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By In Scribblings

Why we need poets and practitioners

My latest substack addresses the need for poets and practitioners in the church:

“The pursuit of theology must be accessible to the people of God without using the complicated language of textbooks and lengthy systematic theologies—except when essential. Most of you will never read through John Calvin’s Institutes or John Frame’s 1219 pages of Systematic Theology unless you are predisposed to reading that type of literature.”

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By In Scribblings

Pride Month and June Victories

We are moving through June merrily. And for the gay manifestos and movements, that has been a terrible thing. Our Christian happiness means the demise of organizations that hate our King. Bud Light, Target, and other nauseating institutions of lesser learning have felt the sting of death in their stock portfolios. And now, Starbucks does not want the sting, so employees are complaining that the green goddess of caffeine no longer supports their LGBTQ+ claims of orthodoxy. Christians move on gayly and merrily through this whole affair.

What does this mean for us? It means that the Church is much more powerful when she harmonizes her prayer meetings and credit payments. It turns out that when moms come together to plan playdates they do not like to see modified linen for aberrations on the racks. It means the Church controls the culture and the world. My seventh thesis on an ecclesial conservatism summarizes: “Ecclesiastical Conservatism does not escape politics but embraces it as an expression of his faith in the world.”

These little victories are astonishing in light of the barrage of externalized impiety among the LGBTQ+ lobby and the overwhelming amount of money poured into these endeavors. But in the end, these organizations still must bow down before the Lord of the Church, and they are still indebted to us for their survival.

The same application goes to ecclesiastical bodies like the SBC and PCA. If my reading is right, there is a trend towards purity, and the incremental task of cleaning things up will take time but is very much worth the calling. The fellas in the courtyard have called the shots too long and set the price tags for our freedom. It’s time to set them free from this conservative bondage and let them form their own band of blind men leading the blind. 

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By In Scribblings

Harry Reeder and Tim Keller, RIP

I was in the PCA for seven years. It was where I did my pastoral internship and was under the care of Presbytery. Some of the wisest and most precious voices in those early days came from fruitful voices in the denomination.

In two days, the PCA lost two of their most esteemed grandfathers. Our Lord took Rev. Dr. Harry Reeder in a car accident, and today, after a long battle with cancer, Rev. Dr. Tim Keller is now with the Lord (1950-2023).

Both men were committed Christians, Presbyterians, and Churchmen. They were faithful to the end. I give thanks to God for these godly statesmen and what they contributed to the Church.

~~~

O Almighty God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, who by a voice from heaven didst proclaim, Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord: Multiply, we beseech thee, to those who rest in Jesus the manifold blessings of thy love, that the good work which thou didst begin in them may be made perfect unto the day of Jesus Christ. And of thy mercy, O heavenly Father, grant that we, who now serve thee on earth, may at last, together with them, be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light; for the sake of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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By In Scribblings, Theology

Podcast: Gary Demar, the Second Coming, and the Gravity of the Matter

Andrew Sandlin and many others (myself included) sent an open letter to Gary Demar concerning his theological transitions. We posed a few straightforward questions for him to consider. Gary offered an initial podcast response today. 

In this episode, I address the gravity of the matter and whether this is simply a topic for dialogue or whether this trespasses historical boundaries. While Gary Demar has done much good in his public ministry, we hope that these exchanges with several of his friends and this season will draw him back to the biblical and historical position of the Church and happily seal his many years of good labor.

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Resources:

An Open Letter to Gary Demar

A Statement on Unorthodox Eschatology

Five Ways the Second Coming Motivates our Obedience

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By In Scribblings

Abraham Kuyper and Common Grace

During the COVID era, I had the opportunity to deliver a few talks via zoom to men’s groups around the country on the legacy of Abraham Kuyper. One of the prevailing themes of these talks was a hearty focus on Kuyper’s doctrine of common grace.

Kuyper made a distinction between special grace and common grace. “Special grace” had to do with church life (ecclesiastical matters) and “common grace” focused on things pertaining to culture and society. Kuyper believed that post-reformational theology focused almost exclusively on “special grace.” The basic features of their controversies dealt with the sacraments, church architecture, church polity, and issues regarding the clergy. Now, to be clear, the Reformers did deal with issues outside the church, but because they were fighting and continued to fight church/liturgical abuses in the 16th century, those topics carried the day.

When Kuyper comes on the scene in the 19th century, he’s living in a day of cultural confusion. He doesn’t think the church is preparing men and women to do their jobs well in the culture. Thus, Kuyper develops this robust view of grace that focuses on the Christian’s contributions to society as image-bearers. If you are a painter, how do your painting skills reflect God’s grace? If you are a politician, how are you applying your Christian faith to particular agendas? You may say it was the outworking of the cobbler’s paradigm in Luther’s reformation.

Kuyper wanted to see how the Christian faith would be applied to public theology. Dutch scholars at the time thought the doctrine of common grace was absolutely ridiculous and considered worldly by many. He even argued that unbelievers contributed certain graces to society that Christians should enjoy, take and transform (Matt. 5:45; Luke 6:35).

The entire endeavor opened a new vista to public theologians seeking to incorporate biblical thought into society. If God has bestowed upon mankind good gifts, then mankind is indebted to the Creator God. There is mutuality, an exchange of blessings between God and man. God grants and men return thanks with offerings. Even unbelievers participate in such gift-giving despite their unbelief. They may assert that they are not offering such blessings, but their inventions and their opinations on the plague of transgenderism (thanks Bill Maher!) offer the church greater confidence in her labors.

Common grace does not act contrary to special grace; common grace validates special grace. It strengthens societally what is already true ecclesiastically.

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By In Scribblings

Discipleship and Formation

Our evangelical churches stress the importance of discipleship. It is good and necessary. But discipleship is often discussed in the context of intellectual learning; a fact-finding mission. However, there is more to discipleship than data.

Discipleship in the Bible is also the cultivation of bodily postures. The Bible trains us to move and live and to have our being in God. True discipleship must include learning to kneel, raise hands, eat, sing, show affection, speak gently, receive, give, sit, and stand in the presence of God and others.

When we formulate a discipleship curriculum without incorporating common biblical rituals we are secularizing biblical formation and turning it into an encyclopedic course and a data-gathering mission.

KC Scribblings are quotes or short sections of readings and thoughts.

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By In Culture, Scribblings

The Plague of Individualism

Christians are people of the book; we are a people of the corporate book called the Bible. The Bible was composed by men who were Spirit-led in all they wrote (II Peter 1:21). But when we read the Bible, we tend to make it an encyclopedia of our favorite life verses. “You like your verses, but I have mine,” we say as if we were making observations about our poker hand.

This is perhaps one of the greatest tragedies of our day. We have come to see the Scriptures as a collection of isolated texts. We have accepted the plague of individualism under the guise of special hallmark cards. As a result, we forget that when we read John 3:16 it is true that God so loved the world, but it is only true in the context of John’s judgment-filled theology of Jesus’ coming. God loves the world, but he does this also by condemning and judging people to eternal destruction. In our day, we have decided that if John 3:16 is good enough for Tim Tebow, it’s good enough for me.

But the Bible is a corporate and contextual text. It is vastly different than the individualized approach many take to it. My own assertion is that the individualization of the Bible—the read one-verse a day Bible programs–has created a culture that practically minimizes the corporate gathering and treats the unified vision of the Scriptures as secondary in importance. Therefore, to quote James B. Jordan, “individualism means that the Bible history is reduced to moralistic stories.” But Samson, Jacob, and Ruth only make sense in union with the rest of the Bible and read in union with the hermeneutic of all Scriptures.

When we gather for the Lord’s Day worship, we are worshiping with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven and all the Christians on earth; true enough. But when we worship, we also worship in the context of the entire biblical story. We are participants in the corporate nature of the text. We are people of the book and therefore, opposed to the plague of individualism. We come to worship not as atomized creatures, but restored humanity put together in a corporate body of worshipers reading the Scriptures in all its fullness.

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By In Scribblings

The Church as Free

I am preparing to do a lecture on Kuyper in a few days, and I have been re-reading lots of his works (thanks to the marvelous task of the Acton Institute). Essential to the Kuyperian vision is the centrality of the church as free. In fact, for Kuyper, a holy nation can only be a reality when the church is allowed to be free to do what it was called to do. If the state, whose role is to protect the church, interferes with the premise of the church as church, she invests herself in an area outside her sphere.

Gary Demar analyzed well the case of the Canadian Pastor Artur Pawlowski. Gary argues that “the health argument is the foot in the door.” In the name of health and preservation, the state has increased its foothold on the church in remarkable ways. It is unlikely most of these churches will return with any degree of stamina to fight against authorial abuses.

However you feel about the pastor’s strategy, one cannot look at such an arrest from the perspective of Kuyperianism and be content with the outcome. In other words, one must embrace variations of two-kingdom theology, or a reduced understanding of the implications of ecclesiastical theology to accept the premise that the state has the authority to arrest a minister of the Gospel for opening his doors for worship.

For the record, I would not approve of such measures in early 2020 and most certainly not at this stage. The abhorrence of such acts in Canada and in the U.S. means that a restored vision of sphere sovereignty is necessary for the furtherance of public theology. And pastoral theology must incorporate Kuyperian thought, which is nothing more than a distillation of Genesis 1-3 applied to history.

Kuyper notes in his Lectures that while we are to be grateful for the state, “we must ever watch against the danger which lurks for our personal liberty in the power of the state.” Kuyper was a man well-aware of the fallacy of unchecked power. The Church needs desperate education in these areas, otherwise, it will quickly succumb to statist pressures and willingly hand over her keys and passcodes.

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By In Scribblings

Bonhoeffer’s Optimism in Prison

I have been reading through Bonhoeffer’s “Letters and Papers from Prison” for some doctoral research. It’s 600+ pages of gem after gem. I underline at least three sentences per page. The more I read, I notice two consistent themes in Bonhoeffer’s imprisonment.

The first is his optimism. He is not cavalier about the difficulties of the optimist. In fact, he says to be a pessimist is “more sensible.” A pessimist leaves his disappointments behind and face people unembarrassed. On the other hand, optimism is not looking at the current situation, but it’s a power of life. For Bonhoeffer, this is the quality that allows him to tolerate setbacks. But most importantly, it’s an aggressive posture since it refuses to let the opponent lay claim of the future. Surely there is “stupid and naive optimism,” but the optimism Bonhoeffer asserts is the ability to desire a better future on earth while vigorously preparing for it.

The second is doing theology. Bonhoeffer sees times of uncertainty as ripe to think clearly about God and his world. He says that in such moments he has to “practice what he has told others in his books and sermons.” It’s the time when theology flows out of your fingertips; when theology becomes true theology in its pure embodied practice. After all, what good is a theology that cannot be lived out in isolation? It was in prison where the German theologian observed that one cannot live by meditation alone. For Bonhoeffer, isolation is tragic because it takes away one of God’s great gifts which is communicating with one another. Theology communes and is livable.

He concludes by noting an added gift of his quarantine; one which would sustain him until the day of his execution. He observes that in his separation and loneliness he suddenly began to give thanks for the small things. And that, for Bonhoeffer, was true optimism and good theology.

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By In Scribblings

Disordered Eating?

I don’t recommend Ted Talks often, or often write about diet on Christian blogs. But this presentation by a secular nutritionist seems to approach the borders of Eucharistic Theology.

I am not posting this for her recommendations of eating more plants. I am posting it for her acknowledgment of the social and personal significance of eating food. I recommend especially the beginning and the end of this video.

Her talk made me think…

(more…)

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