Category Archives: Bible & Theology

What was wrong with the Pharisee? Let us count the ways

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He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

We know right away that the Pharisee represented those who “trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt.” I’ve argued elsewhere that the defensive Reformed habit of imputing a doctrine of meritorious works righteousness into the phrase “trusted in themselves” is unwarranted. The most obvious meaning in context is that these people were sure their way was right and the didn’t need to listen to Jesus’ critique.

Also, treating others with contempt is the whole point of the parable. It isn’t a sin that just happens to accrue to people who believe they can and must be saved by their allegedly meritorious good deeds.

The Pharisee does five things:

  1. boasts before God in his allegedly good works
  2. boast before the public, including the tax collector
  3. attack the tax collector in a place and time devoted to prayer
  4. recite that he fasts twice a week
  5. recite that he tithes all his acquisitions

As I see it, 1) might be indifferent in itself. David seems to do it and Paul speaks of boasting in the Lord. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem to be the attitude recommended by the tax collector. What we need is more context…

2) is a lot more questionable and 3) is just wrong and sinful. Period. The Pharisee would be right to thank God for his righteousness and for not being led into the sins that he sees in others. But his righteousness is actually sinful (including his very prayer) and it was no sin to be a tax collector or, for that matter, a non-Pharisee.

4) is a form of righteousness Jesus only allowed by concession as long as it was kept secret. The Pharisee is hardly keeping it secret by praying out loud and, when he was actually fasting,  it is doubtful he kept it secret the way Jesus demanded.

5) is just wrong. The Pharisee tithes not just his increase. But all his purchases. The law doesn’t demand this and, frankly, only people with economic means could ever adopt this practice. It would be an example of how the Pharisees “righteousness” was really a caste system. From the extra-biblical evidence, the fear was owning something that hadn’t been tithed by the previous owner. This was also a barrier to table fellowship since it mean that one must not eat untithed food.

It seems to me that Jesus was condemning the Pharisaical ethic as one by which a group exalted themselves over another group. This self-exaltation was doomed, while those who showed humility were righteous before God.

Some Texts to Consider

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation (from Romans 5).

Obviously boasting can be wrong and the Pharisee’s boasting is wrong. So is the boast of the “teacher of the law” in Romans 2. But the same word is used by Paul in Romans 5 and it bothers me that the ESV changes the word to “rejoice” in this passage.

Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Collect no more than you are authorized to do.” (from Luke 3).

John the Baptist knows nothing about being grateful that one is not a tax collector. He doesn’t condemn their occupation. He tells them to repent of all corruption and resist the temptation to it to which their occupations exposed them.

Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven…. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you…

And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (from Matthew 6).

Here we see how much Jesus thinks the Pharisee’s behavior in praying and fasting is all directly sinful to God. He isn’t supposed to be praying loud to be heard. He isn’t supposed to be extolling his own tithing to help (in part, presumably) the needy. He isn’t supposed to be advertising his fasting. By doing so he is laying up the earthly treasure of human praise.

I do not receive glory from people. But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? (from John 5)

Jesus indicts the Pharisees for performing for one another to be praised as righteous by one another. This damning practice can be practiced by Calvinists as well as Arminians.

The officers then came to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, “Why did you not bring him?” The officers answered, “No one ever spoke like this man!” The Pharisees answered them, “Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd that does not know the law is accursed.” Nicodemus, who had gone to him before, and who was one of them, said to them, “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” They replied, “Are you from Galilee too? Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee” (from John 7).

I think this demonstrates how people would be confident of themselves and, in the same act, treat others with contempt.

A Different Challenge

Finally, just a few verses later we see Jesus talking about the real rules of God. When he is asked a question about inheriting life, Jesus says nothing about fasting or tithing:

And a ruler asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said, “All these I have kept from my youth.” When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich.

The ruler, too, has to repent and believe in Jesus. For that is what Jesus is calling the ruler to do when he tells him to sell all and follow him. As one witness put it:

When Christ enjoins upon the young man the duty of following him (Mt. 19:23), he does not give a counsel, but a command to all in common because no one can have a hope of salvation unless he follows Christ (2 Pet. 2:21), although from a particular cause it is peculiarly adapted to him. –Francis Turretin (Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Vol 2, p. 32; 11.4.11)

Nevertheless, the ruler’s problem was not the same as that of the Pharisee in the parable and Jesus does not treat him the same, as we see more clearly in Mark 10:

You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

Some provisional thoughts from studying John Calvin’s life

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  • The French Evangelicals were initially protected by Francis I against persecution from the provincial parlemonts. There was no reason at all for Calvin to associate republicanism with safety for Protestantism and monarchy with persecution of Protestantism.
  • And, in any case, Calvin had no problem respecting monarchs. The Institutes was written to Francis I, and the Bible said lots of good things about hereditary kings.
  • Nor did Calvin invent a doctrine of “interposition.” It was already there. Medieval Europeans knew how to overthrow tyrants and had done so. Frederic the Wise didn’t have Calvin to tell him he should protect Luther and he didn’t need Calvin to tell him so. He already knew he had the right and duty to resist higher magistrates when they attempted evil.
  • Calvin’s belief that local congregations should “choose” their pastors means exactly nothing about how rulers should be chosen to run a commonwealth. Oddly, people who insist that Calvin was jus divinum seem to want to also claim that his view of church polity dictated his view of how the commonwealth should be ruled. (I use quotation marks because it is not clear how the congregation was to determine its own will in calling a pastor.)
  • Historically, the idea that government should be “by consent” has never dictated democratic or republican procedures. The point is not that governments should be run by popularity contest, but that the people have the right to overthrow tyrants and establish just rulers, including new dynasties. Even Thomas Jefferson, as late as the declaration, uses the phrase to justify revolution, not the establishment of democracy as the only legitimate form of government. So Calvin’s traditional medieval belief in the right of the people with lesser magistrates to overthrow tyrants does not mean he was a father of democratic governance.
  • Ironically, France became an enemy of Protestantism because the kings had already resisted the Papacy. That success made the Pope an assett to support the pretensions of the monarchy. What would be the point of gaining concessions from the Pope to rule the French churches if the Reformation gave them back to the Bible?
  • When one is measuring Calvin’s place in the trajectory of history, one might bear in mind that, historically, the rise of representative legislatures has coincided with the extinction of resistance to civil government.

    … But as American interest in England’s “revolution principles” increased, those ideas slowly retreated into obsolescence for the most influential Englishmen. It was symptomatic of this change that Sir William Blackstone tried to explain away Locke’s fundamental assertion that “there remains… inherent in the people supreme power to remove or alter the legislative, when they find the legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them.” However just this may be “in theory,” the jurist wrote in early editions of his Commentaries on the Law of England, “we cannot adopt it, nor argue from it, under any dispensation or government at present actually existing.” His statements reflected the effect of a century of complex change in England. Blackstone had to reconcile traditional English notions of limited government with his more modern belief that “so long … as the English constitution lasts … the power of parliament is absolute and without control. He did this, in effect, by resigning revolutionary beliefs to the purer realm of philosophy, denying that the people in real life had the right to resist a legislative power that abust its trust–denying, in effect, the notion that public officials ipso facto surrendered legal authority by violating their trust. For Blackstone and many other contemporary Englishmen, that conception had become otiose by the mid-eighteenth century. Parliament had, in effect, replaced the people as the repository of sovereignty (source).

    So it simply does not make sense to claim that preaching the right to resist is the same as preaching for government by popularly elected officers.

 

A part of the legal heritage of Calvin’s Geneva that is entirely alien to me

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(From: Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and of the Political History of the United States by the best American and European Authors, ed. John J. Lalor (New York: Maynard, Merrill, & Co., 1899). Vol 2 East India Co.; link below)

LAWS, Sumptuary, laws designed to repress or moderate the expenditures of private citizens. Such laws existed in almost all the ancient republics and in most of the modern states.

—The ancient republics were based, as we know, on equality of conditions. [The error of this statement appears from the writings of Aristotle. Vids Blanqui’s Hist. of Polit. Econ., chap. ii., p. 10.—E. J. L] As soon as that equality was in a certain measure changed, the very existence of the state was in peril. Legislators, then, to avert the danger, had recourse to agrarian laws, sumptuary laws, laws to favor marriages, and laws ordering the employment of free men in field labor. All these laws, so diverse in the nature of the subjects to which they applied, were inspired by one single idea and tended to the same end, to prevent the extinction of the free population, from which the national armies were recruited. These laws, which to-day seem strange to us, show how the ideas of the ancients on liberty different from ours, and how different was their social condition from that which exists among us.—”The Romans,” says Plutarch, “thought the liberty ought not to be left to each private citizen to marry at will, to have children, to choose his manner of life, to make feasts; in short, to follow his desires and his tastes, without being subject to the judgment and supervision of any one. Convinced that the deeds of men are manifest in these private actions, rather than in public and political conduct, they had created two magistrates charged with keeping guard over morals, and reforming and correcting them, so that no one should allow himself to be enticed from the path of virtue into that of voluptuousness, or should abandon the ancient institutions and established usages.”

—But the censure instituted at Rome was only one particular form given to the exercise of a right which all antiquity recognized in the state. They thought that by prohibiting the use of articles of luxury, they would repress the avidity of the great and diminish the general consumption of society, that impoverishment would be retarded; that men of the middle class would be prevented from falling into indigence, from which they could emerge only by labor; for we must remember the fundamental principle of the military republics, that labor was dishonorable. Public opinion excused the Roman patrician for having poisoned and assassinated; it would not have pardoned him for engaging in commerce or working at a trade: hence a whole economic system that was artificial and against nature.

—At Rome, we find sumptuary tendencies in even the law of the Twelve Tables. “Do not carve the wood which is to serve for a funeral pile. Have no weeping women who tear their cheeks, no gold, no coronets.” People never regarded these prohibitions. The Oppian law. passed almost immediately after the establishment of the tribunate, forbade matrons to have more than a half ounce of gold, to wear clothing of diversified colors, or to use carriages in Rome. Soon, in the year 195 before our era, the abrogation of that law was demanded, and the demand supported by a revolt of women, as described by Titus Livy. In spite of the opposition of Cato, who, in his speech, showed the intimate relation of that law to the agrarian laws, its abrogation was decreed.

—Fourteen years later, under the inspiration of the same Cato, the Orchian law, limiting table expenses, was promulgated. Twenty years later the Faunian law was passed for the same end. It fixed the expense of the table at about ten cents for each individual on ordinary days, and at less than thirty-one cents for the days of festivals and games. It was prohibited to admit to one’s table more than three outside guests, except three times a month, on fair and market days; prohibited to serve at repasts any bird, were it merely a fatted chicken; prohibited to consume more than fifteen pounds of smoked meat per year, etc. Soon the luxury of the table passed these narrow bounds, and Sylla, Crassus, Cæsar and Antony, in succession, caused now decrees to be issued against gluttony.

—It is true that, by a singular coincidence, most of these men who made laws against luxury at the table, were conspicuous in history for their excesses. The infamy of the feasts of Sylla, Crassus and Antony has come down to us through all these centuries; and if Cæsar was less addicted to gluttony than these famous personages, he introduced no less luxury at his repasts. This circumstance likewise proves clearly that all these statesmen, whatever course they followed themselves and whatever were their personal tastes, considered sumptuary laws a political remedy in some sort applicable to a people in a bad condition. It was not through regard for morals, for private integrity, that they had recourse to sumptuary laws; it was to preserve, if it was still possible, the Italian race, which was rapidly disappearing under the two-fold action of pauperism and civil wars. But private expenses can not be regulated either by laws disregarded by the very persons who make them, or by physical means; the change must be effected through public opinion, religion and morals. When public opinion is so corrupt as to honor theft and despise labor; when all religion is destroyed; when it is honorable among the great to eat and drink immoderately, and to vomit in order to eat again, laws can have no efficacy. Sumptuous banqueting also, incredible as it may seem, increased under the emperors. The emperors then also made sumptuary laws at the same time that they were presenting the spectacle of the most scandalous excesses. Some of them, however, gave what was better than laws, grand examples of abstinence and sobriety, but without result, without power to arrest society on the declivity down which it was precipitating itself. It is as impossible to regulate the employment of wealth acquired by conquest and robbery as that of wealth acquired by gaming.

—The sumptuary laws in all ancient countries were of no avail. Sometimes evaded, sometimes openly despised, they did not arrest the increase of luxury, and did not retard the downfall of the military republics founded upon equality. It seems to us, however, that J. B. Say has treated them with a little too much disdain in the following passage, where he has, however, clearly brought out the difference between the sumptuary laws of antiquity and those of modern states: “Sumptuary laws have been made, to limit the expenditures of private individuals, among ancient and modern peoples, and under republican and monarchical governments. The prosperity of the state was not at all the object in view; for people did not know and could not yet know whether such laws had any influence on the general wealth. * * The pretext given was, public morality, starting with the premise that luxury corrupts morals; but that was scarcely ever the real motive. In the republics the sumptuary laws were enacted to gratify the poorer classes, who did not like to be humiliated by the luxury of the rich. Such was evidently the motive for that law of the Locrians which did not permit a woman to have more than one slave accompany her on the street. Such was also that of the Orchian law at Rome, a law demanded by a tribune of the people, and which limited the number of guests one could admit to his table. During the monarchy, on the contrary, sumptuary laws were the work of the great, who were not willing to be eclipsed by the middle classes. Such was, doubtless, the cause of that edict by Henry II., which prohibited garments and shoes of silk to any others than princes and bishops.”

—There were, in ancient times, other motives for the enactment of sumptuary laws than desire to gratify the poorer classes, and in feudal monarchies the laws originated in other causes than a jealousy of the great: These monarchies were also an artificial creation, founded “on ancient institutions and received usages”; these institutions, these usages, tended to entail property in some families, and to settle rank permanently; and if antiquity had its agrarian laws, which meant equality, feudal society, we must not forget, had its own, which meant inequality and hierarchy.

—The advent of movable wealth and of luxury profoundly disturbed feudal society, where all was founded on the pre-eminence of that property considered especially noble, viz., real estate. A system of agriculture which had become fixed by tradition did not allow the nobility to increase their revenues, while the profits of commerce, navigation and the industries, and the possession of movable capital, elevated the middle class. The luxury of this class, who were eager to imitate the style of the great, disturbed the harmony of society: it deranged a hierarchy without which people saw only disorder. Hence arose sumptuary laws, which distinguished classes by their garb, as the grades in an army are distinguished by the uniforms.

—The vanity of the great, perhaps, called for the sumptuary laws of modern nations, as the jealousy of the lower classes had welcomed those of the ancient republics. But, in antiquity as in feudal monarchies, the legislator was inspired by state considerations, by a desire to prevent innovations which he considered as fatal. From the time when the plebeians came into competition with the luxury of the nobles, from the moment that they were their rivals, it was evident that, if the way was left open for such competition, wealth would finally gain the victory over birth in the opinion of the people, i.e., over the nobility themselves. Now, as feudal monarchies were founded on the right of race, everything that could diminish the authority of this right, tended to subvert the constitution of the state. Even those who did not clearly perceive the import of the luxury of the bourgeois, and who, bourgeois themselves, could not be wronged by it, nevertheless felt that this luxury disturbed the established order, and they supported the sumptuary laws.

—These laws, then, were at all times inspired by the desire of arresting an irresistible movement resulting from the very force of things, from the development, disordered perhaps, but logical, of human activity. They were, moreover, powerless, and were always evaded by a sort of tacit and general conspiracy of all the citizens, without any one daring or being able to find fault with the principle, without any one thinking of contesting the power of the legislator on this point in the very least. In fact, we must remember that in monarchies in modern times, the law-making power was scarcely less extended than in antiquity. People did not recognize the right of every man to work, and still less, the right to work when he pleased; and, what was of much more consequence, they professed that the king held a strict control over his kingdom, and would not allow one class to encroach on the rights of another, or to change the rank assigned to it by ancient custom. “The said lord the king,” we read in an ordinance of 1577, “being duly informed that the great superfluity of meat at weddings, feasts and banquets, brings about the high price of fowls and game, wills and decrees that the ordinance on this subject be renewed and kept; and for the continuance of the same, that those who make such feasts as well as the stewards who prepare and conduct them, and the cooks who serve them, be punished with the penalties hereunto affixed. That every sort of fowl and game brought to the markets shall be seen and visited by the poulterer-wardens, in the presence of the officers of the police and bourgeois clerks to the aforesaid, who shall be present at the said markets, and shall cause a report to be made to the police by the said wardens, etc. The poulterers shall not be allowed to dress and lard meats, and to expose the same for sale, etc. The public shall be likewise bound to live according to the ordinance of the king, without exceeding the limit, under penalty of such pecuniary fines as are herein set forth against the innkeeper, so that neither by private understanding nor common consent shall the ordinance be violated.”

—The world to-day lives in a different order of ideas, and when we read the ordinances of French kings, we find them no less strange than the ancient laws: they seem to us to apply to a social condition in which each laborer was a civil officer, as in the empire of Constantine. These ordinances are nevertheless the history of but yesterday, the history of the eve of the French revolution, and we are still dragging heavy fragments of the chain under which our fathers groaned. But ideas and sentiments have gone far in advance of facts: we have difficulty in comprehending the intervention of the government in the domestic affairs of families, and in contracts which concern only private individuals. As to luxury, it can not disturb classes, in a society where all are on a level, and it can not do much harm if the law of labor is respected, if rapine can not become a means of acquiring property.

—Since the revolution, no sumptuary law has been enacted in France, and yet the luxury of attire which formerly distinguished the nobility has disappeared. A duke dresses like anybody else, and he would be ridiculed if he sought to distinguish himself by a manner of dress different from others. Such is sumptuary law in our time. Any one who should try to make himself singular by particular garments or an exceptional mode of life, would be immediately noted, not as a dangerous citizen, but as a ridiculous fellow. Opinion has undergone an entire revolution. Private expenses are meanwhile increasing, and this increase, too, is pretty rapid. They can not, however, depart far from uniformity vain prodigalities can not be a title to glory in a society where the law of labor is recognized, and the one who will surrender himself to them, however rich he may be, is forced by public opinion to wear a certain modesty, even in his greatest excesses. Sumptuary laws can no longer be proposed. We need not think the honor of the change is due to our wisdom, to our pretended superiority to the ancients; let us simply recognize, (and it is in this that progress consists), that the essential principle of society has changed: the world moves on another basis.

—When the Roman people had, in despite of the observations of Cato, abrogated the Oppian law against the luxury of women, Cato, who had become censor, attempted to have it revived in another form. He included in the census, that is, in the valuation of the wealth of the citizens, jewels, carriages, the ornaments of women and of young slaves, for a sum ten times their cost, and imposed a duty on them of 3/1000 or 3/100 of the real price. He substituted a sumptuary tax for a sumptuary law. The moderns have done as did Cato. After the sumptuary laws had become a dead letter, they imposed taxes on the consumption of luxuries. England has taxes on carriages, on servants, on armorial bearings and on toilet powder. So far as political economy is concerned, these taxes are irreproachable; but they bring little into the treasury, and have scarcely any influence on consumption or on morals.

Zacharias Ursinus: Doctrine is important because God promises the visible church eternal life

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Zacharias Ursinus was the primary author of the Heidelberg Catechism, which is considered substantially compatible with Westminster doctrine in the Presbyterian Church in America and elsewhere. Ursinus delivered lectures on his own catechism which were compiled in a book, Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism. In the very beginning of those lectures he addresses the issue of why “doctrine” (theology) is important.

…This doctrine is the chief and most expressive mark of the true church, which God designs to be visible in the world and to be separated from the rest of mankind… (1 John 5.21; 2 Cor 6.17; 2 John 10; Isaiah 52.11; Rev 18.4)

God will that his church be separate and distinct from the world, for the following considerations: First, on account of his own glory; for, as he himself will not be joined with idols and devils, so he will not have his truth confounded with falsehood, and his church with her enemies, the children of the devil: but will have them carefully distinguished and separated. It would be reproachful to God to suppose that he would have and acknowledge as his children such as persecute him; yea, it would be blasphemy to make God the author of false doctrine and the defender of the wicked, for “what concord has Christ with Belial (2 Corinthians 6.14).

Secondly, on account of the consolation and salvation of his people; for it is necessary that the church should be visible in the world that the elect, scattered abroad among the whole human race, may know what society they ought to unite themselves, and that, being gathered into the church, they may enjoy this sure comfort, that they are members of that family in which God delights and that which he promises everlasting life. For it is the will of God that those who are to be saved, should be gathered into the church in this life. Out of the church there is no salvation.

COMMENT:

So not only is there (ordinarily) no salvation outside the church, to speak negatively, but the visible church is a “family” that delights God and to which God promises resurrection glory, to speak positively.

Question: So what happens to Reformed pastors in the PCA who agree with Zacharias Ursinus in their teaching and practice?

Answer: They get wrongly charged in the courts of the church and then vindicated.

John Calvin should not have been so stingy

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All the kings of the earth shall give you thanks, O Lord,
for they have heard the words of your mouth,
and they shall sing of the ways of the Lord,
for great is the glory of the Lord.
For though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly,
but the haughty he knows from afar.

via Psalm 138 – ESVBible.org.

So Calvin comments on the first line:

Here he declares that the goodness he had experienced would be extensively known, and the report of it spread over all the world. In saying that even kings had heard the words of God’s mouth, he does not mean to aver that they had been taught in the true religion so as to be prepared for becoming members of the Church, but only that it would be well known everywhere that the reason of his having been preserved in such a wonderful manner was God’s having anointed him king by his commandment. Thus although the neighboring kings reaped no advantage by that divine oracle, the goodness of God was illustrated by its being universally known, by his being called to the throne in an extraordinary manner. Having uniformly during the whole period of Saul’s severe and bloody persecution declared that he raised his standard in God’s name, there could be no doubt that he came to the crown by divine will and commandment. And this was a proof of divine goodness which might draw forth an acknowledgment even from heathen kings.

The stuff about King Saul is completely beside the point. Calvin is just wrong here. David’s point is precisely that Gentile kings “had been taught in the true religion so as to be prepared for becoming members of the Church.” And we will see King Hiram of Tyre  at the glorious resurrection, and many others converted by Israel during the time of David and Solomon.

They are our brothers in Christ the High King.

The myth of the Republican (or Democratic) John Calvin

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John Calvin comments on 1 Timothy 2.2 (boldface added):

For kings He expressly mentions kings and other magistrates because, more than all others, they might be hated by Christians. All the magistrates who existed at that time were so many sworn enemies of Christ; and therefore this thought might occur to them, that they ought not to pray for those who devoted all their power and all their wealth to fight against the kingdom of Christ, the extension of which is above all things desirable. The apostle meets this difficulty, and expressly enjoins Christians to pray for them also. And, indeed, the depravity of men is not a reason why God’s ordinance should not be loved. Accordingly, seeing that God appointed magistrates and princes for the preservation of mankind, however much they fall short of the divine appointment, still we must not on that account cease to love what belongs to God, and to desire that it may remain in force. That is the reason why believers, in whatever country they live, must not only obey the laws and the government of magistrates, but likewise in their prayers supplicate God for their salvation. Jeremiah said to the Israelites,

“Pray for the peace of Babylon, for in their peace ye shall have peace.” (Jeremiah 29:7.)

The universal doctrine is this, that we should desire the continuance and peaceful condition of those governments which have been appointed by God.

via Commentary on Timothy, Titus, Philemon | Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

Or consider Calvin’s comments on Psalm 72.11 (boldface added):

And all kings shall prostrate themselves before him. This verse contains a more distinct statement of the truth, That the whole world will be brought in subjection to the authority of Christ. The kingdom of Judah was unquestionably never more flourishing than under the reign of Solomon; but even then there were only a small number of kings who paid tribute to him, and what they paid was inconsiderable in amount; and, moreover, it was paid upon condition that they should be allowed to live in the enjoyment of liberty under their own laws. While David then began with his own son, and the posterity of his son, he rose by the Spirit of prophecy to the spiritual kingdom of Christ; a point worthy of our special notice, since it teaches us that we have not been called to the hope of everlasting salvation by chance, but because our heavenly Father had already destined to give us to his Son. From this we also learn, that in the Church and flock of Christ there is a place for kings; whom David does not here disarm of their sword nor despoil of their crown, in order to admit them into the Church, but rather declares that they will come with all the dignity of their station to prostrate themselves at the feet of Christ.

via Commentary on Psalms – Volume 3 | Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

In my opinion, the fact that the Institutes are appeals to a king should settle the matter…

Halloween pwns Satan (not the other way around)

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It has become routine in October for some Christian schools to send out letters warning parents about the evils of Halloween, and it has become equally routine for me to be asked questions about this matter.[1]

“Halloween” is simply a contraction for All Hallows’ Eve. The word “hallow” means “saint,” in that “hallow” is just an alternative form of the word “holy” (“hallowed be Thy name”). All Saints’ Day is November 1. It is the celebration of the victory of the saints in union with Christ. The observance of various celebrations of All Saints arose in the late 300s, and these were united and fixed on November 1 in the late 700s. The origin of All Saints Day and of All Saints Eve in Mediterranean Christianity had nothing to do with Celtic Druidism or the Church’s fight against Druidism (assuming there ever even was any such thing as Druidism, which is actually a myth concocted in the 19th century by neo-pagans.)

In the First Covenant, the war between God’s people and God’s enemies was fought on the human level against Egyptians, Assyrians, etc. With the coming of the New Covenant, however, we are told that our primary battle is against principalities and powers, against fallen angels who bind the hearts and minds of men in ignorance and fear. We are assured that through faith, prayer, and obedience, the saints will be victorious in our battle against these demonic forces. The Spirit assures us: “The God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly” (Romans 16:20).

The Festival of All Saints reminds us that though Jesus has finished His work, we have not finished ours. He has struck the decisive blow, but we have the privilege of working in the mopping up operation. Thus, century by century the Christian faith has rolled back the demonic realm of ignorance, fear, and superstition. Though things look bad in the Western world today, this work continues to make progress in Asia and Africa and Latin America.

The Biblical day begins in the preceding evening, and thus in the Church calendar, the eve of a day is the actual beginning of the festive day. Christmas Eve is most familiar to us, but there is also the Vigil of Holy Saturday that precedes Easter Morn. Similarly, All Saints’ Eve precedes All Saints’ Day.

The concept, as dramatized in Christian custom, is quite simple: On October 31, the demonic realm tries one last time to achieve victory, but is banished by the joy of the Kingdom.

What is the means by which the demonic realm is vanquished? In a word: mockery. Satan’s great sin (and our great sin) is pride. Thus, to drive Satan from us we ridicule him. This is why the custom arose of portraying Satan in a ridiculous red suit with horns and a tail. Nobody thinks the devil really looks like this; the Bible teaches that he is the fallen Arch-Cherub. Rather, the idea is to ridicule him because he has lost the battle with Jesus and he no longer has power over us.

Read the rest Concerning Halloween | American Vision.

Working hard: there is no substitute

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The first rule for improving personal efficiency is:

Act on an item the first time you read or touch it.

I’m not talking about those things that you can’t do now or even those things you shouldn’t do now. I’m talking about all the things that you could and should do, but you don’t. I’m talking about routine paperwork and e-mail of the sort you encounter every day. Take care of these things the first time you touch or read them, and you’ll save yourself a lot of time in the long run.

Call Mary. Respond to that e-mail message immediately. Answer the customer’s letter of complaint. Act on that voice mail as you listen. Talk to the boss about the problem. Do It Now. You’ll be amazed at how little time it actually takes and amazed at how good you feel when it’s done.

If you’re not going to act on your paperwork, don’t waste time looking at it. If you’re not going to return your voice mail messages, don’t waste time listening to them. If you’re not going to respond to your e-mail messages, don’t waste time looking at them. Don’t clog up your day with things you aren’t going to do. Instead, move on to what you are going to do, and Do It Now.

via The Personal Efficiency Program: How to Get Organized to Do More Work in Less Time.

Before there was Getting Things Done there was The Personal Efficiency Program. What I like about that book is that, at the center of all to the promises of new techniques and knowledge sat a fundamental point–a point about virtue.

Don’t wast time; work!

It seems to me that the value of working as a virtue is slighted all the time. I hear companies criticized because “they don’t do anything that no one else could do.” It seems the key to prosperity is having a lock (intellectual “property” monopoly perhaps) on some kind of supply. Actually managing to do something everyone else can do better than they do it doesn’t seem to be an option.

Likewise, we keep hearing about how people succeed by being “brilliant” or “innovative.” But as far as I can tell, mostly they are lucky. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs could have been just as brilliant in many times and places in human history and they would have been no more well known than the many other brilliant people that we have never heard of.

(Let that last point sink in. Every time you hear about how x leads to success, ask yourself how the researcher has found a wide sample of failures and managed to determine that x was not present in those endeavors. Finding what all success stories have in common might tell you something about making sure that you don’t frustrate the success you might otherwise achieve, but it doesn’t give you any reason to claim that x creates success because, for all you know, many failures have shared the same trait. In the world, and even in the United States, I think it is possible to find one or more examples of just about anything bringing about success. [This is something aspiring church planters might do well to meditate upon]).

A slack hand causes poverty; but the hand of the diligent makes rich.

I realize there there are plenty of visible multi-millionaires who think they found a shortcut. But people win the lottery too. Doesn’t make it a strategy. In the meantime, how is dumping money into lawyers and courts a productive allocation of resources? For example, from the summer of 2007, NYT:

The video rental chain Blockbuster said on Wednesday that it had settled a patent dispute with its rival Netflixthat challenged Blockbuster’s entry into online DVD rental. Blockbuster also signaled that the new business was taking a toll on its finances.

Although terms of the settlement were not disclosed, shares in Netflix jumped $1.26, almost 6.5 percent, to $20.78, while Blockbuster slipped 2 cents, to $4.20.

Blockbuster also disclosed in a securities filing on Wednesday that it planned to seek an amendment to its Aug. 20, 2004, credit agreement that would lower earnings requirements.

The company said in the filing that it planned to modify its popular Total Access plan before the end of the year to “strike the appropriate balance between continued subscriber growth and enhanced profitability.”

Now, I confess to having a weird preference to Netflix, but the idea that selling dvds online through mail via monthly subscription (this was about actual dvds, not online streaming) can be patented is a really stupid idea.

There was a time when the past was a gift and people were invited to do their best with it. Now, this form of stewardship is otiose; we’re supposed to go into debt to buy access to exclusive secrets in the trust that they will make us effortlessly rich. (It is God’s joke on the modern world that, when future historians analyze how we economically strangled ourselves to death, they will realize the fingers around our throat belonged to the gloved hands of a cartoon mouse).

Anyway, I think Solomon would tell you to worry far less about access to a monopoly and simply work hard. He would also tell you to read David Allen for lots of good advice but don’t believe the subtitle. There is no such thing as “stress-free productivity.”

Tamar’s righteousness from generation to generation

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About three months later Judah was told, “Tamar your daughter-in-law has been immoral. Moreover, she is pregnant by immorality.  And Judah said, “Bring her out, and let her be burned.” As she was being brought out, she sent word to her father-in-law, “By the man to whom these belong, I am pregnant.” And she said, “Please identify whose these are, the signet and the cord and the staff.” Then Judah identified them and said, “She is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son Shelah.” And he did not know her again.

Judah, as he is found here in Genesis 38, hardly seems like someone with trustworthy discernment about who is righteous or not. But through the generations Tamar’s righteousness was remembered by Judah’s descendents as an established fact.

“We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman, who is coming into your house, like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel. May you act worthily in Ephrathah and be renowned in Bethlehem, and may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this young woman.”

So far from forgetting what Tamar did, she is remembered as the one who heroically gave Perez to Judah despite Judah’s best efforts to destroy his own inheritance. Her struggles are like those of Rachel and Leah who themselves built up Jacob’s house in much distress.

It all brought about fruitfulness and prosperity and there is no sign that anyone feels ashamed. They invoke the whole story as one of triumph and blessing.

Big brother v. the end goal of baptism

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As I suspect, it always comes back to baptism, infant baptism in particular.

Kahn: “Liberalism has never produced an adequate explanation of the family, because we cannot understand children” without the framing assumptions of liberalism – its assumption that the individual is the primary unit of explanation and its division between public and private. Liberalism “cannot settle whether the state should protect the child from the coercive influences of his or her family, or whether the private family should be protected from the state.” In short, “every individual effort turned toward a public project . . . is a puzzle for liberalism.”

Baptizing infants poses a deep challenge to liberal order: It rejects the notion that the individual child is a self-standing individual, and by placing the child within the church, a public institution with a political history, it disrupts easy public/private divide. By contrast, believer’s baptism looks to be an accommodation to liberal order (though, more precisely, it may be at the roots of liberal order).

via Peter J. Leithart » Blog Archive » Theology of the child.

True.

And the child under his parents is a refutation of the general prinicple that voluntary transactions always mutually benefit both parties to the exchange. Parents know that they can’t allow their young children to interact freely with merchants. That would be exploitation. They want the right and power to monitor and intervene in voluntary transactions.

But, conversely, people are supposed to grow up. They are not supposed to remain children forever. In fact, remaining a child is slavery. People resent being treated like children, being told that virtue lies in remains dependent (and putting an “inter-” prefix on the word does nothing to sweeten the alleged medicine). They want to have children of their own and (if they have any integrity at all) resent the state’s institutionalize encroachments on their families.

So, for all its faults, I think “liberalism” was a needed upraised fist against the powers. Where things should settle is worth discussing. But I don’t think “liberalism” should be blamed for all the faults of its philosophers.

In my opinion, those philosophers came late in the social movement and were explaining what was already happening rather than causing any of it. Philosophers and theologians always rush to lead every parade, and they all started long before they arrived with their batons.

So I’m happy to make paedobaptism a foundational aspect of social theorizing. But I think it will bolster liberty:

Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. 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 slavenor 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.