Reading about what is going on in the mid-east and the U.S. policies there, it seems clear to me that one basic conflict facing the Iraqis and others in that area is a conflict of loyalties and trusts. The U.S. is claiming to offer people in the Mideast a future and a hope. They need to side with U.S. interests and enjoy the benefits of democracy and American aid.

But there are competing offers on the table. Other more local powers are making offers of a hope and a future. Some Islamic teachers are offering not only hope for this life but for the life to come. Many are claiming that the U.S. is untrustworthy and one cannot expect us to fulfill our promises. How each person decides will largely depend on whom seems most trustworthy and makes the most attractive promises.

Almost a couple of millennia ago, a little bit west of Iraq, another superpower was dealing with middle eastern terrorists. In the region of Gallillee there were bands of marauders who were looked upon as freedom fighters by many in the populace, but as violent rebels by the Roman Empire. These Jewish outlaws, often called “robbers” just like Barabbas the insurrectionist and murderer was called a robber, believed that Israel should not have to suffer under pagan tyranny. They were God’s chosen people and God would help them if they were faithful and allow them to throw off the yoke of the Romans Empire.

According to Historian and Bible scholar, N. T. Wright, the ancient writer Josephus worked with the Romans to get one such bandit gang to lay down their arms. The Romans were going to wipe them out, but if Josephus, a fellow Jew, could persuade these Gallilean outlaws to lay down their arms, much bloodshed could be avoided. The leader of the group tried to have Josephus killed, but he foiled the plot. He then confronted this bandit chief. Josephus told him that he knew what he had tried to do but he was still willing to help him. The Greek of Josephus’ account of how he made his offer of aid has been translated in various ways, but it could be easily interpreted as “If you will repent and believe in me.” Josephus promised this outlaw leader that he could bring him into a better future if he would give up his own path and follow Josephus-if he would turn and entrust himself to him.

A few decades earlier, another Jew had given his contemporaries the same counsel. This one was not merely a historian and writer, but rather claimed to be an actual prophet. He didn’t just give advice to one group of rebels, but he preached to the entire nation of Israel. He accused them of becoming just like the pagans they hated precisely by hating the pagans.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

He told them that to really be the light to the world that Israel was designed to be–the city set on a hill that Jerusalem was supposed to be–they needed to turn the other cheek when slapped, and go the extra mile when pressed into the forced labor of carrying a burden for one of the oppressors. Israel had largely entrusted themselves to teachers who told them that God would honor them if they showed zeal against the pagans. This teacher told them that their chosen path was unreliable and would only lead to ruin–the very judgment of God

This man was a prophet, but he was more than a prophet. Jesus not only taught these things, but as the true Son of God he fulfilled them himself. He embodied and fulfilled Israel’s commission to glorify God before the nations. Even though personally innocent, he suffered the full weight of the curse on God’s people, submitting to a humiliating death at the hands of both Israelites and the pagans. He alone practiced what he preached.

As a result, in him God brought about his promised future of resurrection life–not only for his sake but for all those who would turn from their own way and entrust themselves to him.

The point here is that we too, no matter how good we have it, are also confronted with a basic conflict of loyalties and trusts. Whom do we trust to bring us into a blessed future? To whom are we ultimately loyal? Do we think of ourselves as first and foremost Americans who happen to be Christians? Or do we think of ourselves as Christians who happen to be Americans–Christians united by faith and Spirit to all the Christians in the Mideast and South America, and Sudan and everywhere else?

Whom do we trust? To whom have we entrusted ourselves?

Yes, here we are in ’96. Now Jeff has all the facial hair and (thankfully!) our glasses have shrunk to a reasonable size!

Best of all, though, my eldest son has a really personal message directed straight for him (and his parents when they need the reminder!). You can download it and listen here.

Mike Hyatt reviews Apple’s newest laptop.

I. The Catholic or universal Church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one, under Christ the head thereof; and is the spouse, the body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all.

II. The visible Church, which is also Catholic or universal under the Gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the Law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children; and is the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.

What is a Christian?

Almost invariably, the answer to that question is answered in terms of a list of beliefs–a system or teachings or doctrines. A Christian is one who subscribes to the world view commonly labeled "Christianity."

This common view presents me with a problem.

To understand my problem, imagine driving up to Canada and stopping at restaurant to get a bite to eat. And while you’re sitting at the table, an enthusiastic young man comes over to you and says in an excited voice. "Are you an American?" You reply, "Yes, I am."

"Wonderful! I have so little fellowship up here with fellow Americans."

"Have you lived in Canada a long time?" you ask.

"Oh yes, all of my life. I was born here."

"Oh… So your parents were Americans."

"No, sadly my parents remained Canadian all their lives."

"Then how did you become an American?"

"Well, one day I found a tract that told me about American ideas. I was transfixed by their power and adopted them as my own. I was born again, you might say. From that day on I have believed in Americanism. I have memorized all of the Declaration of Independence and portions of the Constitution, and I subscribe to the Congressional Register."

My problem today in explaining the problem of defining Christians in terms of Christianity is similar to the one you would face in trying to explain to that Canadian the reality of his situation. You would have to tell him that there is no such thing as "Americanism." America is not an "ism" but an institution. To be an American one must be a citizen of the nation. There may be beliefs which one must hold to be a good American, but being an American is not a matter of holding certain beliefs.

And now I am telling you: Just as there is no such thing as Americanism, there is no such thing as Christianity. The Reformed theologian, Peter Leithart, put it well:

The Bible never mentions Christianity. It does not preach Christianity, nor does it encourage us to preach Christianity. Paul did not preach Christianity, nor did any of the other apostles. When the Church was strong and vibrant, it did not preach Christianity either. Christianity, like Judaism and "Yahwism," is an invention of biblical scholars, theologians, and politicians, and one of its effects is to keep Christians in their proper, marginal, place. It is the death knell of the life of faith and of the life of the body of Christ. The Bible speaks of Christians and of the Church, but to preach Christianity is gnostic, and the Church firmly rejected gnosticism from the earliest days.

Gnosticism was a heresy which taught salvation by knowledge. It is an attractive type of heresy for today. We live in an age of ideologies and ideological religions where people define themselves by virtue of certain ideas they believe. It is popular these days to talk about choosing a "world view" or a "belief system" of a "philosophy." One can consider Marxism, libertarianism, conservatism, liberalism, humanism, nihilism, Hinduism, Buddhism, spiritism, transcendentalism, existentialism, pragmatism, theism, atheism and so on. The list of "isms" is endless. But there is no "ism" found in God’s Word, the Bible. What is unfolded for us in Scripture is the history of the establishment, growth, and salvation of the Church, which is–as is stated in paragraph two of our Confession–"the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God." We should define a Christian not in terms of subscription to "Christianity" but in terms of incorporation in the Church.

You see, if man’s problem was simply a matter of mistaken beliefs, then all that would be needed for salvation is to correct those mistaken beliefs. But that is not man’s problem, at least not the primary part of it. Man’s problem is that he sinned against God and as a result was disinherited from God’s family and banished from His Kingdom. Adam, according to Luke 3.38 was God’s son. He was also a king under God over creation. He fell away from God’s family and Kingdom, becoming an orphan and an exile. It is impossible to speak of salvation without speaking of the restoration of man to his former standing in the God’s family and kingdom. In other words, it is impossible to speak of salvation without speaking about incorporation into God’s new family and kingdom, the Church.

You will realize this must be true if you think about it for a moment. If you send your child away from the table because he has done something wrong, it makes no sense to go back to him in a few minutes and tell your son that he is forgiven for what he did but that he is still not permitted back to the table. It would be like an emperor condemning his prime minister to exile on a far-away island and later pardoning him but leaving him stuck on the island and giving his office to someone else. It would be a false and useless pardon. Because salvation entails reconciliation and restoration, it entails membership in God’s kingdom and family, the Church.

As Ephesians 1.18-23 spells out, Christ has been given to the Church. If you want to have Christ, you need to be incorporated into the Church, which is Christ’s body (cf. 1 Cor 12.12-13).

Of course, some have tried to get around the Biblical doctrine of the Church by misusing the doctrine of the "invisible Church." But the invisible Church and the visible Church are not two different churches, but different aspects one and the same Church. What is the relationship between those two aspects of the Church? As the Confession puts it, the invisible Church is what will exist when all of the elect are gathered into One. This includes people who have not even been born yet.

The invisible Church then, is the future Church–the ideal or eschatological Church. The visible Church is the present Church–the actual or existing Church. Properly speaking, the invisible Church does not yet exist except as the result in the mind of God which He is planning to bring about as the culmination of history. The invisible Church is the meaning and goal of the visible Church.

It is common to hear, in our circles, that God sees the invisible Church but man sees the visible. This is a very dangerous idea because it causes people to denigrate the institutional Church. When Jesus wept for Jerusalem in Luke 13.34, He was weeping for members of the visible Church of the Old Covenant, who were not members of the invisible Church, because they were going to be excommunicated by God–Jerusalem was going to be destroyed. Jesus saw the visible Church and in his tears we see the face of the Father. God cares about the visible Church. So should we.

This means, incidentally, that we should all make sure that we ourselves and our children are members of the visible Church, "out of which," according to our Confession, "there is no ordinary possibility of salvation." When the Confession states in paragraph 2 that the Church "consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion, and of their children," we need to not jump to the false conclusion that children are members of the Church by birth. The Confession is presupposing that Christian parents are going to baptize their children. According to Chapter 27 of the Confession, one is admitted into the institutional Church by baptism. Again the Church is not simply a collection of people who all believe the same ideology. The Church is an institution, like a family or nation, which is over and above the individual members of it. Baptism is the rite by which citizenship in the Kingdom is conferred upon both an adult or a child. If you are simply assuming, for yourself or your children, that baptism is simply an optional ritual, then I must warn you that you are on very dangerous ground. God does not impose empty symbols. If you take God’s family and kingdom seriously, you will look to the Church as the place where salvation is to be found for yourself and your children.

III. Unto this Catholic, visible Church Christ hath given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God, for the gathering and perfecting of the saints, in this life, to the end of the world; and doth, by His own presence and Spirit, according to His promise, make them effectual thereunto.

We see in paragraph three that God gave the institutional Church, "the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God for the gathering and perfecting of the saints." The Biblical case for this is ably set forth by Peter Leithart:

the Church is not a people united by common ideas, ideas which collectively might go under the title, "Christianity." When the Bible speaks of a people united by faith it means more than a people who have the same beliefs about reality; it means that, but the word "faith" stretches to include one’s entire "stance" in life, a stance that includes beliefs about the world but also includes unarticulated or inarticulable attitudes, hopes, and habits of thought or feeling. Besides, the church is united not only by one faith but also by one baptism (Ephesians 4.4-6), and manifests her unity in common participation in one loaf (1 Corinthians 10.17), and strives to live in imitation of Christ’s self-sacrificing love.

The Church, in other words, is an institution, with rulers, ceremonies, and laws–that is, pastors, sacraments by which one enters and continues in the organization, and the Bible.

This organization is not merely a legal fiction–a mechanical arrangement of rules and rituals and managers–but is the actual home of the Holy Spirit who indwells the Church and makes the ministry, oracles and ordinances effectual in gathering an perfecting the saints.

IV. This Catholic Church hath been sometimes more, sometimes less visible. And particular churches, which are members thereof, are more or less pure, according as the doctrine of the Gospel is taught and embraced, ordinances administered, and public worship performed more ore less purely in them.

The Church is for sinners and will never be perfect until it is brought to completion in the Final Day. Therefore, any view of the Church which demands perfection is simply at war with what Christ has instituted. Christ loves the Church and is willing to put up with many blemishes, patiently working with her. Anyone who loves Christ must emulate His attitude toward His bride and be patient as He is patient. Thus, paragraph four tells us that various churches are more or less pure. A corrupt Church is still a Church.

V. The purest churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error; and some have so degenerated, as to become no churches of Christ, but synagogues of Satan. Nevertheless, there shall be always a Church on earth, to worship God according to His will.

While it is possible for some churches to become so corrupt that they fall away from Christ and worship a different God than the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, there has never been nor will there ever be a time when the Church as a whole ceases to exist. Paragraph 5 reminds us of Christ’s promise in the Great Commission to be with the Church until the end of the age. In America, there are some Christians who pretend that faithfulness to the Gospel dictates that they assert that the Church apostatized from the True Faith soon after the Apostolic Age. This idea nullifies the promise of God. While it is true that the Church is continually reconstituted by the Holy Spirit who eternally proceeds from the Father, it is also true that Christ instituted a Church which grows progressively through history from the time of the Apostles until now and on to the Final Day. To claim there was a time when the Church ceased to exist, and then restarted, is to deny the uniqueness of Pentecost and the Apostolic age as the beginning of the Church.

VI. There is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ. Nor can the pope of Rome, in any sense, be head thereof.

Finally, paragraph 6, deals with the Roman Catholic claim that the Pope is the head of the Church. Roman Catholics believe that the continuing office of the papacy as the successor to Peter is necessary for the historical continuity of the institutional Church. Protestants often respond by virtually denying the existence of the institutional Church as being anything but an afterthought to a personal faith. Both positions demonstrate a lack of faith in the heavenly reality of Jesus Christ as the head of His Church. Both are unsatisfied with the visible means of the Church which the Bible establishes: the sacraments, the Word, and the government of the congregations by pastors. Roman Catholics despise these means by adding to them; Evangelicals despise them by reducing them to naked symbols for a voluntary society. If we truly believe God’s Word, then we know that Christ our head is in heaven who, by the Spirit, perpetuates the Church through history. That should be enough.

If I turn on the radio and listen to Evangelical programming, I will hear a great deal about the importance of the family. I will also hear a great deal about political reform. No doubt the family is important. And we do need to deal with the culture war waging around us. But what I find missing is any attempt to set forth the importance and centrality of the Church. Christ was not given to any family nor to any civil government. He was given to the Church. Let us then, if we value Christ above all, honor the Church as His bride above all other created things.

Justin Talor’s post on Lindbeck and Frame is quite helpful. Or it could be.

Taylor seems to see Frame (rightly) as an antidote to what is wrong in the “post-liberal” as well as the “post-conservative” writings of late. But Taylor seems to have been protected from the experience of being told (1994) that John Frame was himself a relativist and that his friend and colleague Vern Poythress is a pluralist.

While I’m thinking about this (and some posts on reading Barth and on Barth and resurrection), I’m guesing he was never told how suspiciously Barthian Frame is or how desirable and helpful it would be to get hold of Frame’s copy of Barth’s Church Dogmatics to find out how his margin notes reveal influence.

But I digress.

I too with more people would read Frame. But the comments I summarize above came not from outside the camp but from those associated with the fortress construction around “reformed theology” to protect it from the nefarioius influence of N. T. Wright and Rich Lusk. Even in recent conferences I still hear one of these men claiming there is an epistemological issue at root that must be settled in order to properly immunize us from these influences. All the king’s horses and men are being rallied to glue those shattered pieces of stereotype back together again. It’s the last hope for the Thornwellian revival that must sweep the land if the true Gospel is to be preserved.

Everytime Justin writes about Frame and Poythress I feel like flying up to Minneapolis and showing up at his door with a couple of six packs New Belguim 1556 and seeing if it will get me across the threshhold. It is hard not to feel kinship on many levels when he posts on these things.

What a great quotation!:

Sometimes I hear women complaining that not enough men attend worship. This is indeed troubling. But then it shouldn’t be that big of a surprise to us when some have turned worship into something more of a wedding shower (complete with entertainment, practical advice, and “sharing”) than a service of covenant renewal.

The heading of this post is real. I’m only jotting this off because sometimes thinking about an oversimplification can stimulate productive thought.

The debate over the “free offer of the Gospel” was a struggle to gain permission within the Reformed world of sincerely assuring (and warning) unbelievers indiscriminately that God loves them and desires their salvation.

The so-called “federal vision” controversy seems to arise from a demand for permision within the Reformed world to sincerely assure (and warn) professing believers indiscriminately that God loves them and has made them part of his family.

Update.

One cannot take Calvin anywhere at any time in Saint Louis without getting his analysis of the architecture he is being driven by.

It is hysterical. All seventies crud is “modern” and everything with character from the forties is “post-modern.”

I mentioned earlier that this was a fruitful interview to read–on several levels, including theology. Here’s one example of what I had in mind:

DB: …science has no more method than golf …

… You don’t believe that …

DB: You mean about the scientific method? Certainly I do. Where science has a method, it is trivial – look carefully, cut the cards, weigh the evidence, don’t let yourself be fooled, do an experiment if you can. These are principles of kennel management as well as quantum theory. Where science isn’t trivial, it has no method. What method did Einstein follow, or Pauli, or Kekulé? Kekulé saw the ring structure of benzene in what he called a waking dream. Some method.

Don’t you ever want to say (or scream) this about theological method? Or hermeneutics? I remember asking a friend and teacher about Arthur Pink’s “The Law of First Mention,” which is one of the laws we need to keep in mind in order to properly interpret the Bible. Of course, I think it is highly significant that the first time the Bible mentions blood it is crying out to God and provoking him to action. But does it follow that it is really helpful to speak of a list of “laws” to which one must submit in order to understand a text. Do we read anything this way?

When I first saw Schreck I had never watched Disney’s Beauty & the Beast. So what argument would you have crafted to “prove” to me through syntactical unit analysis that the former was spoofing the latter? Wouldn’t you simply immediately know it if you had seen Beauty & the Beast?

Where theology has a method can we really say it is more than trivial?

Eighty-five churches need to be excised because they are “federal vision”?

We’ll have to wait and see if this really reflects an agenda or if it was simply someone’s exaggeration, or simply a mistake. I wasn’t in Africa recently so I won’t commit one way or another. But it would be interesting to to figure out how many presbyteries would be involved in this if it were true.