Ever-Day Has Begun

 
Not only does the church suffer from an open wound of schism, she is weak, and unsurprisingly so, in this time between the times. The former continues in disobedience; the latter is just the way it is, at least until that final day.

Has anything ever been decreed absolutely by God (when it comes to his contingent creation), without any expectation of meeting certain conditions on our part, without any response on his part to intervening historical contingencies? Taking our cue from the sacred Scriptures, we see that even those decrees (oracles, prophecies, apostolic utterances, etc.) that appear at first glance to be absolute (e.g., Jonah 3:4), are nevertheless laden with conditions (when dealing with humankind in particular).

I submit that the same holds true with respect to the people of God and their calling to be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.

Put another way, I'm talking about a God who called out of the massa perditionis a Christ (the eternal Son of God who took upon himself our nature), in whom people are united (through baptism and faith), which people are then called to be what they are. Being thus made posse non pecare they are given the tasks laid out in various places throughout the Scriptures of embodying what it means to be corpus Christi, and, by virtue of the indwelling Spirit of God, are thus able to do so. In doing so, they falter, they err, and all the while their loving and patient God struggles with them, responding to them, and continually goads them on toward the unity (of will and purpose and substantiality) that is shared among the Godhead, the great Three in One.

And the reality is, the church continues to fail in this particular calling toward unity set before it, a church of the open wound. So far as this world and our finite perspectives are concerned, Christianity, with all its divisions, worldly alliances, demagoguery, and heterodoxy, does indeed look false. But there's hope with each dawn, which will be fully realized on that final morn when there will be no more night, for the Lord God himself will shine (Rev 22:5); indeed, the city will have "no need of sun or moon, for the glory of God illuminates the city, and the Lamb [will be] its light" (Rev 21:23).

No-nightness comes.

Ever-day has begun to encroach upon the lightless land,
and we, lamp-stands all, called to remove the basket covering.

But how is the church "rightly" weak today? Perhaps it's better stated this way: the church has always been weak, and we have the tools to recognize it as such, and therefore we have the tools to better "let our good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise our heavenly Father" (Matt 5:16).

Recently, an essay over at First Things by Matthew Rose on "Karl Barth's Failure" produced some critical responses by a few Protestant bloggers. One, in particular, stood out: David Congdon's "In Defense of Modernity." In brief, Congdon writes, "Put plainly: modernity is Protestant, so to reject modernity is to reject Protestantism. Perhaps that is the underlying message of Rose’s article. Barth finally fails, because he remains, at the end of the day, "a theologian of the Reformation."

And what are some of the contours of that modernity? You can read Congdon's post to see, but I'd like to highlight one—the rise of historical consciousness as a genuinely theological event. He quotes Gerhard Ebeling at length to unpack the point:

The sola fide of the Reformation is directed not only against justification by works and thereby against a legalistic exposition of scripture, not only against mysticism and against multiplication of the revealing reality in the form of saints and against materialization of the revealing reality in the form of sacred objects. But the sola fide has undoubtedly also an anti-sacramental and an anti-clerical point. To the sola fide there corresponds solus Christus. Revelation and the present are separated from each other in such a way that only one bridge remains: the Word alone—and indeed, lest any misunderstanding should arise, the Word interpreted as salvation sola gratia, sola fide. All other bridges have been broken up. The whole system of Catholicism has thereby collapsed. There is no such thing as a simple, matter-of-fact presence of revelation. (emphasis mine; Word and Faith, 35–36)

"There is no such thing as a simple, matter-of-fact presence of revelation." The sola fide of the Reformation implies a rejection of all absolute institutional claims, of all offers of restored taken-for-granted institutional certainty (to paraphrase Peter Berger). But does this mean that no institution is left standing? No. But what type of institution can we then speak of? Extraordinarily weak associations of individuals with no deep commitment. Can such institutions survive? They can and do. (I'm a member of a vibrant parish in a decidedly progressive mainline diocese, and it has much more in common with its traditionalist counterparts in Roman and Lutheran churches, and yet is not filled with parishioners who maintain a posture of alleged certainty. And this phenomena occurs regularly within the old mainline churches, often cast in less traditional forms, whether broad-church or evangelical.)

No doubt the certainty of Rome’s institution has been considerably weakened by historical scholarship and the social sciences. The same holds true, of course, for Protestant institutions as well. Every time the structures of Protestant orthodoxy sought to recapitulate Rome's absolute claim—in order to maintain a "strong" institution, one that has a "foundation of taken-for-granted verities, requiring representatives who exude an air of self-assured certainty," so Berger—those structures have also come tumbling down. It's one of the unintended consequences of the Reformation—the divine and human protest again any absolute claim made for a relative (i.e., socially constructed) reality, which immediately turns directly back on to itself.

What this means is simply this: "For the sake of Christ, take pleasure in your weakness . . . . For when you are weak, then you are strong" (2 Cor 12:10). Knowing you're weak, recognizing the gaping wound in the side of our Lord's bride, reshapes the mission each of us have been called to in this American life.

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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).

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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.^↩

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Eden Raised

A CROWD GATHERED around Jesus of Nazareth and wondered: Could this person be the son of David, the one who, like David, wreaks havoc upon our enemies? A few of the local leaders standing by did not take kindly to the clear implications of what they witnessed and accused the man of beating up his own people by the power of the prince of demons. He responded with no ounce of timidity: “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste. . . . How then will his [Satan's] kingdom stand? . . . But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. Or how can someone enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then indeed he may plunder his house” (see Matt. 12:22–29).

What Jesus said in effect here was that paradise was in the process of being regained, that the power of God's kingdom and thus its presence was the only explanation needed for his dominion over the demons. The crowd wondered as much, and their question showed it. The Pharisees, knowing full well what this kind of ministry meant if it was indeed supported by the one, true God of Israel, decided to accuse Jesus of the only other option: He must really be the enemy, working for Beelzebul, the prince of demons.

As interesting as this story is, it is Jesus' allusion to the binding of the strong man that must hold our attention for a while. Because by it, he suggests that he has had an initial victory. Indeed, some kind of prior battle must have been won if he was going to wage subsequent battles—like exorcisms—with any success. In short, Jesus was claiming that he had already met the accuser, the prince of demons, and defeated him. But when?

John Milton wrote of it long ago. In 1671, Paradise Regained was published four years after his famous epic Paradise Lost. It deals with one major event in the life of Jesus, the one major event that Jesus himself considered his initial victory—his temptation by Satan in the wilderness.

Resting on the robust theology of Saint Paul about the parallels between Adam and the Messiah (Rom. 5:12–21), Milton wrote: “I who erewhile the happy garden sung, / By one man's disobedience lost, now sing / Recovered Paradise to all mankind, / By one man's firm obedience fully tried / Through all temptation, and the Tempter foiled / In all his wiles, defeated and repulsed, / And Eden raised in the waste of wilderness” (Paradise Regained, ll. 1–7). Thus begins his poetic rendition of the decisive initial victory of Jesus over the accuser.

The working of miracles, not least exorcisms, were evidences that the future kingdom of God had broken through into the present day. The coming of the kingdom was greatly anticipated by the people of Israel in the first century, and when it did come, it was thought that it would be filled with all the pomp and circumstance a complete overthrow of the world would entail. The whole redefinition that Jesus embodied—around himself as Israel's representative—was, however, mostly unexpected. But the world was being overthrown nonetheless, and the prince of the world (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11) was being challenged in the name of God.

At the outset of Jesus' public career we witness this fact (Matt. 4:1–11; Mark 1:12–13; Luke 4:1–13). During his temptation in the wilderness nothing less than the messianic kingship of God's anointed was at stake. We see this especially with respect to the temptation involving “all the kingdoms of the world.” Who was the real prince? Jesus or Satan? Ultimately at stake, then, was victory over Satan's kingdom by the kingdom of God. This victory, however, was not to take place by raw power alone, for the Messiah's obedience to his Father was to be its primary feature. Jesus was not to gain all authority over heaven and earth in a capricious or violent manner (the only kind of authority Satan knew how to wield). Rather, he would have to obtain the authority Satan offered him in the wilderness only in the way ordained by God.

This he did, and Philippians 2:5–11 contains a good hymn all about it. The obedience of the Messiah figures prominently in the thought of the apostle not only in this passage but in Romans 5:12–21 as well. In Philippians, Jesus is the one who humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death on a cross (2:8), and in Romans Jesus is the one whose obedience makes the many righteous (5:19). In contrast to the first Adam, this last Adam perfectly obeyed God's will, and in so doing, undid the disobedience of the first one, defeating sin and death in the process. And this victory was already underway by the time Jesus had rejected Satan's temptations in the wilderness, the event (as described in Matthew 4:1–11) to which we now turn.

After many days and nights of living in the wilderness alone, Jesus is confronted by the tempter. Each of the three temptations the devil throws at him is meant to undermine the very task to which he has been called as God's Messiah. He was to be precisely what the nation of Israel had failed to be: a light to the world. In response to the Babylonian judgment, the prophet Isaiah assured the Israelites that they are God's servant whom he has chosen and has not cut off (41:8–9). It is that servant in whom God will be glorified by restoring the tribes of Jacob and bringing back from exile the preserved of Israel. It is that servant who will be a light for the nations so that God's salvation will reach the ends of the earth (49:3–6). But Satan desired that Jesus, the servant, the true Israel, would doubt this mission and thus avail himself to become Lord of the world through some other means than the one spoken about by the prophets long ago (in, for example, Isa. 38–55).

When Jesus was baptized by John, his identity was confirmed by his Father: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). And what were the first words out of Satan's mouth in the wilderness? “If you are the Son of God . . .” (4:3). This reminds us right away of the serpent who confronted Adam and Eve in the garden (Gen. 3:1): “Did God actually say . . . ?" In both instances, the tempters call into question the veracity, and thus the faithfulness, of God.

In the first temptation, the devil takes aim at the hunger pains Jesus undoubtedly feels. Hunger is a cruel taskmaster, and many atrocities have been perpetrated in order to lift its oppressive weight. But Jesus refuses to succumb to the temptation to take by force what is his by right (see Phil. 2:6). His hunger would have to continue to gnaw at him, choosing as he does to do the will of his Father and endure suffering as his servant. Adam, in contrast, refused to go without, instead judging for himself—despite God's command—what he should and should not eat. So he ate and plunged the world into despair.

The tempter then takes Jesus to Jerusalem, to the very heights of the temple wall. Again, the devil tempts him, this time to throw himself down into the Kidron Valley, knowing full well that the covenant God would not allow his anointed to strike his foot against a stone. If he did so, and God saved him, then everyone around would immediately know and recognize his status as God's Son. But this was a shortcut, a cheap and shallow way to grasp at the titles Lord and Christ. Adam, in contrast, seized the moment for his own glory, and instead of going the way of humble obedience, exalted himself. In snatching the forbidden fruit, Adam intended to bypass the path of righteousness. He accepted the very shortcut Jesus refused.

Finally, Satan takes Jesus to the peak of a nearby mountain, where he says, “All these [kingdoms] I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me” (Matt. 4:9). Undaunted, Jesus binds the strong man in a flurry of rebuke: “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, 'You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve'" (v. 10). Contrarily, Adam bound himself in his pathetic attempt to show the world that he was its true lord. Adam's belly was full; the garden was magnificent and comforting. Jesus, on the other hand, was famished, and the wilderness was as unwelcoming as it was lonely.

There should be no doubt Jesus was tempted to bring about the kingdom through means other than the way of suffering and obedience to the will and covenant of God. He constantly saw the tyranny of Rome and of all the other empires that trod the Holy Land underfoot. The people wanted action, violent if necessary, to overthrow the yoke of their oppressors. But tempted as he was to answer his calling in that particular way, there was another way to which he was utterly faithful. He saw the temptation for what it was, an end around the plan and purpose of his Father.

Having defeated the accuser in this initial victory and confirming the tone of his mission, Jesus began his public ministry, putting into practice the results of this battle (exorcisms, healings, and so on). In this manner—through the faithfulness of Christ—paradise was beginning to be regained. And in time, all things will be restored (Acts 3:17–21). Until then, being in Christ means that we too have been called to take part in God's regaining of paradise.


{Part of this originally appeared in Tabletalk 32.12 (Dec. 2008): 18–21}

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Ode to Ridderbos

 
Ode to Ridderbos
Or, contemplating the excellencies of the unfurling heilsgeschichte

Upon the lynchpin of history
hangs the murdered, yet risen, son.
When the time had come fully,
the herald proclaimed the battle was won.
The teacher then explained
the history of redemption:
The old age has passed away;
the new man, no more arraigned,
being-in-him, a creation
and aeon of spirit; the flesh now allayed.
 
 

“But congregation, Christ is risen from the dead. That is the new point of view. And it is with that point of view that the apostle Paul wants us to look at life, our own life and the life of the world. Indeed, also the latter. For if we can only see the world, as many Christians do, from the viewpoint of evil, then we are acting as if the devil is the boss in this world and as if Christ is not risen.”

~Herman Ridderbos, "The New Point of View," Kerux 4.3 (Dec 1989): 4–13

 

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A Sacred Place

A long time ago, as Genesis 1 recounts, God began naming, separating, and assigning functions and roles to his creation. In other words, he spoke purpose for his creation into existence (often when God speaks, reality changes). The garden that resulted—Eden, by name—was pervaded with the presence of God, not in the general sense of omnipresence but in a special, intimate way—a perpetual, ongoing presence. The garden was the temple of God Almighty.

Fast forward a good amount of time (but not too much, say, between 2,500 years and 2.2 million years), and we come to the building of God’s dwelling place among his people, Israel (see Exod 25:10–40:33). Clearly, the look and materials employed throughout are meant to symbolize the original creation described in Genesis 1, and thus further represent, to use what has become the old cliché, “heaven on earth.”

Just as the Creator didn’t seek council with his creatures when preparing the garden, so too did he initiate and dictate to Israel the building of his new dwelling place, the tabernacle (Exod 25:9). In fact, we see that God doesn't leave it to his people to define the parameters of worship they will offer him.

The same holds true today—God provides the grand playground in which we’ve been called to play. Yet he has also graciously provided a fence for our protection. We (the church) are not to invent alternative ways to worship the living God—ways that are outside the fence and thus leave behind the essentials God has instituted; nevertheless, we are free to express our God-given creativity when worshiping him in each passing age.

In our time and place, riddled as it is with hyper-individualism and the temptation to live as if God doesn’t exist, we need now more than ever to recapture the biblically defined idea of sacred place, not as a building so much as that which presupposes and points to a personal God. “For where two or three come together in my name,” Jesus said, “I am there with them” (Matt 18:20). Not one, but two or three. And then the Christ comes. What this assumes is that our growth as persons (that is, our development into more fully image-bearing humans) happens only in relation to others—first with God in Christ by the power of his Spirit, and second with the temple of the Most High, his people. Only through this do we have a ready-made resistance against “the wicked spiritual forces in the heavenly world, the rulers, authorities, and cosmic powers of this dark age” (Eph 6:12).

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Book Review: Destiny of the Species

“We all know the same truth, and our lives consist of how we choose to distort it.”¹

Lemme get the criticism out of the way: don't judge the book by its cover. Okay, moving on.

I don’t know Jason as a colleague. But I do know him as a friend, the sort that won’t always tell you what you want to hear but one that is primarily concerned with what’s true, the sort that will follow his convictions wherever they lead, even to his own detriment. That has to count for something in this seemingly God-forsaken short life.

It is to this life as “water spilled on the ground, which can’t be gathered again” (2 Sam 14:14), and its nagging absurdity before the face of . . . nothing—Deus absconditus, if you will—that Jason confronts in his new book, The Destiny of the Species: Man and the Future That Pulls Him. The title of it behooves me to attempt immediately to alleviate any fears that while Darwin and the question of the origin of our species sometimes serves as the foil throughout the following pages, this book is decidedly not another pathetic battle for the beginning. It is, in brief, to turn the heads of every reader toward last things first. No doubt, the question of human origins is important. But the destiny of our species—now, that’s something upon which to fix our gaze.

Even if we were to grant the neo-Darwinian synthesis its basic veracity (as I do), the point is still the same: Are we humans going to live down to our natural instincts? Or are we going to live up to the creator God’s goal, bearing his image, reflecting his glory? Saint Gregory of Nyssa frames it as follows: In discussing the creation of man, he starts with the premise that the cosmos depends upon the sustaining Word of God and that all things came into existence by this power. He’s quick, however, to maintain a Creator/creature distinction: the act of creation was no necessity. Rather, creation sprung out of the “abundant love” of God; his desire was to fashion a humanity with the express purpose to share in his divine goodness. This, for Gregory, remains part and parcel of what it means to be created in the image of God.²

The theme of a longing that “pulls” us toward our destiny (to use Jason’s language à la Peter Kreeft à la Aquinas) is not unique. Many others in times past have thought similar thoughts. But Jason does so for a generation in desperate need to hear them again, and he does so in such a way that this generation will hear them.

Starting with this theme of humanity being drawn toward its future, rather than driven by its past, Stellman confronts us with the challenge to live deliberately in light of this truth. And the only way to consistently live in such a way is to embrace, wholeheartedly, the destiny of the species as homo adorans—worshiping man. Otherwise, life as l’étranger in the face of the absurd is all that’s left. More than anybody else, those who say they already follow this way must resist storing up treasures that "moth and rust destroy." But damn that flesh, that old man—sin—ever seeking to throttle us from its grave. “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” The age to come dawns upon us; all that was accomplished and applied through the faithful life, the ignominy of the cross, the surprising resurrection, and the glorious ascension and rule of God’s messiah, has invaded our lives. Nothing can ever be the same. And the world—its people, plants, and animals—are aching and groaning toward that promised hope for the future, when the creator God, through his son Christ Jesus, by the power of his Spirit, will turn everything right-side up again (the felix culpa, as it turns out).

However, in the meantime, per Woody Allen, we do all know the same truth (that death comes for us all), and, indeed, how we live our lives—our thoughts, words, actions—the stuff that fills them up, is our way of coping with (distorting even) that reality. Which distortion, then, will you let have the final word? Death? Or eternal life on a renewed earth in renewed, resurrected bodies?

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1 Woody Allen: A Documentary, directed by Robert B. Weide (2011; New York, NY: New Video, 2012), DVD.^↩

2 From his Address on Religious Instruction, reprinted in Edward R. Hardy, ed., Christology of the Later Fathers (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 275–77.^↩

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In the Service of the King

Haymaking, Julien Dupré (1880)

OUR STORY BEGINS in the thick of the action: a middle-aged Martin Luther is busy at work reforming the doctrine of the provincial German churches. He soon settles on issues surrounding the Christian life. In response to the medieval church’s insistence that the only truly Christian calling necessarily involved a withdrawal or retreat from society (by becoming a monk), Luther began arguing that calling can and ought to affirm the spiritual value of work in this world. In other words, ordinary, everyday work has significant religious value. It may seem silly to us, but this was a reinterpretation of calling in Luther’s day—and it was radical at that.

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The Four Beasties Met Their Match

"I saw in the night visions,
and behold, with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days
and was presented before him.
And to him was given dominion
and glory and a kingdom,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him;
his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom one
that shall not be destroyed.” 
(Dan. 7:13–14)

IT'S ADMITTEDLY DIFFICULT to come down hard on the details of certain texts that have to do with eschatology ("end times"), but the pastoral points remain the same—the Messiah is now enthroned. He has an eternal rule over the whole earth (Dan. 7:14; Luke 1:32–33). King Jesus, the fully divine and fully human Son of God and son of David, will judge all things before the very throne of the Almighty, the Ancient of Days (Dan. 7:10; Matt. 25:32). For those in union with this King, the Christ of God, the verdict will be “not guilty” (Rom. 8:1; 1 John 2:1–2). Not so for the four beasts—and especially for the fourth beast: his “dominion shall be taken away, to be consumed and destroyed to the end” (Dan. 7:26). This is good news, indeed!

The panmillennialist’s mantra—“It’ll all pan out in the end!”—is surely agreeable at this point. But we needn’t be content with just that. There’s always more to say, not least with respect to eschatology, and not least with respect to Daniel 7, a magnificent portion of God’s Word. Daniel’s vision climaxes with the installation of one like the son of man as the eternal king in 7:13–14. Contrary to popular opinion, this scene has to do with the Messiah’s first coming, not his second, final coming (and I’m no postmillennialist). Clearly, the vantage point of Daniel's vision is from the heavenly court—not earth—and one like a human being ascending toward it. John Calvin picked up on this long ago when he argued that this passage is best understood as a vision of Christ’s ascension to the right hand of the Father after his resurrection (see Acts 1:9–11; 2:33; 5:31).

Thus, Christ is enthroned now. But much like when David the shepherd boy was anointed by Samuel and spent the following several years waiting and fighting to see that kingship manifest itself fully, “all authority in heaven and on earth” has been given to Christ Jesus, complete with its own set of marching orders that are to be carried out while we await, and fight for, the full manifestation of that heavenly kingship: “Go therefore and make disciples” (Matt. 28:18–19). We couldn’t even begin to do the latter if the former were not true.

Keith Mathison argues convincingly in From Age to Age that the “coming Son of Man” sections of Matthew’s gospel that are often understood as pointing to Christ’s second coming actually refer to Jesus’ installation as the eternal king and judge during the entirety of his first advent, but most notably at his ascension (e.g., Matt. 10:22–24; 13:40–42; 16:26–28; 19:27–29; 24; 26:63–65, and parallels). In other words, all of these sayings are fulfillments of Daniel 7:13–14, when Jesus receives the kingdom from his Father, the Ancient of Days.

Let us praise the Lord this day that the linchpin of history has already been banged into place. The promised restoration of creation, including the blessing of all nations, is well underway. “Despite resistance, tribulation, and suffering, all the forces of hell will not be able to stand against the church, for Jesus has overcome the powers of death and hell, and nothing will ever be the same” (Mathison, p. 387).

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When You're Strange

“Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to be with him: I beg you, my friends, not to be so easily confused in your thinking or upset by the claim that the Day of the Lord has come. . . . So then, our friends, stand firm and hold on to those truths which we taught you, both in our preaching and in our letter.” (2 Thess. 2:1–2a, 15)

The destruction of the Jerusalem Temple
by Titus in AD 70.

People are strange. Jim Morrison was just singing the obvious. High on my list of strange these days, besides those who use the Bible to push tee totaling, are those caught up in a particular sort of millennial madness. The cream that has risen to the top of that crop are those who print T-shirts to bring attention to their cause.

The one T-shirt I’ve seen lacking the most creativity is also the one that helpfully marks its wearer out as having succumbed to an egregious error. It reads: “Jesus came back in 70 AD” in big, white type on a black shirt. The apostle Paul would have a few choice words for that fellow, no doubt, and, love it or hate it, Eugene Peterson’s Message paraphrases him well enough: “Now, friends, read these next words carefully. Slow down and don't go jumping to conclusions regarding the day when our Master, Jesus Christ, will come back and we assemble to welcome him. Don't let anyone shake you up or get you excited over some breathless report or rumored letter from me that the day of the Master's arrival has come and gone. Don't fall for any line like that” (2 Thess. 2:1–3).

“Slow down and don’t go jumping to conclusions. . . . Don’t fall for any line like that.” And yet so many still do. I’m not suggesting here that the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 wasn’t a major event in the history of Israel after their return from exile. But it was only an initial fulfillment of the “day of the Lord” that foreshadowed that final day of the Lord, when Jesus returns—literally, not “spiritually”—like the emperor he is, triumphantly marching through town after having defeated his enemies once and for all.

God has promised to judge the world’s systems that set themselves up over against his sovereignty, whether it be at the end of history as we know it, or even occasionally during that history. The catastrophe that took place in AD 70 qualifies as one of these days of the Lord. But it is not the final return to which Jesus and the prophets pointed.

For starters, such apocalyptic events like the revelation of the man of lawlessness and the great apostasy have yet to take place (to be sure, men of lawlessness and apostasy within the church have come and gone). Paul warns the Thessalonians, and us, not to be misled regarding the royal return of Christ, that the “day of the Lord” has already come. We must be on guard against such deception, and one of the surest ways to protect ourselves is also one of most mundane (so we think): attending to the Word and sacraments and prayer in the communion of saints. These are what God has decided will empower his people to “stand firm and hold to the traditions” taught to us by Christ and the apostles (v. 15).

In the end, it’s about God and what he has promised to do: he remains sovereign over all, and he has chosen a people, “the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth” (2 Thess. 2:13). Here is our assurance, not least in the midst of strange people caught up millennial and heretical madness: God’s election guarantees the elect’s salvation. It depends on him alone. He will overthrow all men of lawlessness, all antichrists, all false teachers, and he will keep his church steadfast in the beliefs and practices passed down through the apostles from the divine Master himself.

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Waiting for Godot?

“For you yourselves know very well that the Day of the Lord will come as a thief comes at night. . . . But you, friends, are not in the darkness, and the Day should not take you by surprise like a thief.” (1 Thess. 5:2, 4)

Vladimir and Estragon

The church in Thessalonica had a good reputation. The gospel had an immediate effect on the lives of those who came to life in Christ in that city: their hospitality to Paul and his companions, to the message they brought, their turning to God from idols, and their waiting for God’s Son, who they now know to be their deliverer from the coming fury (1 Thess. 1:6, 9–10).

Remarkably, people were talking about this new church without even being asked—their fame echoed throughout the land. But the exciting news wasn’t just about them; it was about the way in which this church had come to be. The gospel, not the people who believed it or preached it, was the hero (may that be true of us in the midst of evangelicalism’s celebrity syndrome!). And it was that gospel that wrenched those dead idols from the hands of the Thessalonian Christians, causing them to wait for God and his coming wrath with confidence.

It may seem commonplace to us, but eschewing idols was simply unheard of in the first century. “It would be like asking people in a modern city to give up using motor cars, computers and telephones,” notes one commentator.

Embracing the living God meant embracing his resurrected Son and his way of doing things. It meant living with one of the most unique characteristics of Christianity—hope. This hope, as is often said, was no weak desire for something that may or may not happen. Rather, it was a confident anticipation of the royal coming (parousia) of the Messiah from the throne room of God. This coming marks both condemnation and reconciliation. On the one hand, God, through his Christ, will condemn all that distorts and defaces his creation; on the other hand, through this condemnation, his people will be delivered and he will restore all things. Such is the stuff that Christian hope is made of (to paraphrase Bogey, not Shakespeare).

But it’s not a passive waiting, like we do in a doctor’s waiting room or at home when waiting for a loved one to arrive. It’s an active life of holiness and witness to God’s righteousness. It’s a confident anticipation that God will show mercy to his people, returning them from exile to the Promised Land—a new heaven and earth. So, we are not in darkness and the Day of the Lord shouldn’t take us by surprise like a thief (1 Thess. 5:4). May we strive this day to recognize that a future day is coming when God will deal with every form of evil, and may we take comfort in our only defense—the work and righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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Left Behind—by the Grace of God!

THE STORY OF LOT isn’t particularly nice. It is, in fact, one of the more gross stories in the Old Testament. A recalcitrant man of faith, a self-centered wife, two incestuous daughters, obstinate daughters and sons-in-law, and a city full of violence and perversion—great characters all—for a tragedy. Yet it is not without hope. For despite his depressing mistakes, Lot was a righteous man whose faithful soul was tormented over the lawless deeds of the Sodomites (2 Peter 2:7–8). God, ever utterly faithful to his covenant, did not abandon Lot (for Abraham’s sake, Gen. 19:29); rather, he repeatedly delivered him, providing ample opportunities for him to return to the covenant community. Our continual prayer ought to be that God would do the same for us when judgment strikes, lest we be caught vacillating like Lot’s wife.

The comment in the narrative about his wife in turning into a pillar of salt (Gen. 19:26) serves one major purpose: to show what becomes of those who identify themselves with the objects of God’s wrath. In looking back, Lot’s wife directly violates the command in verse 17 (“Do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley.”). She therefore shows her solidarity with the evil city and forfeits her salvation (see Matt. 6:24; 13:22). Before we stand on our own self-constructed pedestals, however, consider some of the reasons why Lot’s wife would have looked back: her husband was a judge in that city (Gen. 19:1), and she undoubtedly enjoyed riches and respect; her home and all her possessions collected over a lifetime were destroyed; and, not least, her other two daughters, who stayed behind with their husbands, were suffering a horrific, burning death. Would you not linger?

So great is the temptation to become identified with the luxuries given by God’s grace that Jesus Himself warned his disciples to “remember Lot’s wife” (Luke 17:32). Lot’s wife, not surprisingly, had become something of an omen in the stories of Israel. She represented the one who, faced with the reality that life and luxury were slipping away, clung tightly to what this world offered, thereby rejecting the salvation of Israel’s covenant Lord. The context in which this warning appears should provide further light on its application for us today.

Readers familiar with Luke 17 know that it’s not easy to understand. As the Pharisees grill Jesus about the coming of God’s kingdom (they in no way consider Jesus’ ministry to be a sign that the kingdom has come), he responds that it is within their grasp—if they weren’t blind to the fact that standing before them was God’s Anointed One. He further remarks that despite the present reality of God’s kingdom in and through his life’s work, judgment is coming. And it will be swift.

Just as in the days of Noah and Lot (vv. 27–29), so too will devastating judgment fall upon those who fail to heed the divine warning. Jesus did not want his disciples falling prey to this destruction, for this destruction would not be preceded by any supernatural signs of imminent danger (vv. 20–21). Therefore, they must be alert. They must not be swayed by false messiahs (see Luke 21:8–9), for the “days of the Son of Man” will be clear to all, like lightning flashing in the sky (17:22–24). When that happens, Jesus warned, flee: “On that day, let the one who is on the housetop, with his goods in the house, not come down to take them away, and likewise let the one who is in the field not turn back” (v. 31).

Well, on what day would this occur? Presumably, “wherever the body is, there the eagles will be gathered together” (v. 37, NKJV). This answer, to us now probably cryptic, may not have been so to His hearers. It is a point of fact that when Rome marched, their imperial standard bore the eagle. Possibly this whole discourse, then, is about the forthcoming destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, the once-great city that rejected her Messiah and Lord.

It is in this context that our Savior exhorted his disciples to remember Lot’s wife. When the judgment of God through the legions of Rome began, they were not to look back. Nostalgia is not worth facing God’s wrath. As the Roman army swept through the city, the chaotic and seemingly random sword of death took one and left another—whether in bed or in the field (vv. 34–35). Ironically, in this situation, being “left behind” is a good thing, for it is those who are left, who are saved from being taken in judgment, that are rescued by God (with apologies to Tim and Jerry).

If we too are to be left behind, receiving the justice of God reserved for his elect (18:7–8), then we must pay heed to the divine warning. And that warning is the gospel itself. The Messiah has come, vanquishing sin and death through suffering and rejection (17:25; see John 5:24–25 and Rom. 8:3). God’s wrath has been turned from his people (1 Thess. 1:10), and their sins have received atonement (1 John 1:7). To ignore God’s way of peace, to exalt oneself, is to lose the very life so tenaciously grasped (Luke 17:33). Has our generation given itself up to worldly, godless living, just like in the days of Noah and Lot? Will we, too, be taken up by surprise in divine judgment and destruction? With which city do we identify?

True, life and luxury are slipping away, but the word of our God stands forever (Isa. 40:8). And that Word, now come in the flesh, whose Spirit fills every believer, enables us to endure patiently, whatever the cost in self-sacrifice, and to be instantly ready for the return of our King. Remember Lot’s wife!

{This originally appeared in Tabletalk 11.6 (Nov. 2006): 23–24}

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An Exilic Presbyterian's Manifesto, part 3

On the heels of the sabbath discussion comes Stellman’s next concern (chap. 7): “to highlight the fact that, regardless of any earthly nation’s horizontal goodness and civic uprightness, there is only one nation with which God is in redemptive covenant, and that is the church.” We can thus free ourselves from the notion that any nation-state (such as America or Israel) “carries redemptive significance” (64). Not much else needs to be said other than Stellman’s own recounting of Donald Barnhouse’s musings about what a city would look like if Satan took it over: “He didn’t envision rampant violence and deviant sexual perversion, with Christians being tortured or thrown into prison. Rather, Barnhouse surmised that if the Devil were in charge of a city, the bars and pool halls would close, the streets and neighbor­hoods would be cleaned up, children would say “Yes, sir” and “No, ma’am,” and every Sunday men and women would flock to churches where Christ was not preached” (65; emphases original throughout, unless otherwise noted). This point, Stellman argues, is one with which we American believers need to wrestle. We, in short, need to look in the mirror: “Do we truly understand that no myth of manifest destiny can justify the earthly, fallen, and selfish motives that drive us ‘further up and further in’ to this dream that we have been told is our inalienable right to enjoy? After all, the Babylonian fixation with free markets and military aggression cannot but sound just a tad familiar to those who dare to read the national news (Rev. 13: 1–2, 4, 11–12a). It appears that Bob Marley and the Wailers were wrong: we don’t need to get to Babylon by Bus, for we can simply go the route of Babylon by mirror” (66). 

In the final chapter of this first part on Christian worship, Stellman turns to a defense of “churchly piety” as opposed to the more common concept of piety (“quiet times,” etc.) prevalent in America today (it’s wise to note that at least the concept is prevalent, if not the practice). He apparently doesn’t intend to emphasize the former at the expense of the latter, he simply hopes to bring back into focus God’s actual ordained means for the health and growth of his church and to exhort all Christians to avail themselves to them. Even more succinctly, his point is that "the faith once delivered is also the faith corporately practiced” (81, emphasis added). The alternative is lethal, Stellman argues, for we cannot take a gnostic shortcut that severs Jesus from his church, the personal from the corporate, the head from his body. “If physical decapitation is lethal, then it would follow that its spiritual equivalent is infinitely more deadly” (84).

Turning now to a discussion in the second part of the book on the “good” kind of worldliness, Christian life in the earthly kingdom, Stellman sets up the big picture of God’s redemptive purposes of the cosmos and the individual pilgrim’s relationship to it. In so doing, he hopes to undo the egocentric paradigm that defines much of Western “churchiness” and to help us see “our struggles as parts of a larger saga, a love story of epic scope” (88). The remaining portion of this chapter is spent defending the thesis that the great redemptive battle is already won (with implications to how Christians view life in the secular realm), and he employs Revelation 12:1–6 in the process. This passage gives the church “a glimpse of Christ’s victory in his cosmic war with Satan, and that glimpse provides comfort and protection for God’s people” (89).

Moving from his brief glance at the epic scope of God’s redemptive plan, and how that plan catches each of us who are in Christ up in it, Stellman goes on to discuss how despite the protections and pleasures of the secular, earthly realm (e.g., “Egypt”), it is ultimately unsatisfying (102). Old Testament faithful like Joseph and Moses are taken to be exemplars of this principle (especially as they are portrayed in Heb. 11). “This is not because the blessings of earth are mere mirages, but because they are subject to the ravages of time, while we have been created with a built-in dissatisfaction with anything short of eternal, heavenly glory” (102–103).

Time, then, is the enemy. And it adversely affects, in the Preacher’s words in Ecclesiastes, all our toil under the sun. “Time renders all of man’s earthly pursuits utterly pointless” (104). Stellman thus directs our attention to three of man’s greatest quests for meaning in this life—pleasure, philanthropy, and piety—and how time frustrates and defeats them, and rightly so, for we are “hardwired” to long for that which stands forever. It seems that Stellman’s point here is not to persuade his readers to check out on all earthly pursuits but to challenge them to not divorce such pursuits from eternity. This “serves to rob even the most noble of earth’s pursuits of any ultimate value, for the bigger the barns we build to store our bounty (pleasure to please the body), the more old ladies we help across the street (philanthropy to calm the con­science), or the more deposits we make in our moral bank accounts (piety to soothe the spirit), the more damning will be the ‘Thou fool!’ that we will hear from God’s lips on that final day (Luke 12:16–21; Matt. 7:21–23)” (109).

Most poignantly, this brings into question the common idea found in modern evangelism, “that before a person can be expected to repent and trust in Christ he must be convinced of his dissatisfac­tion with life as he presently knows it.” Stellman refers to this as the “Jesus Is Better Than Drugs” method of evangelism (111, which, as those of us know who have participated in such extracurricular activities, isn’t true, “if what is being compared here is the feeling one derives from Jesus on the one hand and drugs on the other”). It’s not that worldly happiness is a farce; rather, thinking this way highlights what modern Christians, again, so often forget: “it is the height of vanity to identify our lasting treasure with the stuff of earth; the ‘not yet,’ God’s still-unfulfilled promises, make the earthly treasures of Egypt utterly unworthy of our affection” (112).

Just when the reader may think that Stellman’s leaving them with the utter uselessness the Preacher bemoaned, he turns to consider what, if any, earthly pursuits are worthy of our devotion. Always taking our futures, the telos of God’s cosmic, redemptive plan into account is necessary. “We are to live with our heavenly destiny in view” (115). And what is that destiny? Eternal life on a renewed earth in renewed, resurrected bodies. Humanity, according to Stellman (taking 1 Cor. 14:42–49 as his cue), longs for such an existence, one that transcends the merely earthly and Adamic to which we are currently confined.

But more than humanity groans for this destiny. The entire created order eagerly anticipates it. Citing Romans 8:19–22, Stellman points out that “the fate of the created order…is bound up in the destiny of God’s people, and creation knows it.” He emphasizes this so as to challenge the reader to consider that if subhuman creation groans for more, and if all people also ache for eternity, then how much more ought the people of God “recognize this longing and give expression to it? …The irony, however, is that the unbelieving world often displays, through its art and other media, a greater frustration with earth than many believers exhibit” (119–20). The charge, then, for all believers is to embrace biblical “escapism,” one that is true and grounded in fact (which actually undoes the charge of escapism)—and to live like they believe it. Stellman quotes Kreeft: “Otherworldliness is escapism only if there is no other world. If there is, it is worldliness that is escapism” (121).

The last section of this chapter enjoins the reader to think deliberately about which narrative of origins defines who he or she is. While Stellman does seem to adopt the view that the scientific evolutionary narrative of origins is directly opposed to the narrative of Scripture regarding humanity’s being made a little lower than the angels (Ps. 8:5), he ends up focusing precisely where he needs to: “Are we simply pushed by our past, driven by mere instinct and the desire for the survival of the fittest? …The chicken is indeed produced by the egg, and, likewise, we are the product of our ancestry in some sense. But all of that pales in light of the deeper question of what the chicken is for. Sure, the ‘origin of the species’ is important, but not nearly as important as its final destination” (122). Quite right. Even if we were to grant the neo-Darwinian synthesis its basic veracity, the point is still the same: Are we humans going to live down to our natural instincts? Or are we going to live up to God’s goal, bearing his image, reflecting his glory? 

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An Exilic Presbyterian's Manifesto, part 2

In his first chapter, Stellman simply carries on his thesis and argues for the distinctiveness of Christian worship (again, as opposed to Christian life) by promoting, and this will come as no surprise to Reformed readers, the ordinary—otherwise known as Word and sacrament. In short, the “faithful attendance on the simple means of grace that Christ has instituted for His people’s growth” (5).

Naturally, then, some time is spent taking aim at new and improved programs at the expense of sticking to what God himself has prescribed: “a simple, straightforward, and easy-to-follow program for the growth of the church and the edification of believers: the preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper” (ibid.). The rest of the chapter essentially defends this ‘boring’ program in the face of the many temptations to make appealing, even “sexy” (3), the worship of Christ’s church.

Chapter two calls into question the modern church’s quest for relevance and subsequently compares such a pursuit to grits (as a Yankee, this is particularly endearing to me)—because grits, you see, “takes on the flavor of anything that is added to it, [whereas] salt imparts its own distinct taste to the food to which it is added” (17–18). It comes as no surprise which one Stellman desires the church to emulate, and he thus contends that Christians are to be most distinct from the world when they are gathered for worship. He rests on 1 Peter 2:4–17 to make his case. Does the church need to mirror popular culture in order to seek and save the lost? That is, does it need to “offer baptized versions of every worldly form of program, event, and small group under the sun” (20)? In a word, no, Stellman says (26). 

Objectors will have undoubtedly cried foul already. All this distinguishing, worship from life, sacred from secular, must lead to a kind of carnal Christianity that hypocritically puts on the façade each Sunday only to remove it every Monday. Stellman rightly anticipates this and (finally) sticks his finger in the dike: “Certainly not. As much of the New Testament’s practical instruction clearly demonstrates, a Christian husband, wife, employer, or employee will discharge his or her duties in a manner distinct from the way an unbeliever will (and for very different reasons)” (22). It might’ve been more in keeping with his central thesis to say that Christians will often not discharge their duties in any manner distinct from others, but the reasons behind such diligence to said duties are very different. Still, the fact remains: many of our actions in the secular realm will indeed be distinct from those of non-Christians. “But this requirement for distinctive behavior does not change the fact that believers are citizens of two kingdoms, the eternal kingdom of Christ and the temporal kingdom of culture” (ibid.). 

So, in the end, the cry for relevance is, indeed, most irrelevant, for the call is to holiness, not relevance (25). Even further, “when the faithfully preached gospel of our dying and rising God seems irrelevant to modern man, it is man, and not God, who is irrelevant” (27; again, emphases original throughout). 

The third chapter continues the same trajectory, using the same text (1 Peter 2:4–17) as the springboard, but now expands the discussion to include not just the distinctiveness of Christian worship but of the church’s citizenship (as pilgrims sojourning toward their true home); language (as persons who share the same peculiar and tribal lexicon as Jesus and his friends); and history (caught up as it is in the story of Christianity from the first Adam to the last and in that our ties to the communion of saints—past and present—transcend all others). 

Here’s the money quote that sums it all up: “The insistence that our religion is valuable only insofar as it makes an easily discernible difference in the affairs of everyday life is false. Demands for ‘Christian’ art, music, or dentistry are both an elevation of those legitimate pursuits above their proper station and a debasing of the label Christian by apply­ing it to areas concerning which it has little or nothing to say. Hence, culture is sacralized and cult is trivialized, all in the name of a notion of relevance that God has nowhere promised to bestow” (32). 

The next chapter, in essence, pushes the old amillennial line: “the victory for which the church longs is largely a future promise, with the present being characterized by struggle, temptation, and a status of underdogs” (42). This is good and right, Stellman argues, not just because it’s biblical but because it keeps in check “the lust for victory in the here and now…[which] has the ugly effect of (mis)shaping [the church’s] corporate and personal piety into something as inconsistent with the New Testament as faith is with sight and as the cross is with glory” (ibid.). 

To be sure, the Western church, and particularly American evangelicals, resists such theologia crucis notions of destiny. But this is to resist the very message of Jesus and his apostles (Stellman directs us to Matt. 24:37–39, 42, as an example of future suffering). The arguably better exegesis that sees this particular Matthean pericope pointing to the destruction of Jerusalem notwithstanding, Stellman’s point holds up. “The spirit of triumphalism that characterizes so much of the evangelical church regards such a message as anathema” (47). Who, after all, would rather bear the reproach of Christ than surpassing wealth and power? 

But instead of merely arguing that God has determined his church to be the underdogs in this age (an argument that he of course could make, though not, I believe, without criticism), he does the reader a better service by showing how such a minority position is actually the church’s vocation, which has been described powerfully in John Howard Yoder’s words some years ago: “The believer’s cross is, like that of Jesus, the price of social non-conformity” (The Politics of Jesus). Stellman thus challenges the church to live up to its calling, which is, ironically if not uncomfortably, embracing its underdog status encapsulated in the foolishness of the cross. 

The fifth chapter moves to connect the essential distinctiveness of the Christian ‘cult’ to its worship on a particular day of the week, namely, the first. As is often the case (which makes this a fun read, incidentally), Stellman approaches this issue from a fresh angle, starting with a brief discussion on how the various shades of sabbatarianism in America often stemmed from a “transformational impulse—a desire to capture or recover the glory that once characterized America” (52). In so doing, he sets up a good foil to juxtapose with proper worship observance on the first day of the week. 

Stellman thus wants to maintain the continuation of the fourth commandment in the new covenant, but without resorting to the old, Americanized rationale. Instead, he offers (no surprise) a two-kingdoms rationale, one that maintains the distinction between cult and culture, sacred and secular. 

In brief, Stellman rightly notes that under the old covenant Israel was enjoined to strict and proper Sabbath observance (he also adopts the common Reformed premise that the Sabbath is a creation ordinance, applicable to all humankind before its particular embodiment in the Mosaic covenant). Stellman adds to his case by walking us through Kline’s views on the subject of new covenant Sabbath observance. In short, Kline restricts the Sabbath’s application to the covenant community (not to non-believers). Nor does its application extend beyond that of the covenant community’s assembly. With the two-kingdoms doctrine as his paradigm, Kline believes that “to apply the Sabbath’s restrictions to activities in the cultural realm would be to stamp the profane with God’s holy imprint, thereby conflating the two kingdoms” (57). 

Stellman, however, and many Reformed readers will be happy to know this, does not desire to follow Kline all the way down this path: “I would argue that [Kline’s] limitation of [the Sabbath’s] application to the worship service alone is insensitive to the eschatological character of man’s existence from creation onward. In fact, the very two-kingdoms paradigm that Kline propounds urges withdrawal from cultural activity on the Lord’s Day” (ibid.). 

This not being primarily an exegetical argument, Stellman’s urgings for cultural withdrawal throughout the entirety of the first day of the week are in the end practical: “it…serves to challenge and subvert the assumptions of this fleeting age” (58). I’m all for such pragmatic responses to this hedonistic world. But of course our pragmatic reasons cannot and should not be elevated to normative status—unless we’re commanded to by God himself (granted, sabbatarians think precisely this). No doubt Stellman is convinced exegetically of the Westminsterian Sabbath view, but he didn’t need to use the particular (and debatable) sabbatarian language of this chapter to make his point. I’ve also always had the sneaking suspicion that cultural withdrawal throughout the entirety of the first day of the week is only a viable option post Constantine. It wasn’t until Christianity became a religio licita that anything like a non-workday during the week began to take shape (Jewish and pagan festivals already enjoyed for some time work-free days). In other words, only those of us with the luxury of a “weekend” can spend time arguing about what the entirety of our day of worship is supposed to look like. 

Despite this reviewer’s disagreement with the underlying exegetical presuppositions of this chapter, it’s sufficient to say that one needn’t be a sabbatarian to refrain from treating Sunday like “Saturday, Part Two” (51), nor is the principle of Stellman’s exhortation to be overlooked: “A ‘subversive Sabbatarianism,’ therefore, does not affirm the world but condemns it, employing God’s divinely ordained tool to challenge the culture and its ‘idols of leisure and consumption’” (61). 

* Look for part 3 of this review on Monday of next week.

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