Fathers and children

I recall hearing a presentation where Doug Wilson passed on advice from his own father about learning to be a father: read through the Gospel of John and note everything that Jesus said about the Father.

I was reminded of that when I read this blog post by Peter Leithart today, in which he comments on John 8. Here is his conclusion:

A good test for fathers to see how they are doing with their kids: Do your children do your deeds? and, Do they share your joys? And behind these questions are others:Should they do your deeds or would they be better off mimicking someone else? Do you rejoice in the truth or something else?

Gates

I recently listened to a sermon by Ben Merkle, a pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, ID. In connecting the advance of the gospel to God’s promises to Abraham, he pointed out the connection between Genesis 22:17, Genesis 24:60, and Matthew 16:18 (about the 33-minute mark in the video):

And the angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, “By myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.” (Genesis 22:15-18 ESV)

When Abraham’s servant heard their words, he bowed himself to the earth before the LORD. And the servant brought out jewelry of silver and of gold, and garments, and gave them to Rebekah. He also gave to her brother and to her mother costly ornaments. And he and the men who were with him ate and drank, and they spent the night there. When they arose in the morning, he said, “Send me away to my master.” Her brother and her mother said, “Let the young woman remain with us a while, at least ten days; after that she may go.” But he said to them, “Do not delay me, since the LORD has prospered my way. Send me away that I may go to my master.” They said, “Let us call the young woman and ask her.” And they called Rebekah and said to her, “Will you go with this man?” She said, “I will go.” So they sent away Rebekah their sister and her nurse, and Abraham’s servant and his men. And they blessed Rebekah and said to her,
 “Our sister, may you become
  thousands of ten thousands,
 and may your offspring possess
  the gate of those who hate him!”
(Genesis 24:52-60 ESV)

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. (Matthew 16:13-20 ESV)

Peter Leithart on “sola fide”

I saved this post in my drafts a while back, but never published it. Here it is:

In his letter resigning from the PCA, Jason Stellman wrote this about sola fide:

Regarding Sola Fide, I have become convinced that the teaching that sinners are justified by a once-for-all declaration of acquittal on God’s part, based upon the imputation of Christ’s righteousness received by faith alone, is not reflective of the teaching of the New Testament as a whole. I have come to believe that a much more biblical paradigm for understanding the gospel—and one that has much greater explanatory value for understanding Jesus, Paul, Peter, James, and John—is one that sets forth the New Covenant work of the Spirit, procured through the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ, as internally inscribing God’s law and enabling believers to exhibit love of God and neighbor, thereby fulfilling the law in order to gain their eternal inheritance (Rom. 8:1-4). While this is all accomplished entirely by God’s grace through the merits of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, it is at the same time not something that occurs through the imputation of an external and alien righteousness received through faith alone. Rather, as Paul says, God’s people are justified by a faith that works through love—itself the fruit of the Spirit—and with God’s law inscribed on our hearts and minds we sow to the Spirit and reap everlasting life (Gal. 5:4-6, 14, 16, 22; 6:8).

Leithart responded that Stellman is following a stream of Reformed theology that strips down the meaning of the gospel so that it only refers to justification by faith. Looking at 1 Corinthians 15:1-3, Leithart notes, “Not a word about justification, imputation, active or passive obedience.  Justification is an essential dimension of Paul’s gospel; it is not the sum total of it.  The good news is the announcement of the kingdom; it is, as NT Wright has put it, the story of ‘how God became King.’”

Leithart continues:

Second, Jason says that the biblical paradigm of the gospel emphasizes the work of the Spirit who inscribes the law of God on human hearts so that believers fulfill the requirement of the law and by doing good in the power of the Spirit inherit eternal life.  The faith that justifies is a faith that works through love.  I find Stellman’s brief summary of Paul quite accurate, but I think he’s wrong to conclude that his views on this issue have put himself outside the Reformed faith.  Why can’t he say this: We are justified by the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, and also the Spirit inscribes the law on our hearts so that we reap everlasting life?  Or, following Richard Gaffin, why can’t we say that God’s reckoning us righteous and the Spirit’s work of putting the law in our hearts are both fruits of the reality of union with Christ?  Why can’t we say: The “external and alien righteousness” by which we are justified is Jesus Christ Himself, the Righteous One, to whom are are united by faith?  And then why can’t we say: Jesus Christ the Righteous is no inert resident of my heart, but active and powerful by His Spirit?

Much of Reformed theology has seen no need to polarize the way Jason does.  On Galatians 5:6, Calvin writes: “It is not our doctrine that the faith which justifies is alone; we maintain that it is invariably accompanied by good works; only we contend that faith alone is sufficient for justification. . . . Paul enters into no dispute whether love cooperates with faith in justification; but, in order to avoid the appearance of representing Christians as idle and as resembling blocks of wood, he points out what are the true exercises of believers.”  The Westminster Confession of Faith itself (11.2) makes the same point: “Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification; yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love.”   The Westminster Confession (33.1) says that at the final judgment each will “receive according to what they have done in the body, whether good or evil.”  The Westminster Confession (16.2) connects good works to our inheritance of eternal life in much the same way Jason does: “These good works, done in obedience to God’s commandments, are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith: and by them believers manifest their thankfulness, strengthen their assurance, edify their brethren, adorn the profession of the gospel, stop the mouths of the adversaries, and glorify God, whose workmanship they are, created in Christ Jesus thereunto, that, having their fruit unto holiness, they may have the end, eternal life.”

A more robust definition of faith

Future Grace by John Piper

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Faith is often defined in the modern world a bit like this: believing in something even though you have no idea if it’s true or not. This is because it simply can’t be proved true or false. The virtue is in at least believing in something, something intangible. Taking this approach to the Christian faith leaves a faith that poses little threat at all to own own sin (because it’s all about feeling close to God, not dying to self and living for God) and has no real witness to the world (because the logical conclusion is that faith is so personal that it has to be kept to oneself).

Piper describes this kind of faith is “a mere subjective experience of feelings and thoughts inside ourselves that function as an emotional cushion to soften the bumps of life and give us a network of friends” (357). He makes the case in the book that faith looks to God to provide and protect in the future. We ought to look to God’s promises to blunt the temptations of sin’s promise of illicit pleasures or selfish inward focus. He intersperses chapters on anxiety, pride, misplaced shame, impatience, covetousness, bitterness, despondency, and lust. He exhorts Christians to trust God’s promises for preserving us and believe His warnings about sin. Piper defines faith as not merely mentally affirming some true things about God but as “being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus.”

Piper’s main foil, especially in the beginning of the book, is what’s often presented as the rationale for Christian living: Christ died for us, and therefore we ought to live holy lives out of gratitude. He believes strongly in gratitude as essential for Christians, but believes that it can easily be transformed into a mentality that seeks to pay God back. Instead, he argues that gratitude should encourage believers to believe that God is with us now and will be with us in the future because of Christ’s purchase of us. Past grace, then, is the foundation of ongoing faith in God’s lifelong, gracious presence and provision. We must continue to have a vital, fruit-producing faith in God to expect grace in the future, and we can also trust God to provide the grace to keep this covenant with Him and forgive us when we repent of sin.

Two quick musings on possible improvements before I wrap up:
1) I wonder if Piper considered putting out a shorter version of the book. At 400 pages, it might be passed up by people who aren’t readers but could benefit from it, but I’m sure that in many ways his preaching and teaching ministry has accomplished the same thing.

2) He didn’t mean it that way, but sometimes the phrase “future grace” sounded like a buzzword, a thing that had a distinct existence rather than simply God’s grace to us in the future. I wonder if the message of the book could have been communicated as effectively with a greater variety of language describing God’s grace for the rest of our lives. This could just be how it hit me. I might have an ultra-sensitive buzzword detector because I have spent so many years as a student and teacher in the public education system, which produces buzzwords (that will solve all of our problems!) like Honda produces cars.

I found this book to be a good, thorough survey and application of what the Bible says about faith. I know that there has been a lot written on faith and Christian living, so I don’t pretend that this is the last word on it. It helped me to have a more robust concept of faith, and I appreciated his approach to battling sin with confidence in God’s promises.

View all my reviews

The typology of Christ’s temptation in the wilderness

If I recall correctly, I’ve seen or heard both Peter Leithart and Doug Wilson argue that Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness after his baptism reflects his status as a new Israel that succeeds, not fails. I don’t know that I had heard this correlated with Jesus as the new Adam as well. David Mathis writes about this on the Desiring God blog, taking his cue from Mark 1:12-13 (“The Spirit immediately drove him into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals . . . .”  - Mathis’ emphasis). He wonders why Mark mentions the wild animals, and connects it back to Adam in the Garden of Eden:

The point Mark seems to be hinting at is that Jesus is a new kind of Adam, the new and ultimate Man. Instead of a beautiful garden, the ultimate Man faces his temptations in the wilderness, a wilderness created by Adam’s sin. And instead of kindly presiding over tame animals, the ultimate Man is surrounded by wild animals. This sinful world into which Jesus enters to accomplish his mission is less like a pristine garden and more like Jurassic Park.

Unlike Adam, the surroundings into which Jesus is put to live out human perfection are marred by sin’s corruption. Unlike Adam, Jesus faces a wild land and wild animals. While Adam was setup [sic] for success, Jesus must go against the grain.

But despite the conditions for our new Man being more difficult than they were for the first Man, Jesus succeeds, for our sake, in passing the test — in the wild land and among the wild animals. The new Adam does not succumb to the Enemy’s tempting, but stays his course to die sacrificially for the sin that entered in under the first Adam.

Mathis connects this to Psalm 91, from which Jesus quotes verses 11 and 12 in Matthew 4′s telling of the event. Psalm 91:13 then reads “You will tread on the lion and the adder; the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot.”

This reminded me of an early medieval depiction of Christ as a warlord that I show in my ancient and medieval Western Civ course to illustrate how the post-Roman societies depicted Christ in their own terms. I had not noticed the note on Wikipedia before, but it says that the illustration is from Psalm 91:13.

Liberal Christianity in the US and Britain

Ross Douthat’s July 15 column on the decline of liberal denominations produced some discussion on the definition of liberal Christianity. Douthat defined it as focused on social reform, while British Baptist pastor and theologian Steve Holmes took a more philosophical view, arguing that liberal Christianity essentially bases itself on the idea that the “human experience” can be spoken of in the singular (and thus the various religions are ways of interpreting this experience). Holmes also makes two arresting observations in his post. First, that Anglican liberals tended to support British imperialism, eugenics, and racism, before taking a turn that is more recognizably “liberal” to Americans in the 1960s and after with support of the sexual revolution, “racial equality,” and environmentalism.* He believes that this comes from liberal Christianity’s tendency to follow the culture in which it is embedded. Secondly, this tendency has become a weakness in the postmodern age. The section in italics reflects my emphasis:

This also explains the reason that the, heretofore extremely successful, liberal tradition of Christianity is currently in meltdown. It is not difficult to see that the idea that true notions of the divine can be derived from an examination of universally shared human experience is vulnerable to at least two, apparently devastating, lines of criticism: the claim that human experience is no guide to reality (a claim made classically by Feuerbach in his Essence of Christianity, and forming the basis of neo-orthodox criticisms of liberalism in the first half of the twentieth century); and the claim that there is no universally shared human experience to serve as a basis for the argument. This latter line has become extremely powerful in contemporary theology. The early liberation theologians developed a postcolonial critique of such claims: supposed accounts of ‘normative’ human experience are in fact an attempt to force others to conform their experience to norms created by white male Europeans. The explosion of contextual theologies demonstrated the power of such a criticism in contemporary culture: every proposed account of shared human experience is, on this analysis, a hegemonic attempt to impose a false consciousness on others. So African-American women properly refused to be assimilated to the project of feminist theology, seeing the accounts of human experience offered as too white, and properly refused to be assimilated to Black theology, seeing the accounts of human experience offered as too male. Instead, they constructed their own narration, womanist theology. (The great womanist theologians are poets, not just theologians: Emilie Townes somewhere entitles a chapter ‘To love our necks unloosed and straight’ – why can’t I write like that?!).

The effect of all this is to make classical liberalism – ‘we all feel like this, so…’ – culturally incredible. For two centuries, it caught the mood of a culture which believed in metanarratives; for the last two decades (or more) the culture has been incredulous towards metanarratives, and so has been profoundly unreceptive to classical liberalism. Today, liberalism sounds like cultural imperialism; when it tries not to, it simply sounds incoherent. (The best example is also the obvious and tedious one: White, metropolitan, Western culture regards the acceptance of gay/lesbian relationships to be an ethical imperative; the churches of sub-Saharan Africa (to give only one example) see the matter differently; one may be affirming of gay/lesbian people by dismissing the moral intuition of Black Africans, but not otherwise. To claim that gay people and Nigerian people share moral intuitions, or to claim to be simultaneously attentive to gay people and non-Western people, alike appear simply incredible.)

This observation fits with my own, less informed sense that pre-1950s liberal theology seemed much more grounded and Christian, even though deficient, than its current form. This seems to me a good explanation of why this is the case.

Douthat’s response, through which I became aware of Holmes’ post, grants the point on the definition, but contends that liberal Christianity has been different in the American and British contexts:

However, this quest has gone in different directions in different times and places, and in the United States from the late-19th onward, it found its most important and enduring expression in the Social Gospel idea that Christianity would be vindicated in an age of science and skepticism to the extent that it confronted social evils as well as private sins, and made the kingdom of heaven more visible on earth. Certainly other theological traditions, Catholic as well as evangelical, have linked personal conversion and social reform; certainly liberal Christianity can’t be reduced to that link and that link alone. But for a long time, from the era of Walter Rauschenbusch down to the era of Martin Luther King, Jr., the liberal churches had good reason to see themselves as the primary custodians of a socially-engaged Christianity. Indeed, the historical importance of their role explains why many religiously-literate Americans today still simply conflate ”liberal Christianity” with “the religion of Christians who are politically liberal.” That’s far too broad a definition, certainly, and one that gives theologians hives with its capaciousness. But it’s also one that reflects the lived reality of American politics and religion for long periods of the twentieth century….

Some of [what Holmes says about British liberal Christians' mirroring of British culture] maps on to the American experience: The United States, too, had its liberal Protestant imperialists and eugenicists, and of course we have our liberal Christian environmentalists today. But the Social Gospel and the civil rights movement are both absent from this story (in this country, liberal Christians were arguing for civil rights long before the 1980s), and when you lose them you lose a huge part of liberal Christianity’s direct impact on American religion and public life, not to mention its second-order impact on movements (from WWII and Cold War-era neo-orthodoxy to post-1970s neoconservatism) that were both its critics but also to some extent its practical heirs. Nor, in turn, can you understand the point that the intellectual historian Gary Dorrien makes in the essay that my column quoted, about how the leading liberal Christians of the American past often managed to ground progressive politics on “a gospel of personal faith” expressed “in biblical terms,” rather than just on the kind of ecumenical appeals to “shared human religious experience” that are more characteristic of, say, liberal Episcopalianism today. (I think of Bayard Rustin’s line about M.L.K., which I quote in my recent book: “I was always amazed at how it was possible to combine this intense, analytical philosophical mind with this more or less fundamental — well, I don’t like to use the word ‘fundamentalist’ — but this abiding faith.”) Such a biblical and even dogmatic grounding was possible, I think, precisely because in the American landscape the specific cause of social reform was often more central to the self-definition of religious liberalism than the general prioritization of personal experience that came in with Schleiermacher.

The end of Holmes’ post includes an update in response to similar comments from Alan Jacobs:

UPDATE: Wesley Hill kindly pointed me to some comments made by Alan Jacobs of Wheaton (@ayjay) on Twitter, to the effect that in the above I wrongly conflate American and English (sic…) liberalism, ignoring the profound effect of Rauschenbusch had in redefining US liberalism. This seems to me a very fair point in terms of my account of liberal ethics in ‘so what point 1′ above, which I accept is rather parochial and based on UK examples; I think my broader point, ‘if you have to come up with a one sentence journalistic definition of the heart of liberal Christianity, what would it be?’ stands; Rauschenbusch provided a compelling narration of a particular set of religious experiences – pastoring in Hell’s Kitchen for him, but of course wider for others – that gave the US conversation a particular shape (just as the experience of the 1914-18 war gave the European conversations particular shapes – very different in Germany and the UK), but I think the heart of the issue remains the same.

*This is just a broad characterization of “liberal” and “conservative,” I realize. Even the word “liberal” has been used differently in American and British politics, I believe. And I also realize that liberal denominations in America supported eugenics and imperialism. And racism is not an essentially “conservative” position either, although certainly some conservatives have been racists along with people of different persuasions.

God’s foreknowledge in Romans 8:29

At the Desiring God blog, Jarvis Williams of Campbellsville University considers the issue of how to interpret Romans 8:29: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (ESV):

Some argue that Paul means that God foresaw who would believe, and he therefore chose this group to believe based on his foresight of their faith. According to this reading, God’s choice to save some is based on his foresight that some would choose him first. But, in my view, this reading of Romans 8:29 does not take seriously the force with which Paul discusses God’s sovereignty in both the immediate and the remote context of Romans. It also doesn’t take seriously the Old Testament roots underneath Paul’s view of God’s foreknowledge.

In my view, God’s foreknowledge refers precisely to his predetermined decision to set his covenantal love upon a people for his glory. Foreknowledge in Romans 8:29 does not refer to God’s foresight for the following three reasons. First, the immediate and remote context of Romans 8:28–30 is strongly God-centered. That is, God’s action for God’s purposes is emphasized.

• In Romans 8:3 Paul states that God condemns sin.
• In Romans 8:11 God raised Jesus from the dead and God resurrects those who believe in Jesus.
• In Romans 8:29 God predestines.
• In Romans 8:30 God calls.
• In Romans 8:30, 33 God justifies.
• In Romans 8:30 God glorifies.
• In Romans 8:31 God is for “us.”
• In Romans 8:32 God did not spare his son but offered him for “us.”
• In Romans 9:11–13 God loved Jacob and hated Esau so that God’s electing purpose would stand apart from their works.
• In Romans 9:17 God raised up Pharaoh to destroy him.
• In Romans 9:22–24 God created vessels of wrath and vessels of destruction.
• In Romans 9:24–25 God calls Jews and Gentiles to be vessels of mercy.
• In Romans 11:1–24 God hardens some Jews so that they would not be saved and includes some Gentiles within his saving purposes.
• In Romans 11:33–36 Paul praises God for his incomprehensible ways.

A while back, Joel posted some excerpts from N.T. Wright’s commentary on Romans that made some similar points and also looked at how predestination relates to God’s character and to human actions.

Sleep and death, waking and resurrection

I have enjoyed reading the wedding exhortations that Doug Wilson after officiating a ceremony. The newest one had a really great image:

One aspect of this [lifelong reflection on the gospel] is the beautiful image of sleep, a wonderful image of the gospel. The first time sleep is mentioned in the Bible, it was in order for God to bring a wife to Adam. God placed Adam into a deep sleep (Gen. 2:21) in order to fashion a wife for him out of one of his ribs. The first time a man went to sleep, he woke up to the day when he would meet his wife. If you recall, a similar thing happened to Boaz. He went to sleep at the harvest and woke early in the morning to encounter his future wife, Ruth. Sleep is related to the gospel the same way that women are. The Church is the bride of Christ, remember.

Throughout Scripture, sleeping is a type and image of death (e.g. 1 Cor. 11:30; 15:51), and it follows from this that waking up in the morning is an image of the resurrection. God knows that we are slow to grasp this lesson of death and resurrection, this daily reminder of His ultimate intention for us, and so He goes over the lesson again and again. If God gives Zach and Holly a fifty year anniversary, He will have allowed them to go through this pattern of death and resurrection over 18,000 times. God wants us to get this.

In the book of Philippians, the apostle Paul says he longs to stay in this life because to live is Christ, but he then adds that to die is gain. Staying awake is good, going to sleep is really good, and waking up is just the best. Christians who have the confidence that God’s forgiveness is resting upon them can know and experience a right attitude toward death because although death is an enemy, it is a conquered enemy. Jesus rose, remember.

Every day is a miniature life. Every day follows a pattern, and has a story arc, and if you live faithfully in the course of each day, you will be learning the very best way to go to sleep. For someone who works as he ought to, going to sleep is one of the most glorious experiences God gives to us. This should teach us about the death of God’s saints, and why God considers a faithful death precious. But this only works if the day is fruitful, and not squandered or frittered away in laziness and sin. And waking in the morning with the hope of a full day before us is even better than going to sleep was. But of course, this daily training program is only possible through Jesus Christ. He helps us form each daily letter on the page so that by the end of our lives, we will have written the larger story He has for us.

Receivers who give

Peter Leithart recently noted that the Hebrew word natan (“give”) is used many times in many ways in the Old Testament. He concludes hist short post with this observation:

The Bible presents us with a world teeming with benefactors.  Everywhere we turn there are things offering gifts.  The lamp says, “Here, I give light. Take it.”  The flowers say, “I’ve got a fragrance to give to you.”  The piano says, “I’ve got 88 keys to give you pleasing sounds.”  The forest gives smells and sights and muffled sounds, the birds give their songs, the earth gives grain and wine and trees.  Human civilization is full of things that give.  All there are ultimately gifts from God, but the picture is not of God giving through empty pipelines that simply carry the gift to us.  Rather, the Lord’s gift is the gift of gifting. The Giver makes us givers.  There are secondary givers, given the ability to give and the gifts they gift from the supreme Giver.

A new past

In an exhortation to his congregation this past weekend (Fathers’ Day), Doug Wilson talked briefly about the implications of regeneration, where God gives new life to the believer and become’s the Christian’s Father. He concludes:

This is one of the greatest miracle that God performs, and He does it all over the world. He has done it here, with us. New life, but do not think of this as a mere infusion of some spiritual joy juice. No, in regeneration God gives us a new set of ancestors.

Not only does He radically alter our future, He also gives us a new past.