Gallantly riding in from the White Horse Inn, our guest, Michael Horton -- author and fellow podcaster -- shares his thoughts on reformed theology and how he came upon it garbed in silk and laden with puka shells. Join the usual Spin Team as they discuss some of the nuts and bolts of the reformed faith, ponder how to "get the Gospel right" and discover Dr. James Boice's fascinating role in Horton's 'journey' to reformed theology.
You can watch the full 1 hour and 15 minute discussion here, with Michael Horton, Stephen Meyer, R.C. Sproul Jr., and Del Tackett joining R.C. Sproul to answer questions about the Christian mind, science, old and new earth, and more.
For those interested in these questions, especially from a Reformed perspective, I would recommend reading the PCA Study Committee Report on Creation (2000), where a number of PCA elders from various persuasions on these issues studied and debated these issues in order to produce this report. It is worth reading simply for the definitions, and also for the way in which they seek to describe the strengths of, and objections to, the various orthodox positions.
Much of the ministry to teenagers in America needs an overhaul – not because churches fail to attract significant numbers of young people, but because so much of those efforts are not creating a sustainable faith beyond high school. There are certainly effective youth ministries across the country, but the levels of disengagement among twentysomethings suggest that youth ministry fails too often at discipleship and faith formation. A new standard for viable youth ministry should be – not the number of attenders, the sophistication of the events, or the ‘cool’ factor of the youth group – but whether teens have the commitment, passion and resources to pursue Christ intentionally and whole- heartedly after they leave the youth ministry nest...
Youth ministry is about 150 years old. Arising at first as a way of reaching out to troubled teens especially in highly industrialized urban centers, parachurch ministries like the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) sought to provide safe activities and education in basic reading along with evangelism. Throughout the nineteenth century, parachurch organizations mushroomed. Attempting to create a Protestant Empire that transcended confessional differences, the Bible societies and Sunday School movement increasingly supplanted the ordinary structures, resources, and content of particular church traditions. According to the movement’s leaders, it’s what all evangelicals profess that matters, not what distinguishes Lutherans, Reformed, Baptists, and other denominations. Of course, there had always been catechism instruction for the young and new Christians. Now, however, Sunday school increasingly isolated the younger generations not only from the older but also from the wider confessional tradition to which they belonged. The Sunday school curriculum shared by all Protestant youths, not the catechism, shaped faith and practice. The “youth group” emerged as its own “church-within-a-church,” distinct from the public ministry and worship.
And so it has become increasingly easy for one to go from the nursery to children’s church to youth group and on to college ministry without having actually belonged to the local church. Young people may still drive with their family to the church campus, but from the parking lot they scatter to their own target-marketed groups. For many, the church is more a cafeteria of ministry offerings than a communion of saints. So is it really surprising that a good local church doesn’t figure into things when deciding upon a college and many don’t even join one because, after all, they have their campus ministry? I know of some instances, in fact, of such groups holding their meetings during the regular time of Sunday services.
From an article entitled The God-Centered Gospel by Michael Horton in the latest edition of Tabletalk Magazine: It’s terrific to see so many younger Christians excited about being “God-centered.” However, Islam and Orthodox Judaism claim to be “Godcentered,” too. The Christian faith is distinguished by its claim that God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and we know this from Scripture, preeminently in the Son’s entrance into a fallen world in our own flesh. We dare not approach “God” in His blinding majesty apart from Christ our Mediator. Apart from Christ, the Father is our Judge, and His glory is the worst thing we could ever encounter. That’s not because the Father is less loving than the Son, but because we are sinners. And we can say our “amen” to the Son only because of the Spirit who indwells us.Read the whole article HERE.
A Trinitarian understanding of the gospel clears up a lot of popular misunderstandings. For example, it challenges presentations of the gospel that make it sound as if a wrathful Father took out His anger toward us on His passive Son. On the contrary, the Father “so loved the world, that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16). It was the Father who chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4). And as for the Son, He was hardly a passive victim; He gave Himself up for His people. Jesus, “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2; see Isa. 53). He was a willing sacrifice: “No one takes [my life] from me,” He said. “I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again” (John 4:34; 10:11, 18; see also Matt. 16:23; Luke 9:51; Heb 10:5–10). He went to the cross knowing that His suffering would lead to glory not only for Him but for His people. In spite of His grief, He determined, “Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?” (John 18:11). The cross itself was far from a joy, but He endured it for the joy that lay beyond it. He had embraced the cross in eternity.
Wherever God’s sovereignty in predestination is strongly defended apart from such a covenantal framework, the concrete revelation of our election in Christ according to the gospel’s promise is often surrendered to theoretical debates and endless speculation on God’s hidden counsels. It is dangerous to talk about the glory and sovereignty of God unless the God we have in mind is the Trinity, to whom we have access only in the Son as He is revealed in the gospel.
“Sacrifice and offering you do not desire, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required; Then I said, ‘Here I am; in the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart’” (Ps 40:6-8, emphasis added; cf Ps 51:16). Mediating God’s dispute with his people, the prophets repeat the psalmist’s refrain against those who dare to bring their sacrifices while violating his covenant (Hos 6:6; Am 4:4; Mal 1:8). Jesus takes up the theme as well (Mt 9:13). Obedience is better than sacrifice, because thanksgiving is even greater than forgiveness.
Far from downplaying the importance of the sacrifices, the psalmist is pointing to Christ, the one who is not only a guilt offering, but actually renders at last the thank-offering: the covenantal faithfulness that humanity in Adam has failed to yield. That is how the writer to the Hebrews interprets it. No New Testament writer is more eager to highlight the significance of Christ’s sacrifice of atonement—the guilt offering. Yet his point (consistent with the psalmist’s), is that something greater is needed. Not only is a greater guilt-offering required, since the old covenant sacrifices could never take away sins but only cover them over in typological anticipation of Christ; something more than a guilt-offering itself is envisioned. The writer points out that the burnt offering always reminded worshippers, as well as God, of their guilt. Although it made temporary provision, it always highlighted the negative breach that required satisfaction. In other words, we might say, it never transcended the debt-economy. If these sacrifices would have actually remitted all of their guilt for the course of their entire lives, the worshiper would not have to return home after the Day of Atonement still burdened by “any consciousness of sin” (Heb 10:2). “But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sin year after year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (v 4).
This, I maintain, is what the psalmist had in mind when he recognized the weakness of the old covenant sacrificial system. Forgiveness is good, but obedience is better. God delights in forgiving debts, but his deepest joy—in fact, his requirement—is the faithful love and obedience of the covenant servant whom he created in his own image, with the mission of entering into the sabbath day with the whole creation in toe. The old covenant sacrifices did not absolve transgressors of guilt once and for all, so their negative function (forgiveness) was temporary, and furthermore, such sacrifices could not offer to God the positive obedience (justification) that God required of his covenant partner.
In Christ, however, both types of sacrifices converge: not only is he the only qualified substitute for the guilt of sinners; he is the only one capable of rendering the life of thankful obedience in which God truly delights.
Read the entire article HERE.When it comes to interpreting Christ's saving work, everything turns on our view of God's character and the seriousness of sin. God's law is not merely a reflection of his will but of his moral nature. God cannot relax his holy will or righteous demands. Death is not merely an example of his displeasure or an arbitrary punishment. Rather, it is the legal sentence for violating his covenant (Ezek 18:4; Rom 6:23).
Losing Substitution Yale theologian George Lindbeck says that at least in practice, Abelard's view of salvation by following Christ's example (and the cross as the demonstration of God's love that motivates our repentance) now seems to have edged out any notion of an objective, substitutionary atonement. "The atonement is not high on the contemporary agendas of either Catholics or Protestants," Lindbeck surmises. "More specifically, the penal-substitutionary versions...that have been dominant on the popular level for hundreds of years are disappearing."
This situation is as true for evangelicals as for liberal Protestants, he observes. This is because justification through faith alone (sola fide) makes little sense in a system that makes central our subjective conversion (understood in synergistic terms as cooperation with grace), rather than the objective work of Christ. "Our increasingly feel-good therapeutic culture is antithetical to talk of the cross" and our "consumerist society" has made the doctrine a pariah...Protestant liberalism repeated the Socinian arguments against any judicial concept of the cross. "And so it came about," notes Colin Gunton, "that various forms of exemplarism took the field, under the impulses provided by the rational criticism of traditional theologies by Kant, Schleiermacher, and Hegel. In place of an act of God centered in a historic life and death, towards the otherwise helpless, the emphasis came to be upon those who by appropriate action could help themselves."
At least implicitly combining various subjective theories already mentioned, this trajectory is especially represented in the work of Jürgen Moltmann and liberation theology but also in much of the popular preaching and teaching in contemporary evangelicalism. In much of evangelicalism today, the emphasis falls on the question "What Would Jesus Do?" rather than "What Has Jesus Done?" Jesus provides the model for us to imitate for personal or social transformation. Especially in some contemporary Anabaptist and feminist theologies, the theme of God's wrath against sinners is regarded as a form of violence that legitimizes human revenge. Rather than see Christ's work as bearing a sentence that we deserved, it is seen as moral empowerment for our just praxis (good works) in transforming the world.
I’ve argued elsewhere that evangelicalism is like the village green in older parts of the country, especially New England. There may be two or three churches on the grounds, but the green itself is a wide open space where people from those churches can spill out in conversation and cooperation. Evangelicalism is not a church, though it often acts like one. It isn’t the big tent (more appropriate, given the history) that encompasses all of the churches on the green. It’s just…, well, the green. When it tries to adjudicate cases of faith and practice through conferences, press releases, and blogs, evangelicalism (including Calvinistic versions) exhibits its movement mentality.
My analogy echoes C. S. Lewis’s “mere Christianity”: a hallway in a large house where believers mix and mingle, often opening the door as non-Christians knock. But, as Lewis insisted, it’s in the rooms where people actually live as a family—where they sleep, are warmed by the fire, fed and clothed, and grow. We are formed in the family life of Christ’s body by particular churches, with their distinct confessions and practices. You can’t live in the hallway.
I’m not against evangelicalism as a village green or hallway. In fact, I think it’s a wonderful meeting place. However, when it acts like a church, much less replaces the church, I get nervous.
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."
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.
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.
To be a Christian – in the West, at least, since the fifth or sixth century or so – has required one to believe that the Bible presents one very specific story line, a story line by which we assess all of history, all of human experience, all of our own experience. Most of us know the story line implicitly, subconsciously, even though it has never been made explicit for us. We begin our quest for a new kind of Christian faith by questioning this story line.
-Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith (forthcoming February 9, 2010)
Does our worship focus on the historical drama of the Triune God? Are we being constantly directed outside of our inner experience and our own felt needs to the real newsmaker in history? Is our corporate or private worship centered on “human will or exertion” or “on God, who has mercy” (Romans 9:16)? Is the main point trying to see how God fits into our existing plotline or to hear God tell us how we fit into his unfolding drama of redemption? Like the Old Testament feasts, the great events celebrated by Christians have to do with God’s mighty acts: the Son becoming flesh (Christmas), the crucifixion (Good Friday) and resurrection (Easter), Christ’s exaltation to the right of the Father (Ascension Day), and the sending of the Spirit (Pentecost). There is no room in the Christian calendar for celebrating our own works.
-Michael Horton, The Gospel Driven Life: Being Good News People in a Bad News WorldHT: John Starke
In a word, what encourages you most about what you see in the church today?
The godly lust of many young people for God's grace and glory.
In one sentence, what does it mean to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever?
It means that we are we were created to be, that as Augustine said, God made us for Himself, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in Him--it means that God's glory and our happiness are not antithetical, but our real happiness is found in God.
Considering Bishop N.T. Wright's doctrine of justification, do you believe he is teaching another gospel?
J.I. Packer has a great line: Tom Wright foregrounds what the Bible backgrounds, and backgrounds what the Bible foregrounds--but Wright does more than that; he denies a crucial component of justification, namely imputation. So, in answer to your question, yes--in denying imputation, Wright is preaching another gospel.
There's a kind of fundamentalist approach to Scripture that Tom Wright seems to want to confront. And while he does a wonderful job of highlighting the fact that justification in Paul's writings is understood within a broader redemptive-historical framework, something not all presentations and defenses of justification do, he is not confronting historic Reformed theology. Reformed theology always has understood justification within a broader redemptive-historical framework. If he were to read the Reformers and more recent Reformed writers, such as Geerhardus Vos and Herman Ridderbos, he would clearly see that justification is placed in its proper context with the believer's union with Christ and within the whole history of redemption. Reformed writers speak of Paul's treatment of justification being inseparable from the inclusion of the Gentiles. Then, when you read Tom Wright he makes it seem as if he's the first person who saw these emphases of Paul, and that everyone else before him sort of taught the four spiritual laws. It's an incredibly naïve view...
What is most central to your life and ministry?
The ministry of the Word--the public preaching of the Word is the center. Out of that cascades the ministry of parents in the home, teaching the Scriptures in the home, and the time that individual believers spend in the Word. I think that all of those disciplines are important: the discipline of regular church attendance, attendance to the ordinary means of grace--listening to God speak to us through His Word--each of these is essential, and we must bring the Word into the home. It's essential that we recover the practice of catechism--family catechism, or family worship, whatever you want to call it--a time in the morning and the evening, or at least during one time in the day where parents are training their children in the Scriptures. At our church, for example, we have a weekly catechism question that the children learn at different grade levels, appropriate to their grade levels. At church and throughout the week the children memorize the catechism question and answer and the pertinent Scripture references in family worship. There's an integration of what's happening at home and what's happening at church, and the elders ask when they come for their visits: "Are you teaching the children the Scriptures in the catechism in the home?" That's part of their vows they make as parents and as church members.
And while this is all central, it is also the hardest to maintain, especially personally it's hardest for me to make time daily for my own Bible reading and prayer because every day in my teaching and writing I am reading the Bible. This is our job. And the danger is that it becomes strictly a job. The danger is that we're coming to the Scriptures to mine it in order to make a meal for others while we ourselves might be starving. It's easy for a lot of people who handle the Word regularly as a calling to sort of lose the sanctity of the Word, to lose a sense of appreciation and wonder for that Word, not only for others, but for themselves. So that's what I struggle with most--not being in the Word daily for myself and spending extended periods of time in prayer just for my own edification, even though I'm studying the Word daily.
What is at the core of the temptation to practice a Christless Christianity?
When the emphasis becomes human-centered rather than God-centered. In more conservative contexts, you hear it as exhortation: "These are God's commandments. The culture is slipping away from us. We have to recover it, and you play a role. Is your life matching up to what God calls us to?" Of course there is a place for that, but it seems to be the dominant emphasis.
Then there is the therapeutic approach: "You can be happier if you follow God's principles." All of this is said with a smile, but it's still imperative. It's still about techniques and principles for you to follow in order to have your best life now.
In both cases, it's law rather than gospel. I don't even know when I walk into a church that says it's Bible-believing that I'm actually going to hear an exposition of Scripture with Christ at the center, or whether I'm going to hear about how I should "dare to be a Daniel." The question is not whether we have imperatives in Scripture. The question is whether the imperatives are all we are getting, because people assume we already know the gospel—and we don't.
But aren't many churches doing good preaching about how to improve your marriage, transform your life, and serve the poor?
The question is whether this is the Good News. There is nothing wrong with law, but law isn't gospel. The gospel isn't "Follow Jesus' example" or "Transform your life" or "How to raise good children." The gospel is: Jesus Christ came to save sinners—even bad parents, even lousy followers of Jesus, which we all are on our best days. All of the emphasis falls on "What would Jesus do?" rather than "What has Jesus done?"
Why is this such a temptation for the church?
It's our default setting. No one has to be taught to trust in themselves. No one has to be taught that what you experience inside yourself is more authoritative than what comes to you externally, even if it comes from God. Since the Fall, it has been part of our character to look within ourselves. And it is part of our inherent Pelagianism to think we can save ourselves by following the right instructions.
In such a therapeutic, pragmatic, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps society as ours, the message of God having to do all the work in saving us comes as an offensive shot at our egos. In this culture, religion is all about being good, about the horizontal, about loving God and neighbor. All of that is the fruit of the gospel. The gospel has nothing to do with what I do. The gospel is entirely a message about what someone else has done not only for me but also for the renewal of the whole creation.
For people who are in churches where Christ is faithfully preached, what’s the take-away? What do you want them to do with the information you present?
First of all, to fall down on their knees in gratitude for being in churches where Christ and Him crucified is the rallying cry, where that message is never taken for granted, where it’s always explored from Genesis through Revelation.
But I’m also hearing from a lot of people—pastors, for example, in very sound churches—who have said: “It’s helpful to know why I hear sermons preached with a non-Christo-centric focus. It helps to explain why sometimes my own preaching isn’t as Christ-focused as it could be.”
We need to be asking the question—when it comes to outreach, evangelism, worship, the songs we sing, the visitation we do, even diaconal ministries: How is Christ being delivered to sinners—even lifelong Christian sinners—in this time and place?
Asking that question, I think, is critical.
And so, we can’t envision a sermon that wouldn’t
be predicated on some facet of the gospel?
Right. Which means our preaching needs to be expository. If, as Jesus said, all the Scriptures proclaim Him, then we should be looking for Christ in every passage. We should expect that He’ll be placarded before us.
It makes a big difference if we go to the Bible looking for tips or for “our best life now” or for advice on child rearing, marriage, success in life … . Or, if we go to find Jesus Christ. If we go to find Christ, who is the wisdom of God, then all the wisdom on other matters—marriage, parenting, covenantal life—it finds its proper coordinates in Him.
