Monthly Archives: December 2009

The nation was entrusted

Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.

Israel was given the Ark of the Covenant, and in that Ark was the two tablets of stone with the decalogue written on them by God’s finger. They also had a national covenant that involved the duty to preserve God’s word (his oracles). Every seven years they were supposed to gather together for a week and hear God’s word read to them.

They also had a tribe of Levi especially called to lead in local prayer and a priesthood to serve in the central sanctuary. Elders at the gate also had a responsibility to rule according to God’s word and later kings were to keep a copy of the text near them.

There were age requirements as well establishing different levels of responsibility in Israel’s community and different requirements for office.

And every male was circumcised from the time he was eight days old.

Paul moves smoothly back and forth between the corporate and the personal. Circumcision is value (or advantage in some translations), because the person circumcised is thereby entrusted with the oracles of God. (Were a Gentile to convert and be circumcised he would then be entrusted as well as a new member in Israel’s calling.)

The national calling of Israel, given at Mt. Sinai when the Ten Commandments were delivered to Israel for her service, is given to each individual Jew according to their own stage and place in life.

Thus, baptism entrusts us with the new life of Christ given to him and to His people at his resurrection and ascension.

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led. Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit.

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.

But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

The calling and identity of the Church is the calling and identity of each baptized member just as the value of circumcision was to have been entrusted with the oracles of God. We have been entrusted with the death and resurrection of Jesus–to put to death the old Adam and live in the New Adam.

Dealing with Nazi publishers

Tis the season to fear the seasons

1 Reply

One of the unrecognized and most deadly evil of modern life’s facets is Chinese food.

Most people are wholly unaware of the critical nature of the Chinese food question, and blithely continue to participate in this wicked and dangerous activity: eating Chinese food. Of course, to speak against such a hallowed institution as Chinese food is to be regarded as a fanatic, or even as sacrilegious, but we must be true to the faith!

A moment’s reflection by any serious and committed Christian will show transparently why Chinese food must be rejected. Chinese food is an expression of Eastern monism. Not only does it come from the East, the heart of the world’s most sophisticated paganism (which in itself is reason to reject it as dangerous); it also in its very nature and composition reflects the monistic philosophy of the East.

Christianity gives equal ultimacy to the one and the many. In the West, this has meant that on one’s plate there are several kinds and portions of food: salad, vegetables, meat, and dessert. These are not, however, all mixed up together in a monistic unity, but are left diverse. It is the harmony and combination of the various foods, eaten one bite at a time, which gives expression to unity and diversity.

Chinese food, however, tries to break this down. All the foods — salad, vegetables, meats, and sweets — are mixed together in an attempt to destroy diversity and create a food-monad. This is obviously perverted and evil. Beyond this, sweet and sour are mixed together, in accordance with the philosophy of yin and yang. What could be more pagan?

Read the rest: Biblical Horizons » The Menace of Chinese Food.

Is there any way this works as the prooftext this is supposed to be?

2 Replies

Someone asked me about James 2.10. So here it is in context (the verse is bold-face):

My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court? Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called?

If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.

Now, is there any way that James is trying to communicate to his readers that they must give up trying to save themselves by living in a way that is “good enough” for God? (Happily, there is no evidence that James’ readers would ever countenance such false ideas, so we don’t need James to rescue them from such error.) Isn’t James writing to get them to correct their behavior rather than “give up and rely on Jesus”?

This is the word of God. What does it say? How do you read it?

Hypothetical perfect obedience or faith?

9 Replies

Romans 2 describes someone who will be accepted by God:

He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality.

For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus…

So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but break the law. For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.

Now here is Acts 10 when Peter is sent to the household of Cornelius:

So Peter opened his mouth and said: “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.

Then James made this suggestion at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15:

Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood.

Which was agreed to and sent out to the churches as a decree:

The brothers, both the apostles and the elders, to the brothers who are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greetings. Since we have heard that some persons have gone out from us and troubled you with words, unsettling your minds, although we gave them no instructions, it has seemed good to us, having come to one accord, to choose men and send them to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth. For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.

So what shall we say to these things? Peter learns that God shows no partiality because all Gentile god-fearers are accepted by Him. Paul teaches that God shows no partiality because the Gentiles who persevere in godliness will be granted immortality and will condemn those who are Jews who do not obey God. At the Jerusalem Council, likewise, the issue is what obedience is required, and the Gentiles are told to keep obeying basic morality: no vampirism, idolatry, or sexual deviancy.

So it is hard to believe that Romans 2 would be presenting a hypothetical perfect obedience that could hypothetically produce glory, honor, and immortality apart from Christ.

It might be worth considering that Romans 2 and Acts 10 and 15 are all dealing with people who know the true God. I find it hard to believe that the Romans or the god-fearing Gentiles would ever dream that sinless perfect obedience is a possibility. First Kings 8.46, Psalm 130.3-4, Psalm 143.2, and Ecclesiastes 7.20 are not the only passages that would rule that out from consideration and teach that God only can accept us by grace. While we tend to read Romans 1.18ff as an argument that everyone sins, Paul does not list universal sins but the depths of apostasy. Furthermore, while we use Romans 3.23 as asserting the same thing as the passages I just listed, Paul does not seem to be using the word “sin” to refer to any disobedience in thought, word, or deed, but for falling into real unbelief and apostasy. After all, we all have ongoing sin by the first definition, but Paul says, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5.8). Whatever a “sinner” is for Paul, it is something that we are no longer. And since it is very true that we commit ongoing sin (i.e. disobedience) and need God’s ongoing forgiveness, Paul has something more than that in mind.

On the other hand, when Paul preaches to pagans he does seem concerned to show them that they have no hope of winning favor from God by their works. He told the Athenians,

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served [healed?] by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

So the fact that we all live only by grace, not because of what we think we can do for God is important in confronting paganism. It just doesn’t seem to be the primary issue in Acts 10, 15, or Romans 2.

You never know where your impulse to scribble might lead you

2 Replies

YouTube – John Tolkien on “The Hobbit”.

Transcript:

The actual beginning, though it was not really the beginning, but the actual flash point was – I remember very clearly I ?? I took umm I still see the corner in my house in 22 Northmoor Road ??. I got an enormous pile of exam papers there, and uhh markings.. examinations.. summertime?.. it was enormous… very laborious. And unfortunately it was boring. And I remember picking up a paper and actually throwing.. I nearly gave an extra mark for it, an extra five marks actually – there was one page on this particular paper left blank – glorious – nothing to read. So I scribbled on it – I can’t think why: “In a hole in the ground, there lived a Hobbit.

Piety = clever way to avoid God’s life

Tolkien as “my” Christian champion

6 Replies

A couple of articles I haven’t had time to fully digest yet as I speed ahead on my biography of Tolkien:

Both of these articles are quite worthwhile. They are both, I think, hurt by a desire to “defend the Faith.” Both have their particular virtues on that score as well. The first of these is written by a person from the perspective of a modern traditionalist kind of conservative Presbyterians. The second by an author who is writing to justify leaving that world of thought and society (more or less) and joining the Roman Catholic Church (that is not necessarily the point of the individual essay, but that is the overall perspective and purpose of the website).

In general, I think it is a good thing when Protestants love and appreciate Roman Catholic writers such as G. K. Chesterton or Flannery O’Connor. I think it is a wholesome ecumenicism to appreciate Jesus’ gifts given to the whole Church from outside the Protestant world. But I think it works when we frankly acknowledge where these people come from.

And, when it comes to fiction writing, I think we have a great deal to read from elsewhere. Evangelical Calvinist culture in recent Western history is not overwhelmed with notable authors. All the “Reformed and the Arts” Conferences seem a tacit acknowledgment that most creative types go elsewhere. (In some ways, one could make the case that the PCA is for Hobbits.)

However, writing a glowing tribute in a very Protestant website, with a whimsical comparison of the Pope to the mouth of Sauron at the end, without ever mentioning that Tolkien was a staunch Roman Catholic, seems deficient to me.

But, at the same time, North American Roman Catholics speaking of the importance of “the Mass” to a man who got angry at the way that they do it, also seems lacking. Tolkien was a pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic and the changes he lived to see greatly upset him. Also, I believe that much of Tolkien’s view on myth and truth came from a variety of sources, not all Catholic or even Christian. I am not confident (yet?) that the Mass is behind Sam’s comment about being inside a song.

I realize I’m a Protestant commentator, so I may simply be biased. But then again Tolkien hung out with Protestants and with non-Christians (befriending and seeking input on writing and literature from C. S. Lewis when he was still mostly a skeptic). In his youth, when he conspired with a group of close friends to create an artistic renewal, I don’t think any of them were Roman Catholic. This doesn’t rule out Christian or even distinctively Roman Catholic influences, but it raises the possibility that looking for them for the purpose of emphasizing them may produce a distorted picture.

CREC not a branch of the visible church?

11 Replies

I will add to what Jason said and remember when a PCA church in Alabama tendered a call to a PCA minister from Louisiana and the Presbytery did not accept his credentials (or there was resistance to accepting the credentials). The local church then made the choice to vote out of the PCA and enter into the CREC. What was and is somewhat bewildering is those involved will often make much ado about the importance of the visible Church. In that case did not the visible Church speak and the response was not to submit and opt out.

via De Regnis Duobus: Cult, Culture, and the Christian’s Dual Citizenship: Further Reflection on the Judgment of the SJC Panel.

Pretty amazing what gets (choose one) 1) mistakenly said / 2) accidentally revealed in this comment thread. Is the CREC not a part of the visible church?

Didn’t Jason claim to refuse to call Peter Leithart a heretic? What was the point of that?

So when a Presbytery tells a church that they may not receive a PCA minister in good standing as their pastor it is wrong and disrespectful to the Church for the body to join a denomination that agrees with them?

What status is being attributed to the PCA and denied to other denominations in this little group?

What good is it for the SJC to make a point of denying that they are calling Dr. Leithart a heretic and even allow he may be broadly Reformed if this sort of sect spirit is fostered in the same denominations?

Do you as a Christian really want to have anything to do with such attitudes?

Norman Shepherd and the Westminster Standards: How I stopped thinking I knew and started learning about the Reformed Faith

3 Replies

So, after graduating from college I got a job working for Coral Ridge Ministries and fell into regular conversation for awhile with a seminary grad (RTS or Westminster) who told me about Norman Shepherd. It was probably 1990. He said (and I’m pretty sure I have this word perfect because it made an impression) that Shepherd taught that good works were necessary to salvation.

What?

Could you say that again?

I heard right.

This guy was outraged at what happened to Shepherd. He said that one guy on the board resigned because there was no point of serving at an institution where teachers were not permitted to teach Westminster doctrine (and I have no idea who this may have been or any independent verification; I’m just telling you what he said).

I sat there trying not to freak out. Plainly my friend was expecting me to be sympathetic toward Shepherd because I was (for a young punk non-seminary guy anyway) a knowledgeable and committed Calvinist. He thought I would know that Shepherd was right.

I’m not sure how I reacted at the time except, believe it or not, I stayed quiet and asked questions.

Then I went home and began reading the Westminster Confession and Catechisms.

I had to face two basic questions:

Was Norman Shepherd’s teaching faithful to the Westminster Standards (and perhaps the Reformed heritage generally)?
Was it Biblical?

This was years before Shepherd began thinking about the theology of Zacharias Ursinus and came to question the distinct “imputation of the active obedience of Christ” as a result of his studies of a contributor to the Heidelberg Catechisms. So that was not even an issue. The question was about how we should understand, express, what the Bible demands of sinners as a condition for salvation.

There were some other issues but at this point I had two documents once I did some digging:

It has been quite some time since I’ve read these things by Norman Shepherd, so I am not going to say much now about them. But one of the things that shocked me as I read the Westminster Confession, and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, was how much I had not read them before, even when I was reading them. The power of Already Knowing What They Were Going To Say had pretty much rendered me a worthless reader. I had not paid attention to details. I had not put together statements that were located on different pages. I simply had not allowed my mind to truly think about the actual content of the text.

This was written over a decade later, but it gives you an idea of what I discovered.

And yes, I did decide that the Westminster Standards were being fully Biblical in what they taught on the issues. Though I’m ashamed to say I don’t have as much written to show concern for that issue.

Mark Horne

something helpful… or at least interesting