Valiant For Truth

“If we do not make the Lord Jesus glorious; if we do not lift Him high in the esteem of men…we shall not have the Holy Spirit with us. Vain will be rhetoric, music, architecture, energy and social status: if our design be not to magnify the Lord Jesus, we shall work alone and in vain.”
- C.H. Spurgeon

There are few men that I look to with the same interest and respect as I do Charles Haddon Spurgeon. He was a pastor, preacher, writer, evangelist, teacher, mentor, philanthropist, innovator, thinker, husband, and father. He was and is, in my mind, without peer. I am hopeless to sum up Charles Spurgeon’s life in this limited space. However, I will attempt and feebly so, to highlight a few things that make him a hero to me and a worthy subject for the contemporary church’s consideration.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon was born into a Christian family in Essex on June 19, 1834. In spite of godly surroundings and the fervent prayers of his mother Charles was not converted to Christ until the age of 16. The knowledge of his own sinfulness weighed heavy upon his young soul. Later, he would write, “I reckoned that the most defiled creature…was a better thing than myself, for I had sinned against Almighty God.” This proper understanding of sin would make Spurgeon an effective preacher of the free grace of God. From his late teens until he was 19 years old (1851-1854) Charles pastored a Baptist church in a small village called Waterbeach. The church grew from 40 to 100 during that time and Spurgeon became convinced that he would spend the rest of his life serving Christ and His church as a preacher of the Gospel.

While still only 19 Spurgeon accepted a call to pastor the historic but dying Park Street Chapel, a Baptist congregation in London. The worship center was built to seat 1,200 but saw fewer than 300 in attendance. Within weeks the once almost empty church was overflowing with people eager to hear this young man who preached so fervently. The building was retro-fitted to hold 1,500 but in less than a year that was too small. The decision was made to build a new chapel that would seat 5,000 and have standing room for an additional 1,000. It would be called The Metropolitan Tabernacle. In the days before mega-churches the Metropolitan Tabernacle was a strange sight. “The lad from Cambridge” found himself pastor of the largest church in the world. During Spurgeon’s ministry there, 14,691 people were added to the role, almost 11,000 of which were by conversion and baptism. Thousands of copies of his sermons were mailed out all over the world each week. What an enormous burden for a young pastor to bear. What a temptation toward self-aggrandizement. But Spurgeon maintained a healthy distrust of numeric success. He saw it very much as the exception rather than the rule. In 1887 he wrote, “Long ago I ceased to count heads, truth is usually in the minority in this evil world.”

Spurgeon seemed always to be the target of vicious criticism. This certainly was owing, at least in part, to his prominent voice. After all, Spurgeon was pastor of the largest church in the world and was not shy to offer his opinion. This is not because he enjoyed controversy or was belligerent in any way. Indeed, he loved tranquility and desired to live in unity with his brothers and sisters in Christ. However, Spurgeon’s love for truth and passion for doctrinal precision outweighed all other passions. In the 1860’s he wrote, “Friends chide us and foes abhor us when we are very jealous for the Lord God of Israel, but what do these things matter if the Master approves?...[Be] not dismayed for flesh and blood while you are for the Lord, and for His truth and cause. And howbeit we see truth put to the worse for the time, yet Christ will be a friend to truth, and will act for those who dare hazard all that they have for Him and for His glory.”

Spurgeon’s commitment to the truth was bred within him early on. His father and grand-father were both Congregationalist preachers. When he was only a child, Spurgeon discovered a substantial collection of Puritan writings in the home of his grandfather. The wedding of spiritual fervor and doctrinal clarity championed by the Puritans would mark Spurgeon for the rest of his life. It would fire his preaching and serve as a bulwark through times of sickness, defeat, and controversy. During his life, Spurgeon was often criticized by Arminians and newspaper editorialists because of his high doctrine of God’s sovereignty. On the other hand, he was criticized by “hyper-Calvinists” for his passion for evangelism. Finally, he was criticized and officially censured by the Baptist Union for his stand in what became known as “The Down-Grade Controversy.”

The controversy was sparked by two articles that ran in The Metropolitan Tabernacle’s newsletter, The Sword and the Trowel, called “The Down-Grade”. Spurgeon whole-heartedly endorsed the articles which warned of the downward slide of England’s churches and placed the blame at the feet of preachers and churches that no longer held firmly to the truth. Pastors, who though orthodox themselves, were no longer contending for the truth and in many cases even shared their pulpits with men who outright denied fundamental tenets of biblical Christianity. As evidence of these errors mounted Spurgeon became more outspoken. To those who thought him too stringent Spurgeon wrote, “A little plain speaking would do a world of good right now. These gentlemen desire to be let alone. They want no noise raised…It is time that somebody should spring his rattle, and call attention to the way in which God is being robbed of His glory, and man of his hope.” He went on to call Christians to consider breaking fellowship with those who profess faith in Christ but deny Gospel essentials. “Numbers of easy-minded people wink at error so long as it is committed by a clever man and a good-natured brother, who has so many fine points about him…Under colour of begging friendship of the servant, there are those about who aim at robbing the Master.”

Spurgeon refused to tone down his rhetoric even though many of his brethren pleaded for him to do so. Certainly, he took no pleasure in his difficult duty. “It is no joy to us to bring accusations; it is no pleasure to our heart to seem to be in antagonism with so many.” During this time, Spurgeon’s health problems escalated. Kidney problems and gout caused him severe, debilitating pain. Through it all Spurgeon did not back down in sounding the alarm that the evangelical faith was under serious assault from within. He saw no reason why the Baptist Union should seek to accommodate those pastors who denied essential Christian doctrines such as the authority of Scripture, the virgin birth of Christ, the substitutionary atonement, and the doctrine of hell. “To be very plain, we are unable to call these things Christian Unions, they begin to look like Confederacies in Evil.” On January 13, 1888 Spurgeon met with leadership of the Baptist Union and urged them to adopt an evangelical statement of faith. They refused. In response, he submitted a letter withdrawing from the Union. In the end, the leadership of the Baptist Union, unwilling to stand clearly for truth, accepted his withdrawal and then censured Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

Spurgeon hated division. But his conscience was captive to the Word of God and would not permit him to align with anyone who denied what God’s Word made plain. “Nothing has ever more largely promoted the union of the true than the break with the false.” The Down-Grade Controversy broke Spurgeon’s heart and is thought by many to have hastened his death which came on January 31, 1892.

Spurgeon’s funeral was attended by thousands who came to mourn the passing of this contender for truth and winner of souls. The Reverend Archibald Brown spoke these words at the graveside:

“Champion of God thy battle, long and nobly fought, is over; the sword which clave to thy hand, has dropped at last; a palm branch take its place. No longer does the helmet press thy brow, oft weary with its surging thoughts of battle; a victor’s wreath from the great Commander’s hand has already proved thy full reward.

“Here for a little while shall rest thy precious dust. Then shall thy Well-Beloved come; and at His voice thou shalt spring from thy couch of earth, fashioned like unto His body, into glory. Then, spirit, soul, and body shall magnify thy Lord’s redemption. Until then beloved, sleep. We praise God for thee, and by the blood of everlasting covenant, hope and expect to praise God with thee. Amen.”

Books by and about C.H. Spurgeon:
Spurgeon by Arnold Dallimore – a great place to begin
The Forgotten Spurgeon by Iain Murray – My favorite work on Spurgeon
Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism by Iain Murray - A great follow-up by Murray
Lectures To My Students by C.H. Spurgeon – a must for ministers
Morning & Evening by C.H. Spurgeon – daily devotions

"How sweet are your words to my taste"

If you read much church history you have probably come to discover just how often we Christians tend to drift from the truth. From Arius’ denials of the Trinity (4th c.) to Pelagius’ many heresies (5th c.) to Rome’s centuries long errors in doctrine and practice to Finney’s denial of the atonement and justification by grace through faith (18th c.) to the prosperity “gospel” of our own day the church has been riddled with unfortunate departures from the plain teachings of God’s Word. Even within so-called evangelical churches the disdain for identifying error has led to compromises which will, in the end, cost us more than we are able to bear.

Whether it comes from the market-driven, consumerist prophets of the church growth movement or the advocates of post-modern deconstructionist philosophy the disdain for biblical clarity will be the same: a corrupt and impotent church. The church marketers prefer “happy-clappy” celebrations and self-help “talks” over weighty God-centered worship and biblical exposition. The postmodernists indulge in doctrinal flights of fancy which have led them to deny the innerancy and authority of God’s Word, the objective nature of truth, and even the substitutionary atonement of our Lord. They prefer questions to answers and ambiguity over certainty. Both of these strands continue to flourish in the evangelical church. Whether it is our desire to be large and powerful or our misguided notions of what it means to be “relevant” the results have been devastating: a biblically illiterate church unable to identify clear departures from God’s truth.

I see three conditions that have helped these troubling developments to flourish. First, anti-intellectualism, which has deep roots in American evangelicalism, has led to an unfortunate disdain for formal theological training. While probably not as bad as it used to be there are still preachers who brag about their lack of education in the Scriptures. While God has and does bless His church through countless individuals who have not received formal training, there is little excuse for those called to the full-time ministry of the Word to not be seminary educated. Many of the aberrations of the prosperity gospel, for instance, are the result of ignorance as to what the Bible actually teaches. I cannot help but wonder how many of today’s well known false teachers would be orthodox had they just invested the time to receive formal training in the Scriptures from godly scholars.

A second reason for the proliferation of error is our infatuation with egalitarianism which holds that all opinions carry equal merit. Today, it borders on sacrilege to suggest that someone’s long-held and cherished opinions about God or the Bible are actually wrong. We live in the “How do you feel about this verse?” or “What does this verse mean to you?” approach to Bible study. A willingness to gladly submit to what God has clearly spoken has given way to explorations about what we feel or think about what God has spoken. More times than I care to recount I have heard professing Christians say “I know the Bible says such-and-such but I believe this…”

A third reason behind many of the errors that prevail within the church is the tragic absence of expositional preaching. Few churches will openly admit that they have an aversion to the preaching of God’s Word but the truth is, a great deal of humanistic therapy, political activism, and moralistic legalism parades as biblical preaching. “After all,” the preacher may reason, “I used a lot of Bible verses.” Expositional preaching is the great cure for these problems. Simply put, expositional or expository preaching is preaching that takes the point of the biblical text to be the point of the sermon. It is preaching that says what the text says and intends what the text intends. It also protects the preacher from the temptation to advance personal agendas. Faithful biblical exposition not only teaches the content of God’s Word it develops within the church a great respect for the Scriptures and teaches by example the necessary skills of biblical interpretation. This kind of preaching is every pastor’s responsibility before God. In speaking his tender farewell to the Ephesian elders Paul said, “Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all of you, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:26-27).

Just as pastors are called by God to preach the Bible faithfully, so the church is called to devote itself to the eager reception of biblical preaching and teaching. When the church was birthed in Jerusalem at Pentecost we are told first that they “devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching” (Acts 2:42). Before their serving, their fellowship, their giving, and their evangelizing they shared a common commitment to the Word of God spoken through the apostles. We have that same teaching in the form of the New Testament. During Paul’s ministry he praised the believers at Thessalonica because, “when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God” (I Thess. 2:13).

We must gladly affirm the great Protestant cry of Sola Scriptura or “Scripture Alone”. Indeed, in past centuries men were hounded by church authorities, tried as heretics, and even burned at the stake for their insistence that the authority of Scripture trumps all other authorities including that of popes and councils. In addition to authority Sola Scriptura speaks to the Bible’s sufficiency. The Bible gives us all we need for our doctrine, preaching, godliness, and spiritual experience. A faith without the Bible at the center worships a god of our own imaginations or sentiments rather than the God who reveals Himself. The Bible reminds us that what we believe, how we worship, how we “do church,” and how we live are not matters left to our own determination.

A Newsweek article from the mid 1980’s describes well the church in our day: “They have developed a ‘pick and choose’ Christianity in which individuals take what they want…and pass over what does not fit their spiritual goals.” What is more, it seems that the most successful practitioners of the “pick and choose” religion are those within the evangelical camp. Commenting on this phenomenon George Lindbeck of Yale University has written, “Playing fast and loose with the Bible needed a liberal audience in the days of Norman Vincent Peale, but now, as the case of Robert Schuller indicates, professed conservatives eat it up” (Postmodern Theology, 45). I could add to that list a number of very prominent “evangelical” preachers who use the Bible as a kind of garnish to their preaching rather than the foundation.

The church must insist that her preachers give them the Word of God. How can those tasked to preach the Scriptures do any less? How can churches be satisfied with sugary snacks when God has set before us such a bountiful and satisfying feast? The Puritans often referred to the Bible as a “cordial”, indicating that Scripture does for the soul what a Jacuzzi does for the body or fine chocolate does for the taste buds. As the Psalmist declared, “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me…I hold back my feet from every evil way, in order to keep your word. I do not turn aside from your rules, for you have taught me. How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Ps 119:97ff).

The Birth Pains of Pastoral Ministry

From David Murray at The Gospel Coalition:

If you want to know what having a baby is like, you could ask any mother…or any faithful Pastor. And before I’m clobbered for even daring to suggest a comparison, my authority is the apostle Paul, who wrote to the Galatians: “My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you…” (Gal. 4:19).

Paul had been the spiritual mother of the Galatians (Acts 13, 14). God had used him to turn the Galatians from “ceremony-salvation” to Gospel salvation, a painful and traumatic experience which he likened to having a baby. But just when Paul thought that the Galatians had been delivered from the suffocating womb of ritualism and were now breathing the pure life-giving oxygen of Christ’s grace, he discovers to his horror that they are reversing back up the birth canal, and turning back to circumcision and other ceremonies as a way of salvation.

So Paul re-enters the labor suite and starts pushing them back to grace. In between the agonizing pangs, he can be heard whispering, “My little children, of whom I travail in birth until Christ be formed in you.” There are piercing contractions, baffling complications, stubborn obstructions, and constant resistance. But he won’t give up or give in until he sees Christ formed in them. He’s going to push and persevere and fight for their lives until they take the shape of Christ, until their whole being proclaims Christ, until they look like Christ, sound like Christ and live like Christ. As John Calvin said, “If ministers wish to do any good, let them labor to form Christ, not to form themselves, in their hearers.”

Is it any wonder, pastors, that you feel so exhausted this Monday morning? You’ve been in the labor suite again. Indeed, do you ever leave it?

A heretic by any other name (3)...

Reading Brian McLaren is sort of like dealing with a sleight of hand artist. The problem for Brian is that he's not very good at it. As you read you can almost hear him saying, "Look at my left hand, not my right hand!" Straw men abound in his books. False choices are repeatedly insisted upon. For instance, Brian insists that the Bible is either a wonderful book (Brian loves the Bible you see) but merely a human product full of errors and contradictions (but that's what makes it so great!) OR the cold and dispassionate rule book of those mean 'ol fundamentalists. In Brian's world you have to pick one or the other.

More from Mike Witmer's review and interaction with Brian McLaren's new book:

How should the Bible be understood?

Martin Luther warned us not to destroy something good simply because it is abused. He said that some people worship the sun and moon, but we don’t “pull the sun and stars from the skies;” some people visit prostitutes, but we don’t “kill all the women;” and some people get drunk, but we don’t “pour out all the wine” (actually some of us Baptists do that one, but you get the point).

Destroying the good thing that is abused is precisely the mistake Brian makes on question two. He recklessly alleges that this list of atrocities—“slavery, anti-Semitism, colonialism, genocide, chauvinism, homophobia, environmental plunder, the Inquisition, witch burning, apartheid” was committed because Christians thought their authoritative Bible was telling them to do so. To the extent that this is true (e.g., slavery in America), the obvious solution is a more careful reading of Scripture. But Brian doesn’t consider this option. Instead, he asserts that the only way to stop such crimes against humanity is to stop reading the Bible as our constitution.

Brian smuggles two disparate terms into his definition of constitution, effectively confusing the issue for many readers.

1. He says that we misuse the Bible as a constitution when we read the Bible as a legal document without appropriate attention to genre. Paying attention to genre is simply good hermeneutics, and no one would disagree with him here. But that doesn’t prevent Brian from caricaturing the other side, asserting that reading the Bible as a constitution demands that we naively consider the speeches of Job’s misguided friends to be as much the Word of God as what God himself says in the book. If the Bible is a legal document, then every word in it—even the speeches of Satan—is equally what God wants us to believe. Brian says that “there isn’t an easy way out of this problem.” Actually there is. It’s called hermeneutics, and every seminary teaches it.

2. Perhaps Brian spends so much time on his hermeneutical red herring so his readers will not notice when he smuggles in what he’s really against. Brian says that we also treat the Bible as our constitution when we stand under it as our authority. Brian knows that this point will offend many of his readers, but if he can persuade us that reading the Bible as our authority also commits us to naively reading the Bible without attention to genre, then he may be able to convince many that the Bible is not our constitution.

The key to not being swept away by this sleight of hand is to realize that (1) and (2) are mutually exclusive. It’s easy to stand under the Bible as our authority (2) and still read biblical poetry differently than Paul’s epistles (1). All of us do it all of the time. Brian surely knows this, so I can only conclude that either he is being extraordinarily sloppy here or he is trying to trick us into rejecting the Bible as our authority.

After caricaturing the Bible as constitution, Brian goes on to give his solution: we must treat the Bible as a cultural library for Christians. Just as a library presents competing perspectives on perennial questions, so the books of the Bible present different answers to the big questions of life. We should not expect our Bible to be internally consistent, but should take its messy conversation as our cue to join its great debates. Even God, when he appears in the biblical text, does not give the final answer on anything, for doing so would oppressively “shut down any conversation.” Instead, the “God character” in the book of Job is “not the real God” but merely “a representation,” an “imagined God, the author’s best sense of God, the fictional character playing God for the sake of this dramatic work of art.”

Brian realizes that his view may open the door to moral relativism. He reassures us that it doesn’t, but he doesn’t even attempt to explain how. Indeed, I suspect that Brian’s reading of the Bible opens the door more widely to moral atrocities than the constitution view he blames. Which person is more likely to abuse the Bible to commit violence on others—someone who believes that the Bible is God’s Word which he must obey or someone who thinks that the Bible is a library where one can pick and choose which answers he likes and which ones he doesn’t? How exactly would Brian convince Hitler that God says genocide is wrong? Couldn’t Hitler respond that he was more into another book in the cultural library, thank you very much? Yes, I just played the Hitler card (this is a blog after all), but note that the card was dealt by Brian when he said that my view led people to commit genocide.

Brian’s naiveté or duplicity (it’s hard to tell which) is on display when he accuses people like me of being the “religious thought police” who defend our views because our jobs and reputations are at stake. I confess that I am a sinner whose motives are never entirely pure, but does Brian really think that he does not stand in danger of the very same thing? He has made a very nice living from his “new kind of Christianity,” and he stands to lose much if evangelical Christians conclude that his “third way” forward is actually a fast track back to liberalism.

It would be nice if Brian felt confident enough in his views to discuss their merits without resorting to ad hominem attacks. Writing that we may “politely notify the thought police that we don’t fear them anymore” may score points with some readers, but its “us vs. them” mentality simply poisons the conversation. Even his fictional God thinks he can do better.

Zondervan Fail

From AP:

Kate Gosselin has a new book, "I Just Want You to Know," scheduled for release in April.

Christian book publisher Zondervan said Tuesday the book features excerpts, prayers and memories from Gosselin's journal, offering readers a look at her life during the three years her family went from obscurity to fame on TLC's "Jon & Kate Plus 8."

Zondervan says the book includes eight individual letters, one addressed to each one of her children, covering a variety of topics.

"Jon & Kate Plus 8" filmed the lives of the Gosselins and their eight children — twins and sextuplets — at their home in Wernersville, Pa. Their marriage dissolved, and the show ended last year.

Sunday's Sermon

Last Sunday's message was the first part of two on the subject of biblical peacemaking. You can listen to or download it HERE.

Eden, Avatar, and the Kingdom of Christ

Check out this excellent discussion from Southern Seminary moderated by Al Mohler on how Christians ought to think about and engage pop culture.

Master's Seminary Audio on Sanctification

The Master's Seminary is currently in a series on sanctification in their chapel services. Take time to listen.

Sanctification and Justification: The Relationship - Andrew Snider
Sanctification: The Biblical Basis - Richard Mayhue

Ligon Duncan's Study

Lig Duncan - Study Video from Together for the Gospel (T4G) on Vimeo.

Urban Ministry Conference

Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia will be hosting their annual Urban Ministry Conference this March 5-7. The speakers will be Josh Harris and John Freeman.

Kostenberger on John's Theology

Andreas Kostenberger's lastest volume looks like a must read for anyone wanting to undertake a study of John's Gospel and epistles.

From a review by Anthony Selvaggio:

This volume should be in every pastor's library. If you are preaching on John's Gospel, or intend to preach on it in the future, this volume should be on your desk and read alongside Kostenberger's or D.A. Carson's commentary on John. This book will act as a necessary biblical-theological supplement to your exegetical work. The book will also serve as a fine textbook for a course on John's theology in seminary or college. I highly recommend purchasing this volume. Thus far, it is Kostenberger's magnum opus on the topic of John's theology.

Read the entire review HERE.

More on John from Dr. Kostenberger

Encountering John - Pefect for laypersons and Sunday School teachers!

John (BECNT) - Great for preachers and teachers!

A heretic by any other name (2)...

Mike Witmer continues to review and comment on Brian McLaren's latest book "A New Kind of Christianity." The discerning reader will understand that what McLaren is promoting is not a new kind of Christianity but an old kind of heresy.

He does not believe that there was a Fall (or original sin or total depravity or hell) but that what we have traditionally called the Fall is actually “a coming-of age story” which—wait for it—describes “the first stage of ascent as human beings progress from the life of hunter-gatherers to the life of agriculturalists and beyond.” I have quoted him verbatim so you know I am not making this up. I asked my Old Testament colleague where Brian may be getting this from, and he said that this sounds like modern Judaism (which doesn’t believe in a Fall or original sin), except that even it wouldn’t say that Genesis 3 represents a step up.

Brian says a lot of other things in Part 1, but as you can see, he is no longer having a Christian conversation. He prefers the Hebrew God Elohim over the Greco-Roman God Theos, for the former prefers the messiness of story and evolution while the latter is a “perfect—Platonic god” who “loves spirit, state, and being” and is “perfectly furious” with his fallen creation and just wants to smash it all to hell. Theos may be popular with the “fire-breathing preacher” (does anyone know anyone like this?), but he “is an idol, a damnable idol.” Brian writes that he would rather be an atheist than believe in the God that most of us think is found in the Bible.

Four other observations:
1. Brian seems to be offering a modern Jewish rather than Christian perspective on the opening chapters of Genesis. His flat-out denial of a Fall, original sin, and total depravity and his dismissal of Theos raises questions about his view of Paul, who clearly teaches the former in Romans 5, and the New Testament, which refers to God with the Greek term Theos.

2. Brian does not seem to believe that there was a first man and a first sin, but that Genesis 3 is a myth which describes how the entire human race became farmers. This view fits with his acceptance of evolution, as most who embrace evolution find it hard to believe that there was a first man who rebelled in a cataclysmic Fall. I don’t know how the farmer bit fits, but it is funny.

3. The fourth question which Brian will address in this book is “Who is Jesus and why is he important?” Given that Brian doesn’t believe in a Fall, original sin, or hell, that is a very good question. I can’t wait to hear why God would come and die for a world that didn’t need his help.

4. Brian seems incapable of writing a book without taking repeated cheap shots at seminary education. He often reminds us that he missed out on seminary and is better for it, that he would not see what he sees in Scripture if he had gone to seminary. On that we agree.

Read the entire post HERE.

Truth and Controversy

Much of the Bible is polemical in nature because in the Scriptures God is routinely refuting errors. We see this as early as Genesis which operates in part as a polemic against pagan creation myths. The prophets often functioned as polemicists, in some cases even mocking pagans and their gods. This approach to defending the truth is also common in the New Testament exemplified in Jesus and the apostles. This is so because God's truth is not a trifle. What God has said is a reflection of who He is. Indeed, God has revealed His nature, His ways and works, and His redemptive purpose through what He has said in His Word. Therefore, defending the truth is not about winning an argument. Defending the truth is an act of magnifying God's glory.

I am convinced that what is behind the contemporary church's distaste for polemic is the erosion of the doctrine of the Scripture's inerrancy within the evangelical church. This, combined with a postmodern hermeneutic which holds that truth cannot be known clearly, has left us unable but mostly unwilling to wade into the waves controversy. After all, once we have decided that the Bible cannot be fully relied upon to speak truthfully then why ought we quibble over different opinions? And opinions are all we are left with once we adopt a diminished view of the Scriptures.

Justin Taylor cites some helpful passages from John Stott's book Christ the Controversialist (1970):

The proper activity of professing Christians who disagree with one another is neither to ignore, nor to conceal, nor even to minimize their differences, but to debate them. (p. 22)

We seem in our generation to have moved a long way from this vehement zeal for the truth which Christ and his apostles displayed. But if we loved the glory of God more, and if we cared more for the eternal good of the souls of men, we would not refuse to engage in necessary controversy, when the truth of the gospel is at stake. The apostolic command is clear. We are “to maintain the truth in love,” being neither truthless in our love, nor loveless in our truth, but holding the two in balance. (p. 19)

We need to distinguish between the tolerant mind and the tolerant spirit. Tolerant in spirit a Christian should always be, loving, understanding, forgiving and forbearing others, making allowances for them, and giving them the benefit of the doubt, for true love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” [1 Cor. 13:7]. But how can we be tolerant in mind of what God has plainly revealed to be either evil or erroneous? (p. 8)

Evangelicalism, how far you have fallen!

A little Hamlet does the heart good

Actor Brian Cox teaches young Theo some Hamlet...

Another Snow Day

Concerning the Gospel

From a contribution by Andreas Kostenberger in Faith Comes By Hearing:

Five Observations About the Gospel:

1. Divine, not human: The gospel is God’s saving message to a world living in darkness and a humanity lost in its sin. The gospel is not a human message, nor was its conception a function of human initiative, but its origin and its impetus derive solely from God. For this reason our role with regard to the gospel is not that of evaluation, criticism or reformulation, but that of grateful acceptance and obedience. Humans are not equal partners with God as far as the gospel message is concerned; they are rather his commissioned representatives, charged with proclaiming the gospel in the exact form in which they received it (e.g., John 17:20; 20:21; 1 Cor 15:3–4).

2. Required, not optional: Acceptance of the gospel is not optional for salvation but rather required, owing to pervasive human sinfulness. As the Book of Hebrews states, “people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment”; “Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time . . . to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him” (Heb 9:27–28). Apart from believing in Jesus Christ, “God’s wrath remains” on people (Jn 3:36), and they are spiritually dead (Jn 5:24; Eph 2:1). People must be “born of God” (Jn 1:12; 3:3, 5; 1 Jn 3:9; 4:7; 5:1, 4, 18), that is, be spiritually regenerated (Tit 3:5; 1 Pet 1:3). As Paul writes in his epistle to the Ephesians, “[a]nd you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit . . .” (Eph 1:13). Inclusion in Christ comes only by hearing and believing the gospel.

3. Christological, not merely theological: The gospel is not vaguely theological, as if it were amenable to various ways of salvation depending on a person’s belief in a particular kind of god, or depending on the degree to which people were able to hear the gospel presented in a clear way; it is decidedly and concretely Christological, that is, centered on the salvation provided through the vicarious cross-death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Hence Paul is able to speak of “the gospel . . . regarding his [God’s] Son . . . Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom 1:2–4). Significantly, this gospel is not a New Testament novelty but was “promised beforehand through his [God’s] prophets [such as Habakkuk, Rom 1:17 citing Hab 2:4] in the Holy Scriptures” (Rom 1:2). Abraham already had resurrection faith (Romans 4; Galatians 3; Heb 11:8–12).

4. No other gospel: The messianic motif pervading all of Scripture and centering in the Lord Jesus Christ coupled with the risen Jesus’ “Great Commission” for his followers to go and disciple the nations inextricably link an understanding of the gospel as the exclusive message of salvation in Jesus Christ with the church’s mandate to engage in missionary outreach. This is clear especially from the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, John, the book of Acts, and several of Paul’s writings. Conversely, any messages proclaimed in the name of Christ that feature a “different gospel” or a different Christ (such as compromising his simultaneous full humanity and deity, e.g. 1 John 4:2–3) are rejected. The church must engage in missions, because “faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ” (Rom 10:17). If anyone confesses with his mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believes in his heart that God raised him from the dead, he will be saved (Rom 10:9; see also vv. 10–13).

5. No other name but Jesus: In light of the clear biblical passages mentioned above and in view of the strong and pervasive trajectory of scriptural references to the gospel there is no proper foundation for arguing for salvation apart from explicit faith in Jesus Christ. Scripture makes clear that humanity is universally sinful, and that God’s wrath remains on every individual who has not placed his or her trust in Jesus Christ on the basis of his substitutionary death on the cross and his subsequent resurrection. While there may be philosophical or larger theological objections to such a notion (such as the difficulty experienced by some of reconciling this notion with the love of God), while there may be commonsense concerns on the basis of human conceptions or “fairness” or other similar considerations, there can be little doubt that Scripture nowhere teaches, or easily allows the implication, that there is a way to salvation other than through explicit faith in Jesus Christ during a person’s lifetime (e.g., Heb 9:27–28). In fact, this is not an obscure topic; it is the central contention of the biblical message concerning the gospel, that “[s]alvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

A heretic by any other name (1)...

I have had my fill of Brian McLaren. I have read his books up through "Generous Orthodoxy" which is neither orthodox or generous. But I am glad that others are still reading him with a clear eye so that those who have drunk from the bitter stream of error can know that there still is a voice for God's truth alive and well in the church.

Mike Witmer is reading McLaren's newest tome, "A New Kind of Christianity" (get it?). Not content to give us a new kind of Christian, McLaren now wants to reshape, re-imagine, and remake the whole thing. The church has always had hangers on like McLaren - Arius, Pelagius, Servetus, Finney, etc. Nevertheless, McLaren continues to promote the notion that somehow he is new. In reality McLaren and the rest of his emergent cohorts are as old as heresy itself.

I am going to be posting links to Dr. Witmer's series of posts reviewing McLaren's new book because it's important to not ignore the mischief of heretics. Jesus and the apostles had some very ungenerous words for those who spread error and confusion among the people of God.

In commenting on the introduction to "A New Kind of Christianity" Witmer writes:

I read the introductory three chapters of A New Kind of Christianity, and so far it’s an updated version of the Brian we’ve seen before. He claims to be “a mild mannered guy” who is only looking for a new way to be a Christian that will boost the declining numbers in our churches, and he can’t understand why his critics respond with “fear,” “clenched teeth,” and “suspicion and accusation.” Brian’s really good at winning sympathy, and soon I was loathing myself for ever politely disagreeing with such a nice man.

But then I remembered that this debate about the Christian faith—which he and his friends started—is not a personality contest. You can’t dismiss what Christians have always believed and then expect a free pass because you’re likeable. And just below the surface of Brian’s humble, can’t-we-all-just-get-along vibe is an accusatory tone that repeatedly compares his critics to a religious Gestapo whose leaders defend their conservative beliefs because they don’t want to lose their jobs.

That doesn’t sound like me. I am an easy-going guy who just wants to love Jesus. But to love Jesus, I have to know and believe something about him. Jesus is not an elastic symbol for whatever we happen to value (e.g., inclusive love), but is an actual person who can be known, trusted, and loved.

So why doesn’t Brian want me to know and believe the truth about Jesus? He says that his new kind of Christianity is led by Doug Pagitt, who isn’t sure that Jesus is God; Marcus Borg, who argues that Jesus is dead; and Harvey Cox, a Harvard Divinity professor who wants to blow the whole thing up and construct a new view of God that will connect with our secular age.

Read the entire post HERE.

The Moral Insanity of NOW

It has been said, "It is better to be silent and thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt. NOW opens it's mouth and once again removes all doubt.

In a report from the LA Times the president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) is offended by the Focus on the Family Super Bowl commercial featuring Tim Tebow and his mother Pam.

NOW president Terry O’Neill said [the Tebow ad] glorified violence against women. “I am blown away at the celebration of the violence against women in it,” she said. “That’s what comes across to me even more strongly than the anti-abortion message. I myself am a survivor of domestic violence, and I don’t find it charming. I think CBS should be ashamed of itself.”

No word from NOW on the violence that goes on against women accross the country in its abortion mills.

Charles Simeon - A man who understood to Whom he answered

From an address by John Piper:

In April, 1831, Charles Simeon was 71 years old. He had been the pastor of Trinity Church, Cambridge, England, for 49 years. He was asked one afternoon by his friend, Joseph Gurney, how he had surmounted persecution and outlasted all the great prejudice against him in his 49-year ministry. He said to Gurney, "My dear brother, we must not mind a little suffering for Christ's sake. When I am getting through a hedge, if my head and shoulders are safely through, I can bear the pricking of my legs. Let us rejoice in the remembrance that our holy Head has surmounted all His suffering and triumphed over death. Let us follow Him patiently; we shall soon be partakers of His victory" (H.C.G. Moule, Charles Simeon, London: InterVarsity, 1948, 155f.)...

Simeon had a strong sense of his accountability before God for the souls of his flock, whether they liked him or not. In his first year in the pulpit he preached a sermon on this and said to the people standing in the aisles,

Remember the nature of my office, and the care incumbent on me for the welfare of your immortal souls. . . . Consider whatever may appear in my discourses harsh, earnest or alarming, not as the effects of enthusiasm, but as the rational dictates of a heart impressed with a sense both of the value of the soul and the importance of eternity. . . . By recollecting the awful consequences of my neglect, you will be more inclined to receive favorably any well-meant admonitions. (Moule, 46)

Fifteen years later he preached on the subject again. Years after this sermon, one of his friends told of how its power was still being felt. He said the pastor is like the keeper of a lighthouse. And he painted a vivid picture of a rocky coast strewn with dead and mangled bodies with the wailing of widows and orphans. He pictured the delinquent keeper being brought out and at last the answer given: Asleep. "Asleep!" The way he made this word burst on the ears of the hearers never let at least one of them ever forget what is at stake in the pastoral ministry.

It did not matter that his people were often against him. He was not commissioned by them, but by the Lord. And they were his responsibility. He believed Hebrews 13:17 - that he would one day have to give an account for the souls of his church.

Read and listen to the audio of the entire address HERE.

As one with authority

"Throughout the history of the church the greatest preachers have been those who have recognized that they have no authority in themselves, and have seen their task as being to explain the words of Scripture and apply them clearly to the lives of their hearers. Their preaching has drawn its power not from the proclamation of their own Christian experiences or the experiences of others, nor from their own opinions, creative ideas, or rhetorical skills, but from God's powerful words. Essentially, they stood in the pulpit, pointed to the biblical text, and said in effect to the congregation, "This is what this verse means. Do you see that meaning here as well? Then you must believe it and obey it with all your heart, for God himself, your Creator and your Lord, is saying this to you today!" Only the written words of Scripture can give this kind of authority to preaching."

Wayne Grudem from Bible Doctrine, p. 40

Books Available This Month:

Scandalous by D.A. Carson

Discovering God in the Stories of the Bible by Phil Ryken

Wired for Intimacy by William Struthers

The Masculine Mandate by Richard Phillips

"Bigotry in modern parlance..."

"Now-a-days, if a man is very reverent towards the word of God, and very desirous to obey the Lord's commands in everything, people say, "He is very precise," and they shun him; or, with still more acrimony, they say, "He is very bigoted: he is not a man of liberal spirit;" and so they cast out his name as evil.

"Bigotry, in modern parlance, you know, means giving heed to old truths in preference to novel theories; and a liberal spirit, now-a-days, means being liberal with everything except your own money—liberal with God's law, liberal with God's doctrine, liberal to believe that a lie is a truth, that black is white, and that white may occasionally be black. That is liberal sentiment in religion—the broad church school—from which may God continually deliver us."

- Charles Spurgeon

My Life Story - "An Inconsistent Account"

"As to myself, I would tell you how it is with me if I could: at the best, it would be an inconsistent account…I am a sinner, believing in the name of Jesus. I am a silly sheep, but I have a gracious, watchful Shepherd. I am a dull scholar, but I have a Master who can make the dullest learn. He still bears with me, He still employs me, He still enables me, He still owns me. Oh for a coal of heavenly fire to warm my heart, that I might praise him as I ought!"

- John Newton (August 29, 1774)

The Problem of Evangelical Minimalism

Michael Horton, in an article for Nine Marks Journal, struggles with the question of what exactly is an evangelical.

It feels like a renewed storm, or at least a squall, has been gathering around the term "evangelical" lately. More and more self-described evangelicals are realizing that not everyone believes the same things, even about the core doctrines. In response, some have begun to write manifestos which attempt to re-articulate the characteristics of an evangelical identity. Others are authoring books and holding conferences which aim to re-center the movement as a whole. Still others have decided it's best to pitch the term altogether and call themselves "post-evangelicals."

But the problem is hardly new. It's never been easy to determine who the evangelicals are because evangelicalism has always been a diverse movement. Luther wanted his followers to be called "evangelicals," meaning gospel-people (it was his enemies who nicknamed his followers "Lutheran"). The other branch of the Reformation was also happy to share the evangelical designation (the orthodox Lutherans coined the term "Calvinists" as a way of distinguishing Reformed views of the Lord's Supper from their own). Then, with the advent of the pietism and revivalism, the label "evangelical" went in all sorts of directions. Today, it's such an ambiguous moniker that some historians find the best definition to be George Marsden's: "anybody who likes Billy Graham."

Dr. Horton goes on to describe two prominent "streams" in the history of evangelicalism: the Pietism/Revivalism stream and the Reformation stream. Of the troubling fruit from the Pietism/Revivalism stream Horton writes:

The Second Great Awakening, represented by Finney, created a system of faith and practice tailor made for a self-reliant nation. Evangelicalism—which is to say, late eighteenth-century American Protestantism—was an engine for innovations. In doctrine, it served modernity's preference for faith in human nature and progress. In worship, it transformed Word-and-Sacrament ministry into entertainment and social reform and created the first star system in the culture of celebrity. In public life, it confused the kingdom of Christ with the kingdoms of this world and imagined that Christ's reign could be made visible by the moral, social, and political activity of the saints. There was little room for anything weighty to tie the movement down, to discipline its entrepreneurial celebrities, or to question its "revivals" apart from their often short-lived publicity.

Of the Reformation Stream Horton writes:

Churchmen like Warfield and Hodge regarded themselves as evangelicals in the distinctively Reformation sense and struggled to bring American Protestantism into line with this definition. They were also staunchly committed to and personally involved with the vast missionary endeavors of their denomination at home and abroad, bringing them into constant fellowship and cooperation with other evangelicals.

Nevertheless, Warfield was already beginning to see that the tension between competing visions of evangelical identity was making it more difficult to remain an unqualified supporter of the evangelical cause. In 1920, a number of evangelicals put forward a "plan of union for evangelical churches." Warfield evaluated the "creed" of this plan, as it was being studied by Presbyterians, and observed that the new confession being proposed "contains nothing which is not believed by Evangelicals," and yet "…nothing which is not believed …by the adherents of the Church of Rome, for example." He wrote,

There is nothing about justification by faith in this creed. And that means that all the gains obtained in that great religious movement which we call the Reformation are cast out of with window…There is nothing about the atonement in the blood of Christ in this creed. And that means that the whole gain of the long mediaeval search after truth is thrown summarily aside…There is nothing about sin and grace in this creed…We need not confess our sins anymore; we need not recognize the existence of such a thing. We need believe in the Holy Spirit only ‘as guide and comforter'—do not the Rationalists do the same? And this means that all the gain the whole world has reaped from the great Augustinian conflict goes out of the window with the rest…It is just as true that the gains of the still earlier debates which occupied the first age of the Church's life, through which we attained to the understanding of the fundamental truths of the Trinity and the Deity of Christ are discarded by this creed also. There is no Trinity in this creed; no Deity of Christ—or of the Holy Spirit.

Finally, Dr. Horton offers some reflections on the state of evangelicalism today:

Today, some of the ill fruit of pietism and revivalism live on. Many take it for granted that those who are most concerned about doctrine are least interested in reaching the lost (or, as they are now called, the "unchurched"). Evangelicals are frequently challenged to choose between being traditional or missional, two camps which are typically described with nothing more than caricatures. Where the earlier evangelical consensus coalesced simultaneously around getting the gospel right and getting it out, increasingly today the coalition is defined by its style ("contemporary" versus "traditional"), its politics ("compassionate conservatism" or the more recent rediscovery of revivalism's progressivist roots), and its rock star leaders, rather than for its convictions about God, humanity, sin, salvation, the purpose of history, and the last judgment.

I realize that not all such "creeds" today are as minimalistic as the one evaluated by Warfield. Nor has American Christianity been without its own defenders of the faith. In its statement of faith the National Association of Evangelicals affirms the Trinity, the deity of Christ, "the vicarious and atoning death through His shed blood," and the necessity of a supernatural rebirth. However, there is no mention of justification—the article of a standing or falling church—and the only conviction concerning the church is belief in "the spiritual unity of believers in the Lord Jesus Christ." Baptism and the Supper are not even mentioned.

Read the entire article HERE.

The weather outside is frightful

"An Awfully Freakish-Sounding Story"

You can be sure that if we remove the offense from the Gospel then what we will lose is the Gospel itself. Let us not, in our attempts to bring the Gospel to our culture, present a positive but ultimately powerless message to those whose greatest need is the crucified and risen Savior.

From Russel Moore:

Often at the root of so much Christian “engagement” with pop culture lies an embarrassment about the oddity of the gospel. Even Christians feel that other people won’t resonate with this strange biblical world of talking snakes, parting seas, floating axe-heads, virgin conceptions, and emptied graves. It is easier to meet them “where they’re at,” by putting in a Gospel According to Andy Griffith DVD (for the less hip among us) or by growing a soul-patch and quoting Coldplay at the fair-trade coffeehouse (for the more hip among us).

Knowing Andy Griffith episodes or Coldplay lyrics might be important avenues for talking about kingdom matters, but let’s not kid ourselves. We connect with sinners in the same way Christians always have: by telling an awfully freakish-sounding story about a man who was dead, and isn’t anymore, but whom we’ll all meet face-to-face in judgment.

"I am not ashamed of the Gospel..."

Euan Murray is a Scottish rugby player that has been making a few waves lately for refusing to play on the Sabbath. Murray is a Christian and will not be playing with his team as they face France this Sunday.

The Guardian interviewd Murray.

He suggests that the path many professional sportsmen follow is "rotten". He tries to explain. "All the shiny bubbles," he says, holding out his big hands and shaking his head in sadness. "The money, the possessions, the fame, the great elusive relationship – all bubbles that appear perfectly spherical, all the colours of the rainbow. They're bright and shiny and light as a feather, and you chase them because it's good fun, but the minute you get them they burst and they're empty." He pauses. "I'd had enough of chasing bubbles."

What were the "bubbles"? "The attraction of all the glamour and glitz that society puts up on a pedestal and says is the be all and end all. All the tinsel, you know? The success. There are many ways of measuring success – it could be in popularity, the funniest guy, or the guy with the best scores, it could be money, it could be getting the best-looking girl, lifting the most in the gym, having the best clothes, it could be being the best rugby player in the world." He trails off. "It's not wrong to be funny, or have a great-looking wife. It's not wrong to have money and to want to be the best player in the world, but if that is your idol then that is wrong."

In finding God, he says, Murray was able to change his path. He picks up a mug of tea and a glass of water and holds them out in front of him. "This is the tea, all dirty and horrible, this is me, yeah? That's Jesus," he says, motioning to the water. "Pure. He's taken that filth upon himself and before God he says, 'Punish me for it'. He's been punished and look what he's given me. That perfect goodness in the eyes of God. He's declared me innocent." He swills the dregs of the tea and smiles. Can it be that simple? "I'm ashamed of the things I've done. Of course I am. But I'm thankful I have a saviour. He's saved me from that lifestyle. He's given me a new life."

What I love about Murray's witness is that there is no apologizing or "this works for me" explanations. There are no vague references to God or "the man upstairs." In just a few short statements Murray explains the doctrines of substitutionary atonement and justification. This is not "Jesus will give you your best life now." This is the proclamation of Jesus as Saviour.

Read the entire article HERE.

HT: Martin Downes

"An Atmosphere of Orthodoxy"

Great Post from Martin Downes:

Churches need external and internal defenses against heresies.

1. The external defense comes in the form of clearly worded confessional statements.

These statements need to be comprehensive enough to state the truth with clarity and to safeguard the truth against particular errors. They ought to be as concise as possible in order to serve as useful churchly documents, but not so brief that they fail to express the definite contours of a doctrine.

Those responsible for framing, explaining, and enforcing confessional statements must be aware that, in the history of the church, heresies have often been passed off as orthodox interpretations of biblical and creedal words and phrases.

This is one reason why confessional statements have become more and more elaborate. Time and again it has been necessary to show the clear demarcation between truth and error, or, for this is what it has amounted to, between truth and something that appears to be the truth.

2. The internal defense comes in the form of a Spirit-wrought satisfaction with the truth

Without this internal delight in the truth the external defense is certain to crumble. It is not theological statements that preserve the truth so much as men filled with the Spirit and wisdom, taught by God to follow the pattern of sound words and able to guard the good deposit.

For some churches and denominations the vibrant confessional testimony of their forefathers in the faith became no more than a museum piece, a relic that gave witness to what was once believed before the church moved on with the times. The truth remained the truth, even if you were told to look at it behind a glass case, but long gone was the atmosphere of orthodoxy.

John Owen both expressed and embodied the conviction that an external, objective, truth and an internal, subjective, experiential grasp of that truth was necessary for the survival of orthodoxy:

This I am compelled to say, that unless the Lord, in his infinite mercy, lay an awe upon the hearts of men, to keep them in some captivity to the simplicity and mystery of the gospel who now strive every day to exceed one another in novel opinions and philosophical apprehensions of the things of God, I cannot but fear that this soul-destroying abomination will one day break in as a flood upon us.

(Vindicae Evangelicae, p. 42)

Sunday's Sermon

Sunday's message was part 28 in our current series through Hebrews. It is entitled "I Need You" and is based on Hebrews 10:24-25. You can listen to or download it HERE.

The pastor's public persona and private life...

Thanks to Justin Taylor for posting the following insights from Paul Tripp:

Pastors, these notes from Paul Tripp’s seminar are worth reading carefully and prayerfully:

•The Pastor: Who Do We Think He Is Anyway?
•The Pastor: Not Yet Perfect, Still Under Attack

Here’s one section, on the temptation of a public/private dichotomy in the life of a pastor:

I don’t know if you think about this, but if you live in Western culture, we are used to big borders between your public persona and your private life. By the time you are nine years old you learn that there are things you don’t talk about and must protect. We live in an incredibly individualized culture. We are very used to living in networks of terminally casual relationships. We are very used to living as fundamentally unknown. What that can promote is this disconnect between public ministry and the actual realities of my private life. Not only do those exist, but no one knows they exist because few people know me.

How many people actually know you? How many people are aware of, concerned about, ministering to, not the public guy of leadership, but to the private man? How many people know what kind of relationship you have with your wife? How many people know what kind of dad you are, the condition of your finances, what you do with the rest of your evening when you leave your study, where you go on your computer? How many people in your life actually step over that boundary between public persona and private life?

Would you say that there is any way in your life that the public man is different than the private man? Is there consistency between public confession, public preaching, public calls to godliness and the way you approach your life, or is there incongruity?

God and Cancer

The AP has picked up on Matt Chandler's story. Chandler is the well known pastor of Village Church in Dallas. His recent diagnosis with brain cancer has given him a platform to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus and the sovereign goodness of God in all things.

His theology teaches that all men are wicked, that human beings have offended a loving and sovereign God, and that God saves through Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection — not because people do good deeds. In short, Chandler is a Calvinist, holding to a belief system growing more popular with young evangelicals…

Chandler says learning he had brain cancer was “kind of like getting punched in the gut. You take the shot, you try not to vomit, then you get back to doing what you do, believing what you believe.

“We never felt — still have not felt — betrayed by the Lord or abandoned by the Lord. I can honestly say, we haven’t asked the question, ‘Why?’ or wondered, ‘Why me, why not somebody else?’ We just haven’t gotten to that place. I’m not saying we won’t get there. I’m just saying it hasn’t happened yet.”

Check it out HERE.

Are the Scriptures Sufficient?

Check out this week’s episode of the White Horse Inn. They have been dealing with Galatians. In the most recent episode the hosts address the finality of the Scriptures as God’s Word and the claims to ongoing revelation made by modern neo-Pentecostalists and the Church of Rome. The response to both is essentially the same. The Scripture (the Word) forms the church, the church (community) does not for the Scripture (Word).

"America's Favorite Unopened Text"

In the latest issue of Modern Reformation David Nienhuis addresses the problem of biblical illiteracy among evangelicals. Dr. Nienhuis, a professor at Seattle Pacific University, has had a front row seat to this alarming problem.

In a 2004 Gallup study of over one thousand American teens, nearly 60 percent of those who self-identified as evangelical were not able to correctly identify Cain as the one who said, "Am I my brother's keeper?" and over half could not identify either "Blessed are the poor in spirit" as a quote from the Sermon on the Mount or "the road to Damascus" as the place where Saul/Paul's blinding vision occurred. In each of these questions, evangelical teens fared only slightly better than their non-evangelical counterparts.

These numbers serve to underscore the now widespread recognition that the Bible continues to hold pride of place as "America's favorite unopened text" (to borrow David Gibson's wonderful phrase), even among many Christians. As a professor of New Testament studies at Seattle Pacific University, I know this reality only too well. I often begin my survey of the Christian Scriptures course by asking students to take a short biblical literacy quiz, including questions of the sort mentioned above. The vast majority of my students--around 95 percent of them--are Christians, and half of them typically report that they currently attend nondenominational evangelical churches. Yet the class as a whole consistently averages a score of just over 50 percent, a failing grade. In the most recent survey, only half were able to identify which biblical book begins with the line, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Barely more than half knew where to turn in the Bible to read about the first Passover. Most revealing in my mind is the fact that my students are generally unable to sequence major stories and events from the biblical metanarrative. Only 23 percent were able to order four key events from Israel's history (Israelites enter the promised land; David is made king; Israel is divided in two; and the people of Judah go into exile), and only 32 percent were able to sequence four similarly important events from the New Testament (Jesus was baptized; Peter denies Jesus; the Spirit descends at Pentecost; and John has a vision on the island of Patmos). These students may know isolated Bible trivia (84 percent knew, for instance, that Jesus was born in Bethlehem), but their struggle to locate key stories, and their general inability to place those stories in the Bible's larger plotline, betrays a serious lack of intimacy with the text--even though a full 86 percent of them identified the Bible as their primary source for knowledge about God and faith.

Dr. Nienhuis correctly draws a connection between American evangelicalism's tortured relationship with the Bible and theology to the so-called Second Great Awakening and the rise of revivalism.

Indeed, a good bit of the blame for the existing crisis has to fall at the feet of historic American evangelicalism itself. In his book Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--and Doesn't, Stephen Prothero has drawn our attention to various religious shifts that took place as a result of the evangelistic Second Great Awakening that shook American culture in the first half of the nineteenth century, key characteristics of which continue to typify contemporary evangelical attitudes. For instance, there was a shift from learning to feeling, as revivalists of the period emphasized a heartfelt and unmediated experience of Jesus himself over religious education. While this strategy resulted in increased conversions and the creation of numerous popular nondenominational voluntary associations, it also had the effect of requiring Christians to agree to disagree when it came to doctrinal matters. There was a corresponding shift from the Bible to Jesus, as more and more Christians came to believe that the key test of Christian faithfulness was not the affirmation of a creed or catechism, or knowledge of the biblical text, but the capacity to claim an emotional relationship with what Prothero calls "an astonishingly malleable Jesus--an American Jesus buffeted here and there by the shifting winds of the nation's social and cultural preoccupations."

The most important shift, according to Prothero, was the shift from theology to morality. The nondenominationalist trend among Protestants tended to avoid doctrinal conflicts by searching for agreements in the moral realm. Christian socialists, such as Charles Sheldon, taught us to ask not "What does the Bible say?" but "What would Jesus do?" Advocates of the Social Gospel, such as Walter Rauschenbusch, taught that it was more important to care for the poor than to memorize the Apostles' Creed.

Christians schooled in this rather anti-intellectual, common-denominator evangelistic approach to faith responded to the later twentieth-century decline in church attendance by looking not to more substantial catechesis but to business and consumer models to provide strategies for growth. By now we're all familiar with the story: increasing attendance by means of niche marketing led church leaders to frame the content of their sermons and liturgies according to the self-reported perceived needs of potential "seekers" shaped by the logic of consumerism. Now many American consumer-congregants have come to expect their churches to function as communities of goods and services that provide care and comfort without the kind of challenge and discipline required for authentic Christian formation to take place.

Nienhuis continues with a helpful critique of certain models of Bible teaching and concludes with some suggestions for leading Christians into substantive biblical literacy.

So what then shall we do? What is biblical literacy? Coming to an agreed-upon definition is itself part of the problem. I think all would agree that, at base, it involves a more detailed understanding of the Bible's actual content. This requires: (1) schooling in the substance of the entire biblical story in all its literary diversity (not just an assortment of those verses deemed doctrinally relevant); (2) training in the particular "orienteering" skills required to plot that narrative through the actual texts and canonical units of the Bible; and (3) instruction in the complex theological task of interpreting Scripture in light of the tradition of the church and the experience of the saints. The survey courses we teach at SPU seek to do these very things. But in the end we want to do more than fill believing heads with objective knowledge about the Bible; we want to empower our whole community--students, faculty, and staff--to buck the cultural trends and take up the spiritual discipline of reading Scripture. It is not enough for a Christian university to function as an outpost of the academy; it must also take up the task of serving the church by becoming an abbey for spiritual growth and an apostolate for cultural change. Through our newly established Center for Biblical and Theological Education, we are working to create a reading program--a lectionary of sorts--that will contribute to the formation of readers who come to cherish a relationship not with the "astonishingly malleable Jesus" of American culture, but with the particular God whose story is related in the Bible and celebrated in the Christian church. We want to create a community ethos of habitual, orderly, communal ingestion of the revelatory text. We do so in the hope that the Spirit of God will transform readers into hearers who know what it is to abide before the mirror of the Word long enough to become enscripturated doers; that is, people of faith who are adept at interpreting their individual stories and those of their culture through the grand story of God as it is made known in the Bible.

Read the entire article HERE.