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On November 28, 2019 By In Culture, Music, Theology

Kanye gets Adam and Eve right

If you follow pop culture at all, you know who Kanye West is, and you know that he is now a professing Christian. His recent album, Jesus Is King, is a Christian album filled with surprisingly orthodox lyrics. No blatant heresies or misuses of scripture are detected. In fact, they are quite good insofar as they reveal where Kanye is in his faith.

As I listened to the album, the following lyrics – from the song “Everything We Need” – stuck out to me in particular:

What if Eve made apple juice?
You gon’ do what Adam do?
Or say, “Baby, let’s put this back on the tree,
‘Cause we have everything we need”

These four short lines are immensely profound, for they correct a common misunderstanding about the fall of man (i.e. the doctrine of original sin).

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On November 24, 2019 By In Counseling/Piety, Theology

Transfiguration & Enthronement

In Luke’s Gospel, just after Jesus calls the disciples to deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow him, Jesus leads three of his disciples up a high mountain to see him transfigured. This little exercise was not merely so that Jesus could somehow show off before his disciples. The disciples’ presence is crucial, especially after being told what it means to follow him. Jesus wants to give them a taste of what is coming for them as they continue to follow him. A foretaste of Jesus’ coming glory on that mountain is just as much for the disciples as it is for Jesus. The cross of which Jesus just told them is not the end for Jesus or for the disciples. The cross is the necessary path to glory, but the cross is not the end of the story.

In his fear, Peter doesn’t seem to remember what Jesus told them about eight days before concerning the cross. He wants to stay there on top of the mountain. This can’t be done. Glory is coming, but it will not be a cross-less glory. Jesus will lead the way through the death of the cross to glorious transfiguration in resurrection. All those who follow him will follow the same path in one way or another.

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On November 13, 2019 By In Books, Theology, Wisdom

Augustine on Prayer

Augustine’s book Confessions is a wonderful reflection on the sovereignty of God and the evangelical nature of the gospel. That is to say, in reading in the Confessions, you are steeped in the reality that God will judge every moment of your life. Augustine underlines and highlights this reality throughout the book by writing it as one long prayer to God.

One time I was talking with a friend about the book and he commented that he kept getting caught on the pronoun “you”. He would be reading along and then Augustine would say “you” and my friend said that pronoun would reorient everything: the book is not addressed to the reader but to God. This is true throughout the whole book even up to the end where Augustine writes, “Only you can be asked, only you can be begged, only on your door can we knock” (Bk XIII.38).

As I reflect on the nature of prayer and what Augustine is doing in this book, I am challenged in a couple of ways. First, do I have such a robust prayer life that I could pray to God like Augustine? Augustine prays about everything imaginable. Big things and small things: he prays about smiling as an infant, being beaten at school, dreams, friendships, reading, death, philosophy, memory, etc. Augustine’s prayer life is his whole life. I don’t know when I have ever heard someone pray about the nature of time. But Augustine does it.   

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On November 5, 2019 By In Books, Culture, Politics, Theology

Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism: Calvinism and the Future

This is the sixth part of a six part article series on Abraham Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism. He gave these lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary over a series of days in October 1898. Happy International Abraham Kuyper Month!

Here is an overview of Kuyper’s other lectures on Calvinism: Life-system, Religion, Politics, Science, and Art.

In this final lecture, Kuyper begins by summarizing his past lectures with these words: “[Calvinism] raised our Christian religion to its highest spiritual splendor; it created a church order, which became the preformation of state confederation; it proved to be the guardian angel of science; it emancipated art; it propagated a political scheme, which gave birth to constitutional government, both in Europe and America; it fostered agriculture and industry, commerce and navigation; it put a thorough Christian stamp upon home-life and family-ties; it promoted through its high moral standard purity in our social circles; and to this manifold effect it placed beneath Church and State, beneath society and home-circle, a fundamental philosophic conception strictly derived from its dominating principle, and therefore all its own” (p 171).

Kuyper then moves on to look at his current time and suggests where Calvinism can help in shaping and building for the future. He suggests that the topic of his final lecture is “A new Calvinistic development needed by the wants of the future” (p 171). 

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On November 1, 2019 By In Theology

Why We Need All Saints’ Day

Robert Jenson argues that theology is “the church’s enterprise and the only church conceivably in question is the unique and solitary church of the creeds.”[1] That is to say, doing theology has boundaries. To study the Bible and God we must have creedal presuppositions. We affirm God is the Creator of Heaven and Earth. We believe in the Communion of Saints. If a church abandons these central ideas she is doing theology in vain. She forsakes the hermeneutic necessary to think about God properly.

This is All Saints’ Day. As we celebrate the great actors in God’s history/play, we are celebrating men and women who did theology in the context of the holy, catholic, and apostolic church. They were not isolationists, they did not drink of the wine of the individualist, but rather they discovered that studying the Scriptures happened most effectively when there was proper accountability, faithful ministers, and pure worship.

Part of this profound inability to do theology ecclesiastically stems from our evangelical distaste for anything that is old. I have often said that most evangelicals believe church history began when Billy Graham was born. I exaggerate to make the point that we are untrained in the ancient. We don’t read our forefathers. We don’t relish their words. Therefore, we keep innovating worship, adding our human ingenuity to church methodologies, always trying to outdo the next local assembly in gadgets and lights. And the church keeps losing; losing the youth, losing our identity, losing our history, and losing our Gospel.

For this reason, we need All Saints’ Day! We need it to remind us that we come from a long line of faithful travelers “tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection.” We need it to remember we come from a long line of interpreters. We need it to do theology well. Our history is not a beginning history, but one that has begun long ago. We follow in their train; a noble army of men and boys, the matron and the maid. We continue their journey to that eternal city. We do theology in unison.

Happy All Saints’ Day!

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On October 29, 2019 By In Theology

C.S. Lewis and the “threat” to the Reformation

I was in a friendly conversation with a fellow pastor some years ago. The tone changed rather quickly when I spoke positively about C.S. Lewis. In his perspective, Lewis was a dangerous writer who could lead people away from the safety of Reformed confessionalism.

Suddenly, in his eyes, I had gone from a faithful Reformed pastor to someone compromising my orthodoxy. The experience was so shocking and his tone so harsh that I kindly asked if we could continue this conversation another time and left. I knew nothing fruitful would come from that chat. Of course, we never continued that talk and I am frankly grateful. Such reactions stem from an over-reactionary perspective of theology. The idea is that we must be glued to our Reformed forefathers and read nothing else outside our tradition for fear that it might damage our pure ideas of interpretation.

As we approach Reformation Day, I find myself more and more grateful to God to those within and without my particular tradition. Those of us in the Reformational camp have a greater responsibility to provide a framework that is more whole, more catholic, and more complete than other traditions. After all, we produced the Puritans, Bavinck, Kuyper, Van Til, Bahnsen and Sproul. From the Reformation stemmed this gigantic sense that everything in the world is Christ’s and we are in him which means we seek to bring Christ to everything.

The idea that Lewis’ peculiar views on the imprecatory Psalms, for instance, would be a threat to the Reformation is absolutely bizarre. I could easily find peculiarities in Luther. However, the idea that Lewis’ genius would contribute to a more robust Reformation is precisely the kind of world we need to embrace. If the modern Reformed man or woman lives in fear that such and such an author or thinker will remove us from the Reformation, then we have adopted a very narrow view of the Reformation. We have failed to see precisely Calvin’s vision for the church, the Puritan’s vision for the world, and Kuyper’s vision for the culture.

So then, read broadly, hold on to your convictions closely, explore Christendom unashamedly and go to Narnia often. To be Reformed is to be unafraid; it is to know God and to know self.

Solus Christus!

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On October 29, 2019 By In Art, Books, Theology

Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism: Calvinism and Art

This is the fifth part of a six part article series on Abraham Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism. He gave these lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary over a series of days in October 1898. Happy International Abraham Kuyper Month!

Kuyper begins this lecture acknowledging the terrible idol that Art has become. He says, “Genuflection before an almost fanatical worship of art, such as our time fosters, should little harmonize with the high seriousness of life, for which Calvinism has pleaded, and which it has sealed, not with the pencil or the chisel in the studio, but with its best blood at the stake and in the field of battle” (p 142). Kuyper is reminding us to to see the vast difference between the artists in the art shop and the faithful men and women who sealed their confession with their very blood. While art does make an impact on culture and society, those who have died for the faith have the greater victory. 

Kuyper then says, “Moreover the love of art which is so broadly on the increase in our times should not blind our eyes, but ought to be soberly and critically examined” (p 142). We should not create art for the sake of art, nor should we enjoy it for itself. We must do art for God’s sake and glory. This means a high and serious examination of all art in order to bring it in submission to God.   

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On October 27, 2019 By In Theology, Worship

You Are The Christ?

The Twelve have been walking with Jesus for a while now. They have heard him proclaim the gospel of the kingdom. They have seen him heal diseases, cast out demons, and feed multitudes with five loaves and two fish. Jesus has even granted them authority over diseases and demons. But do the Twelve know who Jesus is? Do they understand his true identity and, consequently, his vocation?

In Luke 9, on the heels of the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus inquires. First, he asks the disciples who the crowds say that he is. They had been mingling through the crowds (9.11) passing out and collecting food. People were talking. What were they saying about Jesus? The disciples tell him that they believe that Jesus is one of the prophets risen from the dead. But then Jesus turns to the disciples and asks, “And you, who do you say that I am?” Peter answers, “You are the Christ of God.” (9.20)

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On October 24, 2019 By In Theology

Reformation Myths, Part 2

In the first post, we dealt with two myths. First, the myth that the Reformers did not care about the outward unity of the Church, and second, the myth that the Reformers wanted each individual Christian to read the Bible on his own and interpret the Bible on his own.  In this final post, I will offer two additional myths. We cannot detail all the various myths surrounding Reformational theology, but we will be content with these four.

The third myth is that the Reformers invented the idea of predestination. The Reformers certainly taught the idea of predestination, but they certainly did not invent the idea of predestination. Augustine many centuries earlier in response to the heretic, Pelagius, had a very developed theology of predestination. Augustine wrote:

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On October 22, 2019 By In Theology

Reformation Myths, Part 1

Reformation Sunday is coming! Thanks to the vast availability of theological material on-line, the Reformed faith has become familiar furniture in the evangelical house. Still, Reformed theology can be very divisive.  A quick search through on-line debates will produce a plethora of healthy and detrimental interactions between Reformed and non-Reformed. Our calling as Christians is to strive towards like-mindedness (Jn. 17) with the non-Reformed, but this does not mean that we ought to strive towards like-mindlessness. The call to unity is a call for us to dialogue with other Trinitarians with an open Bible and a humble spirit. a. To begin this conversation we need to clear away misunderstandings; to clear away the myths concerning the Reformation. It is my humble opinion that the greatest expression of Trinitarian orthodoxy in the world today is found in the Reformed faith. Explaining precisely what this great tradition desired to do will help us ground ourselves in the Reformation’s conviction that the Scriptures are our highest authority in life.

Critics have developed many myths about the 16th century Reformation. Ironically, the critics would not have the privilege and liberty to express their criticisms if it had not been for the Reformation. They persist nevertheless. We will examine four of these myths in the next couple of posts.

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  1. Thanks to my friend, Rich Lusk, for elaborating on these  (back)

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