Monthly Archives: April 2005

Martin Bucer Quotations

Here are some quotations I gleaned from Martin Bucer’s works:

Performative signs & what it means to receive in faith

And therefore, when the faithful, believing theses words and not doubting that they are addressed by the Lord to themselves (that they were in fact spoken only to them is proved by phrases in the context such as, “is given for you, is shed for you, is the new covenant,” which are all entirely alien to those who lack faith), truly eat the body of Christ and drink his blood, there is no reason based on the authority of Scripture which compels us on that account to tie the body of Christ to the bread in a physical manner, and not rather to confess that when Christ is eaten by faith by believers these words are completely fulfilled. The godly man hears that Christ offered bread to his disciples and said, “Take, eat; this is my body,” and believes that this is spoken to himself as well. Does he not truly eat the body of Christ even though no change occurs in the bread that he eats? A prince hands over to a judge elect a rod as the symbol of judicial authority, adding these words: “Behold, I hearby commit to you the authority of a judge.” The latter, believing his prince and accepting the rod, is at the same time constituted a judge, although the rod in itself remains nothing but a rod. Similarly by the symbol of the keys a person may receive the rights of the household, the keys remaining in their own essence the same as they were before.

Source: Martin Bucer, “The Eucharist: the 1526 Apology,” Martin Bucer, Courtenay Reformation Classics IV, p. 330.

FOR FURTHER READING

John 6 & the Lord’s Supper

Christ said here, “Take, eat; this is my body which is given for you,” not meaning himself to be eaten except for salvation, which was his invariable objective in everything, having been sent into our midst by the Father for this very purpose. Why therefore should we conceive a different eating of his body from the one that he himself taught [i.e. in John 6] so fully? Nor do I doubt that this is the reason why John does not mention the Supper, which all the other Evangelists so carefully described, becaus of course he alone had given so lengthy an account of what Christ intended to emphasize most of all in the Supper. it is a highly improbable explanation that he failed to record the Supper because it had been described by the others, for on this basis he ought to have omitted a great deal else besides, especially in the narrative of Chrsit’s passion. Nor can the giving of his body to be eaten and his blood to be drunk be regarded as one of Christ’s commonplace actions, but obviously ranks with those that john labored most particularly to record. Therefore we have no doubt that the essential significance of Christ’s Supper was unfolded by John in chapter 6, though he counted it sufficient that the use of the signs had been related by the others.

Source: Martin Bucer, “The Eucharist: the 1526 Apology,” Martin Bucer, Courtenay Reformation Classics IV, pp. 327, 328.

Baptism = introduction/initiation into God’s service

I bold-faced a couple of expressions that reminded me of Turrettin’s expressions:

Now the reason why God authorized men to use a rite of this nature, involving immersion or washing or sprinkling with water and received at the hands of the official ministers of religion, as the means of obtaining the washing away of their sins and hence also as the regular mode of initiation to the service of God, is to be found in his purpose to confirm and stimulate to greater vigor in them by this procedure the first and foremost principle of our salvation, namely, faith in the remission of sins, that is, in our unmerited justification. For God himself formed us in such a way that whenever we are seriously promising or conferring invisible realities our natural inclination is to do so by means of signs perceptible to the senses. The same procedure can be observed among all peoples in important transactions of every kind, for it is in this manner that treaties are concluded, kings installed, marriages contracted, and sales executed. Consequently, as far as this use of symbols is concerned, God deals with us in terms of our own practice, as he is accustomed to do in other respects as well. And since the whole of the covenant he has made with us and our entire salvation (which is his primary consideration in all his dealings with us) have their beginning and basis in our persuasion that he pardons our sins, in his wisdom he has willed to confirm and stimulate our faith in this pardon principally by his own symbol, and particularly at the time when men consecrate themselves to his service in a special way. For on that occasion they reflect more closely on their own unworthiness and his goodness, and as a result more fully forsake self and dedicate themselves to him for a life of complete holiness and a true readiness to serve the needs of all men.

His purpose, however, to present the remission of sins through the agency of public ministers of religion was not determined solely by the fact that it is appropriate for physical symbols to be conferred at the hands of men. It was also his aim by this means to knit his own more closely together and to each other, and to bind them more securely to submission to religious instruction and admonition in the congregation. This should result from their realizing that the men from whom they received the counsels of salvation and to whom they must cleave as fellow members in the same body are able to shut or to open heaven to them, and to retain or to remit their sins. The Church of God, of course, has always possessed this power, and God has never failed to make use of its exercise for the salvation of his own whenever the Church has languished in spirit and the light of knowledge.

It should now be clear from what we have said why God has required his Church in every age to use baptism and in this manner to introduce men to his service.

Source: Martin Bucer, “Baptism,” Martin Bucer, Courtenay Reformation Classics IV, pp. 287, 288.

Leithart and standard theology proper

Peter Leithart writes:

My point in the paragraph from which that citation is taken is to challenge the “reification and abstraction” that plagues theology. Positively, I am arguing that Christian theology is pervasively personal (a point stressed by Van Til and John Frame), not only in the sense that we should strive to employ personal categories when talking theologically but also in the sense that all theology involves the theologian in faithful witness or unfaithful compromise before a personal God. The phrase “nature of God” is problematic if it has the effect of seducing the theologian into thinking he’s talking about some thing called God’s “nature” rather than talking about God Himself.

Here’s the fuller quotation:

Does the phrase “nature of God” mean anything other than “God”? What is added by adding “nature”? If the phrase refers to God’s attributes, well and good, though I prefer the more personalist connotations of “attributes.” But the phrase can hint that there is some reality that we can call “nature of God” that is different from the Sovereign Person we call “God,” and that hint is dangerous and heretical if pressed. I suspect that “nature of God” is often used for rhetorical effect, since it sounds more weighty and philosophical than “God.” But that rhetorical reach is also dangerous. I suspect too, sinners being sinners, that some prefer “nature of God” to “God” (or, even more, “Yahweh”) precisely because of its de-personalizing implications, because they believe the phrase can be a shield against the righteous, personal Judge. A frail defense. Trinitarian theology forces us to refine our speaking about God in a way that highlights rather than suppresses His personality, His personal promises and demands.

Try this as a test: When you speak of your wife, or your children, or your best friend, do you talk about the “nature of Sam” or the “nature of Diane”? Wouldn’t that be downright weird? Why then does it sound normal when we talk about God? I submit that it shouldn’t. In any case, this statement from my essay has little to do with the question of how God is One.

My thinking about this statement, up till tonight when I suddenly came to my senses, demonstrates how debate poisons thinking, or at least my thinking.

I thought Peter’s response, quoted in part above, was pretty good. But someone said something tonight that made me realize that I have forgotten the obvious: It is absolutely standard in Reformed theology (and virtually all Christian theology whether Roman Catholic or otherwise) to insist that God is identical with his attributes. The fact that Peter feels a need to argue his case is evidence of a great deal of amnesia regarding traditional Reformed theology proper. Peter is saying nothing extraordinary except to speak of how our rhetoric gets in the way of what we are trying to say. The very fact that no one has pointed out that the traditional orthodox view of God radically demands exactly Peter’s formulation is itself evidence of that fact.

Judah & Joseph

Not only is what follows a good response to those who want to revise history and claim there was no real conflict between Jesus and his proto-rabbinic contemporaries (Sanders, Vermes), but it has plenty of application to the temptations that beset Christian denominations.

Here again Sanders is justified in reacting against overstatements by too many New Testament scholars about Pharisaic hostility to the ordinary people. But here too the question has to be asked whether Sanders in turn has over-reacted and tried to push the pendulum too far in the opposite direction.

The Role of Social Conflict in Group Definition
We may consider, first of all, the insights of sociology and social anthropology into the nature of groups and their self-definition. Once we realize that the social identity of a group depends to a large extent on the distinctiveness of its practices and beliefs, it also becomes evident that the corollary of “identity” is “boundary,” that self-definition involves self-differentiation. In all this, ritual as a visible expression of social relationships usually plays a particularly important role. moreover, wherever there are other groups whose distinctives differ, each group is liable to be particularly protective of its identity and react strongly to any perceived threat to its boundaries. Indeed, group conflict can play an important role in binding a group more closely together and will often cause it to put still greater emphasis on the distinctiveness of its rituals. And particularly where groups are close to one another in origin or character or distinctives, the conflict is liable to be all the more intense. It is the brother who threatens identity most (“sibling rivalry”); it is the party most like your own which threatens to draw away your support and undermine your reason for existence as a distinct entity.

(James D. G. Dunn, “Pharisees, Sinners, and Jesus” Jesus, Paul, & the Law: Studies in Mark & Galatians (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1990), p. 72)

Notice, by the way, my hopeful title to this entry.

Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and reign imputed

Here is Paul telling his readers that he is praying they will be brought to understand God’s omnipotence:

…the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.  And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.  But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

So reads Ephesians 1.19bff without the chapter break. Typically, people read “made us alive together with Christ” as personal regeneration. The gift of faith mentioned in the next verse is obviously the way we appropriate this so that it can be said that we were made alive with Christ, but the making alive here refers not to our history, but to Jesus’. Gaffin tries to deny this as Ridderbos articulates it, saying that the “dead” in 2.1 is not identification with Christ’s death, but in our trespasses and sins. True, but the point here is not that we identified with Christ. Rather, he identified with us. Though sinless, he joined us in our curse in the ultimate way by submitting to death.

The transition here is not the transition of individual biography. Reading Acts it is obvious that many people were not “following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience,” living “in the passions of our flesh, carrying ou the desires of the body and the mind…” Cornelius was a devout man whose prayers were acceptable to God. The point here is that both Jew and Gentile races were going to Hell and, before the death and resurrection of Christ, the entire age was characterized in this way. Jesus representatively put the world to death and renewed the world in his person. Those who believe the Gospel message are sealed with the Spirit (1.13, 14) to Christ. We are saved “through faith” (2.8). But that work of the Spirit is not in view for believers in 1.19-2.7. Rather, it is the work of the Spirit in declaring a verdict on Christ by raising him. Christ was given the credit for his faithful life culminating in death on the cross by his resurection and ascension. When we believe the Gospel we receive and are received into Christ so that we share his verdict. Our sins no longer legally matter because Christ’s death to sin counts as ours. There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus (Romans 8.1). Furthermore, Christ’s faithful life and ongoing faithful reign are reckoned as our own. Positively and negatively, Jesus’ righteousness is ours.

Paul is perfectly capable of mixing the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection with the story of a believer’s conversion (Colossians 2.8-15). But in Ephesians 1.19-2.7 it seems to me we have the historia salutis, not the personal ordo.

Purified by Christ for corporate self offering

I’ve been reading Faith, obedience, and perseverance : aspects of Paul’s Letter to the Romans by Don Garlington. Even though I barely have time to think about it, I still am getting a lot out of it.

Consider the transition to the practical/ethical (I’m oversimplifying) in Romans 12.1, 2:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.  Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Paul goes on to write: “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’”Garlington points out that Romans 12.19 is a contains a quotation from Deuternomy 32.35, 36:

Vengeance is mine, and recompense,
for the time when their foot shall slip;
for the day of their calamity is at hand,
and their doom comes swiftly.’
For the Lord will vindicate his people
and have compassion on his servants,
when he sees that their power is gone
and there is none remaining, bond or free.

So far this is nothing new. But, Garlington associates the Deuteronomy passage with Leviticus 19.17, 18 in expounding Paul’s Christian ethic: “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him.  You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.”

So a passage that begins with an exhortation for us to “offer” ourselves as “living sacrifice” (Romans 12.1) on the basis of the finished work of Christ (1-9) has an appeal to the book of Leviticus.

It makes me wonder if Romans 12 is all keyed into Leviticus as a book. It also makes me wonder how we should summarize the book of Levitidus. Why the central love passages here and not elsewhere? Why the ethical directives that are repeated or would fit in other sections of the Pentateuch. Is this an interpretive clue. Are the community instructions in the midst of sacrifice, priesthood, cleanliness, feast, etc an indication of what the sacrificial system represented. Maybe Leviticus is *about* how Israel is to offer herself to God as a fragrant aroma…..

Whatever the case,Leviticus 18.17, 18 is aimed at people who have suffered real wrong at the hands of God’s own people. The Good News of Justification (cf. “vindication” in Deut 32.36) means we cheerfully suffer wrong at the hands of our brothers and sisters. If God will vindicate us, how can we hold a grudge?

Funny Philosophers

Stolen from Peter Leithart:

David Bentley Hart contests Thomas Oden’s claim that Kierkegaard is the most humorous of Western philosophers, offering Hamann as an alternative. In challenging Oden’s nomination, Hart has this important comment about Kierkegaard’s attack on Christendom, particularly K’s complaint about Christian “whoremongers”:

Yes, in fact there are “Christian” whorehouses, and whoremongers, and whores, and they are nothing like their pagan predecessors, because the formation of conscience within even a defectively Christian culture is something altogether novel; the whorehouse is now full of sinners, whose memories necessarily bear the impress of moral grammars and spiritual promises that the pagan order never knew, and who in consequence may yet awaken to their sin, and who may even find themselves at unexpected moments haunted by charity or tormented by grace. And it is the repeated failure of Kierkegaard to understand just this that makes his treatment of the whole question of Christendom finally so boring — and so humorless.

Concentric circles

The fact that not all children of believers are saved does not alter the truth that all of them are in the covenant of grace. Scripture speaks of the unbelieving children of believers as covenant-breakers (e.g., Jeremiah 31:32). They could hardly break the covenant if they were not in any sense in the covenant. Theologians correctly depict the covenant of grace by two concentric circles. The smaller one represents the covenant as vital relationship, and only the regenerate are within it. The larger one represents the covenant as a legal relationship, and all children of believers are in it. The covenant in the latter sense can be broken, and not infrequently is.

I just saw this quotation by R. B. Kuiper. Personally, I’d rather label the two circles “elect and non-elect” or “regenerate and unregenerate,” rather than “vital and legal.” Of course, I do think there is a qualitative difference in the vitality of the two groups, but we can’t read people’s hearts so there is virtually nothing we can do with that practically. At least not in a moment.

The differnece becomes manifest over time.

Politics and Press in the PCA

Not many people seem to be aware that Frank Thielman published a widely acclaimed book, Paul & the Law, which deals with the so-called “New Perspective.” Dr. Thielman is a scholar in the PCA who has attracted positive attention from such people as Richard Hays of Duke University.

So why haven’t more people heard of his book in our present context both in the my denomination and the Evangelical subculture at large? It is quite careful, scholarly, faithful, and fair. I notice he gets mentioned in some bibliographies but never quoted in any real way. Instead, assurances are given that he has not written the last word. Thielman is an interesting person in the PCA. He is apolitical in the best sense of the word. He is also has nothing to do with the so-called “Federal Vision” in relationship, interest, or theological proclivity. One would think he would be considered a must-read.