A Riff on Gaffin's Centrality of the Resurrection

 
Now almost forty years old, Richard Gaffin’s work on The Centrality of the Resurrection (republished as Resurrection and Redemption in 1987) still stands strong as a contrarian manifesto in late twentieth-century debates among confessional Reformed theologians, not least with respect to those issues deemed most important by the mainstream scholastic strain articulated in (mostly) American Reformed dogmatics. This work in many ways served as a harbinger of the coming hostile separations within those churches insofar as it “revised” (in the words of his opponents) doctrines essential to salvation—faith, redemption, justification, sanctification, and adoption—providing an alternative way to think of how salvation itself is accomplished and applied in this time between the coming of the Messiah and his reappearance.

At the risk of oversimplification, the contours of Gaffin’s theology emphasizes redemptive history (historia salutis) as the essential place in which the order of salvation (ordo salutis) works itself out. This he thinks serves as a corrective to the emphasis on the often abstract and forensic, juridical ordo at the expense of the historia within the Reformed tradition. Moreover, the center of the ordo as he explains it in this and other works, is not justification by faith alone (which entails the doctrine of the imputed righteousness of Christ, which in turn tends to focus only on his death, pp. 11–12 n.2, 15) but rather union with Christ wrought by the resurrection through Spirit-empowered faith. Put another way, the centerpiece of salvation consists in being and continuing to be united with Christ by faith in virtue of his resurrection, faith that, through the power of the Spirit, embraces the risen Christ, freely offered to us in the gospel (pp. 12–13, 135–36). Gaffin has often argued that this ordo is reflected at several points in the Reformed tradition, though not as clearly elaborated as one might wish. It’s at this point that he picks up on the ideas emphasized among the Dutch Reformed redemptive-historical school, most notably Geerhardus Vos in The Pauline Eschatology and Herman Ridderbos in Paul: An Outline of His Theology (as well as the Scot John Murray).

In Part 1, Gaffin lays out his “Methodological Considerations,” which in a nutshell serves as his apologetic to favor approaching scripture according to “biblical theological” methods that are consonant with “systematic theological” ones. They are not to be “arbitrarily and artificially separated" (for Gaffin, Vos embodies the former; Kuyper the latter). I realize in the 1970s it was especially popular to pit the former interpretative methodology against that of the systematic theologians, who over the years, it must be admitted, have contorted much of the canon by forcing it through some kind of procrustean pedagogical grid or, in Gaffin’s words, “encyclopaedic distinctions” (e.g., the covenant of works/grace schema—itself as historically situated and biased as that of the scripture’s original authors, not to mention of biblical-theological exegetes). We have to do better in this regard. This is not to suggest, however, that the turn toward history (or, redemptive-history in this instance) wasn’t necessary in the modern era. With the rise of socio-grammatical exegesis of scripture during the Reformation period came the need to understand the historical horizon in which these texts were written, as well as the mind by which they were produced. This also meant recognizing that an exegete’s understanding of the parts hinges on her understanding of a larger whole, which, again, can only be understood on the basis of the parts—the so-called hermeneutical circle. What does not lend itself to immediate understanding can be interpreted by means of philological work. Thus, the study of history became an indispensable tool in the process of unlocking hermetic meaning and language-use. But all of this Gaffin washes over, even if it’s lurking beneath the surface, and yet the very writers he heavily leans upon produced their works in precisely this light. Of course, Gaffin’s book is far more narrowly focused than to get into such epochal socio-cultural turns that led to the paradigmatic shifts across all theological traditions, not just the Reformed one. Nevertheless, perhaps his argument would have been better served if he made the case that his study embodies best what’s required—in light of the turn toward hermeneutics and history—to do the sort of theological and exegetical work he sets out to do in Centrality.

Parts 2–3 of the book contain Gaffin’s exegetical and theological account for this paradigmatic shift (the turn toward heilsgeschte and the resurrection) within the Reformed tradition, focusing, as the title indicates, on how the resurrection of Christ changes everything forever, and he goes on to traverse how that event plays out in the redemptive story, especially as told in the writings of St. Paul. People are saved, so Gaffin, not through belief in the finished work of Christ alone, and certainly not through belief in some set of doctrines about Christ, but through an “existential” and “experiential” union through which believers achieve “solidarity” with Christ. Believers, in short, participate with Christ in his benefits and thus obtain salvation (via the believer’s past spiritual resurrection—i.e., union through faith—and future bodily resurrection, pp. 33–62). Each soteriological loci—including but not limited to redemption, justification, sanctification, adoption, and glorification—was accomplished by Christ in his person and work, raised to life by the Father (pp. 62–66), and applied already (though not yet fully) to believers when they are unified with him by the power of the Spirit (pp. 66–74).

And what kicks this journey off? According to Gaffin, it’s baptism: “Baptism signifies and seals a transition in the experience of the recipient, a transition from being (existentially) apart from Christ to being (existentially) joined to him. Galatians 3:27 is even more graphic: ‘Those who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ’ (cf. I Cor. 12:13)” (pp. 50–51). This union with Christ thus commences with baptism—“the inception of the individual Christian existence, the moment of being joined existentially to Christ” (p. 58), thereby causing participation in the very accomplishments and subsequent rewards of the risen Christ (p. 129). Since Christ himself was redeemed (delivered from death) via the resurrection (pp. 114–17), those who have been raised with him participate in that same deliverance. Just as the resurrection forensically declared Jesus to be God’s Son, at that time adopted as the second Adam (Rom 1:4), so too are believers now adopted children in God’s family, brothers and sisters of Christ and thus heirs as children of the living God (pp. 117–19). In Christ’s justification (1 Tim. 3:16)—that is, by virtue of his bearing the sins of the people as the ungodly one and subsequently being raised from the dead—those united with him, both now and in the future (pp. 119–24, 133), are also declared not guilty. Distinct but not separated from this justification is the believer’s definitive and progressive sanctification, again, all his through union with Christ, by virtue of his resurrection (definitive sanctification) from the old aeon into the new (pp. 124–26). Finally, Christ’s glorification experienced at his resurrection “involves the final definitive investiture of his person with glory.” This, too, means that what Christ is by virtue of resurrection, through solidarity with him, believers will be as well on that final day when they are resurrected (p. 126).

There is no doubt that Centrality brought to the fore in a more accessible manner strains within the Reformed tradition that until that time had largely been underemphasized. At their worst, oppositional critiques defame Gaffin with undoing the very principles of the Reformation (i.e., justification by faith alone). I would strongly object. Speaking personally, I found very little in Centrality theologically or exegetically with which to disagree. I experienced within my own journey through the American Reformed landscape both strands—scholastic and redemptive-historical—both vibrant, and both, sadly, at each others’ necks (though admittedly it was the former that set itself up as the keepers of the orthodox gate—and not without warrant, as that crowd had been for well-nigh three hundred years). However, the gospel proper (which is neither justification by faith nor union with Christ but the fact that Jesus, the crucified and risen Messiah, sent to rescue the world, is Lord) was never at stake in the course of these particular debates; and yet it isn’t mere semantics either. The battle was and is over the center from which the gospel is heralded and applied to the life of God’s people. Be that as it may, the appropriate critique of the Reformers contra late medieval Roman Catholic merit theology is only partially appropriate today. The alternative ways to tell this gospel story, perhaps itself ensconced in the very divisions felt between biblical theology on the one hand and systematic theology on the other, are just as desperately needed in our late modern context as sola fide was (and no doubt still is) in the early modern situation.

Read more »

The Covenantal Contours of Limborch's Compleat System

 
The efforts of self-identified Arminian (or Wesleyan) theologians in recent decades who debate over the heart of “Arminianism” have mostly aimed to undermine the mischaracterizations prevalent among those with whom they disagree on important soteriological issues but who nevertheless share with them in the communion of saints (read: Young, Restless & Reformed).¹ The church at large ought to be grateful for this work to that end, for it has ably shown that Arminius is rightly to be distinguished (but perhaps not separated) from, say, Philip van Limborch (1633–1712), the subject of this brief descriptive summary. While no discernible difference exists, for example, in the way Limborch lays out the order of God’s eternal decrees as compared to Arminius,² there are a few when it comes to other matters related to the accomplishment and application of God’s redemption in time. Any comparisons on this score, however, are beyond the scope of this post.³

In what follows, I will quickly cover the historical-covenantal contours of Limborch’s theology as they appear in the Compleat System, Book 3, starting with his discussion of the relationship between Adam and his Creator in the garden, then moving on to the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants, and ending with the new covenant of Christ Jesus. It is worth mentioning at the outset that as a Dutch theologian, Limborch, by the time of his appointment in 1668 as professor of theology at the Remonstrant seminary in Amsterdam, had inherited a robust, if not one-sided, federal-covenantal theological tradition (whether scholastic or narratival), one in which he could find many examples that were to his mind worth challenging (e.g., Gomarus, Trelcatius, Cloppenburg, or Cocceius).

Before the specific chapters that deal with the history of redemption, Limborch remarks in passing during his discussion on providence that God’s first act of governance is “legislation, or making a law, whereby God prescribes bounds to the will of man” (157), without which humans would will unrestrained to their detriment. There is a history to this legislation, as Limborch notes (158):

This law was prescribed to man at the very creation: And tho afterwards the more especial revelations of the divine will were made to Abraham and his posterity, and a particular law enacted upon promises and threatnings was given to the Jews by the hands of Moses; yet still the rest of mankind had the law of nature written in their hearts, to inform them of the difference between good and evil. But the most perfect law which God prescribed to mankind, was that which he made by his Son Jesus Christ.

Here we see a glimpse of Limborch’s entire system as it relates to the unfurling covenantal narrative of Scripture: humanity was (and is) endowed with a law of nature, and then along came the more revealing covenants of Abraham and Moses, all of which culminate in “the most perfect law” of the new covenant.⁴ For Limborch, there is no entertaining the idea that a covenant can be unilateral or unconditional; it is, by definition, a pact—what God promises to another party if she carries out the conditions of that covenant (bilateral and contractual). With respect to prelapsarian man, God did not make a covenant in any federal sense with Adam (e.g., 187, 197–98). Rather, he was endowed with natural law, an innate knowledge of his creator’s will, and on that basis was given one positive command, with only a threat attached to it (and thus no covenant).

As a result of Adam’s fall, humanity lost this actual knowledge of the divine will, being born with a tabula rasa (144); nevertheless, God still left them the “light of right reason, whereby to discern betwixt good and evil” (210). Even those who exist outside of God’s later covenants are still potentially included in the prospect of eternal life because of this residual law of nature (219).⁵

Upon the arrival of Abraham on the scene, we begin to see God engaging humanity in terms of covenant, clearer than natural law in its precepts, promises, and curses. The Mosaic covenant (though temporary and for Israel alone) was simply a greater and sharper revelation than the Abrahamic. Both were conditional, and both promised blessing and threatened condemnation (temporal and spiritual) based squarely on obedience or disobedience. As with natural law, so too were those living under the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants, for the sake of Christ (whose future sacrifice permits a less demanding application of the law to humanity), justified on the condition of sincere obedience to the precepts under (not by) which they lived (214–15, 229–30). But in the end, natural religion and the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants show themselves to be ineffectual in restoring humanity and delivering them from sin and death (e.g., 230–31). Only the new covenant mediated by Jesus Christ accomplishes this.

In short, Limborch argues that the gospel of the new covenant in Christ Jesus is a new law—but of faith not works (298–99). Like the previous covenants, the new covenant also promises salvation depending on one’s meeting the covenantal stipulations; but now, however, the demands are easier to meet because of the appeasement of the Son (via perfect obedience) to his Father (195). God has decided in his mercy and because of the Messiah’s work to accept imperfect faithful obedience for righteousness rather than perfect law-keeping. To be sure, such faithful obedience finds acceptance through grace, but the legal principle remains, albeit less strict and applied with less rigor (270–71; see also 5.74.7). The new covenant, in other words, is little more than a relaxed old covenant, a little less law and a lot more grace.

---

1 There’s a similar battle among the Reformed, couched in terms of “Calvin vs. the Calvinists,” that has raged for a few centuries. With the publication of R.T. Kendall’s Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 (OUP, 1979) and Paul Helm’s response, Calvin & the Calvinists (Banner of Truth Trust, 1982), the debate received renewed popular attention, and has shown little signs of going away (even if with finality debunked through the ongoing work of Richard Muller, the sentiment is nevertheless sticking around).^↩

2 See Compleat System 4.1, pp. 343–44. Earlier in the treatise, Limborch takes umbrage with the ordo decretorum as delineated by theologians who most raise his ire—all forms of unconditional election that tell us “God by one, single act of his will has at once decreed all things, and that there is no prius or posterius in the divine decrees.” But they are also those who posit—in response to Limborch’s doctrine of conditional predestination—that God has necessarily decreed salvation “prior to his foreseeing their faith and obedience” (118). Instead of belaboring the problems he sees with such thinking at this point, he decides to move on from this “nice subject” (119). Note that nice in its seventeenth-century context could have meant “foolish, stupid, or senseless” just as much as “precise, careful, or agreeable.”

All quotations are taken from Philip Limborch, A Compleat System, or, Body of Divinity, both Speculative and Practical, founded on Scripture and Reason (London: William Jones, 1702). Subsequent citations will be noted in parentheses in the text.^↩

3 A good place to start on some of those differences is with Roger Olson, Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (IVP Academic, 2006). A more exhaustive (but perhaps overstated) treatment can be found in John Mark Hicks, “The Theology of Grace in the Thought of Jacobus Arminius and Philip van Limborch: A Study in the Development of Seventeenth Century Dutch Arminianism,” PhD diss., Westminster Theological Seminary, 1985.^↩

4 This could be little more than what the pre-Reformation church had taught for some time with respect to the history of redemption: the triplex model of natural law, old law, new law. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiœ I–II.91.2, 5. At the very least, it is in opposition to the “decretal” and bi-covenantal perspective of the federal theologians.^↩

5 The imago Dei, however, remains intact, because for Limborch, that image only consists in the “power and dominion which God has given to man over all the works of his hands” (2.7.6, p. 142). Traditionally (at the time, at least), the image of God was defined in terms of faculties and nature of the soul (reason, emotions, etc).^↩

Read more »

When Teleology Trumps Soteriology

I delivered this rant a few weeks ago in a doctoral seminar I'm taking from Tom McCall (co-author of Jacob Arminius: Theologian of Grace). It's basically a riff on Newbigin's doctrine of election and how it completely subverts the ordo decretorum (logical order of God's decrees) debates of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries between supras, infras, conditional infras, etc., etc. Due to the required length of the paper, I had to leave a whole lot of thoughts on the floor, so it definitely runs the risk of presenting a lopsided view of the matter. I also focus criticisms on Arminian arguments because, well, it's a seminar on that very subject.

The Logical Order of Things About Which We Know Next to Nothing

Mercutio: I am hurt.

A plague a’ both your houses! I am sped.

—Romeo and Juliet, 3.1.86–87¹

The church has been hurt, indeed, “sped” throughout the years whenever she finds herself caught in the crossfire of battles over the logical order of things about which we know next to nothing. This is not to suggest that one view with respect to the ordo decretorum is as good as any other; some truly do, however inadvertently, commit blasphemy: some “logical” orders make God the author of sin, while others make man the author of himself.

Nevertheless, the church suffers every time its leaders and laypersons obsess over the reasons for an individual’s election by probing backwards toward the secret counsel of God instead of pressing forward from one’s election (in both individual and corporate terms) to the purpose of that election.² This obsession most notably plagued the Reformed churches in the late sixteenth century and well into the seventeenth century. The Arminian and Remonstrant response, unfortunately, faired little better, precisely because they too shared in their compatriot’s assumptions regarding the final destiny of individuals flowing from decrees made in eternity “past.” Despite the appropriate Arminian allergic reaction to certain Reformed articulations of election that lead to churches thinking of themselves as exclusive beneficiaries of God’s saving love, the biblical fact and fundamental truth of election is that it is made according to God’s sovereign and unconditional choice. Keeping the center of the doctrine of election away from any consigning of individuals to either eternal life or death ought to remove the edges with which it is unnecessarily laden. In so doing, we can see the highly speculative and unedifying nature of the ordo decretorum for what it is, a less-than-robust expression of the purpose of election itself—expressions that Arminians and Remonstrants only recapitulated in their protests.

Taking my cue from St. Thomas, as many others often have, election appears to be primarily teleological—it is all about where we are sent, rather than from where we have come. And by invoking destiny, I do not mean so much individual or corporate salvation as individual and corporate purpose, not so much related to the salvific outcome of absolute decrees among the Godhead as to the purpose for which those decrees were made: Like an arrow directed by the archer towards its mark, the movement of predestination “gets its specific character from what it is a motion to, not a motion from.”³ And it is with that motion to in mind that the mission of God in the election of his people becomes most robustly realized. When members of Christ’s church consider their election as a calling to die to self for the salvation of the world, not as God’s way simply to secure for himself an elite group of chosen individuals, or as a pronouncement upon people he foresees who employ grace just enough to work out their salvation to the end of their lives, the pastoral objections (that the Reformed ordo causes despair or presumption) to God’s sovereign choice in election fall away. In other words, properly emphasizing the individual and corporate teleology, rather than the individual soteriology, of election renders both the Reformed and Remonstrant ordo constructions moot.

When looked at in this way, arguments over whether God elects unbelievers and predestines them to become believers or whether he elects foreseen believers and predestines them to become his children are out of place. This is not to deny a cause or basis of God’s election, because, as stated above, it is biblically obvious that election stems from the elector’s good pleasure. Yet this need not make the Arminian interlocutor anxious, as if her argument that the cause of God’s election instead centers on the free will act of an individual fulfilling the conditions of salvation suffers from incoherence. If the purpose of election was primarily the salvific destiny of individuals, then the Arminian rebuttal to the majority of Reformed expressions merits serious attention. That is to say, in the context of early seventeenth-century debates revolving around the ordo decretorum, Arminius’ opposition to deterministic supra- and infralapsarianism was raised for all the right reasons.

Still, relegating predestination merely to a function of divine foreknowledge is less than satisfactory. Whatever else can be said of the differences between Arminius and subsequent generations of seventeenth-century Remonstrants on redemption, there’s no difference among them on the subordination of God’s decree to predestinate and reprobate certain individuals to his foreseeing their completion or rejection of salvation’s conditions. If, again, the ordo decretorum primarily has to do with how an individual comes to be elected rather than the missiological why that individual was elected, then the Arminian construction finds itself rightly critiqued for reviving something akin to late medieval works-righteousness—perhaps worse, depending on how anemic its ecclesiology is.⁴

Thus, the Remonstrant critique could be seen as a recapitulation of the covenantal nomism that Saint Paul challenged so long ago. Arminius’ confession that he “ascribes to God’s grace the origin, the continuance, and the fulfillment of all good”⁵ may excuse him from the sharpest points of this criticism, but it may also be that his remonstration lead to the unintended consequence of making too much of human performance as a condition of God’s mercy. E. P. Sanders’ summary of second-temple Judaism as “getting in by grace, staying in by obedience”⁶ parallels in significant ways the Remonstrant view that any move toward God is by (prevenient) grace alone while increase in grace and final justification depends ultimately on human cooperation. Not even the most strident Remonstrant has argued that one can be saved by works alone, as human works are not seen to be meritorious in and of themselves (and thus always insufficient to gain God's forgiveness). Yet according to the Remonstrants in particular, in God’s new covenant in Christ Jesus, he promises to accept as righteousness the believer’s obedience of faith. The implication is that the law we humans have always transgressed has been softened to the point that people who make good use of grace can now do it and live, provided they continue to perform.⁷ What is this if not the principle of “getting in by grace, and staying in by obedience”? But this is the very principle that the apostle opposed when he wrote, “You began by God’s Spirit; do you now want to finish by your own power?” (Gal 3:3). If indeed the gospel is a new law, then Augustine’s prayer to a sovereignly electing God to “grant what you command, and command what you will” becomes ever the more necessary.⁸

In short, the debates revolving around the ordo decretorum simply miss the point. What God commands, and what he grants to that end, is encapsulated most succinctly in the motion to of the Great Commission. Herein lies the purpose of election, the telos of which the church forgets at her peril. Lesslie Newbigin summed it up best:

And we can also see that wherever the missionary character of the doctrine of election is forgotten; wherever it is forgotten that we are chosen in order to be sent; . . . wherever men think that the purpose of election is their own salvation rather than the salvation of the world; then God’s people have betrayed their trust.⁹

The salvation of the world with which the elect of God have been entrusted, the called-out ones commissioned to enact God’s kingdom will on earth as it is in heaven, must leave this old debate in the old books where it belongs if it will ever get down to doing its “best to make [the day of God] come soon . . . where righteousness will be at home” (2 Peter 3:12–13).

---

1 From The Yale Shakespeare (Barnes & Noble Books, 1993), 918.^↩

2 St. Augustine’s warning comes to mind: “Wherefore he draws this one and not that one, seek not to decide if you wish not to err.” From Tractates on the Gospel of John, 26.2 (NPNF¹ 7).^↩

3 Thomas Aquinas, ST, I, Q. 23, Art. 1, Reply Obj. 3. Quoted from Summa Theologica, “God’s Will and Providence” (1a. 19–26), eds. Thomas Gilby and T. C. O’Brien, Blackfriars, vol. 5 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), 111. See also Thomas’ ordo in Art. 4: particular love→election→predestination. “Therefore all the predestined are picked loved ones” (121). God creates the lovely through his electing love; it’s in no way based on the created’s loveliness (cf. Art. 5).^↩

4 It's beyond the scope of this post to defend this here, but suffice to say that where baptism and the Eucharist are largely removed from the equation of election, the theologian is left to over-emphasize—and thus truncate—the means ordained in Scripture by God to actualize his elect.^↩

5 W. Stephen Gunter, Arminius and His Declaration of Sentiments: An Annotated Translation with Introduction and Theological Commentary (Baylor University Press, 2012), 141.^↩

6 E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977), 93, 178, 371.^↩

7 See, e.g., John Mark Hicks, “The Theology of Grace in the Thought of Jacobus Arminius and Philip van Limborch: A Study in the Development of Seventeenth Century Dutch Arminianism” (PhD diss., Westminster Theological Seminary, 1985), 103–11, esp. at 110. See also Keith D. Stanglin and Thomas H. McCall, Jacob Arminius: Theologian of Grace (OUP, 2013), 167–68.^↩

8 Saint Augustine, Confessions, X.xxix (40), trans. Henry Chadwick (OUP, 1998), 202. It may be that the historic triplex model of natural law→old law→new law best encapsulates the covenantal framework of God’s redemptive plan, but I do not concede that the necessary grace required to fulfill that new law has been imparted indiscriminately. Even the Remonstrant Limborch confessed as much when he wrote that while God’s general decree of salvation and damnation is not unclear, the other special decree regarding the means thereunto is mysterious, “upon the account of that disproportion wherein God is pleas’d to communicate the means of salvation to men. For he does not bestow an equal share of grace every where at all times and upon all men.” This depends “on the mere good pleasure of God,” and is unsearchable. Quoted from A Compleat System, or, Body of Divinity, both Speculative and Practical, Founded on Scripture and Reason (London: William Jones, 1702), 347.^↩

9 Lesslie Newbigin, The Household of God (Wipf & Stock, 2008), 55.^↩

Read more »

That Won’t Do, Pig. That Won’t Do.

When was the last time you went to a private social club? If you think that kind of thing is for the elite members of our society alone, guess again. The Yellow Pages are filled with lists of social clubs in which anyone in the neighborhood can become a member. They meet mainly on Sunday mornings—but don’t be foolish enough to wait for an invitation.

Unfortunately, like most other clubs, this one is designed to keep certain people in and other people out. You will find in it a decidedly internalized and individualized faith, complete with its own set of man-made regulations. You will find in it a group of folks who act as if they are enjoying life to the fullest, no matter where they are or what they are doing. And what do they do? They do exactly what they wish to do. In this Sunday club, then, it comes as no surprise that God Is One Who Exists for Me.

But in reality, this private social club has been called out of the world of clubs, not to be just another club—albeit a little cleaner (if not a lot less fun)—but to be the anti-club, the place where the mantra above is flipped: I Am He/She Who Exists for God. Apart from this, we would have no purpose, being left anchorless in a torrid sea, unable to know our worth as creatures among other creatures wrought and redeemed by a holy God. (I’m paraphrasing R. Clapp here, A Peculiar People, p. 42; see also Eph 4:14).

And this reminds me of what the apostle Paul wrote long ago. One word, among a few others, that sums up Ephesians 4 is this: friendship. I know that sounds trite to modern ears, but that might have more to do with how trite our friendships are in this shallow, isolated age (friendship in the classical period in which the apostle lived could be summed up as "the sharing of two selves," and, once cultivated in childhood, went on to form the basis of politics and the family of economic activity). St. Paul often exhorts the church in Ephesus to simply act like a community of friends. Chapter 4 of his letter is littered with such exhortations: support each other in love and preserve unity (vv. 2–3); use your gifts to knit the body together and strengthen it (vv. 12, 16); “speak truth to one another” (v. 25); don’t sin in your anger against a friend (vv. 26, 29, 31); and work an honest job in order to share with those in need (vv. 28, 32).

In short, practice friendship. For a church without friendship, just like a "beautiful woman who lacks discretion," who turns aside from her dignity, is like “a gold ring in a pig’s snout” (Prov. 11:22).¹

---

1 I'm assuming, perhaps not unlike the trajectory laid out for us by the church fathers, that the primary interpretation of "women" when found in Jewish wisdom literature in this new covenant age often can refer allegorically to the church, original intent notwithstanding.^↩

Read more »

Forgive or Die

 

Forgiveness in the teaching of Jesus is not for the sake of moral purity;
it’s quite simply for the sake of a future. ~Fr. Richard Rohr

The above quote from Rohr is nagging at me. I think it may be profoundly true on a level we're happy to miss.

On the surface, it's a fine piece of rhetoric: by a simple use of antithesis, Rohr challenges a common assumption—that the letting go of one's offenses, as if they had never been committed, in the teachings of Jesus had as its primary objective the cleaning up of one's life (inside and out). Sure, that may be one means to the end, but it's the end—the future—that faces extinction without forgiveness.

This idea isn't original with Rohr, of course. I think most notably of former Archbishop of Cape Town Desmond Tutu's book No Future Without Forgiveness (Image, 2000). Through his eyewitness account, Tutu focuses on how the Truth and Reconciliation Commission he chaired (pressed upon him by President Mandela, et al.) attempted to move beyond the various forms of institutionalized retribution taking place in post-apartheid South Africa. Calling out the unworkable "solution" of bringing perpetrators of apartheid to court, he describes the highs and lows of his commission's approach to justice: the granting of political amnesty to those who make a full confession of their crimes.

While Tutu's account centers on this world, it's deeply informed by the next. It's a working out of the blueprint Israel's god YHWH drew up so long ago. It's the imperfect attempt to follow the model that God in Christ lived out. It's God's way to approach justice that his Spirit continues to empower up to this very day.

While we are no doubt chosen "to be [God's] through our union with Christ, so that we would be holy and without fault before him" (Eph 1:4; see also Col 1:22), it's God's forgiveness that creates the biblical vision of his future—resurrected life on a renewed earth. The bit that gets so hard to grasp is the fact that the creator God bound himself to forgive. Without forgiveness, even his future goes. What else does the story of him walking through the animal halves alone when ratifying his covenant with Abraham mean (Gen 15:12–21)? That if the promise fails, YHWH himself will be like those shredded carcasses. This is why in the new covenant, ratified by the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, we see that if "we confess our sins to God, he will keep his promise and do what is right: he will forgive us our sins and purify us from all our wrongdoing" (1 Jn 1:9). How striking that the writer includes that God will "do what is right"! Why is it "right" (or "just") for God to forgive sins when they're confessed? Because that's what he promised to do, precisely because of his promised future.

He binds himself to forgive. Remember that the next time you fall into the same old sinful patterns that betray his covenant.

As Tutu's example shows, this kind of forgiveness for the sake of the future, the kind that God himself enacts and ultimately embodied in Jesus by the power of his Spirit, easily applies to every relationship we experience. From the creator God to his created, to the rebuilding of nations, and (not least) to familial ties, withholding forgiveness murders the future—and it will kill you.

Forgive (and be reconciled) or die.

Read more »

A Question I Heard Often . . .

. . . back when I used to hang around churches.

WHAT IF you're scheduled to work on Sunday? And the question this implies: Is the old Sabbath still in effect today for Christians?

My answer usually goes something like this: I don't think so (read this to find a good reason). But you are indeed to reserve and guard the time for the gathering of the assembly, which, in God's wisdom and since God raised Jesus from the dead on the first day of the week, happens to be Sunday (and it's no small fact that the church eventually confirmed this day too). The day itself isn't sacred. The time and space set aside for the gathering of the elect is.

This is why Christ's disciples "need corporate worship to keep them strong" (as commonly expressed). God decided it would be through these means so to do. If a Christian is asked to work on Sunday, she does so. But she may want to make it clear that she'd prefer not to work during the time the church gathers (the principle still applies even if her Christ-community gathered at some other time during the week). We work when we're scheduled to work (with all due respect to Eric Liddell [but, damn, that's inspiring]). And you let your bosses know that you'd prefer not to work Sunday mornings, since that's when your community gathers (I assume for the sake argument). Going in right after the services let out is of course a perfectly viable option.

As an aside, the ancients (Israel included) reckoned the close of the day at sundown, not at 11:59 p.m. So, technically, if you are sabbatarian, you couldn't work from sundown Saturday to sundown Sunday.

Being scheduled to work on the Lord's Day is not a test from God to prove your sabbatarian mettle. But it could be a test from him to prove your standing up for what he has commanded you to do—not forsaking the assembly. And this "not forsaking" isn't a checklist thing, that is, going to church every Sunday. It's a way-of-life thing. To forsake the assembly is to consistently forgo—when you are able—gathering with God's elect for the purpose of re-coventanting together in the name of our triune Lord.

Read more »

Confirmation & Stuff

OVER AT JESUS CREED, Scot McKnight posted about a "note from a pastor in a denomination that baptizes infants and then proceeds to catechism and confirmation, but this pastor has his doubts." (There are some good thoughts/advice in the comments section over at JC, btw.)

I too responded in the combox, but this issue is one that's near to my heart, having taught such classes for a few years, which teaching challenged me more than any other to date (whoever said "if you can't explain it to children, you don't understand it well enough," was right in my opinion).

The discussion can easily turn into a perspectives match on why—or not—baptism is efficacious (covenantally binding and enabling grace), essential, and preferably paedo- to following the Christ. But that's not the point of this post. Rather, it's simply to get at an answer to the question: What do you think would improve confirmation? By way of personal anecdote, I'll try to offer part of a suggestion:

I was raised Baptist, which of course didn’t use words like confirmation but nevertheless had a baptism preparation class that carried with it all the automation and pressures of most confirmation classes. To be sure, a profession is expected before enrolling in this class. If memory serves correctly, I was six or seven, which, to my understanding, for the majority of Baptist traditions is kind of young (perhaps not among Southern Baptists—see, for example, this article on the upward trend of pre-schooler baptisms since 1974).

At the time I started practicing Christianity more seriously (around 20 years of age), I was not re-baptized, as many of my fellow Baptists were wont to do. However nascent my theological understanding was in these matters, it seemed to me one dunk was clearly enough.

Some five years later, I married in to a confessional Lutheran family, and my wife’s experience in confirmation, despite the automatic feel among that crowd, was, according to her, absolutely confirmatory (a bolster) for her faith.

I should note at this point that I think we fail to grasp what confirmation is, not least as a result of its relationship to (the historic church’s view of) baptism, if we’re losing sleep over this “automatic” flavor. That said, I understand why (theologically) Baptists and Anabaptists take umbrage with it.

Fast forwarding to my own practices and experiences in the local church as a teacher: At the church I had been a member of (an independent Reformed congregation) for six years during the first decade of this century, I taught the communicants (confirmation) class for four years.

Here’s what was cool about this particular church’s practice: We asked parents to decide when to put their children in this class. This meant that during any given year, I had children ranging from 5 (the youngest) to about 12. Average ages were 8–10. All throughout the class, I spent time with each parent discussing their children’s “progress.” Receiving first Communion was by no means automatic after taking part in this process. The final class(es) consisted of walking through the gospel (in age appropriate Q&A form) with a (senior) elder present. That elder would make the final call regarding the child's understanding of the gospel (if Scot reads this, I made sure it was not the potentially truncated "soterian" version being rehearsed, as described in his book on the subject).

Now, given my conviction regarding baptism and confirmation (that the former is efficacious and enabling, and the latter is meant to confirm—sacramentally, though not in the same sense as baptism and the Supper—what has been promised and thus presumed in the former), I’d made sure that each of my kids would be admitted to their first Communion. But even then, a small handful over the years would come back the next year for a do-over.

I hope this last personal experience and example helps answer the question. In short, what do I think would improve confirmation? Put the ball in the parents’ court to decide when to put their children forward. Move past the notion that every child has to be a certain age before he/she can enter confirmation. And get a spine—imagine the words coming out your mouth, “Your child is not ready,” and then brace yourself for the consequences. Finally, see each family as a mentoring opportunity—both for the child and her parents.

Or sidestep this whole issue and just go Eastern Orthodox—their children receive confirmation (chrismation) right after they’re baptized (but whence comes catechesis, which is what I think constitutes at least one major import of confirmation in the West [along with the sealing of the Holy Spirit], in the Orthodox tradition?).

Read more »

Yet More Perspectives on the Sabbath

Scott Oakland of ReformedCast called me on Monday for a live podcast revolving around the book Perspectives on the Sabbath.

The time flew by, but I do think this was one of my more articulate presentations. I could be totally wrong on that score (I know one thing, participating in radio/podcast interviews are quick lessons in humility—the boring, monotone sound of my own voice; the fumbling diction; incorrect facts; sticking my foot in my mouth, etc.). Why not listen for yourself?

Read more »

Father Abraham Had Many Sons

AT THE PRECISE MOMENT we’re introduced to the pagans from Ur of the Chaldeans in the book of Genesis, we meet the one whom the God of creation called to start fixing the evil mess Adam and his children made. Through Abraham and his children and grand-children, God eventually sent his Son to fulfill finally and faithfully the vocation to which his ancestors were called. And Abraham was the one who left everything behind, walking by faith, even when he didn’t know where he was going (Heb. 11:8). For this, he was revered by the people of Israel as a model of true piety. Such was their reverence that the anonymous Jewish priest who wrote Jubilees thought, “Abraham was perfect in all his deeds with the Lord, and well-pleasing in righteousness all the days of his life” (23:10). Indeed, Abraham was thought to have not even sinned against God (see The Prayer of Manasseh). He was their father, one in whom they could be proud.

This may bring to mind that elementary school Bible song:

“Father Abraham had many sons,
Many sons had father Abraham;
I am one of them and so are you,
So let’s all praise the Lord!”

We’d then scream something about our right arms and left arms, and by the end of the song we all looked like we were marching in place (with the added, though inexplicable, nodding of the head). It must have been quite a scene to behold—a sanctuary full of pre-pubescent adolescents awkwardly lurching about. (I couldn't link to just one version—see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, from all different peoples around the world.)

Well, the song serves it purpose—to expend energy. But what about it? Just who are the sons of Abraham? Can we modern, Western children really be Abraham’s sons?

One portion in particular of Saint Paul’s letter to the churches in Rome gives us the answer. In chapters 3:27–4:25, the apostle begins to unpack one central theme he discussed in 3:21–26, namely, “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe” (v. 22). The obedience of Jesus is everywhere drawn out in this portion of the letter as the sole ground of God’s free justification, with faith its sole means.

After he contests the importance of the Mosaic law as a means to justify oneself, the apostle Paul appeals to the story of Abraham to bolster his claim that righteousness is credited only by faith. The reasons he does so should interest us. As we just saw above, Abraham was widely revered throughout Israelite history. It is probable that Paul wanted to show the largely Gentile Roman churches that those he had had arguments with (certain Jews and Jewish Christians) were not understanding Abraham rightly according to the Scriptures. Thus he argues, contrary to Jubilees and The Prayer of Manasseh, that Abraham was not so much “perfect in all his deeds with the Lord” but was justified by faith: for “to the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Rom. 4:5). Because Abraham is an exemplar of faith in God’s promises — not “perfect in all his deeds”—he is truly the father “of all who believe without being circumcised” (v. 11; see also Gal. 3:7, 29). By the way, those “who believe without being circumcised” are those modern, Western children, giddily stomping and swinging their arms to the tune of “Father Abraham Had Many Sons.”

It is no surprise that Abraham held such a prominent position in Israelite history; after all, the Old Testament gives him that place. He is the father of the chosen nation and the one in whom the promise of God was sent forth, and we mustn’t miss the fact that God’s plan all along was to include Gentiles in his promise—the promise of adoption and reconciliation (Gal. 3:8). Now we can see one reason why Abraham is given so much space in Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans: if his gospel is “the gospel of God” (Rom. 1:1), the very same God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, then the apostle needed to show how his gospel stood in continuity with the Word of God given to the prophets, while at the same time showing, for the Gentile Christians’ sake in Rome, that there is a certain amount of discontinuity, especially with respect to the Mosaic law. In short, they didn’t need to be circumcised, because righteousness is credited by faith (apart from Torah) in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, which draws “all people” to him (John 12:32).

In this way, we Christians today, who are so far removed from the world in which Abraham lived, can call him our father. We didn’t deserve this, of course, but God obligated himself to do it on the day he walked the gauntlet of animal carcasses while Abraham was sleeping (Gen. 15). Moreover, the Apostle to the Gentiles teaches that our ability to call Abraham father is proof that God has kept the promise he made way back in Genesis 15. This promise is grasped by faith and rests on grace alone, and it is “guaranteed to all [Abraham’s] offspring—not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all” (Rom. 4:16). So Abraham, the father of the faithful, kept on believing God, and any person, if he or she believes like him, will also be reckoned righteous (see Rom. 4:11, 23–24).

Finally, all of this depends on the character of the life-giving creator God who made such promises. And we can be sure, as Saint Paul was, that this God will keep them, because he is the only one “who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (v. 17).

{This originally appeared in Tabletalk 30.6 (June 2006): 22–23}

Read more »

Extra ecclesiam nulla salus

{This originally appeared as "Church Covenants" in Tabletalk 27.5 (May 2003): 48}

On a Lord's Day not too long ago, my wife and I stood in front of our fellow congregants to be received as members of the church we had been attending for more than two years. The pastor, smiling, yet with all seriousness, asked us the following five questions (and I paraphrase):

1. Do you acknowledge yourselves to be sinners, justly deserving God's displeasure, without hope save in his sovereign mercy?
2. Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and do you rest upon him alone for salvation?
3. Do you now promise, relying upon the Spirit's grace, to endeavor to live as becomes the followers of Christ?
4. Do you promise to support the church in its worship and work to the best of your ability?
5. Do you submit yourselves tot the government and discipline of the church and promise to study its purity and peace?

Publicly answering each of these questions served as our entrance into a solemn covenant with Christ and his church.

The only problem with this idyllic scene is that I failed this covenant miserably in the short time since I made the commitment. Sure, the first three questions are Sunday school no-brainers, but they are ironically no more important than the last two, for in them the first three questions are realized or lived out. That is, a life of grace that hopes in God's sovereign mercy, made available by Christ alone, and perpetuated by good works in the Spirit, manifests itself in a life that supports the church's worship and work, and that submits to the government and discipline of the church, and therefore promises to study its purity and peace.

Most important, whether other churches verbalize these five questions or not, this oath transcends denominational lines, thereby drawing our focus back to God's prescribed means for promulgating the gospel—the church. If the church is to remain true to her calling, membership in any local congregation must mean entering into covenant with God, simply because a congregant ought to be, by definition, a bond servant of Jesus in the family of God.

Since the church is the radiant bride of Christ, how much more should she expect the commitment of saints who are more concerned with worshiping the Almighty in Spirit and in truth than attempting to convince the world that church-goers are everyday, ordinary people?

Read more »

Covenant Life

{This originally appeared in Tabletalk 27.3, (March 2003): 34}

The word covenant gets tossed around a lot—in Tabletalk and elsewhere. The difficulty lies in the fact that covenant remains a hard concept to comprehend, yet many theologians teach it to be a central interpretive principle of Scripture and Israel's history.

Simply put, God's covenant with man is gracious and everlasting, resting on his oath that should it fail, he will be torn in two (Gen. 15; cf. Jer. 34:18). However, this simple early covenant grows more complex as the biblical narrative continues. By the time we reach 1 Samuel 12, we see provisos upon which the fulfillment of the covenant seems to rest. How are we to understand God's conditions? We ignore them only at our peril. At the very least, covenant is not merely a hermeneutic principle; rather, it envelopes the believer's earthly pilgrimage (cf. Deut. 6:4–9). 

Herein lies the tension: If the covenant of grace is eternal, why does God impose stipulations? Is the fulfillment of the covenant at risk? One school of thought within orthodoxy suggests that the stakes are the very blessings of the covenant itself: "For Yahweh will not forsake his people, for his great name's sake…. But if you still do wickedly, you shall be swept away" (1 Sam. 12:22, 25). Though the covenant will see its end (Gen. 17:7–8), we may not, for, as our Savior said, "If you love me, keep my commandments" (John 14:15; cf. v. 21). While we can be sure that God will complete his covenant, we have no right to such certainty if we practice lawlessness (Matt. 7:21–23).

Perhaps the greatest tension of all now comes to the fore—our inevitable failure to keep the conditions of this covenant. Who, then, "will put security for me?" (Job 17:3). Praise be to God there is an answer. Our security is in the risen Christ, who met all the conditions on our behalf with his perfect loyalty and obedience. Even further, his work established covenant living for us: we take seriously the conditions of the covenant and strive, not to gain salvation, but to live accordingly in covenant with the creator God.

Failing in this secures our citizenship in that dismal city of ruin where the Tower of Babel stands, where its kings exclaim, "Is this not great Babylon, that I have built…by my mighty power?" (Dan. 4:30), and its depraved inhabitants respond, "We have no king but Caesar" (John 19:15).

Read more »