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On August 2, 2016 By In Theology

Reading the Fathers

An increasing number of people in the evangelical and Reformed tradition are becoming aware of the importance of engaging with the writings of the early church Fathers. The Reformers themselves would of course have taken this for granted, a point regularly made, for example, by students of Calvin – notice the huge number of quotations from the Fathers in his Institutes and elsewhere. In a similar vein, if we turn to Cranmer on the Lord’s Supper or Jewel’s Apologia for the Church of England, once again we find not only a heavy dependence on the writings of the church Fathers, but also a deep-seated conviction that a theological (and indeed historical) continuity with the Fathers is a vital part of what it means to hear the truth of God in the Scriptures.

It’s therefore very encouraging to see the self-identified heirs of Calvin, Cranmer, and the rest following in their footsteps in this matter, since working hard at this connection with the early church is really the only way to ensure that we acquire a vision of the Christian faith with the deepest possible roots in the (small-c) catholic tradition of which we rightly consider ourselves to be a part.

Yet the enterprise of reading the Fathers is not always as easy as it seems.

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On July 25, 2016 By In Theology, Wisdom

How not to miss opportunities in theological and ministerial education

I was chatting with a friend recently about ministerial and theological training, and I had a couple of thoughts about some of the ways in which the whole experience can go awry.

It strikes me that one of the problems that sometimes arises when people go to seminary or theological college is that they are frankly a little suspicious of their lecturers (whom they don’t know very well, after all), and about the books they’re asked to read (many of which are written by people they’re never heard of), and they therefore approach their studies with an attitude of rather unconstructive criticism. They adopt a “personal theological position” on a whole range of matters about which they profess sufficient knowledge to make pretty final-sounding judgments, and then proceed to assess what they read and hear on the basis of whether it agrees with what they already think they know.

As a result, their theological training is characterised by two major disappointments. First, they experience only the slightest incremental growth in theological understanding during their training, because they have innoculated themselves anything new, and it’s quite hard to have your world rocked by someone who is saying stuff that’s basically pretty familiar. Second, on the (rare?) occasions that they happen to encounter something genuinely new (perhaps by accident, or perhaps because it’s forced upon them), they respond with an unhealthy dose of critical-spirited-ness, because, after all, this stuff contradicts my “personal theological position.” It’s all pretty sad.

At the risk of causing offence – a risk worth taking in this instance – I’ll be blunt.

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On June 14, 2016 By In Theology

What do we receive in the Lord’s Supper?

The debate about what exactly we receive at the Lord’s Supper, and how we receive whatever it is that we receive, is a long and complex one. Normally, it gets bogged down pretty quickly in some fairly flaky metaphysics from Roman Catholics and Lutherans, facing off against strident denials of almost everything from evangelicals, with the Reformed types sitting somewhere in the middle, uncertain quite which way to jump. One wonders whether there might not be a better way of approaching the question.

Fortunately, there is.

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On May 16, 2016 By In Theology

In Praise of Klaas Schilder

The work of Klaas Schilder (1890-1952) is not very well known in North America, but I hope that will change soon. He was a brilliant theologian—a courageous voice for Calvinist orthodoxy in the Netherlands for over four decades—who, while upholding the “cultural mandate” perspective that provides the basis for Dutch neo-Calvinist thought, disagreed with Abraham Kuyper on some key points. He sets forth his overall case in a concise manner in his little book, Christ and Culture, which has been available to the English-speaking world since 1977. Now, however, the folks at the Canadian Reformed Seminary in Hamilton, Ontario, have produced a much more readable translation, with helpful explanatory notes, which deserves careful attention from those of us in the Kuyperian camp. (Full disclosure: I wrote the Foreword to this new edition.)

As a Kuyper devotee, I do have some serious disagreements with the way Schilder makes his case. But on several key points he offers helpful words of caution to those of us who follow Kuyper. He rightly observes, for example, that Kuyper makes more than one “rather large leap” in claiming a biblical basis for the idea of sphere sovereignty. Even though I am convinced that a biblically sound Kuyperian-type case for diverse creational spheres can be developed, Schilder rightly pushes me to exercise considerable care in making the proper biblical moves.

For all of his criticisms of Kuyper, though, Schilder does not lose sight of the kinds of foundational emphases that Kuyper drew upon from the Reformed tradition. Schilder has his own criticisms of Anabaptist and Barthian perspectives, insisting—in formulations that any Kuyperian will find inspiring—that Christ is indeed the Lord of culture, and his followers must submit to his Lordship in all aspects of life. And while Schilder is not fond of the notion of common grace—such a key theological concept for many of us—Schilder nonetheless insists that we must not lose sight of the reality that all human beings, elect and non-elect, share a created “being together,” a sunousia, that has not been erased by the radical effects of the Fall. (more…)

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On May 5, 2016 By In Theology

The House and the Ascension

Long ago, our Father in Heaven had a plan. His plan was to create the world as a theater to display his glory. The world was to be a house that reflected his name. The Shekinah glory was to remain there forever. And through many dangers, toils, and snares, the house was little by little losing the purpose the builder had for it.

It would appear that God’s building project had become an abysmal failure. But God’s construction plans are not like our building projects. His ways are not our ways. He had a plan. He had a restoration project. He was going to restore, rebuild, and reclaim his own house. This time, the house was not going to be built on spiritual adultery or religious idolatry. It would be on the Rock, which is Christ. The builders rejected him, but the new humanity composed of men and women, and children united to the Rock, will no longer deny him.

In the life of Jesus, the foundation was poured on the earth. In his death, the wall and roof were placed to cover the world and give it shade. In his resurrection, fresh, clean water is available. Come and drink of the river that never runs dry. But there is one part of this earthly construction that is missing. There is a foundation, a roof to protect you from the storms, running water to shower and be replenished, but now we need to turn it on. We need electricity! We need the power to turn the refrigerator, stove, microwave, air conditioner, heater, fan, laptops, cell phones, etc. We need to activate the house so that everyone can live with a purpose. I propose that the Ascension of Jesus is that singular event in history that gives life to everything; that sets everything into motion. It is the electricity that the Church needs to disciple the nations.

Without the Ascension, we are living in an almost finished property. The Ascension means that the house/world is ready to be inhabited once and for all. The power is on. We can now move in together as a Church and take care of it. The workers can all go home. Our only task is now maintaining the house. Now, this house is the world. And the world is a big place. It needs to be energized by the Ascension. The Ascension is God’s way of saying: “My Son’s work is done! Now it’s your turn!” (more…)

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On April 25, 2016 By In Family and Children, Theology

The Radical Nature of the Ordinary

There is an incredible investment in the evangelical community in the word radical. There is nothing inherently sinful about the word, but its common usage has turned into a marketing scheme. For instance, well-known author David Platt in his book Radical observes:

“Radical obedience to Christ is not easy… It’s not comfort, not health, not wealth, and not prosperity in this world. Radical obedience to Christ risks losing all these things. But in the end, such risk finds its reward in Christ. And he is more than enough for us.”

Whether or not we are comfortable with Platt’s conclusion is a different question. But crucial to this discussion is the use of the word as an accentuation of the Christian faith. Ordinary faith+radical faith=authentic faith. But is this how the Bible portrays the Christian life? In other words, why do so many authors and speakers find the need to insert the word radical into the clear commands of the Bible? Is “love your neighbor” not a pure example of a kind of life that is diametrical to the human experience? Is radical faith a kind of secret life that only few can find through a consistent impulse to abandon wealth and prosperity and the American dream? Simply put, are we making Jesus’ yoke hard and his burden heavy? Are we creating a sub-culture of radical Christians who do the risky thing for Jesus while the others are left in this trite category of non-radical?

Part of the genius of the Christian Bible is that the ordinary is radical. Forcing an alliance of radical Christians into the Scriptures makes the ordinary unnecessary. Certainly the impetus of such move is to offer the evangelical world a more robust expression of Christian living. But my assertion is that creating a radical platform to encourage people to do their ordinary work is not an encouragement, but a detriment to pursuing the ordinary work of Christian living. Who, after all, feels radical after a long bout of chemotherapy? You feel ordinary. In fact, you feel incapable of being anything more than ordinary. In fact, your calling at this point is to be as ordinarily Christian as you can as your body decays from within.

Ordinary Christian living is different from radical Christian living. It does not feel shame in the comfort of a hammock at the lake or in the luxury of an afternoon game at the stadium or the perfectly grilled steak. Ordinary Christian living does not negate the good, it gives thanks for the good. It does not negate the routine of a mother’s third diaper change of the day, it exalts the role of motherhood. I do not doubt many in this movement would affirm these assertions, but the reality is that the kinds of disciples these authors and speakers are producing are either misunderstanding the message of Radical proponents or they are using this message as a way of escaping the ordinary.

We live an age where we need less radical things and more ordinary things lived out daily in the Church. We need more bread and wine, more hugs, more encouragement, more connection with one another, more good night kisses and more tickling of babies. We need more ordinary. Jesus accomplished the radical. Let’s live out the radical nature of the ordinary in faithful obedience.

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On April 23, 2016 By In Politics, Theology

Problems in public theology

The task of speaking for Christ in the public square – the kind of thing done here in the UK by our friends at Christian Concern and the Christian Institute – is an urgent and important one. Yet it is fraught with difficulties. Here are some of them.

1. The British evangelical and Reformed church has given only limited attention to the task of constructing a public theology. Many churches appear to view almost any kind of public engagement as a distraction from the gospel, a view that only serves to reveal an unbiblical and minimalist view of the gospel itself. Yet the fact remains that with a few exceptions British evangelical and Reformed churches are largely disengaged from public life, leaving the task to courageous para-church organisations like those mentioned above. One reason for this is that we have failed to articulate a clear theological rationale for such engagement. Consequently, until we recover something approaching a biblical view of eschatology, ecclesiology, and indeed of the gospel itself, this situation is unlikely to change.

My impression is that the situation is a little better in the US. Yet even so, I’m not sure there are many reasons for optimism. Just to take one slightly unnerving example, if a Christian-dominated political constituency is capable of bringing this man to the brink of the nomination for Republican presidential candidate, it clearly has some way to go before it can really be said to have worked out all the details of its public theology.

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On April 15, 2016 By In Culture, Politics, Theology, Worship

The doxological foundations of a Christian social order

Introduction

In recent years, various writers have given some thought to the shape of a distinctively Christian social order: What would the world look like if large numbers of people turned to Christ and sought to live out their faith in every sphere of life?

This is an important question for at least two reasons. The first is of particular concern to me, as a Minister in London England: this issue has been almost entirely neglected in contemporary British evangelicalism. While God has blessed us richly in the last century or so with a rediscovery of the priority of biblical preaching, personal faith, evangelism, church planting and so on, we have not given enough thought to the ways in which the gospel should impact the wider structures of society – the life of nations, our educational systems, the media, the law, politics, medicine, the arts, and so on. It’s about time that we did.

Second, these questions about the nature of a Christian social order are not merely peripheral or academic. In the contrary, the answers we give to them will profoundly shape the kinds of decisions we make in many different areas of our lives. They will help us decide how we should educate our children, what kind of political change we ought to work and pray for, how we should vote (and what to expect from even the best candidates if they win), what strategies we should employ as we engage in public life, what kinds of attitudes we ought to have towards our vocations, and a whole range of other questions.

Indeed, almost every major decision (and a good many minor ones) we make in our lives as individuals, families, and churches presupposes some kind of answer to this question, since at its heart it is about the shape of history (past, present and future), and our interpretation of the past and our expectations for the future will necessarily shape our decisions in the present. Life is eschatology.

A neglected question

There is one important issue, however, which has been rather neglected (so far) as we have sought to reformulate our vision of a distinctively Christian social order. The question concerns the role of the church in bringing about the change we seek for. At a superficial level, it appears that the church’s role is far from neglected. Everyone affirms that the church must pray; everyone affirms that it is through the church’s evangelism and witness that people are draw to faith in Christ and begin to display the transformed lives that lie at the heart of the social change we desire; everyone affirms that the church has a vital role as a place of teaching, fellowship, encouragement, and so on; and most importantly of all everyone affirms that it is in response to the church’s prayers that God acts graciously in the world to bring about the social change that we long for. At their best, these affirmations have been self-consciously corporate in focus – that is to say, “the church” has meant not just “That collection of individual Christians who worship at St Ethelwine’s and then head off to pray and evangelise and so on in the hope that that Spirit of God would draw other men and women to faith,” but rather, “That congregation at St Ethelwine’s in response to whose corporate prayer, evangelism and community life the Spirit of God is at work to change the world.”

But this answer, it seems to me, stops short of explicating the full extent of the church’s place in this aspect of the Spirit’s work. In particular, it fails to address explicitly the vital importance of the church’s worship on the Lord’s Day as the first step in God’s plan to renew and re-create the world.

The worst effects of this are seen when Lord’s Day worship is replaced (almost) entirely with evangelistic activities, on the well-intentioned but ultimately misguided assumption that this is the best use of our precious time together if we want to see our communities transformed by the gospel. Of course evangelism is vitally important, but worship is vitally important too, and the two activities are not to be seen as a trade-off, as though doing one would detract from the effectiveness of the other. On the contrary, both are necessary (at different times, in different contexts), and it is in response to both of them (and also, as it happens, in response to the renewal of our relationships within the corporate life of the church) that God works to change the unbelieving world around us.

So what exactly is this missing element? How exactly is the church’s worship related to the Spirit’s work to renew and transform the world? The answer could be put like this: It is as the church gathers in the presence of God, lifted up in the Spirit into the heavenly places in Christ Jesus to worship before the Father, that God is at work both to renew and reorder the relationships between the members of the church and to transform the unbelieving world outside the church by drawing people to faith in Christ and bringing about the broader social change we long for.

To put it most simply, everything begins with worship. A Christian social order has doxological foundations.

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On March 14, 2016 By In Politics, Theology

The End of the Evangelical Christian? A Response to Russell Moore

The rise of Donald Trump has caused Christians of all varieties to question their conservative bona fides. There are many reasons conservatives have chosen Donald Trump. Some have chosen the real estate mogul as the most suited to destroy the Washington machine. Some support the former Apprentice host as the voice of anger for those silenced by the mainstream media and the establishment GOP. Others find his open hostility to illegal immigration his most redeeming value. But while conservatives may have a few reason for voting for the Donald, conservative Christians, in particular, are having a more difficult time. After all, these conservative evangelicals are contemplating voting for someone who believes in God but has not sought God’s forgiveness. In Trump’s world, that is not a contradiction, and for some evangelicals, the contradiction is an acceptable compromise.a

The result has been unnerving for many evangelicals who are generally on the side of Ted Cruz; a conservative Southern Baptist from Texas, who speaks the evangelical language with extreme ease. They cannot fathom why conservative Christians have endorsed someone who does not understand the most fundamental of evangelical commitments.

Some evangelical leaders have embraced Donald Trump enthusiastically. Consider the very conservative Southern Baptist, Robert Jeffress, who endorsed Trump and referred to the Republican front-runner as a “great Christian.” Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. praised Donald as “a successful executive and entrepreneur, a wonderful father and a man who I believe can lead our country to greatness again.” (more…)

  1. While the passion for a Trump candidacy seems to be on the rise, a vast majority of Conservative voices on the right and liberal voices on the left have found  a surprising common ground: #nevertrump.  (back)

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On March 4, 2016 By In Politics, Theology

Andy Stanley’s Big Frustration with Little Churches

Post by Uri Brito and Dustin Messer

In a recent sermon, Andy Stanley made the staggering observation:

When I hear adults say, ‘Well I don’t like a big church, I like about 200, I want to be able to know everybody,’ I say, ‘You are so stinking selfish. You care nothing about the next generation. All you care about is you and your five friends. You don’t care about your kids…anybody else’s kids.’ You’re like, ‘What’s up?’ I’m saying if you don’t go to a church large enough where you can have enough Middle Schoolers and High Schoolers to separate them so they can have small groups and grow up the local church, you are a selfish adult. Get over it. Find yourself a big old church where your kids can connect with a bunch of people and grow up and love the local church.

Stanley has since apologized in the way modern preachers apologize: via twitter. 

While we take him at his word (or tweet, as the case may be), this was not simply a slip of the tongue. While he may be sorry for the way in which he communicated the message—even sorry for a specific sentiment in the message—one can’t fake the sort of passion exhibited by Stanley as he described his antipathy for small churches. Again, we believe he’s genuinely sorry we’re offended, but Stanley clearly has heartfelt feelings about non-megachurches (microchurches?) that didn’t begin or end with the sermon in question. Below are three reasons we feel such a sentiment is harmful: (more…)

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