Discussing the sanctity of all labor while sipping lattes and browsing the net at Starbucks

“Wasn’t the lecture in practical theology excellent today,” said Brian.

“Honestly, I didn’t hear much,” admitted Jenny, “because a friend sent me an email asking my advice. She’s still in college and her parents don’t want her living off campus her senior year.” She glanced at the screen of her macbook and chuckled. “Oh wow. She just tweeted that the two people she loves most are the cheapest she’s ever known. Yikes.”

“I wondered why you were so occupied with the net in class.”

“Yeah, I used to worry about what the prof would think. But they know we have lives and can’t be working all the time. Anyway, all they see is a room full of students with laptops drinking coffee. I doubt they notice who is or is not paying attention.”

“Right,” said Brian. “But today he was really good. He talked about how there is no menial work and that all labor is holy to God. I find that encouraging since I’m having to work as a bellman at the Radisson this semester?”

“Wow! How do you find time?”

Brian shrugged to indicate that he wanted to accept his suffering gladly as a Christian witness and hoped that Jenny would notice how cheerfully he faced his martyrdom. “Sometimes it is difficult to fit in those fifteen hours a week. But most nights I get off early enough to catch a few of the guys at the pub before closing. And it’s nice to have some cash from tips for beer.”

Jenny nodded. “Plus it will help you when you’re a pastor,” she said. “It is good to be able to relate to menial workers in your congregation.”

“Totally,” agreed Brian.

A waitress came by to clean the table next to theirs. But of course she was invisible.

Offsite: Looking for Legalism in all the wrong places

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I previously posted a paper on this blog which discussed Paul’s letter to the Galatians. In it, I argued that Paul’s Judaizing opponents in Galatia were not merit legalists and that Galatians is not an argument against such legalism. Instead, Paul’s opponents were more like “hyper-dispensationalists.” They wanted the Christian gentiles to become Jews because the Judaizers believed that the old covenants had not been affected at all by the arrival of the Messiah. Paul therefore argued in his letter that circumcision (the Abrahamic covenant) and the law (the Mosaic covenant) had been fulfilled and transformed by the Messiah’s arrival. Thus, in this new covenant, the gentiles had been incorporated into God’s people apart from the old administrations.

In the next few posts, I want to continue with this theme as it relates to the N.T. history books. I want to look at the Gospels and Acts and see what sort of emphasis, if any, is put on identifying and critiquing merit legalism. The three posts in this series will be as follows:

1. The Sins of Israel

2. The Sins of the Pharisees

3. Some “Surprising” Teaching from Jesus

This post will summarize the sins of Israel in general as they are pointed out in the Gospels and Acts. I will be looking to see how prominent merit legalism is. Not every sin will be listed. In a number of places, Israel or a group of Jews is criticized without a lot of specificity (e.g., Matt. 11:20-24). But I will be looking for discussions of specific sins with an eye toward identifying any examples of legalism.

Read it all: beaten with brains: Looking for Legalism.

A vague note on PCA process

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I noticed one of the more insane of the attack blogs claiming to defend orthodoxy quoted a man recently accused of agreeing with N. T. Wright on justification as saying back in 2004

I don’t agree with Wright on everything he says about justification

Yet this same blog had earlier accused the man of inaccurately reporting that he had not agreed with N. T. Wright on justification back when he wrote at this same time on the same email list from which the above quotation was found. The attack blog had quoted stuff that had nothing to do with justification but rather with what the Pharisees believed. Notably missing from the post was the above quotation. It only slipped in later under a new topic on a different post. I have no access to this list so that I have no way of knowing how many other things are missing that might give a different picture than the one painted and framed by this blog.

Of course, the point of that blog and many others is not to be “even handed” or even pretend to look at all the evidence pro and con. It is to attack and destroy someone that all people of good will should already know is guilty. After all, an entire denomination (represented by stacked study committees rather than the actual actions of its presbyteries) could never be wrong, right?

So what if someone used information from a blog like this to try to reverse a church court ruling that there is no “strong presumption of guilt”? If they simply collect everything they can find that they think qualifies as evidence of guilt, and make no effort to collect evidence of innocence, then what are they doing?

I think what they are doing is called, acting as a voluntary prosecutor.

As I wrote on Machen’s Warrior Children Were Subsidized:

Even our Book of Church Order has a (rather anemic) appeal to the justice of Deuteronomy 19.16-19:

31-9. Every voluntary prosecutor shall be previously warned, that if he fail to show probable cause of the charges, he may himself be censured as a slanderer of the brethren.

But somehow, no one ever needs to actually man up and accuse. No one ever pressed charges against Steve Wilkins in Louisiana Presbytery. The entire process was circumvented so that there was no risk and everyone went along with it.

So by filing a complaint, culled from incredibly biased attacks on a man, one could get a free pass to only care about tearing down a man’s reputation and having virtually no responsibility for considering contrary evidence. What organization will survive a period of time in which accusers are given this kind of institutional cover? Jesus claimed that even Satan knew better than to allow this sort of internal conflict. A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand.

What I thought I had done

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In seminary I worked several “menial” jobs to make ends meet. I was a bell hop, security guard, and wore a few other hats. I did all this while being a full time student and while we had our first babies. I had one semester in which I took nineteen hours of classes. I wanted to make sure I was done in three years.

So I would tell anyone that I knew what it was like to make a living working at menial jobs.

Word to the wise:

When you are a student who thinks you have an entire career ahead of you, you know nothing about making a living working at menial jobs.

Nothing.

Different expectations. Different time frame. You were in an entirely different world than anyone you know who actually makes a living working menial jobs.

Why “Baptismal Regeneration” is not the best way to explain Baptismal Efficacy

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At this point, some of my readers are probably ready to throw this paper down: “You can’t be Reformed and believe in baptismal regeneration! That’s Lutheran, or even Romish!” But patience is needed if we are to attain mutual understanding and like-mindedness. Part of the problem is the meaning of the term “regeneration,” which has been anything but stable in the development of Reformed theology. The term has acquired a fixed and narrow meaning in modern Reformed scholasticism and its popularized twentieth century spin-offs, but it was not always so. In the Bible, the term “regeneration” is used only twice: In Mt. 19:28, to refer to the renewal of the whole cosmos, and in Titus 3:5, in reference to baptism(!) [33]. For Calvin and the early Reformers, “regeneration” usually referred to our total renewal in God’s image, including conversion and growth in Christ-likeness [34]. In Institutes 3.3.1, Calvin wrote, “I interpret repentance as regeneration whose sole end is to restore in us the image of God….[T]his restoration does not take place in one moment or one day or one year; but through continual and sometimes even slow advances.” In the early seventeenth century, the Synod of Dordt whittled the meaning of the term down to conversion alone [35]. Soon after that, Reformed scholastics developed a full blown ordo salutis, distinguishing between the implantation of new life and the first manifestations of that life in faith and repentance, nominating only the former “regeneration.” In this scheme, regeneration is often a secret, unmediated work of God, under-girding and producing conversion. Finally, some contemporary theologians have called for a return to something similar to the earlier, Calvinian meaning, though with a biblical-theological twist. Richard Gaffin argues that “in Paul, the notion of having been raised with Christ [which is usually treated as synonymous with regeneration] does not correspond more or less exactly to the dogmatic conception of regeneration…Paul writes expressly that believers have been raised up with Christ ‘through faith’…Unlike the traditional ordo salutis Paul explicates the inception of the application of redemption without recourse to the terminology of regeneration…understood as ‘a communication of a new principle of life’” [36]. The problems, then, should be obvious. Not only is there a bifurcation between the way “regeneration” is used in the Bible and dogmatic theology, but dogmaticians themselves have not agreed on the proper theological definition of this key term. So whether or not a given version of “baptismal regeneration” is valid depends largely on which theological vocabulary one has chosen to work with.

If regeneration is taken in the Protestant scholastic sense, “baptismal regeneration” is absurd, since it would mean that each and every person baptized was eternally elect and eternally saved. Obviously, the earlier Reformed theologians who spoke freely of “baptismal regeneration” did not have this kind of monstrosity in mind. Instead, their understanding of regeneration was something less specific, more open ended. Regeneration in this broader, generic (shall we say “covenantal”?) sense can be found in passages like Matthew 13:21-22 and Hebrews 6:7-8. In the Parable of the Sower, the stony ground hearer receives the seed and new life springs forth. Something living is there that was not before. But when crises come, that new life withers away. Similarly, Hebrews 6:7-8, in the context of issuing a warning against apostasy, speaks of the earth (a natural allusion to humans, in light of Gen. 2:7) drinking in rain (an obvious allusion to baptism) and producing a living plant. But the blessing of baptismal rain is in itself no guarantee of a good crop. The new life may bear great fruit, unto blessing, or thorns and thistles, unto cursing [37].

This, then, is the point: God blesses us in baptism with new life, though baptism itself does not guarantee perseverance. Thus, we must combine the waters of baptism with enduring faith (cf. 1 Cor. 10:1-12). If not, the heavenly waters God has poured out upon us will drown us in a flood of judgment [38].

All this is to show that the debate over “baptismal regeneration” is not what it appears to be at first glance. Indeed, careful definition of terms is needed, lest we simply talk past each other. However, we must remember that our classical Protestant forebears were very much at home in the strong, efficacious biblical language. If red flags go up for us when we hear things like “God saved you in baptism” (cf. 1 Peter 3:20-21) or “God clothed you with Christ in baptism” (cf. Gal. 3:27), we need to rethink our baptismal theology and bring it more in line with the teaching of God’s Word. At stake is our whole understanding of how God works salvation in the world.

Read it all at: Theologia » Baptismal Efficacy & the Reformed Tradition: Past, Present, & Future.

Sunday P. M. Post: Augustine on Grace

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For the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord must be apprehended—as that by which alone men are delivered from evil, and without which they do absolutely no good thing, whether in thought, or will and affection, or in action; not only in order that they may know, by the manifestation of that grace, what should be done, but moreover in order that, by its enabling, they may do with love what they know. Certainly the apostle asked for this inspiration of good will and work on behalf of those to whom he said, “Now we pray to God that you do no evil, not that we should appear approved, but that you should do that which is good.” 2 Corinthians 13:7 Who can hear this and not awake and confess that we have it from the Lord God that we turn aside from evil and do good?— since the apostle indeed says not, We admonish, we teach, we exhort, we rebuke; but he says, “We pray to God that you do no evil, but that you should do that which is good.” 2 Corinthians 13:7 And yet he was also in the habit of speaking to them, and doing all those things which I have mentioned—he admonished, he taught, he exhorted, he rebuked. But he knew that all these things which he was doing in the way of planting and watering openly were of no avail unless He who gives the increase in secret should give heed to his prayer on their behalf. Because, as the same teacher of the Gentiles says, “Neither is he that plants anything, neither he that waters, but God that gives the increase.” 1 Corinthians 3:7

via CHURCH FATHERS: On Rebuke and Grace (St. Augustine).

Sunday A.M. Post: N. T. Wright on Foundational Grace

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When St. Paul says that ‘if righteousness came by the Law, the Messiah died in vain” (Galatians 2.21), he was stating a foundational principle. Whatever language or terminology we use to talk about eh great gift that the one true God has given to his people in and through Jesus Christ (“salvation,” “eternal life,” and so on), it remains precisely a gift. It is never something we can earn. We can never put God into our debt; we always remain in his. Everything I’m going to say about the moral life, about moral effort, about the conscious shaping of our patterns of behavior, takes place simply and solely within the framework of grace–the grace which was embodied in Jesus and his death and resurrection, the grace which is active in the Spirit-filled preaching of the gospel, the grace which continues to be active by the Spirit in the lives of believers. It is simply not the case that God does some of the work of our salvation and we have to do the rest. It is not the case that we begin by being justified by grace through faith and then have to go on to work all by ourselves to complete that job by struggling, unaided, to live a holy life….

What’s more, if we try to put God in our debt by trying to be make ourselves “good enough for him” (whatever that might mean), we are prone to make matters worse… We would all prefer to live with people who know perfectly well that they weren’t good enough for God, but were humbly grateful that God loved them anyway, than with people who were convinced that they had made it to God’s standard and could look down on the rest of us from a lofty moral mountaintop.

There is much more to the doctrine of “justification by faith” than this, but not less. The radical insight of St. Paul into what it means to be human, and what it means to have the overwhelming love of God take hold of you, corresponds in quite an obvious way to what most people know about what makes someone more or less livable-with. And livable-with-ness, though of course it contains a large subjective element, is not a bad rule of thumb for what it might mean to be truly human.

From After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters, p. 60.

James Buchanan on Edward Fisher’s Marrow of Modern Divinity

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The Marrow controversy in Scotland was a protest against alleged Antinomianism, on the one side, and a reaction against real Neonomianism, on the other. It was occasioned by the republication in this country of a work entitled ‘The Marrow of Modern Divinity,’ which had been written by Edward Fisher, an Independent, and published in 1647 with the approbation of Caryl, Burroughs, and Strong. It was assailed by Principal Hadow, of St. Andrews, in a work entitled ‘The Antinomianism of the Marrow Detected:’ and Mr. Hog, of Carnock, with the brethren who concurred with him in recommending the book, were cited to appear before the Church Courts, and ultimately forbidden to teach the doctrines contained in it. This Act of Assembly gave rise to a keen and protracted controversy, and ultimately led, in concurrence with other causes, to the secession of some of the ablest and best ministers of the Church. The discussion involved many important points of doctrine, but it mainly turned on a question of fact,—the one party affirming, and the other denying, that certain Antinomian errors were contained in Fisher’s work,—while these errors were equally rejected by both. In so far as it related merely to that fact, the controversy could have no permanent importance; and it would have resembled that which was waged between the Jansenists and the Jesuits, whether certain propositions, which were equally disclaimed by. both parties, were contained in Jansen’s ‘Augustinus,’—or that between the Neonomians and their opponents in England, whether certain doctrines, which were disclaimed by both parties, were taught in the writings of Dr. Crisp.

In regard to this question of fact, in the case of the ‘Marrow,’ we shall only say, that a book which is held even by its admirers to require explanatory or apologetic notes, may be fairly presumed to contain some unguarded expressions, which might be understood in a sense dangerous to some part of the scheme of divine truth; and that this remark applies equally to Fisher’s ‘Marrow of Modern Divinity,’ which was annotated by Thomas Boston, and to Dr. Crisp’s ‘Sermons,’ which were annotated by Dr. Gill.

They claimed the entire General Assembly had misunderstood them?

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At the Assembly in 1721 twelve men, including Boston, Hog and Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, submitted a “Representation and Petition”, arguing that in condemning The Marrow the Assembly had condemned propositions which were scriptural, and other expressions which were plainly taught both by many orthodox divines and in the doctrinal standards of the Church of Scotland. They also argued that the report had misrepresented the book’s teaching, taking various expressions out of context. Their petition was rejected. In the Assembly of 1722 The Marrow’s condemnation was reaffirmed and the twelve Representers were rebuked.

via Marrow Controversy – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Sanctification by Faith: instead of a follow-up

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Mark Horne » Blog Archive » The Article by Which the Church Stands or Falls: Santification By Faith, 1.

I have promised a series of blog posts and haven’t had time to even think about them, let alone write any.

So instead, here is something I wrote on Ephsians 1.2 and why Paul addresses his letters to “saints.”

Why “saints”? What does that term mean?

The easiest thing to do is to say that a saint is a “holy one” and just assume we all know what holiness is and let it go at that. To modern readers, that really explains nothing. Yes, a saint is a Latin derivative that translates the Hebrew and Greek terms for “holy one.” But what does that mean?

The only way to understand holiness is to begin by thinking in the spatial and geographical terms that the Bible gives us beginning in Genesis. Even though God is omnipresent, he is able to locate himself in a special way in designated places. He created the heavens and the earth, and neither can contain him, but he has located his throne in the heavens. Likewise, God “descends” to places on Earth, where he is especially present.

The first time we find the word holy used as a noun it is used in Exodus 3.5 when Moses meets God in the burning bush. God tells him to remove his shoes because he is standing on holy ground. Normally, according to the way the Bible explains our situation, the ground is cursed because of sin (see Genesis 3). But when God draws near his presence makes the cursed ground holy so that it is an insult to wear shoes as if one needed protection from it. God drew near to a particular place at a particular time and that meant that the ground that he touched down upon was holy and had to be treated accordingly.

Another story is the story of Passover with the resulting law set down for Israel in Exodus 13.3 that every first born animal was to be “sanctified”—made holy. How does one sanctify a firstborn? Well in the case of an animal that is acceptable on the altar, sanctifying the firstborn meant bringing it to the central sanctuary and offering it up into God’s presence from the sanctuary altar.

That leads us to another story, the story of when God came down on Mount Sinai. Once again that piece of geography had to be treated as “holy”—as special due to God’s special presence there. On that Mountain, God instructed the Israelites to build him a tent in which to live. That tent had different sections: the outer section was called “the holy place” and the interior section where God’s footstool dwelt was called “the holy of holies.” The whole structure is mentioned in Exodus 25.8 this way: “And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst.” Sanctuary, like saint, is an English terms we have derived from our Latin roots. Sanctus—“holy”—is the root of both saint and sanctuary, holy one and holy place. The sanctuary, remember, is where God is enthroned. Beyond the holy place in the Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant overshadowed by two golden Cherubim. The Bible declares that God was enthroned above those Cherubim so that the Ark was his footstool (First Chronicles 28.2; Psalm 99.5; 132.7). As the Psalmist declares in Psalm 98—a Psalm all about God’s ruler over the world from his throne—“Holiness befits your house, O LORD.”

In the events of Mount Sinai we first have a reference to people as “holy ones” or saints. Moses gives a blessing that recounts what happened:

The Lord came from Sinai,
And dawned on them from Seir;
He shone forth from Mount Paran,
And He came from the midst of ten thousand holy ones; [angels]
At His right hand there was flashing lightning for them.
Indeed, He loves the people;
All Your holy ones are in Your hand,
And they followed in Your steps;
Everyone receives of Your words.
Moses charged us with a law,
A possession for the assembly of Jacob [33.2-4].

When God is enthroned at Sinai, it is appropriate to refer to his angels as “holy ones”; and when at the same time God is enthroned among his people, it is appropriate to refer to them as “holy ones,” saints, as well. Since Ephesians repeatedly describes the enthronement of Jesus at God’s right hand, it is an especially appropriate term for those who belong to Jesus.

We typically think of holiness as a certain kind of moral quality. Someone is holy if he is righteous or godly. That’s true but it is a secondary development.

The primary meaning of holy is simply near to God’s special presence. In the case of God Himself, when he is described as “holy, the term probably refers to His own independent integrity which also reminds us of his transcendence and separation from creation. But for all other things or people, being holy refers to access to, or association with, God’s sanctuary. Some things come near to God and they have no business being there so God expels them by destroying them or banishing them. They are not holy and therefore may not get that close. Other things belong near to God so that they can be called holy even if they are separated from God’s presence—they are meant to be brought to Him. The idea there is that they shouldn’t be so separated.

This is the legal position of all Christians; they are holy. All who profess their faith in Jesus are given authorized access to God’s throne room. The amazing privilege this involves can be seen from another story from Second Chronicles 26: When King Azariah tried to force his way into the holy place, a skin disease broke out on his forehead so that he was expelled not only from the Tabernacle but also from his own throne in Jerusalem. According to Leviticus, skin diseases that exposed the inner flesh banned a person from access to God’s palace and from populous areas. But Paul, in calling us saints is ascribing to us free access to where kings were once barred.

Of course, the problem with saying all this is that all the concrete reference points are no longer visible. There is no longer one central sanctuary on earth that is especially the place and home of God’s presence. Therefore, there is no literal, geographical access to experience the way, for example, the people of Israel.

Nevertheless, this is not just an esoteric analogy. Here are a few implications:

First, The fact that all believers are saints means that we are all equally welcome to God and must be welcome to one another. We have a right to God’s presence and we cannot deny the right of other believers to our fellowship. Any divisions between Christians based on race, sex, or some kind of alleged holiness above and beyond one’s basic Christian identity is a repudiation of the fact that all believers are saints.

Second, the fact we are all saints means that we are under God’s close scrutiny. He pays attention to us. We should act as people who are in God’s company at all times.

Third, the fact that all Christians means we can now meet and worship as the church in any place on earth and, when we do so, we have the same or better access to God’s presence than the priests did who served in God’s temple in Israel before the coming of Christ. There is no longer only one geographical sanctuary on earth that is holy to God. In Israel, before Jesus ascended into heaven, the only place where one was permitted to eat at sacramental feasts was the central sanctuary. Now Christians all over the world can eat and drink a sacramental meal of fellowship with Jesus. We are welcome at his table anywhere on earth.