason for that in Biblical Studies is that evangelical seminaries are rigorous in requiring Greek and Hebrew, whereas the other seminaries typically are not. There are more competent students potentially qualified to do doctoral work coming out of our seminaries (who know Greek and Hebrew well), and they are going on to do doctorates at non-evangelical institutions.

In the United States when one enters into a doctoral program that is not evangelical it is like entering a new world, a world that does not have the values that the student had back at their Christian college. When you go into that world as an evangelical you are made to feel like an ignorant fundamentalist if you really believe in the inspiration, indeed the inerrancy of Scripture. And if that were made known, you are then made to feel odd. No one wants to be made to feel odd by their professors and scholarly student peers. So it is very easy to downplay one’s view, and it becomes very easy to want to fit in. In other words a student wants to be considered normal; no one wants to be seen as abnormal, and so there is tremendous pressure not to reveal one’s belief in inerrancy, when particular occasions may call for it.

There is this huge sociological pressure placed on students, and if they are not tremendously founded on the Word of God and in a strong Reformed epistemology, then I have seen that it is easy for them to become conformed to that environment in which they are around. So students come out and maybe they are still evangelical, they believe in the gospel, but some of their other beliefs have been eroded, such as the full inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture, which they also begin to think is the fundamentalist view.

Those are two reasons for the erosion of inerrancy in evangelical: postmodern theological reasons and the sociological factors. I must say there are some students who go through these programs, and they do fine, but there is a significant percentage who come out still considering themselves as evangelical but not with the same set of beliefs on Scripture.

How do you assess the status of inerrancy today among evangelical theologians and biblical scholars? Is the doctrine in good health?

Part of my answer goes back to the rise of postmodernism and its baptism into evangelicalism. You see this with some of our theologians at evangelical schools that do not want to be called systematic theologians. Systematic theology of some of these theologians is a matter of the past, a matter of Church history. Some contemporary theologians do not consider systematic theology to be a viable approach for the doing of theology today. These theologians sometimes like to refer to themselves as constructive theologians.

For them systematic theology focuses too much on reason, and the notion that you can organize Scripture into categories. They would also say that it focuses too much on propositions. So there is a de-emphasis on the inspiration of the propositions and an emphasis on the presence of God in Scripture. Of course that is a wonderful emphasis. Karl Barth had that emphasis. But you do not downplay one for the other. The propositions are true because they are living oracles of God and God is there speaking through them. The way He speaks to us existentially through the Scriptures is going to be consistent with the way they were originally penned under inspiration. There are not going to be different or contradictory meanings given by the Spirit.

I published a book in the mid 1990s called The Right Doctrine from the Wrong Texts? There is a debate still among evangelicals that the New Testament writers used the Old Testament but gave it completely new meanings, and yet what they wrote was inspired. I have to say ‘no’ to that. I have argued against that in a number of my writings and I think that is the opening of the door toward a dilution of inerrancy. Peter Enns, most recently of course, argued for this position in his book Incarnation and Inspiration.

Another symptom of the dilution of the authority of Scripture among evangelicals is the popularity of the Barthian view of Scripture. Of course, I don’t want to paint everyone with this brush; there are some fine evangelicals upholding the doctrine of inerrancy, (and I’m not going to go school by school!), but some schools are mixed in this regard. I do think that the theology of Karl Barth’s view of Scripture continues to live on, and in fact is becoming very, very much more influential, even more than it has been in the past, much more influential among evangelicals.

What that means is that the key issue is the presence of God confronting one in Scripture, and not so much the focus on propositions. Barth himself believed that there were actual errors in the inscripturated form of the Bible, but that God can reveal Himself even through those errors. This is a kind of strange hyper-Calvinist view. Some of these theologians would think that it is antiquated to try to defend inerrancy as an apologetic because of what they consider to be an appropriate lack of stress on propositions.

An interview on the doctrine of Scripture with Greg Beale (2)

The following interview with Professor Greg Beale is taken from Risking the Truth: Handling Error in the Church

In February 2011 Greg Beale will be one of the speakers at the Affinity Theological Study Conference on the doctrine of Scripture. Other speakers include Carl Trueman, Daniel Strange, Martin Downes and Hywel Jones.

Part 2: Dealing with denials and criticisms of the doctrine of inerrancy

What are some of the consequences of denying inerrancy?

Ultimately, if you hold just to limited infallibility (for example, just the theological and soteric doctrines are inspired, not the other parts of the Bible), what can happen is that one ends up choosing what is inspired and trustworthy. What is infallible is different for different interpreters, and so one can end up making a Bible within the Bible for oneself. That is problematic. Someone might say that there are not a lot of errors, just a few. Well that is up to the ‘error’ decider. For some it may be more, for others less, but that way you don’t end up with a fully inspired Bible.

I should address the typical objection that it is irrelevant to hold that the Scriptures were inspired in the original autographs, since we no longer have them. However, if we didn’t have originally inspired autographs who knows how many errors we could have? And when did the Bible become inspired if they were not inspired in the originals? We are left with even more problems if we don’t affirm a view of the inspiration of the original manuscripts. Furthermore, why do textual criticism if there was not an inspired original? Textual criticism is based on the fact that there was an original and that we are trying to get back to it.

Some people are concerned about the New Testament because there are corruptions in the manuscripts, which of course there are. But, in terms of the textual problems that we have, the really serious ones probably equal only one percent of the whole New Testament. Someone has compared this to the department of weights and measures in Washington D. C. Apparently, they have the perfect ruler there and the perfect foot. Carpenters around the country have rulers also. They are not as perfect as the one in Washington but they are very near it. To all intents and purposes we can say ‘thus saith the Lord’.

If we are preaching from a text of which there is serious doubt about what the original said, then we have to acknowledge that, just as we have to acknowledge that there may be interpretative problems with some texts that maybe Augustine, Luther, Calvin and Hodge disagreed over. In fact, if we had the original autographs it wouldn’t solve most of our problems. Most of our problems are theological and interpretive, not textual.

The doctrine of inerrancy has been criticized as “‘practically worthless’ because it requires so much qualifying. Andrew McGowan has recently questioned it on those grounds. Is it a fair criticism?

You may be referring to his comments about the Chicago Statement on inerrancy. I do think it is important to make qualifications. All that is to say is that the Scripture is inerrant from the angle of God’s intention through the human authors. If numbers are given in one text, and in parallel texts they are not exactly the same, is that an error? Well it depends on the intention of each particular author. One may be approximating and the other may not be. Some will say that is a qualification and that this qualification is a good example of inerrancy dying the death of a thousand qualifications. I don’t think so.

Even those who hold to a broad view of inspiration, for example the infallibilists, will point to intention, even though they limit that intention to soteric issues or theological issues and not historical ones. I feel very happy with the qualifications that the Chicago Statement makes and I don’t think that those qualifications qualify inerrancy in a way that it ‘dies the death of a thousand qualifications’! In this connection, intriguingly, it is very striking, astonishing really, that Andrew McGowan’s book has hardly any exegesis in it.

Another objection to inerrancy is that it is really a nineteenth-century invention that was forged in the conflict with liberal theology and higher criticism. How do you respond to that claim?

What tells the tale on that are some of the articles and books that have been written that deal with the doctrine of Scripture in the apostolic fathers, the church fathers, the medieval period, the Reformation, and on up to the 1700s. The language used of Scripture throughout the history of the Church is the language of perfection, of not making mistakes, of not making errors and other synonymous terms. John Hannah has edited the book Inerrancy and the Church, in which there are several articles, beginning with the church fathers, that show that the doctrine of inerrancy is traceable long before the nineteenth century.

It is also a typical response to say that inerrancy arose from the Enlightenment, especially as this pertains to the use of reason in understanding Scripture. The response to this has to be the same as with the above discussion of the view of inspiration held throughout Church history.

An interview on the doctrine of Scripture with Greg Beale (1)

The following interview with Professor Greg Beale is taken from Risking the Truth: Handling Error in the Church

In February 2011 Greg Beale will be one of the speakers at the Affinity Theological Study Conference on the doctrine of Scripture. Other speakers include Carl Trueman, Daniel Strange, Martin Downes and Hywel Jones. For details on the last conference "The End of the Law?" go here.

Part 1: The Exegetical Foundations of Inerrancy

Why do you believe the Bible, as originally given, is not only inspired but also inerrant?

It is intriguing that some people don’t like the term ‘inerrancy’ because it sounds too negative. They also say the word cannot be found in Scripture. But you do find the concept. For example in John 10:35 Christ says that Scripture cannot be broken. And of course there are the well-known texts like 2 Timothy 3:16, ‘All Scripture is God-breathed’ and 2 Peter 1:21 ‘prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.’

The traditional syllogism of classic orthodox evangelicalism is that since God is true and without error, His oral Word is true and without error, and when His oral Word becomes inscripturated it is therefore true and without error. This syllogism has been challenged most recently by Andrew McGowan in his book The Divine Spiration of Scripture. McGowan argues that this syllogism is not biblical. I’m prepared to argue that it is not only biblical but that it is also exegetical (on which see further below).

What are some of the principal exegetical foundations of inerrancy?

As I mentioned, I believe that the concept of inerrancy is in Scripture. The syllogism that I referred to is found in some parts of the Bible, even though McGowan says that there is no evidence of such an exegetical syllogism but that it is an assumption imposed on the Scriptures.

You can, however, see this syllogism in the book of Revelation. I began to reflect on this when McGowan issued this challenge. Part of what I am now going to summarize can also be found partly in my commentary on Revelation. The key texts are Revelation 3:14 , 21:5, and 22:6.

In Revelation 3:14 Christ introduces Himself and says He is ‘the Amen, the faithful and true witness’. Now, it is acknowledged by most commentators that the Amen comes from Isaiah 65:16. This is the only place in Scripture where ‘Amen’ is a name. And it is a name for God. He is the ‘Amen’, and He is called the ‘Amen’ twice there in Isaiah 65:16. Christ expands that into ‘the Amen, the faithful and true witness’. That extension by the way is found in different LXX versions of Isaiah 65:16 and so there is already a precedent for expanding ‘Amen’ in the way Jesus Himself does in Revelation 3:14.

We have here an identification Christology. Christ is Yahweh. It is a wonderful Christological text. He says ‘the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God’ (the latter phrase probably coming out of Isaiah 65:17 which says, ‘Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth.’ Jesus’ resurrection is the beginning of that new creation).

So now Christ is speaking, and He is ‘faithful and true’. Therefore He can be depended upon in His oral Word. But this oral Word is inscripturated here, and so it too can be depended upon. Especially since it ends with, ‘He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches’ in 3:22. These are the words of Christ and they are the words of the Spirit, which John has been commanded to ‘write’. But at this point let us be satisfied merely to say that Christ’s oral Word here is faithful because He is seen as a faithful witness.

His character is faithful and true, therefore as God was called the ‘Amen, the faithful and true’ (putting the different Septuagintal traditions of Isaiah 65:16 together), Christ identifies Himself as ‘the Amen, the faithful and true witness’. His witness is faithful and true, and what He says is faithful and true. Very intriguingly, in Revelation 21:5 we have this statement: ‘He who sits on the throne says, “Behold, I’m making all things new.”’ Here we have the new creation again, and He says, ‘Write, for these words are faithful and true.’

Here we have a development from 3:14, but it still has in mind Isaiah 65:16. But now, notice, this is not Christ who is faithful and true. What is happening here is that, what was true of Yahweh and Jesus – that their character is faithful and true – is now being taken and applied to written scriptural form in the same way as it was to their oral Word. That is, God (or Christ) is saying that His ‘faithful and true’ oral Word is extended to the written Word. ‘Behold, I’m making all things new’, and He said ‘write this down for these words are faithful and true’.

So we see the extension of God’s character, Christ’s character, to His witness and oral Word in chapter 3. And now John is commanded to write this word down in scriptural form in chapter 21. The faithful and true character of the oral Word is extended to the written form.

In 22:6 we see the same thing. We read, ‘These words are faithful and true.’ He is probably not just referring to the Revelation 21:1–22:5 vision but to the whole book. ‘These words are faithful and true.’ Again the whole book is categorized in this way. This is found in one other place. In 19:9 we read ‘Then the angel said to me, “Write: ‘Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!’”And he added, “These are true words of God.”’He is commanded to write. Why? Because what has been spoken as true has been extended to the written form. Only two verses later, Christ is again referred to as ‘faithful and true’.

Now some might say, as they have in fact said to me, ‘well there is a little room for slippage here. Yes, God is telling John to write these things down because the oral Word is “faithful and true,” but maybe he could have slipped a little bit and just a bit of inaccuracy could have crept in when he tried to record it.’ But, in fact, we know that John was a prophet, and we know that God views the whole book in its written form as prophetic. This is apparent from the well-known verses of Revelation 22:18-19, ‘I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues which are written in this book. And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life.’ And, likewise, remember that in chapter three, in the letters, at the end they are seen as the words of the Spirit, yet John was commanded to write.

So with this extension what we have here in Revelation is the syllogism. God and Christ are seen as faithful and true, therefore their oral Word is faithful and true, and because of this their Word is to be put down in written form, and this too is faithful and true. The word ‘inerrant’ is not used but certainly the notion is that God and Christ being ‘faithful and true’ includes that their witness not contain any untruth or error. Thus, the concept of inerrancy is likely expressed here.

Iron Sharpens Iron: Interview with Tom Ascol

Dr. Tom Ascol was recently a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron where he discusses his chapter "The Good Shepherds" from Risking the Truth and the impact of contemporary theological errors in the Christian life. Dr. Ascol is the the pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida.

You can listen to the interview here (the intro is in Spanish by the way, and you should skip the ads at the start...unless you like listening to that sort of thing)

Interview with Dr. Guy Waters

Dr. Guy Waters (associate professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson, Mississippi) was recently interviewed on the Iron Sharpens Iron radio program. The program's host Chris Arnzen discusses Dr. Waters' chapter in Risking the Truth and his books on the New Perspective on Paul and the Federal Vision. You can download the interview here (the notices and ads are fairly long so you may want to skip them).

Knowing the Truth & Risking the Truth

Earlier this evening I was a guest on pastor Kevin Boling's program Knowing the Truth. As well as talking about my book Risking the Truth there was also a live call in. You can have a listen to the broadcast here.



The book is available in the UK here

And in the US here, here, here and here

And in Australia here

Knowing the Truth: Radio Interview

God willing I will be a guest on the Knowing the Truth Radio Progam on Tuesday 17th November.

The host Pastor Kevin Boling will be asking me about the issues raised in the book Risking the Truth: Handling Error in the Church. You can get more details here. The broadcast is at 1pm Eastern Time, so that's 6pm here in the UK. There is also a phone in during the show.

By all accounts it is the most listened to Christian Talk Radio Program in the South East US and recent guests have included R.C. Sproul, Albert Mohler, D.A. Carson, J.I. Packer, Jerry Bridges, Joel Beeke, Ligon Duncan, Steve Lawson, Russell Moore, Richard Phillips...

"Remember, remember..." An interview with Mike Reeves on the Reformation, part 3

This is the third and final part of my interview with Mike Reeves.

Mike is the theological advisor for UCCF:The Christian Unions, the power behind the throne for Theology Network, and the author of The Unquenchable Flame: Introducing the Reformation (IVP). UK readers can get the book for the bargain price of £7.20 (that includes p & p) here. A US edition of the book will be out on 1st April 2010 and will be published by Broadman & Holman.

Downes: Some evangelicals and some Roman Catholics have worked toward joint agreements on justification. What do you think about this?

Reeves: I would love to see real and peaceful agreement on justification between all who profess to be Christian. And in that sense I admire and applaud the efforts of those who have sought such unity. However. The simple fact is that while some individual Roman Catholics have come round to what looks something like a Reformation understanding of justification through faith alone, Rome’s doctrinal position has not changed.

Those statements that purport to show true agreement on justification simply fudge the main Reformation position, papering over the cracks that still remain between Rome and the Reformation (typically, by vague wording and agreeing that justification is by faith, but leaving out the key word ‘alone’). And if that is the case, then evangelicals and Roman Catholics who think they have come to a common agreement are deluding themselves. Oh, for Roman Catholics and evangelicals to find true agreement on justification as a declaration, made on the basis of God’s grace alone! But as things stand, that agreement is yet to be found.

Downes: How should Christians and churches develop a passion for church history?

Reeves: Simply read good church history and historical theology! There’s all sorts of wonderful stuff out there: I put a list of further reading at the back of the book, and there’s more to be found on the website (theunquenchableflame.org). But I’m so glad you asked the question, because it’s moronic to cut ourselves off from the wisdom and lessons of the bulk of the church. If we forget church history, we just leave ourselves victim to our zeitgeist. In fact it’s for just this reason that I’ve written another book, out in January. It’s called The Breeze of the Centuries: Introducing Great Theologians (IVP), and I’m hoping it can do something to rescue us from being prisoners of our age.

Downes: You say in the book that the Reformation isn't over. Why not?

Reeves: You’re giving things away! But absolutely I think that, and essentially because the Reformation was not a mere historical response to a problem that has now gone away. The Puritans especially saw how easily the reforming of the Church could go off-track or be forgotten, and how necessary it is for the Church to remain ever a creature of the word of God. Sinners need constant reformation by the gospel of God’s free grace, and that was what the Reformation was all about. It cannot, then, be over.

But I think there is also a particular and pressing need for the Reformation to continue today. My fear is that right now in bible colleges and theological institutions, future preachers are being bombarded with many confusing interpretations of what Paul meant by justification and ‘the righteousness of God’. And even if they are not lured away from what I am convinced is the biblical truth of the main Reformation position, I worry that they will come out confused. If that happens, then we will have a generation where the pulpits are silent on the gospel of God’s gift of righteousness. And thus the Church will wither terribly.

Given that, today is a day of days when preachers must drink more deeply from Reformation waters and boldly hold out that gospel.

"Remember, remember..." An interview with Mike Reeves on the Reformation, part 2

This is the second part of my interview with Mike Reeves.

Mike is the theological advisor for UCCF:The Christian Unions, the power behind the throne for Theology Network, and the author of The Unquenchable Flame: Introducing the Reformation (IVP). UK readers can get the book for the bargain price of £7.20 (that includes p & p) here. A US edition of the book will be out on 1st April 2010 and will be published by Broadman & Holman.

Downes: How do we explain the extraordinary changes that the Reformation unleashed?

Reeves: Chatting with a Roman Catholic priest recently, he charged the Reformation with unleashing extraordinary changes, but disastrous ones, especially years of religious wars between Protestant and Catholic. That’s a common accusation, but an unfair one, I think. What happened was that political rulers used what was a theological revolution for political ends. And something I tried to show in the book was how different a politically motivated Reformation looked to a more purely theological one.

At root, the Reformation was a matter of theology, of rediscovering God’s grace. That is something now commonly obscured in modern histories of the Reformation, and something I tried to remedy in mine. But that, I think, points us towards the answer I believe the Reformers would have given to the question: Why such changes? The power of the word of God purely taught!

Downes: In the book you say that "Justification was what made the Reformation the Reformation" and that "The Reformation was, fundamentally, about justification." What is justification by faith alone and why does it matter?

Reeves: Yes, acknowledging Scripture as the only sure foundation for belief was the formal cause of the Reformation, but justification was its matter. Luther’s discovery was that ‘the righteousness of God’ is not simply a description of how God is. If it were, that would be nothing but terrifying for us who are unrighteous. What Luther saw in Romans 1:17 was that ‘the righteousness of God’ is something God has that he shares with believers.

Justification, then, is much more than forgiveness. If it was mere forgiveness, then every time I sinned I would need to be re-justified (and isn’t that how too many Christians seem to think?). But justification is God’s declaration that a sinner is now clothed with the very righteousness of Christ himself. And, being God’s declaration, a gift of something he has, justification cannot be a process or something that I can contribute towards. It must be something I can only receive. It must, in other words, be through faith alone.

And why does it matter? Simply imagine the difference between being clothed with the righteousness of Christ and not. It means assurance or not, boldness in prayer or not, true love for God or not. Basically, it means spiritual health or not. If we lose justification by faith alone, the Church falls and turns, as Paul put it, to ‘another gospel’ (Galatians 1:6-9).

Downes: In the book you describe the reformers as "evangelicals" and the Reformation movement as "evangelicalism." Isn't that anachronistic? I would imagine that they would be horrified by big-tent evangelicalism with its glitzy techniques, indifference to truth, and accommodation of error. So why did you describe them as evangelicals?

Reeves: Yes, the Reformers must be turning in their graves at the things you describe. I used the term carefully, partly because for the first twenty years of the Reformation, before the term ‘Protestant’ was used, the Reformers were known as ‘evangelicals’. And that captures something important: they aimed to be, quite simply, gospel people.

Also, the Reformation was a project that many political rulers happily hijacked. They came to be seen as ‘Protestant’ rulers, and all their subjects naturally became ‘Protestant’, but that did not mean that they were necessarily anything like ‘gospel people’. And that was the essential impulse behind the Puritan movement: in the 1560s, when Puritanism began, England was officially a Protestant country; but for the Puritans, that was something different to true Reformation. They were after the reforming of hearts in churches that were not nominally Protestant but shaped in every way by the gospel.

Downes: How can the contemporary indifference toward doctrine be overcome?

Reeves: You ask deep questions! I think we need to know what’s happened historically. Before the Enlightenment it was normally believed that doctrine was essentially relevant because it would remake our very being – it would change how we think and act. Read theologians from before then and you see they couldn’t separate doctrine from pastoral care. Take John Calvin, writing his preface to the first edition of his Institutes, for example. Why did he write all that doctrine? ‘My purpose’, he said, ‘was solely to transmit certain rudiments by which those who are touched with any zeal for religion might be shaped to true godliness.’

But today, post-Enlightenment, the professional ‘theologians’ are commonly not preachers and the preachers are commonly not theological. And I think a good deal of the blame is to be laid on the Enlightenment, with its denial of divine revelation. For then, what is doctrine? No more than a titillating hobby, for it cannot be talking about real truth.

I think that myth has gone deep down in us, making us see doctrine as the plaything of picky nerds. And that conceals the fact that our minds are naturally full of doctrines, but doctrines taken from the world. So we need to explode the myth and be very clear that in Christian doctrine we are talking about absolute truth that by its very nature has the power to overturn hearts and the world. In fact, the only way for the Church to grow is to replace our natural doctrines with God’s. And that is what you see happening in the Reformation (and oh how it happened!): look at Calvin’s hours of wrestling with doctrine – they led to the conversion of millions, even in his own day.

"Remember, remember..." An interview with Mike Reeves on the Reformation, part 1

Mike Reeves is the theological advisor for UCCF:The Christian Unions, the power behind the throne for Theology Network, and the author of The Unquenchable Flame: Introducing the Reformation (IVP). UK readers can get the book for the bargain price of £7.20 (that includes p & p) here. A US edition of the book will be out on 1st April 2010 and will be published by Broadman & Holman.

Mark Dever says that it is "quite simply, the best brief introduction to the Reformation I have read" and Gerald Bray says that it "will stir the heart, refresh the soul and direct the mind towards a deeper understanding of our faith."

I recently asked Mike some questions about the book.

Downes: Why did you write the book?

Reeves: Discovering the Reformation was a real turning point for me personally. It was Luther I found first, and when I did I saw gospel-clarity of a sort I had never seen before. I didn’t know it, but at the time I was pretty hazy on great doctrines like justification, and reading Luther was just life-changing. So I wanted to share what was for me a profound gospel discovery.

And I wanted it to be a bed-time story of a book, an easy read that anyone could pick up and enjoy, but through which they’d come to appreciate some of the key lessons of the Reformation: justification, the supremacy of the Bible, how (and how not) to reform churches and so on. Primarily, then, I wrote it for every Christian; but I also realised that a history book feels like safe reading for non-Christians, and I hoped that it could be the sort of book Christians could give to their non-Christian friends – harmless in feel, but full of the gospel.

Downes: Why is it important for us today to know about the Reformation?

Reeves: Often the Reformation is spoken of as a historical curiosity, as if the Reformers’ real issue was with a sixteenth century problem of corruption in the Church. I cannot stress enough how misleading that idea is. The Reformers themselves believed that the Reformation was not so much a negative movement, about criticising Rome (though they did do that); they were part of a positive movement, about moving closer to the gospel. As such, the spirit and message of the Reformation is the lifeblood of the Church’s health today.

Downes: Is the church scene today in any way like the church before the Reformation?

Reeves: There are, of course, substantial differences, but I have found teaching people about medieval Roman Catholicism extremely helpful pastorally. And that’s because the religion found there is the sort of distorted gospel of works rather than grace that Christians most naturally slide into. So in that sense there are great similarities, and they are worth being aware of to see how starkly the Reformers’ message contrasts with it.

Not only that, but there are theological camps today -- even deep within Protestant circles -- that stray into worringly similar territory. When, especially, good works are spoken of as being in any way a cause, rather than a consequence of our justification, I see great similarities.

Downes: What dangers are we in if we think that the Reformation is irrelevant?

Reeves: Well, take that essential issue of whether our works are a cause or a consequence of our justification: if we soft-pedal that by saying it is beside the point or that we don’t want to nit-pick over such doctrinal minutiae, we will see precisely the pastoral nightmares Luther experienced. Thinking he had to win God’s favour, Luther saw nothing in God to love. He thus confessed that, before his Reformation discovery, he hated God. And with his security dependent on his own performance he lived in constant terror of death. He lived the very polar opposite of Paul’s ‘For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.’

But my worry is that we will see more and more such pastoral train-wrecks because of the widespread fear of doctrinal precision. Of course the sinful human heart always fears the harsh light of divine revelation and prefers the vagueness of theological waffle, but there is something in our age that seems especially prone to avoiding doctrine. And yet if the Reformation shows anything, it is the liberating power of good doctrine.

The Reformation also shows how easily people misunderstand how to go about reforming the church. Some, for example, thought that Reformation was essentially about getting rid of traditional ways or traditional beliefs, and those misunderstandings proved catastrophic. Ignorance of how church reformation can misfire is simply dangerous.

The annihilation of hell (1)

It is easy to measure need and to be moved by compassion, or to stifle that response, by what our eyes can see. In a world marked by sickness, pain, greed, deprivation, and death, the needs of people, near and far, press themselves upon our vision.

But whether or not people need the gospel is not something that can be measured by what we can see. It is something that we have to be told. The need people have for the Saviour, because of the seriousness of their sin and its eternal consequences, is something that we must be taught by divine revelation. Our eyes cannot measure this need.

We see some of the devastating consequences of the Fall, but we do not see the full extent and true horror of sin in this life. Nor, for that matter, are we able to grasp these matters at all unaided by divine truth. Therefore, it is imperative that we take seriously every word of Jesus upon the subject of the eternal fire and the outer darkness.

One of the greatest impediments to taking the truth of eternal judgement seriously is our default position of making divine revelation in Scripture subservient to our own assessments of need. And as long as think that we can adequetly discern this by looking rather than listening we will annihilate the influence of eternity upon us.

We would do well, Bible in hand, to follow the practice of Rodin's The Thinker, sat above the gates of hell, meditating upon these weighty matters. To help us do that Monergism has a helpful page of articles and audio messages on hell. You can access them here.

In Risking the Truth I asked Covenant Seminary professor Robert A. Peterson, who has written extensively and helpfully on the subject of hell, some questions on this subject. Here is a short extract from what is a powerful, sobering, and thought provoking 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.

Risking the Truth: The Premier Radio Interview

If you so wish you can listen to my live interview with John Pantry on Premier Radio by clicking here and downloading the file. The interview lasts for 37 minutes. My thanks to Glenn Smethurst for editing the recording so that we don't have to listen to the traffic and weather reports.

We spend a bit of time discussing whether doctrine really matters and then I get to answer questions from callers. Being a Reformed Christian in the wider evangelical and Christian world is a bit like being the Tasmanian Devil. You are considered to be a rarity, a danger to livestock, and you can be easily caricatured.

The Wages of Spin: The White Horse Inn

Carl Trueman was recently interviewed on the White Horse Inn. You can catch the programme here. You can find out more about Carl's book here.

Over the summer we started a Curry Club for men at our church where we have ended the meal by listening to an episode of The White Horse Inn and having a discussion together about the issues raised. Great food, great listening, and plenty to discuss. I recommend it.

Interview with Darryl Hart

David Strain give us the final part of his interview with Darryl Hart here

The Two Kingdoms

My old friend David Strain has recently been interviewing Darryl Hart. You can check out part one and part two. In the latest installment they discuss the two kingdoms. Here's a taster:

1.Would you briefly state the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms (2K) for us?

I should have a handier definition than I do. I guess I would describe it this way.The church is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ (WCF 25.2) outside of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. Communicant and non-communicant church members are part of that kingdom, the kingdom of grace (which is different from the kingdom of Satan and which is playing a part in hastening the kingdom of glory – the Shorter Catechism speaks of these three kingdoms, Satan’s, grace, and glory in explaining the second petition of the Lord’s prayer.

The kingdom of the civil realm has its own rules and sovereignty, and has criteria for membership that vary in places and across time.

The kingdom of grace operates according to the doctrine of forgiveness. The church is to minister the message of forgiveness of sins that comes through trusting in Christ and repentance from sin. The state operates according to standards of justice and is supposed, no matter how imperfectly, to punish wrongdoing.

Confusing forgiveness and justice is a huge example of category confusion. Granted, the forgiveness the church administers is premised on the justice that Christ underwent in suffering for the penalty of sin. And granted the magistrate’s ideals of justice are a type of the eschatological justice that will be administered on the Last Day.

In other words, you can’t understand the church or the state apart from God’s righteous standards, that is, his law.

But the church is involved in the work of reconciling God and man through Christ. The state has no direct role in that project of reconciliation. It may create and sustain an environment in which the church can minister. But the aim of the state is fundamentally different from that of the church.

Read the whole thing

Christ the Center interview: Truth and Error in the Church

The guys over at Christ the Center recently interviewed me about my new book Risking the Truth. Here's the blurb:

The nature of error and heresy is delineated and the best approach to
handling it pastorally in the life of the local congregation and in the larger church is discussed at length. The interview format of the book is also considered. This is an enjoyable conversation about perennial issues in the life of the church.

You can listen to it here.

Guy Davies interviews Garry Williams

Over the Exiled Preacher. Garry Williams is the new director of the John Owen Centre at London Theological Seminary.

Guy didn't ask about Garry's Welsh connections. Personally, I think he's slipping.

Here's a taster:

GD: You have written on the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement. Why do you think that this teaching is so important?

GW: For so many reasons. Key of course is that the Bible teaches it and so we must too if we are to honour the Lord Jesus and rightly proclaim his saving work. Spiritually, clarity on the atonement grounds our assurance of the Lord’s forgiveness and favour – without it we are left with the burden of sin, which we know is intolerable. Theologically, it goes with the doctrine of God’s justice – if we redefine the atonement we are usually redefining the nature of God.

GD: Why do you think that the doctrine has become so unpopular in some supposedly evangelical circles?

GW: What we see often with a denial of penal substitution is a wholesale rewriting of a series of the more (humanly speaking) uncomfortable doctrines. Penal substitution is a glorious description of the love and mercy of God, but it also entails a belief in the retributive wrath of God, and that is always hard for people to accept. This is where the link to the doctrine of God is so important: the pressure often arises to redefine the atonement because a different god is wanted. This is obviously not the case for every critic of the doctrine, but many critics themselves rightly make the connection to the doctrine of God.