Three Sides to the Story

You know that quintessential '70s scene where in the midst of a raging argument a wife leaves her husband and home, heading to her parents' house with kids in tow packed into a Pontiac station wagon?

I thank God, for the sake of every loving and engaged father out there, that such stories are seldom heard anymore.

My own short story in this regard is that I was put through the custody ringer (a legal racket, if ever there were one) during the course of my divorce. That is to say, when my ex filed for divorce (on fallacious grounds), she also vied for sole custody and removal (from the area) of our children, to which I responded with a simple no, and in so doing kicked off an excruciating eighteen-month legal process (because she chose to fight for it until it became obvious that it wouldn't go in her favor). If this reflects your current reality, take comfort. Fathers have rights recognized and protected in the courts these days. Oh, you still have to fight for them (they are unfortunately not assumed, as they are for most mothers), but while doing so is draining in every way imaginable, at least there's a clear opening these days to make your case. And what's more, judges are bound by laws protecting fathers' rights to judge according to the evidence.

So, take a breath. Calm down. And then get to work, protecting yourself and especially your children from the harm that groundless (and so I assume, vindictive) sole custody can do. For example, you'll want to start recording (e.g., on a calendar) the length, breadth, and depth of your loving engagement and presence with your children (as strange as that will feel). It's worth the effort and will cut lies off at the knees, should you perchance have the unfortunate luck to face such a thing.

I'm not at all suggesting that there aren't warranted instances where sole custody and even removal of the children (from the geographical locale) ought to be granted. Usually those are obvious to everyone but the toxic and irresponsible individual at the other end of the suit. But in a situation where you have two loving and engaged parents, being the cause of an unnecessary battle over custody until the bitter end makes no sense (it's deeply damaging to everyone involved—physically, financially, spiritually, etc.; and it also subverts any modicum of mutual respect you'll be needing to show while co-parenting). This isn't to deny that there are always two sides of a story (it's the third side in this instance that's too often forgotten). Of course there are, and of course those "reasons" put forward for sole custody and/or removal can be validated. That doesn't mean, however, that those validated reasons outweigh the reasons why sole custody and/or removal is not in the "best interests" of your children (get familiar with that phrase).

"Bitterness blinds life," preached Harry Emerson Fosdick, "love anoints its eyes."

Bitterness is like a tuberous weed—a gigantic pain in the ass to kill. Removing the growth above ground won't do; you must dig the entire root and all its tubers out. In the midst of an unwanted and subsequently acrimonious divorce due to specific hateful and hurtful actions revolving around the children on the part of the one suing, it requires a Herculean effort to avoid bitterness. If you do not, you will share in the cause of the malignancy to come. While you cannot control the victimization, self-absorption, manipulation and avenging that emerges in the actions of someone who has allowed bitterness to take deep root, you can control how you respond. There are wonderful resources out there (not least face-to-face therapy or just a friendly shoulder)—no matter what your learning style—to help you check yourself.

Even a few years on, I find myself continuing to battle with vigilance the bitterness before it takes root. It's hard to say this with absolute certainty, but I can imagine one getting over his or her divorce once the shock of it all subsides and the parties involved come to a relatively respectful parting. I mean, I can honestly say, on this side of it, that being divorced from that woman is A-OK. The battle with bitterness, it seems to me, would not feel so acute so often. But reflecting on what I had to go through in order to protect my children's lives and relationships with both their mom and dad still makes me angry. Add to that the burden of providing maintenance (and I'm not talking child support here) to a capable and educated person—really just an adult child, at this point—which puts both households at the poverty line, and bitterness and anger become very real and regular threats, indeed.

I've returned a few times to a helpful little booklet on bitterness written by Lou Priolo in the Resources for Biblical Living series published by P&R. Yeah, it's not the most robust treatment, leaning heavily as it does in the direction of nouthetic counseling, but I've found it useful each time I've read it. I know there are better (i.e., psychologically responsible) resources available out there on this issue, so I don't recommend it unless you're able to read it critically and openly, while at the same time attending to the trauma in your life that is in part one of the reasons you'd be struggling with bitterness in the first place (this booklet will not help you with trauma). Read with your eyes open, and probably don't read it first, is all I'm saying.

I'll leave you with Mary Baures helpfully highlighting the contours of bitterness and the role of hate and forgiveness in the wake of trauma (in the great article I link to in the above paragraph):

Allowing oneself to feel the fury of hate...is often a healthy part of the recovery process but it is only healthy if one can also learn to let it go. Hate minimizes a victim's feelings of powerlessness and self-blame and counteracts feelings of destruction. But after anger has been experienced, when self-compassion has replaced self-blame, and when the terror of the experience is no longer intrusive, letting go of hate can give survivors vitality and hope. ...The world is full of violence, and many are its victims. It is natural to become angry and even to hate as part of the healing process. But the final step is to forgive. Forgiveness does not condone evil behavior; it acknowledges evil without denying a person's potential humanity.

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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.

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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

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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.^↩

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Frustrating Kindness

 

“One who loves instruction is one who loves knowledge,
but one who hates correction is an ignoramus” (Prov 12:1).

It's nothing new: those who dare embrace the label Christian must be known by their love—indiscriminately to all, and especially to each other in the household of faith. They must practice, in a word, friendship. They must risk shame; they must wash feet. They must exclaim, at least in actions if not in words, “Hosanna!”

So, in the proverb quoted above, we see that they must “love instruction”; otherwise, they’re just ignoramuses—brutish, senseless creatures—indeed, less human than God desires. Enter the amazing grace of our triune Lord, without which our destiny, declared by the Creator to be a life centered around him, devolves into savage narcissism.

By his grace, those of us who confess that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead (Rom 10:9), no matter what his or her heritage, are ingrafted branches, stemming from the true vine (John 15:1–11). And yes, by his loving grace, those confessors who bear fruit are pruned, so that they bear more fruit (v. 2). Grace is being given the passion to love this, to love the instruction, the correction, that directs us toward knowledge, which knowledge paves the way toward the God-centered life. Hating this, in short, bears nothing, no fruit, and is thus heading toward being broken off (v. 2).

With the above proverb in mind, another way of saying all this is that being a branch stemming from the real vine involves embodying what it means to be human in Christ Jesus (see 2 Cor 5:17). Meeting reproof with hatred (often disguised as incredulity), exposes the pride that goes before destruction (Prov 16:18). Even more, it betrays the place where such a person has made his stand—“outside the divine realm of sensible discourse [and in] the animal kingdom” (Waltke, Proverbs, vol. 1, p. 520). Following this trajectory leads only to one place—the broken-branch realm of stupidity, irrationality, and animal-like brutishness. In other words, the devolution of the image of God in man to the point of no return. Think of Nebuchadnezzar: driven out of human society, eating grass like an ox, sleeping outside with hair as long as eagle feathers and nails as long as bird claws (Dan 4:33).

But then, the unexpected: Grace. His sanity returned and he praised the supreme God (v. 34). Our Lord has a maddening tendency, doesn’t he? To bring back people (we’ve often written off) from the point of no return (see Rom 10:23–24). May we learn to love this frustrating kindness of Almighty God.

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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.

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A Holy Calling

A PREACHER ONCE PARAPHRASED a bygone theologian as a challenge to the congregation: “To convert one sinner from his way is an event of greater importance than the deliverance of sub-Saharan Africa from the problem of malaria.” He went on: “The very fact that we have pause here is an indication of the influence of relativistic thinking among us.”

On the one hand, this point needs to be heard—a church who thinks the primary concern of Christianity is to make the world a better place suffers form short-sightedness. But it also perpetuates a false dilemma. No doubt, for those churches who allow the message of the good news of Jesus Christ to be overshadowed by social action, the fact that top priority must always be given to the conversion of souls cannot be overstated. Yet the last thing a church that is so afraid of falling prey to the social gospel that works of charity are avoided needs is "theological" justification for their inaction. The remedy is clear: the situation ought not be cast in terms of either/or—either work toward the conversion of souls or work for the eradication of malaria in southern Africa (or abortion [through social, not legislative, action] in the West, child prostitution in southeast Asia, or wage-slavery and state-generated oppression the world over). Indeed, a church's works of charity is (or ought to be!) inextricably bound to the news that the king of all kings was born in Bethlehem about 2,000 years ago.

Maybe this stems from our confusion over what “conversion of souls” means. It’s not just about redeeming one’s spirit; salvation involves the whole person. In fact, a soul, in biblical terms, is the whole person—both the body God fashioned from the ground as well as the breath of life he breathed into that body (Gen. 2:7 KJV). “The conversion of souls,” then, has nothing to do with redeeming some kind of wispy vapor animating our bodies (that has more to do with a philosopher named Plato than we might think). Rather, it has everything to do with the calling God gives to those he's called out according to his boundless grace and love. (Note here that conversion, in the language of the New Testament, is denoted by the word calling, 1 Cor. 1:26; Eph. 4:1; 2 Thess. 1:11; 2 Tim. 1:9; Heb. 3:1; 2 Peter 1:10). So, there’s no doubt the calling of sinners into God’s kingdom, with no qualifications, ought to be the church’s top priority. We just need to remember that God has promised to deal with bodies and tangible things, like all of creation—not shadows and mist—when it comes to redemption.

Connected to this calling is the purpose or mission for which people have been called. Just because a church has a top priority doesn’t mean it's allowed to relegate its subsequent priorities to the shelf—especially when those other priorities flow from the top one itself. This speaks to the purpose of the church’s existence. It is why the church is often described as a “missionary church,” a body of people whose mission is to go into all the world and make disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ (the one given all authority in heaven and on earth), baptizing them as a sacramental act of entrance into the covenant community and of union with the risen Christ. Having been called (converted), God’s people are then “sent” to fulfill that holy calling (John 20:21). But to do what?

This brings us full circle: First, to proclaim the good news that Jesus is Lord, that sin and death have been defeated, that all people are called to trust in him and turn from sin if they want to be resurrected one day, and that by his Spirit he is establishing God’s kingdom now (hark, powers of the earth!). Second, precisely because Jesus is the one through whom God began this good and final work in the world (i.e., it is well underway), we too must get with the program. We are being sent, and thus we are called to be agents of God’s healing love in this dark world. (This is what it means, incidentally, to be the "people of God," that is, the "elect.")

There is no dilemma here. The two are bound up together in the very same mission. And it’s not a mission to establish a country club or voluntary association that meets every Sunday morning. It’s not a mission to become a better person and develop some kind of spiritual potential. It’s not a mission to huddle together in order to escape from an evil world and to pave the way for heaven when we die. It’s not a mission to fill our heads up with facts. It’s not a mission that merely seeks to encourage others, and it’s certainly not a mission to show the people of the world that Christians are just like them. The mission is clear, distinct, and twofold: the calling of people to talk about the gospel of God with others, as well as the calling to acts of “justice and mercy and faithfulness.”

In Matthew 23:1–39, Jesus lays into a series of woes. They serve as warnings to us today insofar as we’ve fallen off the missionary track. Behind these threats of sorrow lie Deuteronomy 27:15–26 and 28:16–20, where Israel is threatened with exile if they do not keep the covenant. This challenge Jesus basically reiterates to the leaders of Israel in his day. Matthew, in recording it, is challenging us too: he puts the choice of exile or long life in the land before us. In which place will you be found?

{Part of this originally appeared in Tabletalk 32.10 (Oct. 2008): 12–13}

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1 Out of 7 Is Bad

TWO MISTAKES accompany most discussions on gluttony. The first is that it only pertains to those with a less than shapely waistline; the second is that it always involves food. In reality, it can apply to toys, television, entertainment, sex, or relationships. It is about an excess of anything.

The ancient pagans got this right. At Delphi (in lower central Greece), the sanctuary of Apollo had inscribed upon it, wisely, “Nothing in Extremes.” The problem with this, of course, was that the judge of such excessiveness was the individual, whereas for followers of Christ it is the Creator God Himself. And we know His thoughts on this subject not because we fall into some kind of trance and speak his words—as the oracle at Delphi supposedly did—but because we have his Word to us. See, for example, Proverbs 23:1–3: “When you sit down to eat with a ruler, observe carefully what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite. Do not desire his delicacies for they are deceptive food.” This is basically a warning to exercise self-control when faced with the extravagance of the ungodly rich who may seek to lure you into their way of thinking.

Sound familiar? Whose life, before Jesus was born, best illustrates this for us? Daniel was the one who sat at the opulent table and “resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food” (Dan. 1:8). Again, this same principle applies to any good thing that God has created. Surely we are to enjoy them (this is no call to rigid self-denial), but we are not to consume them with ravenous gluttony, demanding more from these simple pleasures than Spirit-filled prudence allows.

Prudence, by the way, is the opposite of gluttony. Prudence, in the sense of wise frugality or temperance, is the heavenly virtue that, according to the church fathers Chrysostom and Jerome, was severely lacking in Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden; indeed, so much so that due to their wild appetite they were cast out of Paradise, for they exalted themselves as the judges (much like the ancient Greeks and Romans) of what was excessive.

Gluttony, or a lack of moderation, also leads many of us to demand all things to be exactly the way we want them. A more subtle form of gluttony, this vice is not merely tolerated in churches today but acclaimed. It has become respectable. You’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who, as the old Romans did, desired so much pleasure that after eating a meal they purged themselves in order to eat some more. But a keen eye will notice in many quarters what we may call a gluttony of delicacy.

In his Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis describes this vice as it inflicts “the patient’s mother.” She is a “positive terror to hostesses and servants . . . always turning from what has been offered her to say with a demure little sigh and a smile ‘Oh please, please . . . all I want is a cup of tea, weak but not too weak, and the teeniest weeniest bit of really crisp toast.’” Lewis points out that because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before her, she never recognizes as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others. She will, in fact, “be astonished to learn that her whole life is enslaved to this kind of sensuality.” And it is this kind of gluttonous sensuality, Wormwood instructs Screwtape, that has as its chief use “a kind of artillery preparation for attacks on chastity.” On the battlefield, the artillery bombarded the enemy’s defenses to prepare the way for an incisive attack. As long as we are deadened to this in us (and the fact that this is seldom discussed among us doesn’t help), we will continue on our merry way and in the end be as astonished as the patient’s mother.

Along with this gluttony of delicacy is often found a tendency to demand too much from others, thus exasperating them to the point of withdrawal or anger. Friendships (to say nothing of the marital relationship) are true gifts from God, yet they too can be objects of gluttony. Having high expectations is one thing; having unrealistic expectations—demanding more from others (like from a child) than is appropriate—for the gluttonous pursuance of pleasure is another thing entirely.

But there’s good news. Gluttony, which is admittedly a matter of the heart, is nonetheless often limited by our bodies. If we eat in excess, many times our bodies let us know. If we are too fussy about having everything just so, we’ll be told to do it ourselves. If we demand too much from others, they will not want to be around us. And all these can serve as catalysts to change.

Thanks be to God, change is possible. By the power of his Spirit, we are enabled to pursue such changes, to practice self-control and a healthy dose of self-denial (hard for us Americans, to be sure).

We Christians have unthinkingly embraced our society’s desire “for just a little more” as we pursue our supposed main objective in life — upward mobility. But these are little more than the sanctified vice of gluttony; indeed, they are respectable sins.


{Part of this originally appeared in Tabletalk 32.5 (May 2008): 12–13}

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Baxter's soup, Wright's soap, and Helm's in deep

[I wrote this entry about three years ago. Its introductory paragraph will explain why I haven't pressed the publish button until now—"now" being March 2011.]

IT IS WITH SOME trepidation that I post this. If you move within my circles, you'll know why. When writing and responding to the [former, et passim] Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, if you're not careful to distance yourself from him on certain points, you could find yourself in trouble. This is, of course, appropriate—we are, after all, a confessional bunch, and promoting doctrines that directly contradict the essential elements of one's confession (to be understood as conscience) is neither right nor safe (to borrow from Luther at Worms).

Too often among us, responses to him range from one extreme to the other—with the minority adoring everything the good bishop writes and many others offering only knee-jerk reactions as if everything he has written deserves being tossed in the waste bucket. But no thinker has gotten everything wrong (even Shelby Spong, as hard as that is to imagine), just as no thinker has gotten everything right. All deserve criticism and all deserve the benefit of the doubt. We would do well to blaze a middle way.

This post comes after having read Professor Helm's interesting thoughts on the supposed parallels between Baxter and Wright. Now, my own studies in seventeenth-century history and theology some years ago also heightened my sense of the possible parallels between Wright's "fresh" perspective and neonomianism. But the more I think on it, the more it seems that the similarities are incidental at best.

Reformed folks worth their salt have always had a robust doctrine of sanctification. It is as integral to the equation of salvation (systematically understood) as justification. Indeed, the two are to be distinguished, but never separated. They are two sides of the same coin. Put differently, they are two distinct legs on the way to salvation—and none of us will be hopping into heaven. That said, one does indeed have priority, for the latter (sanctification) must needs flow from the former (justification). With this background, when I've read Wright on the future of justification, and then when I read Professor Helm's critique, I get the feeling that I've missed something. Maybe I've given Wright too much credit, too much benefit of the doubt. It is in this spirit, therefore, of seeking to learn that my response is posted. I'd like to know where I'm wrong on this score, and if my Reformed goggles have tainted my reading of Wright on this particular point.

In the professor's analysis, he quips that he's unable to “see neither Wright nor Baxter come close to saying anything about what is to be done at the judgment about the believer’s continuing shortcomings.” I’m not so sure about Baxter, but it seems to me that Wright deems such shortcomings to be entirely irrelevant (with respect to the sweeping picture of redemption). This is not to suggest that he finds no place for the continuing struggle and the confession of sin in the Christian life (see his commentary on Rom 6 in NIB); it is to say that I think he thinks that continued imperfections are simply not a problem for those who are in Christ—not a problem, that is, in the sense that they’re irrelevant to God.

Why? Because of Christ. He writes: “...Paul was a realist, about himself, about his fellow Christians, about suffering, pain, depression, fear and death itself. These were not enemies he took lightly. But his entire argument in this chapter [Rom. 6] so far...is that the Christian, facing these enemies, stands already on resurrection ground. This is ultimately a truth about the Christian’s Lord, the Messiah, but because of baptism it becomes a truth about the Christian himself or herself” (p. 541). I assume that when he writes that this is a truth about Jesus, he means that despite the fact we Christians still struggle with sin, the fact that the sinless Jesus was utterly faithful to God’s covenant to the point of death (and resurrection) means, insofar as we’ve been united to Christ, that our continuing imperfections, in the final analysis, are caught up and done away with as a result (arguably akin to what Helm termed “double justification” in his critique—which has no relation to Bucer’s or Regenburg’s formulation, as confusing as this [oversight?] might be). In short, quite precisely because the Christian is assured of this pardon and that his or her works will be pleasing to God on that final day, possibly, then, Wright thinks the continued imperfections are irrelevant.

And, whatever else can be said of Wright, in Augustinian (Calvinian?) fashion he does think sanctification to be definitive (“the Christian...stands already on resurrection ground”). In his commentary on Romans 8:29–30 he begins: “In order to show the branches that they are indeed to bear blossom and fruit, Paul...goes back behind justification itself to God’s purpose and call, and behind that again to God’s foreknowledge” (601). About foreknowledge, he writes, “Foreknowledge is a form of love or grace; to speak thus is to speak of God reaching out, in advance of anything the person may do or think, to reveal love and to solicit an answering love, to reveal a particular purpose and to call forth obedience to it. More particularly, this foreknowledge produces God’s foreordaining purpose” (p. 602). After going on a side trail about how God’s sovereignty does not render human actions insignificant, Wright argues that “all these things [predestined, called, justified, glorified] have happened already to and in Jesus, the Messiah; and what is true of the Messiah is true of his people” (p. 603). “The steady beat of the verbs within Paul’s solemn rhetoric underscores the steady beat of God’s unshakable purpose set forth in the Messiah and completed by the Spirit” (presumably, by the Spirit in God’s people, p. 604).

Because of this certainty with which Wright speaks of the presently justified’s glorification, it would seem that his point about being justified in the future on the basis of the whole life lived is a sure thing. In other words, Christians will certainly burst forth in spontaneous obedience to God (freely given according to God’s grace and empowered by God’s Spirit), which obedience plays a part in their final justification, and which obedience, however tainted by sin, is made acceptable because of the acceptable-ness of Christ himself. Thus, the continuing sins of Christians are ultimately irrelevant to the redemptive program of God (keeping in mind, of course, that confession of sins itself falls into that category of Spirit-led obedience). As I've written and thought about this post over several months now, I find yet again support for this in Wright's newest book on the subject Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision:

The present verdict gives the assurance that the future verdict will match it; the spirit gives the power through which that future verdict, when given, will be seen to be in accordance with the life that the believer has then lived.

Finally, Professor Helm asks, “On Wright’s account is there any place, then, in the final judgment for God justifying the ungodliness of the godly? If so, how does it happen?”

Maybe the bishop's answer would be that “ungodliness,” for those who are in Christ, is that which is passed over by “sheer grace to any and all who, despite their ungodliness, trust in this God” (commentary on Rom. 4:4–5, p. 492). And given Wright’s commentary on Paul’s discussion of how Christians occupy, as it were, a different sphere or place than they did previously (see pp. 542–547 of NIB), Wright might add that “ungodliness” is not a proper word for describing the life of a Christian (one might consider the validity of their profession otherwise). Maybe now the question could be more forcefully asked: “Is there any place in the final judgment for God justifying even just one account of ungodliness of the godly?” I assume Wright would say that that has already been taken care of in Christ, so let’s not fixate on that which has been dealt with (indeed, exposed by the law, which brings no condemnation for those in union with Christ Jesus).

Update: May 2014

So, after seven years, Wright finally grants me the opportunity to update this post with a definitive statement on the subject. The following appears in his recently published Paul and the Faithfulness of God, pp. 948–49:

In Paul’s theology all this means two tightly interconnected realities, both of which he urgently wants to stress. First, all those over whom that declaration is made are permanently "in the right." The status of dikaiosyne is not temporary. It truly anticipates the verdict which will be issued on the final day. This is why "justification" is the heart of what later generations would rightly see as Christian assurance. Properly speaking, "justification" is not "how someone becomes a Christian," but "how someone who becomes a Christian through believing the gospel and being baptized can be sure they will receive the verdict 'righteous' on the last day." The judge has already pronounced it, and his word will stand.

So, now I ask again, quid tibi est?

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