In his classic work Atonement: The Person and Work of Christ T.F. Torrance muses on the eschatological significance of the cross of Christ[i]:

“By his cross Jesus Christ has made a past—once for all he has put something completely behind him. On one side of the cross there is set the old Adam, the old aeon and all that belongs to them, and they will never be resurrected. ‘Old things are passed way,’ as St. Paul put it, but on the other side of the cross, ‘all things are becoming new’ [II Cor. 5:17]. The cross created a past, but only because it creates a new future, or a ‘better hope’ as the epistle to the Hebrews puts it [Heb. 7:19].

That is what Christ has done by his redemption: opened up an eschatological vista for faith in which we are already planted in Christ, and with Christ already enter through the veil into God’s presence. It is because Christ ever lives as our redeemer, our surety, our atonement, that our life is set on a wholly and eternally new basis. As such Christ is the head of all things, the head of the new age, the messianic king, to whom the whole of the world to come belongs [Eph. 1:10, 19-23; Col. 1:15-20, 2:10; Acts 2:33f.; cf. Rev. 1:5, 17-19, 11:15f., 17:14].”

In an earlier work, Torrance further discusses Christ’s function as the “head of all things.” Here, he picks up on one of Irenaeus’ favorite images[ii]:

“As the early Fathers used to express it, when a baby is born it is usually born head first, but when the head is born the whole body follows naturally, for it is the birth of the head that is the most difficult part. Now Christ, the Head of the Body, is already resurrected, the First-born of the New Creation, and as such he is the pledge and guarantee that we who are incorporated with him as his Body will rise with him and be born into the new creation in our physical as well as our spiritual existence.”

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A good way to improve all of your Systematic Theology texts would be to strike almost every occurrence of the word “although” and replace it with “because.” Peter Leithart shows how this would work in the case of human freedom and Divine sovereignty[i]:

“Theologians have long puzzled over questions of free will. If God knows all things, including the future, then all things, including the future, are determined ahead of time. God won’t be surprised, and if he can’t be surprised, then nothing is going to happen other than what he expected to happen. The difficulties become acute for Christians who believe, as I do, that God not only knows but controls all things.

How then can human beings have any freedom or be held responsible for their actions? Theologians often answer this sort of question with a concession: although God knows all things that will happen in the future, still human beings are free. This assertion suggests that God’s infallible knowledge and human freedom are incompatible with one another, and have to be stuck together in spite of being fundamentally at odds.

Here and in many other cases, it is much better to begin that sentence with ‘because’: because God infallibly knows and controls the future, human beings are free and responsible. That seems to make things worse, and to sacrifice incompatibility to incoherence. But that move implies that God’s knowledge and human freedom are not two doctrines awkwardly standing side by side, each waiting for the other to ask for the next dance. God’s knowledge and human freedom depend on each other. Human freedom is embedded in God’s infallible knowledge of the future, and God’s infallible knowledge of the future somehow indwells human freedom. Stating the issue with ‘because’ implies that the two are always already dancing.”

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The cultural wealth accumulated by Modernity is directly tied to their (unwitting) use of Christianity’s currency. Because the naturalist worldview assumes the absence of a “storyteller,” Modernism lacked the tools to tell its own story. Thus, Modernism assumed much of the Christian story. Physicist John Byl offers an apt assessment of the Modernist project (accounting for both its strengths and weaknesses) in his book, The Divine Challenge: On Matter, Mind, Math & Meaning[i]. The book, published by Banner of Truth, is must reading not only for those interested in the sciences, but for all those who have an interest in applying the Christian faith to every sphere of life. Says Byl:

“Man’s initial downfall was his desire to be like God. Prompted by Satan’s seductive words, ‘Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil’ (Gen 3:5), Adam and Eve disobeyed God. They ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Ever since, fallen man still willfully rejects God and his Word. Man is still searching for metaphorical trees of knowledge of good and evil, magical shortcuts leading to divine knowledge and power.

The modern, naturalist worldview was based on the biblical worldview. The biblical worldview asserts that there is a real world beyond our senses. This world and its history have a purpose. As theologian Robert Jeson puts it, the biblical worldview has its own true story and promise. The story is the biblical story of creation, fall and redemption. The promise is the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ and a future eternal life with God. The universe has a true story because there is a universal Historian.

Modernity took over the biblical notion of rational man in an orderly world but rejected the God who created man and the world. In essence, it was just a continuation of man’s war against God, begun in Eden. Modernity, Jesnon notes, wanted to maintain a realist faith while denying the God who was that faith’s object. It tried to live in a universal story of its own making, without a universal storyteller. Modernity’s version of the gospel promise was its confidence in progress, in a future utopia where man would solve all his social problems.

Modernity is collapsing. In the modern world, human reason elevated itself above God and claimed sovereignty. This entailed that it could criticize all beliefs. Yet, once reason was given license to criticize all things, it was inevitable that it must eventually criticize also itself. Then reason unmasks itself as unreasonable. Critical human reason, once uncorked, is an insatiable acid that dissolves all absolutes, whether in religion, ethics, science or logic. Eventually it erodes even its own foundation, causing modernity to self-destruct.

Modernity, having banished God, is now realizing that it is left with no sound basis for objective knowledge. Without a universal storyteller the universe can have no story. Meanwhile, modernity’s hope in progress has been dashed by catastrophic World Wars, the fall of Marxism, the rise of international terrorism and the persistence of crime and violence that characterizes modern civilized society. Modernity has lost both its story and its promise. Modernity has lived off the intellectual and moral wealth inherited from Christianity. This wealth is rapidly running out. Modernity cannot replenish it without denying itself and bringing back the biblical God it has banished.”

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I find Tom Holland’s work to be the near-perfect balance of creative yet careful, original yet faithful. While many talk about theological exegesis—Dr. Holland actually does it, and he does it well. To whet your appetite for his indispensable Contours Of Pauline Theology, here is Holland interpreting the church’s baptism into Christ through the lens of Israel’s baptism into Moses. In so doing, he answers the deceptively tricky question “when did the church come into existence?”[i]

“Alongside the baptism into Christ is the type of the baptism of the Israelites into Moses in their Exodus. All Jews, according to Gamaliel the second, of all preceding and subsequent generations, were present in the coming out of Egypt, and shared in the baptism that made Moses their leader. It was then that Israel became the son of God and the Spirit was given to her to lead her through her wilderness journey.

This explains why Paul has been so decisive in his use of the preposition sun. There is no unity of believers, either with each other or with Christ, until they have been united together through baptism. Paul has been careful to define this baptism in terms of its occasion, for it was a baptism into Christ’s death. As Moses, in the Exodus from Egypt, took out the people of God, for they were united with him through baptism, so Christ takes those who have been baptized into union with him from the realm of Sin and death. It was a baptism into his death that all believers experienced, in the same historic moment.

There was no union, either with each other or with Christ, until it had been created by the Spirit. It was this baptism that brought the covenant community into existence. Therefore if one asks when did the church historically come into existence, the answer is at the moment of Christ’s death, for it was then that the Spirit baptized all members of the covenant community into union with their Lord and Savior. Once this union had been established, Paul was free to use the preposition en (in), which speaks of the fellowship of believers in Christ. From then on, in terms of ultimate reality, no believer could experience anything apart from all other believers, for their union with Christ is such that all other believers were also partakers in Christ’s saving work.

What I am arguing for is that the baptism passages which we have considered are speaking neither about water baptism nor even of Christ’s baptism into his sufferings, even though these are important related themes, but about a baptism modelled on the baptism of Israel into Moses when Israel came into a covenant relationship with Yahweh through the representative he had appointed. In Romans 6 (and in 1 Corinthians 12:13, Galatians 3.:5ff, Ephesians 4:6 and 5:25-27) Paul is demonstrating how the old order has been brought to an end and how the new eschatological order has come into existence. It is because believers have shared in the death of Christ, with the consequence that they have died to all the covenant demands of the old relationship that bound them mercilessly to Sin and Death (Satan), that they are now free to live lives unto God who made them his own through Christ his Son.”

Holland concludes:

“Once again we have seen that Paul has stayed within the corporate categories of the Old Testament. He has modelled the creation of the New Testament community in the same terms as Israel’s inauguration when she was brought out of Egypt. In reverting to the original Exodus Paul has not abandoned the New Exodus motif, he has simply merged the two exoduses of the Old Testament to form his model. This allowed him to use the Paschal sacrifice of the Egyptian Exodus to interpret the death of Jesus. The Babylonian Exodus was not based on a sacrificial rite and therefore needed augmentation. He joined the sacrificial element of the Egyptian Exodus with the promises of the prophets of a New Covenant to produce his New Exodus paradigm. It was this merger that was unique to the New Testament, for the Jewish material did not look for a suffering Messiah whose death would bring about the salvation of the new covenant community. Paul saw the death of Jesus to be his exodus and identified the moment of the birth of the community under its new representative to be in the moment of its Messiah’s death. Thus all Christians have been baptized into his death. To be outside of that event is to be outside of Christ. Again we see the clear use Paul made of the prophets’ New Exodus model that had been enriched by the sacrificial threads of the original Exodus and fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Jesus.”

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In chronicling the unique contribution of Reformed Theology to Theology proper (i.e. the Doctrine of God), T.F. Torrance describes Calvin’s project as being in “full revolt” of the Latin system. Medieval theology, says Torrance, begins with the “being of God,” conceived of in primarily philosophical categories. Reformed Theology, in contrast, begins not with a philosophical ontology, but with the ways in which God has chosen to reveal Himself—namely, His Word, written and incarnate. Says Torrance[i]:

“In contrast, then, to Medieval theology, the Reformed doctrine of God can be set out in four main lines.

(1) God is He who is known only though His Word, who is indeed unknowable except as He gives Himself to be known, but who has as a matter of fact condescended to reveal Himself to us familiarly in our human speech and in our creaturely world in such a way that we are drawn into conversation, that is personal relation, with Him.

(2) This is essentially the living, active, Creator God of the Biblical Revelation, who made the world out of nothing, so that all creaturely reality is utterly distinct from Him, though entirely dependent upon His goodness for its existence and being and order and goal. As such He is utterly free, transcendent and incomparable in His Divine Life and Being. He really is the Supreme Eternal, Infinite Being, and reveals Himself as such through His active intervention and works in creation and redemption.

(3) This God, is ‘a God in Covenant,’ as the Westminster Larger Catechism admirably put it. He is not a God who wills to live alone but who has created man for communion with Himself and bound man in Covenant promises which He actively fulfils within creation and history. He is the God who intervenes in history, who is mightily active in the Covenant people, as well as the nations of the world, in the fulfilment of His redemptive purposes.

(4) He is the God and Father of Jesus Christ, the Saviour, to whom we in Christ may pray, ‘Our Father.’ It is this knowledge of God in Christ which governs all, which tells us that God is eternally Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so that all the perfections of God are of the Three Persons of the Godhead, so that God’s relation to the creature, in creation and in redemption, is the relation of this God who became incarnate and creaturely man, and yet remains very God on the throne of His Kingdom. There is no God except He who has shown us His Face in Jesus Christ, so that we cannot go behind the back of Christ to find God, or know anything about Him apart from this God, for there is no other God than this God. Here then, it is not some prior ontology, but Christology which is all-determining in our knowledge of God.”

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This morning, former Texas Governor Rick Perry appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. In the interview, he was asked if he thought America was in the midst of a “spiritual crisis.” As we all know, politicians are trained to present themselves as the solution to every problem. Perry could’ve easily taken the opportunity to say, “Yes, we have a spiritual crisis. Elect me and I’ll fix it by banning X or implementing Y.” Instead, he responded with the following:

“You know, I can only speak for myself, and I know where my hope for the future is in my Lord and Savior… If people are looking for government to be their savior, they’re looking at the wrong place. The things we have in this country were given to us by God, not by government. Now if you call a spiritual crisis relying on government as a crisis, I would suggest to you we’ve got a spiritual crisis if you’re looking to government to be your savior.”

Perry’s answer was built on three very astute observations. First, one’s hope can only be rightly placed in whoever created the institutions, people, and matter which make up reality. Second, a spiritual crisis occurs when one stops putting their hope in the Creator, but in something within the created order—say, an institution, person, or piece of matter (this phenomena also goes by the name “idolatry”). Third, “government” is in the created order, thus can’t be a person’s ultimate hope, or the solution to a “spiritual crisis.” On these three premises, Perry asserts that government is not only  impotent to provide the solution to our spiritual crisis, but the very impulse to look to government for an answer to the crisis is itself the crisis!

Who knows what would possess a politician to answer a question with such humility and theological acuity? Perhaps he recently read Acts 12. There, the prototypical politician, Herod, accepts the praise of man and does not give glory where it is due. Rather than telling the people where true hope is to be found, he gladly accepted the messianic role. As you may recall, he’s promptly eaten by worms—for real.

This may seem like an odd punishment; a grotesque thing to witness, no doubt. However, it’s not that unusual or odd at all. Actually, this is the hard reality with which every created thing will one day have to reckon. We have a beginning, we have an end. We go into the ground, and we’re eaten by worms. In the case of Herod, the process was just expedited a bit. As a created thing, your hope has to be found in a non-created being. More to the point, your hope has to be placed in the one who met the grave, yet escaped the worms. Herod was a created thing. Rick Perry is a created thing. America is a created thing. You and I are created things. Thus, our “spiritual crisis” can only be solved by placing our hope in the Creator as He’s revealed Himself in the resurrected Messiah, the giver of eternal life, Jesus of Nazareth.

Whatever Perry’s motivation was in answering the question the way in which he did, such moments of sanity are rare in our current political landscape—when they do occur, we should notice and applaud.

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The “matter” of baptism (i.e. water), according to Alexander Schmemann, represents: (1) life, (2) death and destruction, and (3) purification. To participate in a baptismal liturgy, then, is to communally rehearse the biblical story of creation, fall, and redemption. Says Schmemann[1]:

“Baptism proper begins with the blessing of the water. To understand, however, the meaning of water here, one must stop thinking of it as an isolated ‘matter’ of the sacrament. Or rather, one must realize that water is the ‘matter’ of sacrament, because it stands for the whole of matter, which the biblical ‘mythological’ world view—which incidentally is more meaningful and philosophically consistent than the one offered by some ‘demythologizers’ –water is the natural symbol of life, for there is no life without water, but it is also the symbol of destruction and death, and finally, it is the symbol of purification, for there is no cleanliness without it. In the Book of Genesis creation of life is a victory of the Spirit of God over the waters—the chaos of nonexistence. In a way, then, creation is a transformation of water into life.

What is important for us, however, is that the baptismal water represents the matter of the cosmos, the world as life of man. And its blessing at the beginning of the baptismal rite acquires thus a truly cosmic and redemptive significance. God created the world and blessed it and gave it to man as his food and life, as the means of communion with Him. The blessing of water signifies the return or redemption of matter in this initial and essential meaning. By accepting the baptism of John, Christ sanctified the water—made it the water of purification and reconciliation with God. It was then, as Christ was coming out of the water, that the Epiphany—the new and redemptive manifestation of God—took place, and the Spirit of God, who at the beginning of creation ‘moved upon the face of the waters,’ made water—that is, the world—again into what He made it at the beginning.

To bless, as we already know, is to give thanks. In and through thanksgiving, man acknowledges the true nature of things he receives from God, and thus makes them to be what they are. We bless and sanctify things when we offer them to God in a eucharistic movement of our whole being. And as we stand before the water—before the cosmos, the matter given to us by God—it is an all-embracing eucharistic movement which gives the baptismal liturgy its true beginning.”

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N.H. Gootjes’ chapter Schilder on Christ and Culture in Always Obedient: Essays on the Teachings of Klaas Schilder offers some clear, practical wisdom for the Christian living “between the times.”

“Is this a period [between Christ’s first and second comings] in which only the duty to preach has to be fulfilled, and not the duty to work in this world? If applied consistently, this opinion would imply that a Christian should work only enough to enable him and his family to live and fulfill their duties and that in all the rest of his time he has to evangelize.

Such a view clearly goes against the New Testament. For example, when John the Baptist announced the coming of the Messiah, he did not say to the tax collectors, ‘Give up your work, and go out and preach.’ He said in Luke 3:13, ‘Collect no more than is appointed you.’ And when soldiers came, he did not tell them to leave the army to become evangelists. Instead he said, “Rob no one by violence or by false accusation, and be content with your wages’ (Luke 3:14). Or to give another example, the problem with Alexander (2 Tim. 4:14) was not that he was a coppersmith but that he opposed the gospel.

The meaning of the time between Creation and Christ’s return is not limited to evangelism. It is also the period in which the Holy Spirit works in Christians to bring them to obedience to God. The Holy Spirit also requires us to see and do our daily work (as soldiers, servants, and so on) in the light of Genesis 1 and 2, even in a world that is no longer a paradise.

It is important to maintain that in this period of the New Testament church, regeneration should become apparent in the way in which each believer fulfills his daily work. Our daily work is more than a necessity to keep us alive. Our life should show that we work as God’s servants in God’s world.”

Gootjes then applies the cultural mandate to various professions, showing that the farmer, the garbage man, and the artist each have value in God’s good world:

“Because of the cultural mandate, our children who have the ability should be allowed to study, to become scientists, to become professors, if they can. Farmers and professors should not despise each other but should cooperate in the mandate to work in this world, each in his own place and according to his own ability…

[Further,] being a garbage man is not humiliating. For it is work that has to be done to keep our society going, as a part of the instruction ‘to keep the earth.’ This commandment implies keeping streets clean and preventing the outbreak of diseases.

And then there are those who have artistic ability. This too is a gift from God to be developed. It is true that artists often have a bad name among Christians. And the artistic world has itself partly to blame for it. They have fostered the idea that the artist must be completely free and completely himself to produce a meaningful artistic work. This often implies that the artist rejects God’s Word and becomes a god to himself. When Christians reject this, they are right. On the other hand, the arts should be seen as a possibility that God has given in creation. Artists, too, should have dominion over their part of created reality.

Seen from the perspective of the cultural mandate, followers of Christ may work in many jobs. In the church no one should despise another because of the work he does. The other is a fellow worker, a servant of God in his field.”

In conclusion, Gootjes offers this advice to pastors:

“This gospel confronts the believers again with the duty instituted from the beginning: to have dominion over the world. God’s gracious gospel puts daily jobs in the light of service to God. Therefore, the minister cannot limit his sermon to the inner life of the believer. Daily work comes within the scope of preaching. The sermon should touch the daily life of the minister’s congregation. Ethics in the workplace and in the schoolroom [should] be mentioned.”

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The Irish Presbyterian Thomas Witherow—who studied under Thomas Chalmers in Edinburgh—writes on the tendency of “professing Christians” to downplay those doctrines which are “non-essentials in religion.” If ever there were an admonition that the “gospel-centered” movement needed to hear, it’s this one:

 “It is very common for professing Christians to draw a distinction between essentials and non-essentials in religion, and to infer that, if any fact or doctrine rightly belongs to the latter class, it must be a matter of very little importance, and may in practice be safely set at nought… To say that, because a fact of Divine revelation is not essential to salvation, it must of necessity be unimportant, and may or may not be received by us, is to assert a principle, the application of which would make havoc of our Christianity… But if all the other truths of revelation are unimportant, because they happen to be non-essentials, it follows that the Word of God itself is in the main unimportant… If such a principle does not mutilate the Bible, it stigmatizes much of it as trivial… So in the Christian system, every fact, great or small, that God has been pleased to insert in the Bible is, by its very position, invested with importance… Every Divine truth is important, though it may be that all Divine truths are not of equal importance.[i]”

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