Important to notice here is not simply Horne’s rejection of Horton’s understanding of the gospel, as if there were any hope for sinners apart from Christ’s righteousness and the forgiveness that comes through trusting him.

There is no hope for sinners apart from Christ’s righteousness and the forgiveness that comes through trusting him.  Not only have I never said or implied otherwise, but I believe and teach the opposite.

I expect Hart to simply double-down on this strategy.  He ought to repent of it.

The disparity in standard of living between the top quarter of London’s population and the bulk of its citizens was stark. Few members of the aristocracy resided permanently in the capital, but came to London when the stench and heat of the city had subsided in the autumn, and when the courts and Parliament held their sessions. However, the merchants whose wealth rivaled that of the aristocrats were permanent fixtures on the metropolitan landscape.

London also hosted a growing middle or “professional class,” comprising court officials and lawyers; Ebenezer Scrooge would be placed in this class as a usurer, banker, or property owner. Finally, the working classes composed about three-quarters of the population. These included shopkeepers, prostitutes, and children who labored in factories; a financial contribution from each family member was necessary for survival. Dickens learned this firsthand as a young boy who worked to support his family while his parents languished in debtors’ prison.

Children growing up in London during the Hungry Forties—a depression coupled with poor harvests—were steeped in these disparities. The skyline was a sea of profitable smokestacks puffing clouds of sooty grit that covered rooftops and the cheeks of young chimney sweeps. Coal was the energy source du jour, and the resulting London fog often hid the real picture. The streets were covered in rainwater, the contents of chamber pots, and animal waste. Rats abounded. Small, often emaciated children sold flowers and matches, while the wealthy class’s horse-drawn carriages swept past, throwing grime and muck on those too poor to afford transportation. Despite the horrid conditions, the birth rate rose as mortality rates fell: more children now lived than died. And as the population grew, so did the price of food.

via The Darker Side of A Christmas Carol | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction.

And how did this end?

It didn’t end by new laws.  All the social legislation (“child labor” laws, etc) followed the growth of prosperity.  Then those laws “worked” as long as one used protectionism to keep the people in poorer countries that hadn’t arrived yet.

And there probably should have been more almsgiving, more charity, more sharing and all the rest.  (Though, again, it would not surprise me if they outdid us.) But charity didn’t change the circumstances described above.  And more charity would not have ended it either.  It would have helped people survive it, but it couldn’t have produced wealth.

How did the world of poverty, that Charles Dickens wrote about, end?

It ended by people working hard and trading.  It ended by greedheads trying to get better off within some ethical constraints.  Those constraints were probably not as respected as they should have been.  (Though again I doubt we are in a place to judge them.)  But they changed the world.  They built up wealth and spread it out.  They made the world that we take for granted.

If you want to see what happens when people try to make a better world, go visit the mass graves of the great wars.  If you want to know why we all have flush toilets and affordable food, just look around you.  Keep serving, keep praying, keep witnessing, and keep working at it.

The Manhattan Declaration, released November 20, 2009, firmly yet winsomely takes the stand in defense of truths that are increasingly undermined in contemporary Western societies, including our own. Drafted by Princeton law professor Robert George and evangelical leaders Chuck Colson and Timothy George, this declaration focuses on three issues: (1) the inherent dignity and rights of each human life (including the unborn) by virtue of being created in God’s image; (2) the integrity of marriage as a union of one man and one woman, and (3) religious liberty, also anchored in the image of God.

There is a lot of wisdom in this document. For one, it does not breathe the vitriol that is often too common on the religious right and left. In this declaration one will find more light than heat, yet a sense of personal concern for the humaneness of the common culture, even for those who are pursuing antithetical agendas. May this more thoughtful approach to public engagement become more characteristic!

The framers wisely appeal to natural law as well as to Scripture and its revealed doctrines. After all, these three issues are grounded in creation. They are deliverances of the law that God inscribed on every human conscience, not of the gospel that God announced beforehand through his prophets and fulfilled in his incarnate Son’s life, death, and resurrection.

However, it is just for that reason that I stumbled over a few references to the gospel in this declaration. It took me back to the old days of “Evangelicals and Catholics Together,” when I joined others in raising concerns with Chuck Colson, Richard John Neuhaus, J. I. Packer, and others that this 1996 document announced agreement on the gospel while recognizing remaining disagreement over justification, merit, and the like. Many true and wonderful things were affirmed in that ECT document, but the gospel without “justification through faith alone apart from works” is, as I said then, like chocolate chip cookies without the chips.

This declaration continues this tendency to define “the gospel” as something other than the specific announcement of the forgiveness of sins and declaration of righteousness solely by Christ’s merits.

(Emphasis added)

Read the rest at A Review of the Manhattan Declaration » White Horse Inn Blog.

Yes this is a completely Biblical idea that fits all the data.

Consider the first four books of the New Testament (referred to as “Gospels” by non-Protestants):

Matthew 4.24:

And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the kingdom’s specific announcement of the forgiveness of sins and declaration of righteousness solely by Christ’s merits and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.

Matthew 24.14:

And this specific announcement of the forgiveness of sins and declaration of righteousness solely by Christ’s merits, which belongs to the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

Matthew 26.13:

Truly, I say to you, wherever this specific announcement of the forgiveness of sins and declaration of righteousness solely by Christ’s merits is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her.

Or consider the heading of the Book of Mark (Chapter 1, verse 1):

The beginning of the specific announcement of the forgiveness of sins and declaration of righteousness solely by Christ’s merits of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Mark 1.14, 15:

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming God’s specific announcement of the forgiveness of sins and declaration of righteousness solely by Christ’s merits and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the specific announcement of the forgiveness of sins and declaration of righteousness solely by Christ’s merits.”

Luke 9.6:

And they departed and went through the villages, preaching the specific announcement of the forgiveness of sins and declaration of righteousness solely by Christ’s merits and healing everywhere.

Luke 20.1:

One day, as Jesus was teaching the people in the temple and preaching the specific announcement of the forgiveness of sins and declaration of righteousness solely by Christ’s merits, the chief priests and the scribes with the elders came up…

Acts 8.25:

Now when they had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they returned to Jerusalem, preaching the specific announcement of the forgiveness of sins and declaration of righteousness solely by Christ’s merits to many villages of the Samaritans.

Acts 15.7:

And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the specific announcement of the forgiveness of sins and declaration of righteousness solely by Christ’s merits and believe.

What did Paul say the Gospel was?

Romans 1.1-4:

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, (which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures) about the specific announcement of the forgiveness of sins and declaration of righteousness solely by Christ’s merits.

Romans 2.15, 16:

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 specific announcement of the forgiveness of sins and declaration of righteousness solely by Christ’s merits, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

I Corinthians 15.1-12:

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the specific announcement of the forgiveness of sins and declaration of righteousness solely by Christ’s merits I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.

Now if specific announcement of the forgiveness of sins and declaration of righteousness solely by Christ’s merits is proclaimed, how can some of you say that there is no forgiveness of sins or righteousness solely by Christ’s merits?

Galatians 3.8:

And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the specific announcement of the forgiveness of sins and declaration of righteousness solely by Christ’s merits beforehand to Abraham, saying, “your sins are forgiven and you are declared righteous solely by Christ’s merits.”

What about Peter?

First Peter 4.17:

For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey God’s specific announcement of the forgiveness of sins and declaration of righteousness solely by Christ’s merits?

What about John or Jesus?

Revelation 14.6, 7:

Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead, with an eternal announcement of the forgiveness of sins and declaration of righteousness solely by Christ’s merits to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people. And he said with a loud voice, “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.”

OK, I’m not trying to deny a content difference between how the disciples preached the Gospel when Jesus sent them out during his earthly ministry, and how it was preached by the Twelve after Pentecost and how it is preached by Paul.  But if Horton’s definition is true, then the Gospel was simply a description of atonement theory and a claim that that transaction was about to be/had been fulfilled in Jesus.  It is about propitiation and anything more compromises the Gospel.

A preview of future posts in this series.

Horton is completely wrong in his definition of the Gospel.  When Jesus preached the Gospel he did not preach the precise message that Horton says that he was supposed to.  When the Apostles preached the Gospel, Luke does us the favor in Acts of telling us what they preached and it does not conform to Horton’s “specific announcement.”  When Paul describes the believing response to the Gospel and the specific mental content it entails, he does not specify the reception of any such specific message.

It is not just that Horton is wrong, it is that the content of the Manhattan Document is exactly right to appeal to the Gospel as the Church’s commission to proclaim the justice of Jesus.  Jesus is Lord and he has assumed enforcement and arbitration of every violation of those ethical mandates “grounded in creation.”  Every violation will be brought before Jesus whom, according to the one and only Gospel, has been given authority as the raised and ascended Lord to Judge.

Horton’s ideas are not as dangerous as Tetzel’s sales pitch, because what he believes is true.  But what he teaches is every bit as Biblically illiterate and twisting of Scripture.  And the fact that professed Bible-believers cling to these false and groundless claims is as intellectually superstitious as any monk approaching a vial of Mary’s alleged breast milk on his knees.

We need to outgrow this and be willing to accept the Bible as written.  Stay tuned.

Today, for some reason, I’m remembering I jotted off back in the nineties when I was in seminary.  It was an attempt at a simple statement of what the Westminster Confession and Catechisms teach about sacraments, along with an explanation I thought would help persuade people that it took the right approach.  At some point I lightly edited it, but I don’t remember changing anything substantial.

Originally posted at Theologia as “The Westminster Standards and Sacramental Efficacy,” here is what I wrote some time in 1996 or 1997: Continue reading →