Author Archives: mark

How baptism is God’s election

In Acts 15 Peter speaks to an assembly about God’s election of him,

Men, 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 gospel and believe.

The passage could be just as easily translated from the Greek: “in the early days God elected among you.”

This is obviously not referring to an eternal decree (though I don’t doubt that God’s choosing Peter was part of God’s plan going back to eternity) but to an action God had taken in time (“in the early days’). Specifically, God chose Paul by calling him to go preach the Gospel to Cornelius and his household (Acts 10-11).

If I hold out a platter of cookies to you and say, “Choose one,” I’m not asking for a secret mental operation on your part. I’m asking you to take a cookie and eat it.

Likewise, Peter remembers God sending him the vision and commanding him to go to Cornelius’ house as God electing or choosing him to preach to the Gentiles.

With that in mind, how is God choosing his disciples?

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

While it is true that the God’s present activity is done according to his plan going back to eternity, we can still say truly that God chooses or picks his people by acting through agents. He takes them out of their surrounding generation.

Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.

God intervenes in history in the lives of people to choose them. He does this by His Spirit, by human agents, and by rites of intervention in the world. When God providentially arranges the baptism of a person, he has, in that act, “made a choice among” us, that he or she should bear his name and be separated to him from their generation.

Glad to see someone finds my commentary helpful!

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In his book The Victory According to ~~Jesus~~ Mark, Mark Horne argues that Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the temple actually foreshadows his own arrest, sufferings, and death (Victory, pp 166-18). Sadly, for many readers, (myself included) Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the temple tends to overshadow the story of the persecution, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus.

Here is how Peter Leithart fleshes out Horne’s observation:

– Jesus predicts that the Jews will deliver the apostles to the courts (13:9); but first Jesus is delivered to the courts.

– Jesus predicts that the apostles will be “flogged in the synagogues”(13:9); but first Jesus is flogged (15:15).

– Jesus warns the disciples that they will stand before governors and kings to testify (13:9); but first Jesus stands before Pilate the governor (cf. Matthew 27:2, 11, 14-15, 21, 27) and before King Herod (cf. Luke 23:7ff.).

– Jesus tells the apostles to leave their cloaks behind them when they flee from the city (13:16); in Gethsemane, a young man flees without his cloak (14:51-52).

– Jesus predicts tribulation (13:19), and then suffers tribulation, sorrow, and pain.

-After the days of tribulation, “the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light” (13:24). At the cross, “when the sixth hour had come, darkness fell over the whole land until the ninth hour” (15:33).

-In the coming generation, “the powers that are in the heavens will be shaken” (13:25); at the death of Jesus, the temple veil, which symbolized the veil of the firmament dividing heaven and earth, was torn in two, rent like the heavens at Jesus’ baptism.

-When the temple falls, all will perceive that the Son of Man has received dominion from His Father (13:26). As Jesus dies, as the temple of His body is destroyed, a Gentile centurion confesses that Jesus was the Son of God (15:39).

-Even the Jews who mock Jesus on the cross recognize a connection with His temple predictions: “Ha! You who are going to destroy the temple and rebuilt it in three days, save Yourself, and come down from the cross!” (15:29).

The point here is that Jesus is the true and better apostle who experiences everything that his followers will experience. He is the true and better Israel who experiences the curses of the covenant in place of his people. He is the true and better temple that will be destroyed and raised again in three days.

The apocalyptic vision is not a square peg in a round hole. It is a cross-shaped story within the cross-shaped story. The good news here is that in the midst of all the turmoil, trials, and tribulations, all God’s elect/chosen ones are protected and preserved by God’s mercy. And as the gospel is preached throughout the world and all God’s elect/chosen ones are gathered from the four corners of the world.

via Jesus the Revelator « NEW HOPE CHURCH

Guest post: Advice from Erasmus on how to deal with the Muslim enemy

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The best way and most effectual to overcome and win the Turks, should be if they shall perceive that thing which Christ taught and expressed in his living to shine in us. If they shall perceive that we do not highly gape for their empires, do not desire their gold and good, do not covet their possessions, but that we seek nothing else but only their souls’ health and the glory of God. This is that right true and effectuous divinity, the which in time past subdued unto Christ arrogant and proud philosophers, and also the mighty and invincible princes: and if we thus do, then shall Christ ever be present and help us.

For truly it is not meet nor convenient to declare ourselves christian men by this proof or token, if we kill very many, but rather if we save very many: not if we send thousands of heathen people to hell, but if we make many infidels faithful: not if we cruelly curse and excommunicate them, but if we with devout prayers and with all our hearts desire their health and pray unto God to send them better minds. If this be not our intent it shall sooner come to pass that we shall degenerate and turn into Turks ourselves, than that we shall cause them to become christian men.

(From Enchiridion or The Manual of the Christian Knight)

Another satisfied reviewer

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Horne does a wonderful job of breaking Tolkien’s life into manageable chapters, and corresponding them with Tolkienesque chapter titles that made my inner geek smile. Beginning at the very beginning, Horne looks at Tolkien’s life from a dual-perspective: how it impacted the man, and how it influenced the writing. Drawing from previously written, more extensive biographies as well as Tolkien’s letters and writings, Horne creates a biography that is condensed without feeling lacking – an enjoyable read, but also substantive. And, of course, there’s attention paid to Tolkien’s faith and its role.

Read the res: A Word’s Worth: J.R.R. Tolkien.

When was your coronation, Christian?

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In the Bible, though Hebrew kings wore crowns to designate their office, the ceremony in which they were put into that office centered on being anointed with oil. For example, God told the prophet Samuel,

Fill your horn with oil, and go. I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.

Samuel did as he was told and, after a process of discovery, learned that God had chosen David to be king over Israel:

And the LORD said, “Arise, anoint him, for this is he.” Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the LORD rushed upon David from that day forward.

As Israel progressed, they came to call the expected king who would be chosen by God according to this ceremony: The Anointed One, or Messiah (in Hebrew) or Christ (in Greek). The New Testament Christians learned this Hebrew heritage. “Christ” was never reduced to Jesus’ last name.

We see this especially in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, when he writes:

Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say “Yes, yes” and “No, no” at the same time? As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.

In the Greek, “in Christ and has anointed” is εἰς Χριστὸν καὶ χρίσας (en Christon kai chrisas). There is no way that Paul would write that without being sure his readers would tie the title of Jesus to the ceremony of anointing with oil.

But when did God anoint Paul and the Corinthians, and put his seal on them? Paul has already referred to this event in his first letter:

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.

So understand, Christian, God has placed you in an office through an objective, tactile experience by which he designated you.

God could have simply had Samuel preach to David that he was king.

And God could have simply told Abram that He had promised to give him an inheritance–and that should be good enough.

But that’s not how God works with us in His Kingdom.

He had Samuel anoint David and so gave him the gift of His Spirit.

And when Abram asked how he could know of his inheritance, God entered into a covenant with him by a ceremony (Genesis 15).

By faith, Abraham knew he had God’s sealed promise in that event.

By faith, David knew being anointed by Samuel with oil meant he was king.

Your faith should tell you that God has done the same to, with, and for you in your baptism.

What do you think the name Christian is supposed to mean?

Guest Post by Fisher Ames: School Books

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IT has been the custom, of late years, to put a number of little books into the hands of children, containing fables and moral lessons. This is very well, because it is right first to raise curiosity, and then to guide it. Many books for children are, however, injudiciously compiled: the language is too much raised above the ideas of that tender age ; the moral is drawn from the fable, they know not why ; and when they gain wisdom from experience, they will see the restrictions and exceptions which are necessary to the rules of conduct laid down in their books, but which such books do not give. Some of the most admired works of this kind abound with a frothy sort of sentiment, as the readers of novels are pleased to call it, the chief merit of which consists in shedding tears, and giving away money. Is it right, or agreeable to good sense, to try to make the tender age more tender? Pity and generosity, though amiable impulses, are blind ones, and, as we grow older, are to be managed by rules, and restrained by wisdom.

IT is not clear, that the heart, at thirty, is any the softer for weeping, at ten, over one of Berquin s fables, the point of which turns on a beggar boy s being ragged, and a rich man’s son being well clad. Some persons, indeed, appear to have shed all their tears of sympathy before they reach the period of mature age. Most young hearts are tender, and tender enough; the object of education is rather to direct these emotions, however amiable, than to augment them.

WHY then, if these books for children must be retained, as they will be, should not the bible regain the place it once held as a school book ? Its morals are pure, its examples captivating and noble. The reverence for the sacred book, that is thus early impressed, lasts long; and, probably, if not impressed in infancy, never takes firm hold of the mind. One consideration more is important. In no book is there so good English, so pure and so elegant; and by teaching all the same book, they will speak alike, and the bible will justly remain the standard of language as well as of faith. A barbarous provincial jargon will be banished, and taste, corrupted by pompous Johnsonian affectation, will be restored.

First published in The Palladium, January, 1801.

The wikipedia entry for Fisher Ames.

Oh, those poor rich people forced to offer us such low prices…

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The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chernow

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I haven’t finished this book yet, but I have gotten far enough (up to WWII) to see its value in exposing how the American populace is being gamed by socialists/monopolists/technocrats/bankers. See this frank admission of his views made by President Obama, as an example.

It seems anomalous that America’s most famous financier was a sworn foe of free markets. Yet it followed logically from the anarchy of late nineteenth-century railroads, with their rate wars, blackmail lines [Note: I think the comma between blackmail and lines is a typo], and lack of standardized gauges. To destroy competing lines, railroads could simply refust to transfer freight to roads that abutted theirs. From an engineering standpoint, Pierpont knew little about railroads. What he did know is that they required steady revenues to cover their fixed interest costs on bonds marketed in New York and London. In the mid-1880s, freight rates were declining sharply under the pressur of savage price-cutting.

For Pierpont, the leading symbol of railway monopoly, pure competition was never an option. Years later, he a said, “The American public seems unwilling to admit… that it has a choice between regulated legals agreements and unregulated extralegal agreements. We should have cast away more than 50 years ago the impossible doctrine of protection of the public by railway competition. As we shall see, the House of Morgan always favored government planning over private compilation, but private planning over either.

As the top manufacturer of crude steel, Carnegie decided to branch out into finished products, such as pipe and wire. As the head of the second largest steel group, Pierpont feared a replication of the railroad chaos with overbuilding and price wars. He growled that Carnegie would “demoralize” the entire industry through competition.

Backed by representatives of Barings and Brown Brothers, Pierpont offered the railroad presidents a deal: if they refrained from rate-cutting and cutthroat competition, the financiers would stop underwriting competing railways. It was a clever move, for while Wall Street accused railroads of irresponsible behavior, the railroads blamed Wall Street for floating too many securities and creating the overexpansion that led to price wars.

The populace might dread the power of Pierpont Morgan, but he paid his bills promptly, always stuck by his word, and was almost universally respected among businessmen. He also saw competition as a destructive, inefficient force and instinctively favored large-scale combination as the cure.

Where Pierpont’s theorizing was largely nonexistent [partner, Goerge W.] Perkin’s was sophisticated. He gave speeches and published pamphlets on every conceivable subject. He was an oddity at the world most cryptic bank. he preached a gospel of industrial cooperation, contending that small-scall business depressed wages and retarded technological advance. Not Wall Street, he said, but steam engines and telephones produced trusts. “What is the difference,” he proclaimed, “between the US Steel Corporation, as it was organized by Mr. Morgan, and a Department of Steel as it might be organized by the Government?” He drew a parallel Pierpont wouldn’t admit to–that trusts, with their centralized production and distribution, were a form of private socialism. And unlike Pierpont, he saw that they had acquired a public character, and he favored government licensing of interstate companies and extended worker benefits, including profit sharing, social insurance, and old-age pensions. This, he boasted, would be “socialism of the highest, best, and most ideal sort.” Although Teddy Roosevelt sometimes wondered whether Perkins simply rationalized a selfish Morgan agenda, there was a striking likeness between their views.

That a Morgan partner should advocate socialism is not so startling. After all, Pierpont, starting with his Railway associations of the late 1880s, espoused industrial cooperation instead of competition. He like his capitalism neat, tidy, and under bankers’ control… Perkins wasn’t the only one in the Morgan camp to applaud moves toward a planned, integrated economy. Later on, Judge Elbert Gary of U.S. Steel, who held private dinners to fix prices in the steel industry, testified: “I would be very glad if we had some place where we could go, to a responsible governmental authority, and say to them, ‘Here are our facts and figures, here is our property, here our cost of production; now you tell us what we have the right to do and what prices we have the right to charge.'”

On why Morgan got along with Teddy Roosevelt progressives:

As we shall see, the mortal attacks on the House of Morgan came not from socialists but from such trustbusters as Louis D. Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, and William O. Douglas, who favored small economic units and sharp competition. This tradition would lambaste the Morgan Money Trust as the biggest and most dangerous trust of all. Because the House of Morgan preached socialism for the rich, it always had a partial affinity for those who preached it for the poor.

COMMENT:

Chernow is an advocate and defender for the Morgans, just as his latest book defends and advocates the mercantilism of Alexander Hamilton over against the Constitutionalist, limited-government, vision of Jefferson. So this is no prosecution’s case but the testimony of a friend.

So what happens under real Capitalism? Answer: The rich end up giving low-cost goodies to the poor and middle class but often end up rejoining those classes because they lose all their wealth in the process. Capitalism does not lead to concentrations of economic power but constantly threatens them. People who want to keep their economic power go to the government to protect it from the competition of the market. Despite Pierpont’s preference for “private planning” his efforts never lasted. He needed the government to get a real cartel going.

People who try to protect us from the concentration of economic power by concentrating economic power are not worth following.

For some more questions about the history of the cartel Utopia (mainly in the oil industry), see these posts:

“Progresive” Cartelization
Are we trying to get more oil or create a shortage
“Conservation” for cartels

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Stuff I forgot to mention: Bruce Gordon’s biography of John Calvin

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Bruce Gordon’s biography of John Calvin » Mark Horne.

Calvin by Bruce Gordon

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Calvin would name his political enemies (and there really isn’t any other kind of enemy available in Geneva) from the pulpit. While they were present, I think.

The sheer extent to which the Reformation in a particular area was simply a church vandalism campaign was disconcerting. Calvin was better than this, but not Farel. (Here my reading of Calvin’s Geneva may be bleeding over into my memories of this biography.)

Jim Jordan has said in some lecture I heard once that his father, a French literature professor, claimed that Calvin more or less transformed and invented the French language. I’ve never felt confident asserting this in lectures of my own because it was so second hand by the time I speak of it. But Gordon spends a couple of pages making basically the same claim (which I haven’t articulated very well here).*

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*There seems to be a bitter irony here. One step in the evolution of secular nation states was unified languages for a geographical area. Calvin probably never envisioned such things, or would have desired them, but he assisted in the creation of one. (He probably also assisted in giving France a scapegoat of unity. To what extent can French identity and culture be distinguished from hatred of Protestantism? Well, that can change gradually, just like language does.) Calvin was originally Picardian, though since he had come by way of Paris, that distinction was probably lost on the Genevans, just as it has been lost in the absorption that took place in history. He invented a French that he himself had to learn to speak fluently, since Picardian was not quite the same.

Bruce Gordon’s biography of John Calvin

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Calvin by Bruce Gordon

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I keep wanting the time to get my thoughts together and write a review worthy of this book. Not going to happen (Happily, Sean Lucas wrote a short but worthy review).

Thoughts at random.

Thank God we don’t live in the sixteenth-century.

Calvin may not have been a bishop, but he didn’t operate as a Presbyterian either. His “ruling elders” were state-appointed officers and his consistory was neither precisely a Presbytery nor a Session. It ssemed to function much more like a Family Services department in some ways.

Calvin was never “in power” the way we tend to think, though perhaps after 1555 he got close. When you can get killed and need to worry about being killed in a riot, you are not really in power.

Geneva itself was too small a city to matter as a “power.” Rather, Calvin and Geneva were constantly trying to make their friends happy (for protection) while still trying to save some independence.

“Nationalism” or immigration was an issue I had never realized affected Calvin’s ministry. Calvin found local pastors mainly inadequate, so he brought in talent from France (arguably, I should write “France” in scare quotes). So Genevans found their personal lives being run by foreigners. Not a welcome situation.

Calvin came to repudiate Bucer’s ecumenical attempts of the early 1540s. I had no idea.

Calvin spent much of his time trying to convince French Evangelicals to totally break from the Roman Catholic Church in France and suffer the consequences. Again, Calvin the divider.

Calvin later spent much of his time trying to convince French Protestants to willingly suffer rather than resort to violence and revolution. Weird since he owed his place in a city created by revolution. But it shows that any relationship between Calvin and political resistance is not the result of his own teaching on the matter.

France seemed at first like it would be open to Evangelicals (when Calvin still lived there). But with the break in Germany, French royalty came down on the side of the Roman Catholic establishment. Why? Because the same impulse that led the king to appreciate Evangelicals had led him to win concessions from the Pope that gave him control over the Church in his lands. Opposing the Papacy would make these concessions worthless.

Bullinger thought Calvin’s writings on predestination were over-the-top and could imply that God was the author of sin.

For a time Calvin’s writings were publicly burned in the Protestant city of Berne.

Calvin actively opposed an ecumenical movement in France in the 1550s because it was trying to use the Augsburg Confession. Though earlier in his ministry he had offended Bullinger by agreeing with it, now he saw it as a tool of Lutheran extremists who would try to hurt the Swiss churches and disturb the French Protestants who were not Lutherans.

…and much more…

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Getting God’s attention

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The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Make two silver trumpets. Of hammered work you shall make them, and you shall use them for summoning the congregation and for breaking camp. And when both are blown, all the congregation shall gather themselves to you at the entrance of the tent of meeting. But if they blow only one, then the chiefs, the heads of the tribes of Israel, shall gather themselves to you. When you blow an alarm, the camps that are on the east side shall set out. And when you blow an alarm the second time, the camps that are on the south side shall set out. An alarm is to be blown whenever they are to set out. But when the assembly is to be gathered together, you shall blow a long blast, but you shall not sound an alarm. And the sons of Aaron, the priests, shall blow the trumpets. The trumpets shall be to you for a perpetual statute throughout your generations. And when you go to war in your land against the adversary who oppresses you, then you shall sound an alarm with the trumpets, that you may be remembered before the Lord your God, and you shall be saved from your enemies. On the day of your gladness also, and at your appointed feasts and at the beginnings of your months, you shall blow the trumpets over your burnt offerings and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings. They shall be a reminder of you before your God: I am the LORD your God.”

via Numbers 10 – ESVBible.org.

I couldn’t help but think of Susan’s horn when I read this passage. The idea of a signal device that guarantees and promises that you will gain the attention of a rescuer is a powerfully attractive kind of “magic.”

But I worry about the ESV’s choice in verse 10 to sayd that the trumpets “shall be a reminder.” As the context makes clear, the one being reminded is not the person blowing or the human persons hearing the trumptes. God is reminded to act! I think a better translation might have been “memorial.” God is reminded of his covenant promises and is thus prodded to act on them.

I think we avoid talking this way because it seems to detract from the omni-power of deity. But, look, just praying does that, to our minds, and God wants us to pray and promises that he, yes, responds, to our prayers. It is not up to us to extrapolate from our imaginations what God’s experience as an omniscient being must be like. He says that we are like him and that the way we respond to heartfelt requests from our children is similar to his own experience. We are in no place to second guess Him on this point.

And when God remembers, he acts. A couple of examples:

But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided.

During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.

So God is reminded in many places in Scripture. And we forget and switch it all around. How many Christians have been told that the rainbow is designed to remind us of God’s promise not to destroy the world in a flood? But…

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast of the earth. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

And we are told that Passover was a celebration that reminded the Israelites. I’m sure it did. But is that given to us as the primary purpose of the reminding?

For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt. “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast.

Plainly, God meant when he said that the blood “shall be a sign for you,” he meant it was to be a sign for them to use to show God so he did not strike them. And thereafter, the blood of all the passover lambs was put on the altar at the central sanctuary that God had the Israelites build for him in the wilderness. So the blood always was directed toward God for him to respond to.

We don’t have the authorized trumpets any more, but the trumpets simply represented the voice of the people (preeminently the voice of Jesus himself, which is like a trumpet (Revelation 1.10; 4.1–note the voice calls John into heavenly worship). We remind God of who we are and what he has promised by using the name of Jesus. And we have his supper to remind him to keep covenant with us. If I may offer what I think is a slightly better translation from 1 Corinthians 11 (using the ESV’s footnotes!):

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this as my memorial” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, as my memorial.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death [to the Father?] until he comes.