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On October 18, 2024 By In Family and Children, History, Theology

Marriage is like Purgatory

“Marriage is a lot like purgatory, not many protestants seem to believe in it.” 

&

“Marriage is a lot like purgatory, everyone seems eager to end their suffering.”

This is how I facetiously began a recent sermon on Questions 108 and 109 of the Heidelberg Catechism, which address the commandment against adultery. The catechism emphasizes the call for every believer, married or single, “to keep ourselves pure and holy.”

In the context of the 16th-century Reformation, marriage and purgatory were hot-button issues. Christian marriage was central to Reformation theology—can we tell the story of Martin Luther without Katharina von Bora or Henry VIII without his six wives? In this post I’d like to explore how these two are related in some surprising ways.

On Purgatory and Reformation 

The medieval doctrine of purgatory sought to address an important dilemma: How can we reconcile the extrinsic grace of God with the ongoing imperfection and sinfulness of individual Christians? In the medieval Roman system, God’s divine justice could purge or cleanse the souls of those who trusted in Jesus, removing their individual shortcomings in an intermediate state. However, Protestants like Luther insisted that our righteousness before God is already perfected—simul justus et peccator (“simultaneously justified and sinner”).

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On July 16, 2023 By In Church, Culture, Theology

Saved by the Virgin Birth

The Born Again Christian

In American evangelical Christianity, the term “born again” is now used to describe a personal spiritual experience of conversion and often marks a new beginning in a person’s relationship with God. It is often associated with the concept of being “saved.”

The phrase itself is thoroughly Biblical and originates from Jesus’ conversation with the pharisee Nicodemus in the Gospel of St. John, where Jesus tells him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” a. This conversation is often interpreted to emphasizes the need for a spiritual transformation in one’s relationship with God.

For modern evangelicals, being “born again” typically involves acknowledging one’s sinful nature b, recognizing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and surrendering one’s life to Him. It is viewed as a moment of decision and personal commitment to follow Jesus. In many evangelical circles, the phrase “born again” is used to distinguish those who have had this personal conversion experience from those who did not have a individualized experience. This is often expressed as a criticism of liturgical churches (whether they be Presbyterian, Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox, etc.) that more often expect the corporate forms of worship and sacramental identity to sufficiently endow the believer with an individual Christian identity through the ecclesiastically means of grace like baptism, confirmation, catechesis, and the eucharistic service.

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  1. John 3:3 ESV  (back)
  2. see Sinner’s Prayer here  (back)

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On July 4, 2023 By In Culture, History

Promoting the Myth of a Christian America

The Christian Heritage of the United States: A Forgotten Narrative

In today’s rapidly changing America, it is important to revisit the foundations upon which America was built. Americans once universally recognized the protestant Christian origins of this nation, yet today the spurious myths around so-called “deism” and “separation of church and state” have made serious inroads into the American narrative. Even the Christian character of undoubtedly godly men like George Washington and Patrick Henry has been cast aside by the revisionism of leftist ideologues and political pundits. It is disheartening to witness the extent to which historical figures who embraced the Biblical faith and shaped our nation’s values are now subject to reinterpretation and distortion. I’ve even met families whose college-aged children refuse to celebrate Thanksgiving, influenced by a skewed perspective that portrays the pilgrims as inherently evil.

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On September 20, 2022 By In Culture

No Sunday School at a Funeral

The passing of Queen Elizabeth II and her funeral liturgy gives Americans the unique opportunity to see the distance that exists between modern American versions of Christian worship and the worship as it was during the Reformation. The Church of England’s liturgical traditions are preserved in word and ceremony through their use of the Book of Common Prayer. Officially the English are bound to the reformed heritage of the Protestant Reformation in the historic 1662 edition. We could sneer at the stiltedness of such endeavors or perhaps even mock it based on the hypocritical participation of various royal and ecclesiastical apostates—yet I would charge that there is something special preserved here in two ways.

Gospel through Liturgy

The first is in the presentation of the Gospel through the liturgy. Since the service requires the use of Bible passages through its lectionary, more Scripture was read at this funeral than is typically read in most American Churches on any given Sunday. Even more, the Scripture lessons were more comprehensive in that portions were read from the Psalms, Gospels, and Epistles. Without the established tradition of the prayer book liturgy, who could say which Scripture (if any) might be read at a state funeral. Yet here the words of our Lord through St. John and St. Paul are clearly presented for the entire onlooking world to hear and “it shall not return void.” (Isaiah 55:11)

Death at a Funeral

A funeral with the casket in full view is similar to the imagery of the Lord’s table. Jesus offers the Lord’s Supper as part of Christian worship to commemorate his death. Therefore, when Christians continue to remember the last supper with bread and wine they are bringing to mind the death of Jesus. In addition to the imagery of the meal at a table, Christian tradition has also brought the Lord’s table to represent a type of ancient sepulcher. Early Christians burying their dead would not have dug a hole, but placed them upon the raised platform in a tomb. Traditions around eucharistic tables reflect this in their use of linen coverings, which were also used as shrouds for the dead. Another tradition that points to the Lord’s Table as a funeral image is the frequent engraving of five crosses on the surface of the table to represent the five wounds of Christ, who was laid upon the sepulcher. Additionally, we see as early as the 3rd century that church tables were constructed over the tombs of the martyrs. a Only a few example needs be offered, but many more examples can be drawn in the various traditions and ceremonies in the Church East and West.

Family Integrated Funeral

Drawing this connection between the Lord’s Supper and Funeral is helpful in that it shows how deformed modern views of the Lord’s Supper have become. American children are typically excluded from Lord’s Day services by the use of Sunday School. Most American churches additionally refuse to admit children to the table based on their misreading of St. Paul’s admonitions to examine oneself. (1 Corinthians 11:28)

But when we look at the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, we see the children of the royal family attending and participating in the service.

In fact, their absence would have brought shame upon their parents and scandal upon the entire family. People would have noticed if these children didn’t attend. Imagine for a moment how improper it would be for the royal children to be ushered away from the funeral and instead told to color a picture of the Queen or perhaps glue some macaroni, or learn a dumbed down version of “God Save the Queen.”

Instead Prince George, 9, and Princess Charlotte, 7, suited up in their Sunday best and followed along with the order of worship. They even walked in train with the casket.

This is formative behavior that the church needs for its children. In the Book, The Church Friendly Family, Rich Luck writes:

“Some parents feel it is completely within their rights to impose piano lessons and swimming practices on their children. But when it comes to religious things, they say they want their children to ‘make their own decision.’ But God tells parents they must impose a religious identity on their children—a specifically Christian religious identity. God says our children are His. He has claimed them from the beginning. We are to raise them up in His way. Beginning with baptism, we are to give our children to God and claim the promises He makes to and about them.”

  1. Liber Pontificalis attributes this to Felix I  (back)

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Is the Regulative Principle Scriptural?

On July 28, 2022 By In Culture, Music, Worship

The Human Body and the Regulative Principle of Worship

John Calvin’s convictions against instruments in worship developed into distinct forms of worship across the various Reformation churches. Calvin inspired a capella psalmody among the Scots via John Knox and the use of metrical psalms in the Church of England and its descendents. As Karin Maag writes a,

“John Calvin begun the project of versifying the Psalms in French during his three-year stay in Strasbourg from 1539 to 1541. But although Calvin had talents in many fields, this was not one of them. His attempts at putting the psalms into poetic meter were clunky at best, and were quickly abandoned.”

The task of Calvin’s metrical psalter was completed by his successor in Geneva, Theodore Beza, and then the first English metrical psalter was printed by Robert Crowley, who was ordained by Nicholas Ridley – whom Beza called, “the English Calvin.”

Reformation Issues with Instruments

Calvin cites several issues with instruments but his concerns could be summarized by the “Regulative Principle of Worship” which teaches that, “…God sets the bounds and gives the basic patterns for worship. We are to do what God commands, since he is the one who alone can determine how he is to be worshiped.” b Under similar convictions, Calvin concludes that the Bible did not command the use of instruments in worship and thus to use them would be prohibited. 

Some have objected to this view by citing the use of instruments in the Old Testament and for worship in the Hebrew temple. In a sermon on 2 Samuel, Calvin writes: “the musical instruments were in the same class as sacrifices…” meaning to imply that they filled a ceremonial role and had been abolished with the advent of Christ’s perfect sacrifice. It is worth noting that Roman Catholic apologists of the medieval period looked to the Old Testament patterns of worship to justify the various doctrines of a sacrificial priesthood. Calvin’s view may have been formed partly in reaction to the severity of the idolatry he saw in the medieval Roman mass. 

Did the Early Church use instruments in Worship?

Calvin’s view against instruments was not new and could find precedence in the patristic church. In his article on Church music, Paul James-Griffiths writes: “Some of the Church Fathers, like Basil the Great, thought that cithara (like a guitar) players should be excommunicated from the church, and Ambrose was concerned that if Christians turned from psalm singing to playing instruments they might lose their salvation…” 

Strangely enough, it was a Roman Pope that was most successful in curbing the influence of instrumental music in the church. As Pope Gregory I reformed the 6th century Roman church and its rite for worship, the chanting (sometimes called “Gregorian Chant” anachronistically) that would develop over the next several centuries would emphasize the “word” over its accompaniment. It was the church fathers that first brought in the idea of a capella singing of psalms via the introits, graduals, and various antiphons of the communion liturgy. John Calvin admired Pope Gregory and frequently cites his example in his Institutes — noting Gregory’s emphasis on the word was not only limited to music, but also in his emphasis on pastors as preachers and as men bound by the limits of Scripture. Calvin’s appreciation is often noted in his calling Gregory the last good pope. c

So perhaps, one might imagine that Pope Gregory would’ve joined John Knox’s “Rascal Multitude” d as they reformed the Scottish Church. Unlikely. While the Scottish reforms removed organs, they also disbanded the church choirs, destroyed noted manuscripts, and aimed to destroy Gregory’s liturgical heritage developed in the Roman Rite and Western Christendom. There is a bit of irony in Calvin and the Scots removing instruments as “too catholic” when it was the Pope himself who removed instruments first. As the phrase goes, “Is the Pope Catholic?”

Is the Regulative Principle Scriptural?

The regulative principle is further expounded upon in Chapter 21 of the Westminster Confession, “As it is the law of nature” is used to describe how the example of sabbath history forms the pattern for Sunday worship. Appealing to the “law of nature” (or natural revelation) is not foreign to our theology of worship, as St. Paul points out in Romans (1:20-21) natural revelation proclaims God’s power and that we owe Him honor, thanks, and worship. For those attempting to see how instruments may conform to the regulative principle a similar deduction may be made as the Westminster Divines approbation of a “law of nature.”

If man is a worshipping being “without excuse” how is he to offer and return back praise? Some say in psalms, some say hymns, some say with instruments. All demand man to offer himself in worship.

In an article for Banner of Truth, Terry Johnson writes:

“Circumstances of worship are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence. An example of a circumstance would be the question of illumination at an evening service or the need for amplification of voices to be heard by all.”

If a man using his voice to sing conforms to the regulative principle, then the amplification of this same voice also conforms to the regulative principle. Thus the voice through the tool (or instrument) of the speaker remains commanded by God for worship, despite the lack of chapter and verse for microphones, speakers, and all their various snake-like wires.

Man as the model for Instruments

Many years ago, I sat under a lecture from James B. Jordan that made the case that all human instruments are modeled after the pattern of worshipping man. He made the argument that what St. John’s describes in Revelation 4-5 is heavenly worship accompanied by instruments. e And that string, wind, and percussive instruments are, according to Jordan, derivative of the human capacity to worship.

The various instruments are certainly analogous to human anatomy:

  1. We have string-like vocal cords that compare to harp, guitars, and other plucked instruments.
  2. We have wind-filled lungs that produce pitch through the throat to the lips–not unlike flutes or trumpets.
  3. We have hands to clap, feet that stomp, and flesh to drum.

Instruments and the Image of God

One could see then that the development of instrumentation in the temple is not some reflection of sacrificial identity, but rather the image of God taking dominion over nature. Just as the Angels sing “glory” at the Nativity when God became flesh–the people of the incarnation sing as they transform the gifts of creation into tools of worship. The pseudo-spirituality of denying instruments rejects our human identity as a worshipping body of flesh and bone. We don’t “gnostically” think praise with our brains, Psalm 95 teaches us to “worship and bow down” and to “kneel before the LORD our Maker.” We worship with our bodies.

These bodies were put in creation to take dominion through tools. In Exodus, Moses describes all skilled workmanship as the work of one “filled” with the “spirit of God.” f Natural labor’s role in dominion by erecting homes and learning trades is no less spiritual than the liturgical arts in God’s world. Therefore, the acts of worshiping God deserve not a truncated vision of human dominion, but the first and fullest since the worship of God as the chief end of dominion. Israel understood this and reserved its most beautiful and precious manners of workmanship for the Temple. Solomon’s extravagant use of timbers overlaid with gold, bronze altars, precious stones, and colored curtains amplified the God of creation. In the same way, instruments of worship elevate the human gifts of lungs, lips, and limbs to proclaim loudly the glory of God. Even more, did not St. Paul’s say that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? Does He not now deserve the beauty and splendor of instrumental Temple worship? A step further might be to consider how the incarnation and our union with Christ transforms our notion of Temple. Does not Scripture say, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up…But He was speaking of the temple of His body.” (John 2:19,21) Christians who worship Christ this Temple, also have Christ the great High Priest – let us bring him the greater and more glorious worship!

Beyond the Temple’s beauty, worship with instruments was to have the power of dominion. The walls of Jericho fall to the final blow of the trumpets and David’s harp bound the King’s demons. If Worship is warfare, to go unarmed in a capella singing is to ignore the clear scripture example of so many of the Bible’s sainted accompanists.

Tools for Worship-based Warfare

Even Christ’s recasting of the dominion mandate as the Great Commission in Matthew 28 is prefaced with dominion by worship. In v. 17, we read “And when they saw him they worshiped him.” The language St. Matthew uses for worship is in the greek etymologically related to “proskynesis” as in bowing down before him (or literally to kiss toward, reminding me of the end of Psalm 2.) In response, Jesus claims “all authority in heaven and on earth.” Christians ought to recognize that Christ’s pathway to “discipling the nations” (v.19) and “teaching them” begins with worshipping. Don’t go into battle unarmed.

  1. Karin Maag is the Director of the H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies (in Hekman Library), one of the world’s foremost collections of works on or by John Calvin.  (back)
  2. Orthodox Presbyterian Church. (2017, May 27). Q&A: Regulative Principle vs. Normative Principle. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Retrieved June 15, 2022, from https://www.opc.org/qa.html?question_id=567  (back)
  3. In Book 4, Chapter 17: “Gregory, whom you may with justice call the last Bishop of Rome…”   (back)
  4. Knox’s Iconoclasm sermon instigated a 2-day riot against St. John’s on May 11, 1559  (back)
  5. e.g. “the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each having a harp”  (back)
  6. see context of Exodus 31:1-6, e.g. “And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, To devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass…”  (back)

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On June 7, 2022 By In Theology

Inspiration and the Breath of Prophets

The doctrine of Biblical inspiration is central to any effective defense of the Christian faith and serves a foundational element in any discussion on why the Bible is a reliable source of truth. Yet many Christians today undermine the doctrine of inspiration by either rejecting its claims flat-out or by neglecting attention to what such a doctrine requires – namely infallible and inerrancy. As Rev. JI Packer points out in his commentary on the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy “We affirm that canonical Scripture should always be interpreted on the basis that it is infallible and inerrant.” (Link to Chicago Statement text)

In the New King James version, St Paul’s words in 2 Tim 3:16a are translated as “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God…” The phrase “inspiration of God” is related to the idea of breath and implies that Scripture is God-breathed (Greek: θεόπνευστος) and while this word itself only appears but once in the New Testament, the idea of God’s breath can be found elsewhere in the text of the Bible.

God’s Breath for Adam

Starting in Genesis we find Adam brought to life with two actions.

First, “God formed man from the dust of the ground” and Second, “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” The phrase “breath of life” in the Greek translation of the Book of Genesis shares the word for breath employing πνοήν ζωής to describe how God made Adam alive. The word for breath will also be used throughout the Bible in describing the third person of the Blessed Trinity as the Holy (ἁγίου) Spirit (πνεύματος). Christians recognize this connection between the breathing out of Scripture as spoken words by the Holy Spirit in the very words of our Creed when they proclaim, “And I believe in the Holy Ghost… Who spake by the Prophets.”  And it is claimed in the New Testament itself by St. Luke (Luke 1:70) and the author of Hebrews (Heb. 1:1). 

Beyond this we have the Hebrew collection of his spoken utterances collected into the medium of written books which were publicly breathed out before the people. This Scriptural tradition of God’s breathed word through prophets and repeated back to the congregation is therefore a type of re-creation of mankind. Christ himself speaks of the power of resurrection by speech in both his examples of Lazarus called from the dead and his words in John 5 where he assures his listeners with, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.” (John 5:25). “For the word of God is quick…” writes the author of Hebrews in 4:12. ‘quick’ here is the archaic English phrase for living just as Adam’s first breath from God might be referred to as his quickening. The idea of God’s word as life-giving is drawn from the narrative of Adam’s creation, but also in the sense that men find life worth living as they live by his word. A sentiment echoed by our Lord who proclaimed, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

The Hebrew culture operates around the paradigm that God’s word and our covenantal faithfulness to its demands determine our outcome as stated in the Book of Deuteronomy, “…that thou mayest obey his voice… for he is thy life…” (30:20) There is therefore a clear connection in Hebrew literature itself to the idea of God’s spoken word and the gift of Life. 

Expiration of Scripture

It is with this background on the significance of God’s breathed out word, that we move to understand the context of St. Paul’s doctrine of inspiration. Primarily, what St. Paul is interested in describing with the phrase  “inspired” or “God-breathed” is that God is the one who is breathing out words. Dr. RC Sproul once quipped that a more accurate terminology would therefore be “expiration” because our God is more about the exhalation from God. While we can certainly draw out implications for the way God has communicated, St. Paul’s emphasis is on God as the authority, origin, and impetus behind the Scripture.

St. Paul includes the phrase ‘all’ to emphasize that divine source of inspiration applies to all of the Scripture. For the Christian, this all is significant in that the Old Testament canon is varied in the types of Scriptures it contains history, poetry, and prophecy. St. Paul is affirming the validity of these texts and without qualification. As a student of St. Peter and the Apostolic tradition, we can also infer that the historicity of the Old Testament was not in doubt during the life of Christ. Critics of the Reformation are quick to point out Dr. Martin Luther’s comments on James as the “epistle of straw” as the Great Reformers evaluated the theology of the letter through his narrowed lens of Reformation theology. In a similar vein, it would be unsurprising to see a figure like St. Paul, who struggled with Judaizers, taking opportunity to critique or even nuance his acceptance of the Old Testament canon to fit the distinctives of the Christian sect. Remarkably, St. Paul instead maintains a complete continuity of the entire Old Testament canon and takes it one step further by claiming that they,  “are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” 

Claiming that the Hebrew scriptures point to Jesus is quite the claim for the former Pharisee who trained under Gamaliel. St. Paul’s conviction that the scriptures are God-breathed is therefore spoken from a mind with complete confidence in what is contained therein. The notion that the word of God had faithfully spoken to God’s covenant people is a conviction inherited from his devotion to them as an ancestral document, divinely preserved by real men in history, and confirmed by his experiences with Christ himself at the Damascus Road.

What Did St. Paul Know?

St. Paul, of all men, best understood the claims the Old Testament makes for itself insofar as it claims to speak as God’s revealed word and his own conversion experience with “scales” falling from his eyes he is able to see the Christ and hear his voice in these same traditional scriptures of his ancestors. Similarly, he is able to encourage Timothy, “from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures,” largely because this is his own experience. What Paul learned as the child called Saul is now the wisdom of Christ sufficiently revealed in ages past. 

It is often pointed out that the canon of the New Testament is beyond the scope of St. Paul’s claims of inspiration in 2 Timothy 3 use of the word “scripture.” One primary evidence for this argument is the lack of a completed New Testament at the time of Timothy’s reception of this letter. Timothy may not at the time of Paul’s writing even have a copy of a Gospel and no piece of the New Testament would fit St. Paul’s expectation that Timothy had been trained in it since his childhood. Others argue that St. Paul’s “all” demands an acknowledgement of a completed canon which the New Testament and apostolic writers did not have sufficiently organized at this point in Church history. Yet these details do not prevent St. Paul from believing and teaching that Scripture beyond the Old Testament is inspired. As we can see in his letters to the church at Corinth, St. Paul believes he speaks with a divine authority. “If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual” writes Paul, “let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 14:37). An individual with experience in rabbinical tradition would recognize that no previous spiritual leader could lightly take the mantle of prophetic voice, yet Paul clearly aligns his own words with the same weight as Isaiah or the like. St. Peter confirms Paul’s place as God’s mouthpiece in describing Paul’s writing as Scripture in his own Epistle. (2 Peter 3:14-16) 

 Beyond this Paul’s use of New Testament quotations as Scripture imply that he believes them to also possess a like authority. St. Paul’s doctrine of the Lord’s Supper communicated to the Church at Corinth is based on quotations from the Gospel of Luke. Comparing 1 Corinthians 11:23–26 and Luke 22:19–20 reveals that St. Paul considers the Gospels to be authoritative as well. One of the more significant of these New Testament references is St. Paul’s statement, “that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.” (1 Corinthians 15:4). Yet where is this “third day” citation of the Scripture? St. Paul’s is looking to St. Matthew’s written testimony that, “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” (Matthew 12:40). 

Inspiration and Inerrancy

Common objections to inspiration are related to the idea of Biblical inerrancy. If the Bible is God’s breathed word, it would be reasonable to expect it to reflect its author in perfection. Yet many struggle to accept the Bible as God’s word because of suspected errors or additions in the transmission of the text.

The Christian position is that the Scripture breathed from God is inerrant in its original manuscripts, often described as autographa, and this sense of perfection does not apply to translations and copies.

Yet St. Paul did also imagine that the inspiration of God was for a purpose and outlines this in the phrases, “profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” Profitable for doctrine explicitly outlines that God is knowable through his scripture and that Scripture itself is the tool that God has appointed for teaching who he is. The idea of reproof in the second statement relates to the power of Scripture to bring about conviction and serves as the means by which the Holy Spirit may persuade man to believe. St. Paul’s idea that the Scripture is for reproof echoes Jesus’s command to “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.” (John 5:39).  The authority of the Scripture is also seen in St. Paul’s perspective that the Scripture have a sanctioning authority over against the conscience and life of a man. When he teaches that Scriptures are for correction, he is also claiming that they may be appealed to straighten (as a literal translation of correction would be rendered) a man’s waywardness.

Finally, Paul’s view of inspiration is confirmed in that the Scriptures are places as model records for “instruction in righteousness.” It is this last characteristic that makes our Scripture the “Holy” Bible in that their contained wisdom reflects the divine approval of the author. St. Paul’s final piece conveys the idea that the Scriptures are not only good for us, but because they are from God, they represent the standard of God’s judicial approval.  

Integrity of Manuscript Tradition

The turbulent world of textual criticism has been unable to shake scholarly confidence in the Scripture largely due to the work of faithful scholars who have been able to demonstrate the historic integrity of our received manuscript tradition. At the same time, it is the confidence gathered by St. Paul’s firm commitment to divine inspiration that encourages scholars to press forward against the doubts of liberal and neo-orthodox critics. St. Paul’s devotion to the Scriptural tradition is a reflection of his devotion to the God who speaks.  Princeton theologian BB Warfield explained the significance of our doctrine of inspiration best in this succinct definition: “In a word, what is being declared by this fundamental passage is simply that the Scriptures are a divine product, without any indication of how God has operated in producing them.” As did St. Paul believe, so does the faithful church believe. 

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On May 31, 2022 By In History, Theology

Messianic Prophecies and Covenant Renewal

“When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt: And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son.”  

St. Matthew ii:14-15
Image by Robert Cheaib

The prophetic witness of the Old Testament is a central theme of the gospel writers and appears throughout St. Matthew’s work as evidence of Jesus’s status as the Messiah. Through textual quotations, allusions, and implicit references St. Matthew offers his Hebrew audience dozens of examples of how Jesus fits the messianic qualifications of their own Scriptural tradition. Yet, St. Matthew often handles these references in ways that seem out of context with their original narratives. Established stories and characters are recast from their historical plots to take on symbolic or even typological meaning in the life of Jesus. While St. Matthew’s interpretation of the Old Testament is under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, it is unlikely that his contemporaries or even the prophets themselves always understood how their words pointed to a future Messiah.  One example is the fulfillment of “Out of Egypt have I called my son” cited by St. Matthew from the Book of Hosea. St. Matthew understood how the phrase fulfilled Scripture in terms of messianic prophecy, but also informs our interpretive lens for the Old Testament.

Prophecy and Providence

Basic to the idea of Biblical prophecy is the doctrine of providence by which we understand the divine governance of God in history. God fulfills his purposes as he unfolds the natural years of human history. Dutch-American theologian Louis Berkhof describes providence as, “whereby He rules all things so that they answer to the purpose of their existence.” a God’s sovereign orchestration of history is clearly explained in passages like Psalm 103:18 where we read, “The LORD has established His throne in heaven, And His kingdom rules over all.” The mechanism of messianic prophecy demonstrates the special promises possessed by the Hebrews as they expected the God over their history to also superintend a savior in their future. Contrast this with the writings of Sophocles and his Delphic oracles that entrap man’s future into an Oedipal tragedy.

St. Matthew’s use of messianic prophecies is therefore primarily a matter of demonstrating God’s power in time and not intended to be mere proof texts for qualifying Jesus’s own messianic candidacy. We see in the messianic prophecies God’s fingerprints of providence and signposts of his imminent work in establishing his renewed Kingdom. Dr. Edmund Clowney of Westminster Seminary explains in his popular book Preaching Christ in All of Scripture that the patterns that seem to repeat and find fulfillment in Jesus point to the magnifying work of Israel’s Messiah. “God will not merely repeat his deeds of the past; he will do greater things, climatically greater: a second exodus, involving spiritual deliverance; a new covenant, a new creation, a new people, including Jews and Gentiles; and a greater than Moses, than David, than Elijah.” b We should then expect that the interpretive methodology that St. Matthew will employ in relation to the fulfillment of the Old Testament will cast a greater weight to prophetic statements and allusions that point to the Messiah’s greater role in the destiny of the covenant People.

Greater Fulfillment in the Gospels

The narrative employed in Matthew 2 functions to highlight God’s past faithfulness and connect it to the greater promises that come through or are fulfilled by His Son. St. Matthew’s emphasis on the holy family’s refuge in Egypt employs not only a reference to Old Testament scripture, but invokes the historic symbolism of Moses and Hosea. Harkening back to an Exodus-like story, St. Matthew introduces Herod as a new Pharaoh and Jesus as a new Moses. The Messianic prophecy itself attempts to connect or memorialize a past event in redemptive history to the life and ministry of Jesus. This method of weaving pictures of previous covenantal epochs into the successive stages of Israel’s growth matches the entire pattern described as “covenant renewal” in James B. Jordan’s book Through New Eyes. Jordan explains that, “…time is opportunity.” and the Covenant history builds in a linear-spiral fashion. c The connections between messianic prophecy and their fulfillment point to God’s work at fulfilling his promises through successive covenantal renewals with mankind (e.g. Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David). With each successive Patriarch’s renewal, God reveals more of his glorious plan to be fulfilled in the future Messiah. Here St. Matthew appeals to Jesus as a new stage of covenant renewal. 

(more…)
  1. Berkhof, L. (2005). A Summary of Christian Doctrine. Part II. Ch. X. The Banner of Truth Trust.  (back)
  2. Clowney, E. P. (2003). Preaching Christ In All of Scripture. pg. 40. Crossway Books.  (back)
  3. Jordan, J. B. (1999). Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World. Wipf and Stock Publishers.  (back)

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On May 24, 2022 By In Culture, Politics, Pro-Life

Pelosi, Whoopi, and the Grace of Excommunication 

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco Salvatore Cordileone announced last week the excommunication of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The Archbishop has cited Pelosi’s refusal to back down from her public advocacy of abortion, which conflicts with the moral positions of the Church, Christian tradition, and the Holy Scripture.

Many news outlets have strangely described the event as the “denial of communion” (Washington Post) or a “communion ban” (Fox News) rather than excommunication. One criticism of the excommunication comes from Whoopi Goldberg – who once pretended to be a nun in a movie and now pretends to speak with even greater erudition than the Archbishop. Goldberg claims, “This is not your job, dude! You can’t — that is not up to you to make that decision.”

The term excommunication itself literally means “out of/from communion” and is from very simple Latin: “ex” and “communicatio.” I believe the modern American sees phrases like excommunication as harsh and as with a sense of permanence, yet this is not the historic understanding of the term. The process of removing a Christian from communion is not related to any particular sin, but rather the obstinate refusal to repent. While various sins certainly place individuals in a grave position at odds with Christian teaching in faith and morals, it is impenitence alone that leads to formal excommunication.

The historic understanding of excommunication is lost on many who would rather paint the church’s role in excommunication as harsh, judgmental, and unloving –  yet the act of excommunication is by the witness of Christ and his Apostles an act of love toward the wayward. God’s grace is fully present and offered in the pronouncement of excommunication as a final call away from sin and into the free gift of forgiveness – over even the most notorious of sins.

Did Jesus Teach Excommunication?

Just a few lines down from, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” (Matthew 7:1) our Lord Jesus also says, “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (v. 19) and “‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'” Jesus clearly expected that there would be situations that demand separation and even destruction from those who departed from his “narrow gate” (v. 13-14) and the, “will of My Father in heaven.” (v. 21). Jesus also passes down the authority to enact this separation through his Apostles with his own words, “And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 16:19).

St. Paul explicitly continued the practice of excommunication and explains that the act might be for the benefit of those engrossed in sin, “deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” (1 Corinthians 5:5) St. Paul saw excommunication as having the power to save, not as a malicious act to permanently destroy. The Geneva Bible includes these helpful notes, “The goal of excommunication is not to cast away the excommunicate that he should utterly perish, but that he may be saved, that is, that by this means his flesh may be tamed, that he may learn to live to the Spirit.”

Does the Church Excommunicate for Politics?

Goldberg contends that, “The archbishop of San Francisco is calling for speaker Nancy Pelosi to be denied receiving Communion because of her pro-choice stance…” While this statement is partly true, Archbishop Cordileone claims that the decision is “purely pastoral, not political.” The idea that an activist Bishop might wield the keys of the kingdom for political reasons is rightly to be feared, yet the issue of abortion is not simply political. There is a plainly spoken and unbroken witness in the Christian tradition from the first-century Didache (“you shall not abort a child or commit infanticide.”) through today in defense of the unborn. There is no doubt that ancient Christians consistently held that life in the womb was to be protected and the taking of this life was a sinful breech of the commandment to “do no murder.” Again, it should be reiterated that Cordileone has not excommunicated Pelosi for a belief about abortion or even “the grave evil she is perpetrating”, but rather for obstinately refusing to repent of her advocacy of abortion.

The Archbishop’s position to excommunicate a powerful governmental figure for their support of a grave evil is not new and has precedence in church history. In 390, Bishop Ambrose of Milan excommunicated Emperor Theodosius, claiming that the “The Emperor is in the Church, not above it.” The same could be argued today, in that Speaker Pelosi is in the Church, not above it. Emperor Theodosius’s excommunication was directly related to his role in the massacre of 7,000 men, women, and children in Thessalonica. After eight months outside the church, Theodosius kneeled his heart in penitence and was restored to communion. Through excommunication, the same grace and hope for restoration is offered to Pelosi.

The emperor himself had not driven a sword into a single individual, just as Speaker Pelosi does not herself scrape out a baby using a metal curette, yet the policies supported and advocated by Speaker Pelosi have contributed to the deaths of millions of unborn children through legal abortion in the United States. The Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood’s research arm, estimates the number of annual abortions to be over 800,000. (from 2017 figures)

In response to the Archbishop, Pelosi has openly criticized the church’s positions, accused the hierarchy of hypocrisy, and went on to receive communion at a church outside of the Archdiocese. Perhaps this speaks to Pelosi’s character or perhaps to the weakness of discipline in the Roman Church, but it certainly is not representative of a spirit of humility or of respect for her claimed ecclesiastical tradition.

The Practical Prayers of Excommunication

During the formative years of my Christian walk I sat under a church that prayed each week for those who had strayed from the Christian faith. We would pray for those who are not saved, but also for those described as “under discipline” (or “excommunicated”). Each week we would recite the names of those under discipline and ask, “that our Lord would bring them to a place of repentance and restore them to the fellowship of Christ’s church.” Seeing them actually return to answer these prayers was always a powerful testimony. My own tradition speaks to excommunication in the Articles of Religion, “XXXIII. Of excommunicate Persons, how they are to be avoided.” Here again, excommunication is affirmed but with the goal that such treatment, “as a heathen and publican” (see Matthew 18:17) would result in reconciliation, penance, and received back into the full fellowship of the church.

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On June 30, 2021 By In Books, Church, Discipleship, Theology

Kill Goliath and Save his Skull

Last week, our church hosted a Vacation Bible School that included the story of “David and Goliath” as one of the Bible stories. I was responsible for the “Bible story station” that introduced the characters, the meaning behind the story, and its application. Groups would spend twenty minutes with me and then return later in the day for ten minutes of reflection and prayer.

Our VBS theme’s package included scripted lessons that a leader could simply read with sample questions and ideas for applications for various age groups. Our materials were produced by the Methodist publisher Cokesbury and generally faithful to the Biblical story. They were also insightful about how to manage the attention of younger students, but like all modern children’s curricula – do not expect much from the child.

On Bite-Sized Lessons

Exercises like this always cause me to question how much of Sunday’s sermon is actually understood by my youngest congregants. The VBS curriculums seem to assume that children need everything delivered in such easily digested, bite-sized pieces. Perhaps this level of VBS is meant for children who may have never been to a church. But not even two minutes into my introduction of David and Goliath it was obvious that my group of eight and nine-year-olds were already very familiar with the details of the story—down to the number of stones that David collects. The study guide wanted me to focus on “facing bullies” and “overcoming adversity” but the kids had heard it all before.

Caught off guard, I went into “Rev. Clowney Mode” and thought I would pivot into teaching how Goliath’s downfall points to Christ. Now completely off script, I asked the students, “So what happened to Goliath next?” A few hands went up. One young man was so excited to share that I decided to ignore his impatient “I know! I know!” and call on him anyway. “David cut his head off!” For some strange reason, this scene wasn’t included in the coloring sheets and didn’t make it into any of the suggested drama skits for the day. Go figure.

And, “and then what happened?” I asked. The students looked at each other, shrugged, and back to me. Here I explained that King David eventually took the giant’s skull to Jerusalem, to be buried just outside of the Holy City of Jerusalem.

I asked them to consider Goliath a type of serpent, reminding them that “coat of mail” that we see described as his armor in 1 Samuel 17 is more akin to a breastplate of snake scales. I then asked them to remember the Garden of Eden and to consider the promises made to Adam and Eve after their expulsion, chiefly that a descendent of theirs was to crush the head of the serpent. I pointed out that in our Scripture reading, David’s stone “sunk” into Goliath’s head. David was Adam’s great-great (times thirty-five generations) grandson and he was well aware of the promises to his family’s line. He and all future generations would remember David as the son of Adam who had crushed the serpent with a stone to the head.

Yet David was only fulfilling part of that promise. David’s battle with Goliath was looking forward to when the Messiah would destroy the true serpent and undo mankind’s death curse. David anticipated this when he brought Goliath’s skull back to Jerusalem as a covenant sign of God’s future faithfulness. For the very place that David buries Goliath’s skull is to become the very same spot that Jesus is to be crucified: Golgotha.

David with the Head of Goliath, circa 1635, by Andrea Vaccaro

As James B. Jordan points out:

“Golgotha is just a contraction of Goliath of Gath (Hebrew: Goliath-Gath). 1 Samuel 17:54 says that David took the head of Goliath to Jerusalem, but since Jerusalem was to be a holy city, this dead corpse would not have been set up inside the city, but someplace outside. The Mount of Olives was right in front of the city (1 Kings 11:7; 2 Kings 23:13), and a place of ready access. Jesus was crucified at the place where Goliath’s head had been exhibited. Even as His foot was bruised, He was crushing the giant’s head!”

Biblical Horizons Newsletter No. 84: Christ in the Holy of Holies The Meaning of the Mount of Olives by James B. Jordan (April, 1996)

I had gone way off course from the VBS script. I was talking about burying a giant’s skull and Christ crucified, where the script had this as its closing reflection: “If you wonder how you can face challenges that might seem bigger than you, remember that with God you can find what you need to help you meet your challenges.”

Goliath Cross Skull

At reflection time they returned eager for more juicy details about David’s bloodlust, only for me to remind them of Christ’s present promises to conquer sin and that perhaps us miserable sinners are more like Goliath than David in the story. We deserve a stone to the head for our life of war against God. And like Goliath’s lifeless skull outside of Jerusalem, our only hope was the blood dripping down from the saviour on the cross.

On Practical, Relevant Preaching

The need for a “practical application” and the lure of relevance or accessibility has detached the Christian meaning of David versus Goliath from its place in the story of the Gospel. King David as a historical figure with a natural and spiritual lineage leading to Jesus is of no real consequence in the VBS version. While I have no doubt that this story also presents a great opportunity for character building in giving us examples of overcoming adversity, let’s not limit David to the realm of mere fable.

David and Goliath - Malcolm Gladwell

After all, popular authors have done much better than pastors with this self-help approach. For example, Malcom Gladwell parlayed the underdog notion of David and Goliath into a New York Times Bestseller back in 2015 when he connected this story to all sorts of character applications. Everything from the religious sacrifices of the French Huguenots to the jumbled but noble struggle of dyslexics. In Gladwell’s applications, the whole idea of the story was simple: what we saw as disadvantages in the small-statured shepherd boy, were actually his secret weapons against the Philistine giant. David had it in him the whole time, everyone else just couldn’t see it. Is this the message of Christ?

We must contend that the Holy Spirit did not include the battle with Goliath to add a Hebrew hero to the Aesopica. David’s battle must be more than a story for inspiring courage and spurring on self-development. We have not faithfully taught any passage of Scripture without connecting it to the story of Christ’s redemption. Or as Rev. Edmund Clowney put it, “Preachers who ignore the history of redemption in the preaching are ignoring the witness of the Holy Spirit to Jesus in all the Scriptures.”

Rev. Clowney was Professor Emeritus of Practical Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, where he served for over thirty years, sixteen of those as president. He authored several books, including The Unfolding Mystery: Discovering Christ in the Old Testament.

Esoteric Speculations

Grounding our teaching in the story of Christ also prevents the fetishizing of obscure details in the Hebrew text. I was recently asked to lead a book study through Michael S. Heiser’s book The Unseen Realm. While leading the study, I quickly learned that the generation of men taught under “relevant preaching” styles had missed out on the necessary theological framework to hang the Old Testament narratives. They craved the order and structure The Unseen Realm offers. Unfortunately, Heiser’s book reads like he has just recently unlocked a secret code to understand the Bible through special ancient symbols and obscure language clues.

Speculations about Nephilim, angels, and giants creep in and have the power to wedge an artificial gap between our historical theology and our new pet passages. Men like Othmar Keel, Meredith Kline, and Gregory Beale have been offering us similar approaches to Biblical symbolism while staying within Nicene orthodoxy and the historic church. And of course, James Jordan offered a very accessible compendium of Biblical symbolism in his book Through New Eyes.

How much did Goliath’s armor weigh? Were his ancestors fallen angels? Did the giants survive the flood? Does new Philistine DNA evidence prove the existence of bronze-age giants? The depths of the Biblical text are inexhaustible, or as D.A. Carson put it in his book The Gospel as Center, “The Bible is an ever-flowing fountain…” but wild speculations detached from the story of salvation are not equal to seeing Christ in every passage of Scripture. To see Christ in every God-breathed passage is to drink from the living stream, while a desire for obscurity inevitably leads to the brackish waters of pseudo-scholarship based in the mysteries of pseudepigraphon and cliches of post-modern religious studies.

Teach Christ

There’s nothing foolish, redundant, or mediocre about Christ-centered preaching. Those who love the Lord will never tire of hearing how Christ is present on every page. Those who are far from him desperately need to hear him speak to every area of life. Let us never grow weary in taking captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:5)

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Climate Change Christian time

On September 17, 2020 By In Culture

Climate Alarmism is the Left’s Version of Rapture Theology

“We must make sure that nobody is left behind…”

UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ (September 2019) 

One of the most disappointing ministry stories that I’ve ever encountered was that of a young woman who recounted how she ended her Awana glory days. This young woman was part of a Christian family and a baptized member of the local First Baptist Church. She had been through multiple stages of Awana and considered herself “on fire” for Christ. When the year 2000 came around, her pastor encouraged her to put her faith to practice. He warned that Y2K and all of the apocalyptic events surrounding the new millennium were certainly signs of the end times. “Jesus is coming back. Don’t be left behind,” was the clear message. 

 This young woman was ready for the return of Christ. Her pastor shared that December 31st of the year 1999 was going to be the last day of the world and that the Lord would rapture up the faithful believers into Heaven. Everyone else will be left behind to face the most difficult times mankind has ever known. The message was clear – everyone who does not believe will face certain disaster. It was a powerful tool for conversions. It made the fear of the Lord into a pressing reality and gave evangelical Christians a paradigm by which to read current events. 

But on January 1st, 2000 – Jesus did not return. And neither did this young woman. Not to Church at least. She was more than disappointed, she felt deceived. Her entire worldview was built around Christ’s return and her pastor’s ability to tell the truth. 

Christian teachers who expect the imminent return of Christ are largely from the American dispensational and premillennial camps. This innovative 19th century movement can be traced back to men like Darby and Scofield, yet it now holds a great deal of influence in evangelical circles today. You may even be familiar with some of their more ardent advocates like Tim LaHaye of the fiction series “Left Behind” (which was also made into a movie with Nicolas Cage and Jordin Sparks).  Our friend Gary Demar refers to this theological movement as “Last Days Madness.” (See his book by the same title here). 

But rapture theology permeates not only the evangelical world, but the entire human condition. The idea that the world is running down toward destruction is a common trope also embraced by climate alarmists and is often coupled with phrases like, “left behind.” 

In a press release, the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks, “We must make sure that nobody is left behind as a result of the climate impacts that we are already experiencing and more and more will experience in the future.” This apocalyptic language is common throughout the climate change discussion. One of the most eminent prophets for American environmentalism is former Vice President Al Gore. In 2006, Gore’s famous An Inconvenient Truth set the clock at ten years until the ice caps were gone and irreversible damage had been done. But as David French put it, “Well, the ten years passed today, we’re still here, and the climate activists have postponed the apocalypse. Again.”

Postponing the apocalypse happens again and again. Today’s climate prophets like Greta Thunberg sound eerily familiar to the wonks predicting the coming rapture. “I want you to panic… I want you to feel the fear I feel every day,” preaches Thunberg. And she’s not alone in her preaching, ”The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change,”  says millennial Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The religious overtone of these conversations continue in almost every level of politics. In responding to wildfires and hurricanes, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claims, “Mother Earth is angry… She’s telling us with hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, fires in the West…” 

I remember when the news media would mock men like Jerry Fallwell and Pat Robertson for linking natural disasters to the wrath of God. Yet, climate alarmism seems to embrace the very same rapture mentality: the end is near, be afraid.

The negative effects and false prophecies of climate alarmism have been readily apparent for decades. Yet our politicians continue to choose the religion of climate activism over the welfare of human life. In his book “Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All” Michael Shellenberger chronicles how end-times environmentalism has done more damage than good. 

More than embracing junk science, modern climate change alarmist often reveal a hatred for our world.

“When we hear activists, journalists, IPCC scientists, and others claim climate change will be apocalyptic unless we make immediate, radical changes, including massive reductions in energy consumption, we might consider whether they are motivated by love for humanity or something closer to its opposite We must fight against Malthusian and apocalyptic environmentalists who condemn human civilization and humanity itself.”

(Apocalypse Never, p. 274) 

While I don’t personally agree with many of Shellenberger’s ultimate conclusions, there is an underlying truth that humans can improve the health and well being of our planet. We can transform once arid environments into farmland and relieve some of the worst human suffering by economic development. There’s no need for alarm, but rather hope. 

The myths of limited resources and overpopulation are used to malign human life by climate alarmists. Again, wielding a similar weapon American Dispensationalism spurns the world and looks to escape a sinful world via the rapture. But the message of the Gospel is that Christ’s resurrection has overcome the sin of Adam. The lamb of God has come to take away, not the people from the world, but the sin from the world. We have therefore both a spiritual and cosmic hope for this world and the next. 

We cannot allow the “apocalypse nonsense” of the left’s “climate alarmism” or dispensational “end times madness” to be the rudder of a Christian future. Christians ought to recognize the power of our sovereign God in history and the present reality of Christ’s dominion for the life of the world. 

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