Category Archives: Reforming

Apologetics, Culture, Current Events, Law and Faith, Politics, Prayer, Reforming, Theology

Honor the President

I would like to point everyone to some very good posts that came out yesterday on election day regarding how we, as Christians, are to respond to the new President. Justin Taylor says:

With Ohio being called for Senator Obama, it appears that he will be our next President.

It’s very easy to forget–especially for those of us who are on the younger side–that it was only a little over 40 years ago that there were Jim Crow laws in the US. Just a generation ago, many African Americans were segregated from whites in public schools, transportation, restrooms, and restaurants.

Tonight, the United States has elected a biracial man to serve as its leader.

It would be an understatement to call this a watershed cultural moment in our country’s history.

No matter who you voted for–or whether you voted at all–it’s important to remember that, as President, Barack Obama will have God-given authority to govern us, and that we should view him as a servant of God (Rom. 13:1, 4) to whom we should be subject (Rom. 13:1, 5; 1 Pet. 2:13-14).

There are many qualifications to add to these exhortations–for example, see this excellent post by John Piper–but it’s still important to remember that these are requirements for all Bible-believing Christians.

John Piper Says:

How does the Bible instruct us to pray for “all who are in high positions”? It says,

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (1Timothy 2:1-4).

A few observations:

1. Giving thanks “for kings” is hard when they are evil.

And, as Calvin said on this passage, “All the magistrates of that time were sworn enemies of Christ.” This shows us that anarchy is a horrible alternative to almost any ruler.

We should give thanks for rulers because “non-rule” would unleash on us utterly unbridled evil with no recourse whatever.

Again Calvin: “Unless they restrained the boldness of wicked men, the whole world would be full of robberies and murders.” The better we understand the seething evil of the human heart that is ready to break out where there is no restraint, the more thankful we will be for government.

2. The effect we pray for is “that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly, and dignified in every way.”

Dignified means “serious and reverent,” not stuffy. I suspect what Paul means is not that we can’t live godly and serious lives during times of anarchy. We can. I suspect he means that peaceful and quiet lives, which are the opposite of anarchy, are often wasted in ungodly and frivolous actions.

So he is praying for a government that would give peace and quiet (not anarchy), and that Christians would not fritter away their peaceful lives with the world, but would be radically godly and serious about the lost condition of the world and how to change it.

3. Using our peace for radical godliness and serious action will lead to more effective evangelism and world missions.

This last observation is confirmed by the hoped-for outcome Paul mentions. Paul says that the reason God delights in such peaceful, Godward, serious action is that he “desires all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”

More people will be saved if our government restrains the horrors of anarchy, and if Christians use this peace not to waste their lives on endless entertainment, but seriously give their lives to making God known.

Apologetics, History, New Testament Theology, Reforming, Systematic Theology, Theology, Trinity

The Impassibility of God

If you have never studied this doctrine of the divine impassibility, I encourage you to read the following history by Dr. Robert Culver. It is very good and thought provoking:

THE IMPASSIBILITY OF GOD

Here is an important excerpt from the paper:

Impassibility comes into our language as translation of the Greek word apatheia in the writings of Church fathers, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Apatheia, despite the obvious etymological connection with apathy and apathetic in modern English, (Pelikan) started out as meaning “the state of an apathes” (alpha privative, plus pathos) without pathos or suffering” (Liddell and Scott Lexicon). Among the Greek Fathers pathos or passion was the right word for the suffering of Christ, as it still is. So in theology to be impassible means primarily to be incapable of suffering. Early theology affirmed that in heaven our resurrected bodies will be pathes in this sense. The word came to be extended to mean incapable of emotion of any kind and beyond that, apathes (impassible) in important theological discourse meant without sexual desire (Gregory of Nyssa, The Great Catechism, chap. xxxv, “Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series,” edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, 1910, ii, 5, pp. 502-504). As applied to God, incapacity for any emotions sometimes is meant. We will return to this. The twelfth canon of the Second Council of Constantinople (553, Fifth Ecumenical) seems to say Christ on earth was impassible in the sense of “longings (passions, presumably sexual) of the flesh” (Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, trans. R. J. Deferrari, Hersler Book Co., 1954, 224).

In this paper I am interested mainly in the question of whether or not the divine nature is capable of emotion, including, in a secondary way, the experience of suffering.

Ecclesiology, Mp3s, Promotionals, Reforming, Theology

Building Healthy Churches – Conference Audio

This past weekend my church, Concord Baptist, in Chattanooga, TN, hosted a “Building Healthy Churches” Conference by 9 Marks Ministries. I encourage you to download the audio and listen through all the sessions so that you can help your church become a healthy, Gospel-centered church.

Here are the links re-posted below from the church web site:

Below is the audio from the 9 Marks conference held at Concord on October 17-18, 2008. At this conference, many church issues were examined through the light of scripture to help us discern this question: “What does a healthy church look like?”

[Right click and select “save as” to download them to your computer.]

  1. Session 1 – A Theological Vision :
    Churches that Display God’s Glory
    Matt Schmucker
  2. Session 2 – Preaching & Biblical Theology
    Michael Lawrence
  3. First Evening Q&A
    Michael Lawrence and Mark Dever
  4. Session 3 – Gospel, Conversion & Evangelism
    Mark Dever
  5. Session 4 – Membership, Discipline, and Discipleship
    Greg Gilbert
  6. Session 5 – Leadership, Membership, Discipline, and Discipline
    Mark Dever
  7. Session 6 – Covenanting Together
    Matt Schmucker
  8. Closing Session Q&A
Law and Faith, Lectures, Reforming, Theology

The Law and Laws: A Biblical Overview

The above article is something worth reading if you are interested in understanding the use of the Law in Scripture and how it applies to us today. Here is an excerpt:

I. Introduction

Paul says in Romans 7:14 that “the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.” Our attitude towards God’s law ought to mimic the Apostle Paul’s positive attitude. A very important interpretive principle should guide and direct our understanding and our application of God’s law to our lives and the lives of others, a principle that is often neglected or dismissed in this day and age: the principle of periodicity.

The Princeton scholar, Geerhardus Vos, summed this up well at the beginning of his book on Biblical Theology by stating:

  • The method of Biblical Theology is in the main determined by the principle of historic progression. Hence the division of the course of revelation into certain periods. Whatever may be the modern tendency towards eliminating the principle of periodicity from historical science, it remains certain that God in the unfolding of revelation has regularly employed this principle. From this it follows that the periods should not be determined at random, or according to subjective preference, but in strict agreement with the lines of cleavage drawn by revelation itself. The Bible is, as it were, conscious of its own organism; it feels, what we cannot always say of ourselves, its own anatomy. The principle of successive Berith-makings (Covenant-makings), as marking the introduction of new periods, plays a large role in this, and should be carefully heeded.

Therefore, one of the foundational principles of correctly interpreting the Scriptures is that one respects and listens to the covenantal context of any given passage in Scripture when the meaning is being interpreted and application is made. To better understand the law, one must apply the principle of periodicity in studying the function of the law in the pre-fall, post-fall, and New Testament eras.

II. The Principle of Periodicity and the Pre-Fall era

First, in the Garden of Eden, Adam was under a covenant of works: there was law. The Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) states, “God gave to Adam a law, as a covenant of works, by which He bound him and all his posterity, to personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience . . .” (19.1). In that garden the tree of life and the testing tree of the knowledge of good and evil contained the seeds of the gospel. The tree of life was essentially a symbol of the best life that awaited Adam if he were to pass his probation in that garden. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil signified the law because it was given as a “trial of obedience and by sin (no less than that) [was] made the occasion of death and the minister of condemnation.”

Recognizing the role and application of the law as conditioned by the covenantal context is especially important in the differences evidenced between the pre-fall situation and that situation following the fall of mankind. For example, works play a fundamentally different role in the pre-fall covenant, a covenant of works, than they do in the post-fall covenantal period, in the covenant of grace. In the pre-fall covenant, works function as a condition of acquiring life; in the post-fall covenant they follow the act of justification and demonstrate that one has life in the Son.

Let’s now turn our attention to the periods after the fall…

[Continue Reading]

Conferences and Seminars, Lectures, Promotionals, Reforming, Theology, Videos

2008 National Desiring God Conference

The Power of Words and the Wonder of God

All the video from the conference is now online:

You can also read Dr. Piper’s message here. Abraham Piper provides this summary for us:

The way we talk can undercut the cross. This much is clear in 1 Corinthians (1:17; 2:1). But does all eloquence minimize the gospel? Does the pursuit of verbal impact necessarily preempt the power of Christ?

Both George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards were eloquent, each in his own way. Did this “empty the cross of its power”? More than that, the Bible itself contains many portions that are nothing less than eloquent. How do we make sense of this?

A pointer is found in the context of 1 Corinthians. Here Paul makes clear that there is a kind of eloquence that exalts self and therefore cripples the cross. But this isn’t the only brand of eloquence. There’s another kind, a distinctly Christian eloquence, that humbles self and exalts Christ.

Our eloquence will never be the determining factor in causing someone to believe the gospel, but it still makes a difference. We can hope for at least 5 benefits from Christian eloquence:

  1. keeping interest
  2. gaining sympathy
  3. awakening sensitivity
  4. speaking memorably
  5. increasing power

[HT: Abraham Piper]

Anglicanism, Book Reviews, Books, Covenant Theology, Current Events, Ecclesiology, Eschatology, Historical Jesus Debate, New Testament Theology, Promotionals, Reforming, Systematic Theology, Theology

The N.T. Wright Project

Some students from Princton Theological Seminary have started a research project for the purpose of studying the foundational works of theology by N.T. Wright. Here is their description of the project:

Rarely in the course of our seminary study do we have the opportunity to study theologians whose work is currently transforming the life of the church. Tom Wright is one such theologian, and a small group of us at Princeton Theological Seminary, together with one of our professors, Ross Wagner, have decided to spend this semester immersed in Wright’s work. We hope to carefully read some of his most foundational writings and to engage each other through this blog on the issues and ideas which emerge from this study. From time to time we will have guest authors from a wide spectrum contribute, and we also invite those of you in church, parachurch, or seminary communities to read and respond to our blog posts as a way of keeping this project closely grounded in the church today. Welcome and enjoy!

I encourage everyone to keep up with this blog, especially if you don’t have the ability to read Bishop Wright’s works in full by yourself. These students will be summarizing and analysing and discussing much of what he has written and I think we will all benefit from their work. May God bless this project!

Covenant Theology, Ecclesiology, Hebrew, History, Languages, OT Hebrew, Reforming, Theology

LORD, Language, & Liturgy

Pastor Jeff Meyers, over at Corrigenda Denuo, has posted three very helpful articles (12 points in all) on the topic of the Hebrew name for God, Yahweh. This is a very interesting subject to me and I encourage you all to read it and consider what he has to say about it. I would tend to agree that there is no reason we should keep translating the word “LORD” or “Lord” when that is not specifically what the name means. Yahweh is not simply a title, as “Lord” or “LORD” is. It is God’s covenant name and we need to recognize that when we study, teach, and worship the Triune God with that name.

Here are the articles:

Lord, Language, & Liturgy – Part I
Lord, Language, & Liturgy – Part II
Lord, Language, & Liturgy – Part III

Here is a good excerpt regarding what I mentioned above:

1. Yahweh was given to Israel as God’s “memorial name” (Exod. 3:15). This personal name of God was revealed to Israel so that they might use it in prayer and thus remind God of his covenant so he would act for them. God’s personal name for Israel was not “Lord” but “Yahweh.” As Psalm 20 says, “Some trust in chariots and some in horses but we will memorialize the name of Yahweh our God.” The name of the God of Israel was not “Lord” or “LORD” but Yahweh. They were to call on God to remember (that’s what “memorialize” means) his covenant by using the name he gave them for that purpose. I should say here also that all the gnostic theologizing about what this name really “means” is a distraction. Yahweh is not a “term” that refers to something else, like God’s infinite majesty or whatever. Yahweh is a concrete name given to the Israelites to use, to call out in prayer and praise in their worship.

2. “Lord” is a title not a name. You can make the word “Lord” into all caps, italicize it, bold it, or whatever, but that doesn’t change the fact that it means “Master” or “Sir” and is not a name, certainly not God’s revealed personal name. So when one translates passages like “Let them praise the name of Yahweh” as “Let them praise the name of the LORD” you muck up the meaning badly. In fact, this is not really a translation at all but an altering of the text for some external purpose. God’s revealed name in the Hebrew Scriptures is not “Lord” or “LORD” but Yahweh.

3. The abbreviation YAH is not replaced with LORD in our English translations. We still say and sing “hallelujah,” which means “praise Yah[weh].” Why don’t we sing “hallelu-LORD”? Silly, you say? Just as silly as replacing YHWH with Lord. If saying the whole name is so spiritually hazardous, why isn’t saying part of the name just as dangerous? But YAH was not even replaced by superstitious Jews who refused to say the whole name for fear of judgment. In addition to Hallelujah we still have all the proper names that include Yahweh in them, like Joshua (Heb: Yah-shua – “Yahweh saves”). The best we can say is this is inconsistent; the worst is that it’s evidence of how stupid this superstitious avoidance of the name Yahweh really was and is.

4. Later Jews superstitiously refused to vocalize the name. I’ll get to when this happened in a moment. But the practice of replacing Yahweh with Lord was an act of rebellion, pure and simple. God gave this name for the Jews to use in memorial prayers, Psalms, and worship. Not using it means that they thought they were wiser than God. This is part and parcel with the Pharisaical “fencing of the law.” In order to avoid transgressing the 3rd Word (“taking the name of Yahweh in vain”) the wily Pharisaical Jews decided to just avoid the word altogether. And we want to follow that tradition?

Apologetics, Covenant Theology, New Testament Theology, Reforming, Theology

The Trinitarian Love of God

From John Owen’s Christologia

No small part of the eternal blessedness of the holy God consisteth in the mutual love of the Father and the Son, by the Spirit. As he is the only-begotten of the Father, he is the first, necessary, adequate, complete object of the whole love of the Father. Hence he says of himself, that from eternity he was “by him, as one brought up with him: and was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him,” Proverbs 8:30 – which place was opened before. In him was the ineffable, eternal, unchangeable delight and complacency of the Father, as the full object of his love. The same is expressed in that description of him, John 1:18, “The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father.” His being the only-begotten Son declares his eternal relation unto the person of the Father, of whom he was begotten in the entire communication of the whole divine nature. Hereon he is in the bosom of the Father – in the eternal embraces of his love, as his only-begotten Son. The Father loves, and cannot but love, his own nature and essential image in him.

Herein originally is God love: “For God is love,” 1 John 4:8. This is the fountain and prototype of all love, as being eternal and necessary. All other acts of love are in God but emanations from hence, and effects of it. As he does good because he is good, so he loveth because he is love. He is love eternally and necessarily in this love of the Son; and all other workings of love are but acts of his will, whereby somewhat of it is outwardly expressed. And all love in the creation was introduced from this fountain, to give a shadow and resemblance of it.

Love is that which contemplative men have always almost adored. Many things have they spoken to evince it to be the light, life, lustre and glory of the whole creation. But the original and pattern of it was always hid from the wisest philosophers of old. Something they reached after about God’s love unto himself, with rest and complacency in his own infinite excellencies; but of this ineffable mutual love of the Father and the Son, both in and by that Spirit which proceeds from them both, they had neither apprehension nor conjecture. Yet, as herein does the principal part (if we may so speak) of the blessedness of the holy God consist, so is it the only fountain and prototype of all that is truly called love; – a blessing and glory which the creation had never been made partaker of, but only to express, according to the capacity of their several natures, this infinite and eternal love of God! For God’s love of himself – which is natural and necessary unto the Divine Being – consists in the mutual complacency of the Father and the Son by the Spirit. And it was to express himself, that God made any thing without himself. He made the heavens and the earth to express his being, goodness, and power. He created man “in his own image,” to express his holiness and righteousness; and he implanted love in our natures to express this eternal mutual love of the holy persons of the Trinity. But we must leave it under the veil of infinite incomprehensibleness; though admiration and adoration of it be not without the highest spiritual satisfaction.

Again, he is the peculiar object of the love of the Father, of the love of God, as he is incarnate — as he has taken on him, and has now discharged, the work of mediation, or continues in the discharge of it; that is, the person of Christ, as God-man, is the peculiar object of the divine love of the Father. The person of Christ in his divine nature is the adequate object of that love of the Father which is “ad intra” — a natural necessary act of the divine essence in its distinct personal existence; and the person of Christ as incarnate, as clothed with human nature, is the first and full object of the love of the Father in those acts of it which are “ad extra”, or are towards anything without himself. So he declares himself in the prospect of his future incarnation and work, “Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth,” Isaiah 42:1. The delight of the soul of God, his rest and complacency — which are the great effects of love — are in the Lord Christ, as his elect and servant in the work of mediation. And the testimony hereof he renewed twice from heaven afterwards, Matthew 3:17, “Lo, a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased;” as it is again repeated, Matthew 17:5. All things are disposed to give a due sense unto us of this love of God unto him. The testimony concerning it is twice repeated in the same words from heaven. And the words of it are emphatical unto the utmost of our comprehension: “My Son, my servant, mine elect, my beloved Son, in whom I rest, in whom I delight, and am well pleased.” It is the will of God to leave upon our hearts a sense of this love unto Christ; for his voice came from heaven, not for his sake, who was always filled with a sense of this divine love, but for ours, that we might believe it. This he pleaded as the foundation of all the trust reposed in him, and all the power committed unto him. “The Father loveth the Son, and has given all things into his hand,” John 3:35. “The Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that himself does,” John 5:20. And the sense or due apprehension of it is the foundation of Christian religion. Hence he prays that we may know that God has loved him, John 17:23, 26. In this sense, the person of Christ is the “prooton dektikon” — the first recipient subject of all that divine love which extends itself unto the church. It is all, the whole of it, in the first place fixed upon him, and by and through him is communicated unto the church. Whatever it receives in grace and glory, it is but the streams of this fountain — love unto himself.

[HT: The Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies]

Apologetics, Biography, Calvinism, Denominations, History, Mp3s, Podcasts, Promotionals, Reforming, Theology

J. Gresham Machen’s Response to Modernism

I found this article over at Desiring God recently and thought I would share it. Thankfully, if you don’t have time to read it all, Desiring God is now providing audio recordings of many of their past articles. I encourage you to listen to it in your car or while you work one day. Machen’s work and writings continue to be a strong influence today in the Reformed Protestant tradition and I think you will find this biographical sketch by John Piper a very enjoyable read. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

Here is the audio:

[display_podcast]

Here is an exceprt from the article:

Machen’s Response to Modernism and to Fundamentalism

Machen’s years at Princeton were the two decades which are known for the ongoing mondernist-fundamentalist controversy. We will see Machen’s distinctive response to Modernism if we contrast it with what was known most widely as fundamentalism. In the process of defining his response the meaning of Modernism will become clear.

He was seen as an ally by the fundamentalists; and his ecclesiastical opponents like to make him “guilty” by association with them. But he did not accept the term for himself.

In one sense fundamentalists were simply those who “[singled] out certain great facts and doctrines [i.e., Fundamentals] that had come under particular attack, [and] were concerned to emphasize their truth and to defend them” (see note 18). But there was more attached to the term than that. And Machen didn’t like that. He said,

Do you suppose that I do regret my being called by a term that I greatly dislike, a “Fundamentalist”? Most certainly I do. But in the presence of a great common foe, I have little time to be attacking my brethren who stand with me in defense of the Word of God (see note 19).

What he didn’t like was

1) the absence of historical perspective;
2) the lack of appreciation of scholarship;
3) the substitution of brief, skeletal creeds for the historic confessions;
4) the lack of concern with precise formulation of Christian doctrine;
5) the pietistic, perfectionist tendencies (i.e., hang ups with smoking (see note 20), etc.);
6) one-sided other-worldliness (i.e., a lack of effort to transform culture); and
7) a penchant for futuristic chiliasm (or: pre-millenialism).

Machen was on the other side on all these things. And so “he never spoke of himself as a Fundamentalist” (see note 21).

But none of those issues goes to the heart of why he did not see himself as a Fundamentalist. The issue is deeper and broader and gets at the root of how he fought Modernism. The deepest difference goes back to Machen’s profound indebtedness to Benjamin Warfield who died February 16, 1921. Machen wrote to his mother, “With all his glaring faults he was the greatest man I have ever known” (see note 22).

In 1909 at the 400th anniversary of Jon Calvin’s birth Warfield gave an address that stirred Machen to the depths. Warfield made plea that the Reformed Faith—Calvinism—is not a species of Christian theism along side others, but IS Christianity come to full flower.

Calvinism is not a specific variety of theistic thought, religious experience, [or] evangelical faith; but just the perfect manifestation of these things. The difference between it and other forms of theism, religion, [and] evangelicalism is difference not of kind but of degree … it does not take its position then by the side of other types of things; it takes its place over all else that claims to be these things, as embodying all that they ought to be (see note 23).

So he says Lutheranism is “its sister type of Protestantism” and Arminianism is “its own rebellious daughter” (see note 24). Calvinism’s grasp of the supremacy of God in all of life enabled Machen to see that other forms of evangelicalism were all stages of grasping God which are yet in process of coming ot a full and pure appreciation of his total God-centeredness. (Continue Reading)