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REFORMATION SOLAS ❘ OUR 10–YEAR VISION ❘ INTERVIEW WITH EUGENE PETERSON

MODERN REFORMATION

A Time for Truth 15th Anniversary Issue VOLUME

16, NUMBER 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007, $6.00

MODERN REFORMATION

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Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton Executive Editor Eric Landry Managing Editor Brenda Jung Department Editors William Edgar, Why We Believe MR Editors, Required Reading Brenda Jung, Diaries Eric Landry, Common Grace Diana Frazier, Reviews Starr Meade, Family Matters Staff | Editors Ann Henderson Hart, Staff Writer Alyson S. Platt, Copy Editor Lori A. Cook, Layout and Design Ben Conarroe, Proofreader Contributing Scholars S. M. Baugh Gerald Bray Jerry Bridges D. A. Carson Bryan Chapell R. Scott Clark Marva Dawn Mark Dever J. Ligon Duncan Adam S. Francisco Richard Gaffin W. Robert Godfrey T. David Gordon Donald A. Hagner John D. Hannah Gillis Harp D. G. Hart Paul Helm C. E. Hill Karen Jobes Hywel R. Jones Ken Jones Peter Jones Richard Lints Korey Maas Keith Mathison Donald G. Matzat John Muether John Nunes Craig Parton John Piper J. A. O. Preus Paul Raabe Kim Riddlebarger Rod Rosenbladt Philip G. Ryken R. C. Sproul Rachel Stahle A. Craig Troxel Carl Trueman David VanDrunen Gene E. Veith William Willimon Todd Wilken Paul F. M. Zahl Modern Reformation © 2007 All rights reserved.

For more information, call or write us at: Modern Reformation 1725 Bear Valley Pkwy.

Escondido, CA 92027 (800) 890-7556 info@modernreformation.org www.modernreformation.org

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How Did We Get Here?

There are two competing stories that we can believe: the “glory story” which is about human ascension to God through moral progress and self effort, and the story of the cross which is about God’s condescension to us in Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. Our editorin-chief evaluates today’s spiritual climate and substantiates the fifteen-yearold mission of Modern Reformation and The White Horse Inn to proclaim the Good News in the story of the cross.

by Michael Horton

14 The Way Forward Why do we need a theological magazine for thoughtful laity? Our executive editor provides synopses of several issues currently facing the church and charts a course for Modern Reformation’s next ten years.

by Eric Landry

19 2007: A Time for Truth What are the most important doctrines of Christianity? They are essentially what have come to be known as the “solas” of the Reformation. Our managing editor introduces the solas that Modern Reformation will expound on in each issue in 2007.

by Brenda Jung Plus: Who are the Reformers?

25 Remembering Our First Year Wanted: Apathetic Lutherans and Calvinists

by Michael Horton Was Martin Luther a Born-Again Christian?

by Rick Ritchie Are You Sure You Like Spurgeon?

by Alan Maben

COVER COMPOSITION BY MARK VANDER POL

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Keeping Time page 2 | Letters page 3 Interview page 34 | Reviews page 37 | Family Matters page 44

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Apostles Creed Jesus Christ Victorious

325 A.D. NICENE CREED Bust of Constantine

c. 500 A.D. ATHANASIAN CREED Triquetra

1561–1619 THREE FORMS OF UNITY T.U.L.I.P.

1563–1571 THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES Cross of St. George

1580 BOOK OF CONCORD

Martin Luther’s Seal

1646 WESTMINSTER CONFESSION Westminster Abbey

‘Tis the Season Welcome to Modern Reformation’s fifteenth anniversary issue. Among the small cadre of Christian publications which look most like Modern Reformation, a spate of anniversary issues have been published recently. The most prominent are Christianity Today and Touchstone, celebrating their fiftieth and twentieth anniversaries, respectively.

Each of our magazines was formed in response or reaction to a general development across the broader Christian world. For Christianity Today, the rise of Evangelicalism in reaction to the liberalizing tendencies of mainline Protestantism moved a small group of pastors, theologians, and financiers to begin a magazine that might rival the mainline’s grand old dame, Christian Century. For the founders of Touchstone, the magazine was not so much a reaction against as it was a response to a new ecumenical enterprise born out of Vatican II proposals and alliances forged between Protestants and Roman Catholics during the culture wars.

Modern Reformation—while younger and smaller than Christianity Today and Touchstone—was formed under similar pressures: first, the evangelical abdication of classical formulations of Protestant beliefs and practices convinced the first editorial board that a witness to Protestantism’s heritage must be maintained as a sort of seed-house for future renewal efforts. Thus, the first issues of the magazine called for nothing less than a reformation of American Christianity. But, like Touchstone, our beginning wasn’t just a reaction to a perceived problem in our circles; it was also a response to a new reality: confessing evangelicals often had more in common with their brothers and sisters in other denominations than they did with their own fellow church members. Thus, a conversation between a Lutheran, a Baptist, and a Reformed pastor was more than the start of a joke; it was the beginning of a shared concern to remember and foster confessional Christianity in an anti-confessional age.

In this issue, the editors have taken up the pen themselves to fill these pages.

Our editor-in-chief, Michael Horton, reminds our readers of the ground this magazine has already covered by appealing to a familiar distinction in our circles: the difference between a theology of glory and a theology of the cross. In my article, I chart a course for the future of the magazine by highlighting areas of concern, which demand that a magazine like Modern Reformation exists to take them up. The third feature article is written by managing editor Brenda Jung, who takes a particular look at our survey of the Reformation solas, our theme for the rest of 2007.

We are convinced that 2007 is a time for truth, a time for a renewed emphasis on the treasure and heritage bequeathed to us by our Reformational forbearers. As we give our time and attention to that treasure, particularly as it is found in the solas of the Reformation, we invite you to keep time with us.

Maybe you know a friend or pastor who would benefit from this new series.

Take a moment now to give them a gift subscription by calling us at (800) 8907556 or by visiting our website at www.modernreformation.org.

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Eric Landry Executive Editor

NEXT ISSUES: March/April 2007: Gods Unto Ourselves (Sola Scriptura) May/June 2007: Christless Christianity (Solo Christo)

LETTERS your

I have subscribed to your publication for several years and I think the September/October ‘06 issue was one of your best! As a former ordained bivocational minister in one of the Arminian denominations and an avid Arminian for thirty years, I relate well to this debate.

I agree with Jerry Walls when he states, “the Arminian view of God’s character is profoundly at odds with the Calvinist view.” As a Calvinist now for over ten years, I can honestly say that it was exactly this concept — the character of God — presented by J.I. Packer in his book, Knowing God, which literally changed my life and my view of God. I have never known more peace and contentment during trials, more hope for the future, nor greater assurance in salvation through Christ alone than in these last ten years since I embraced Calvinist theology and teaching.

Additionally, I appreciate the spirit of unity in common beliefs between Arminianism and Calvinism as expressed by Robert Peterson. Clearly there are differences and they must be articulated clearly. But Dr. Peterson showed that they can be approached graciously and in a spirit of love.

Keep up your great work with this publication!

Dan Farmer Bangor, MI

I was intrigued enough to read the interviews with Jerry Walls and Robert Peterson (September/October ’06).

A few dozen scriptures raced through my head in reaction to Jerry Walls’ first paragraph. I was tempted to answer his claims but after reading

through his remarks three times I noticed that Walls did not quote a single verse of Scripture to support his opinions. So instead of answering him with my usual response to Arminians, I have decided to give a copy of the Bible to him.

Please forward my offer to him.

I had some problems with Dr. Peterson’s use of 2 Peter 3:9 to prove that God does not desire that only the elect be saved. Other texts may offer that assurance but I was taught to start my understanding on that text with 1 Peter which tells us who is being addressed by Peter as well as the word “us” in 2 Peter 3:9. The word “all” is to be interpreted in light of 2 Peter 2:12.

As always, you have provided a thought-provoking issue.

Robert Demarest Cuminale Charlotte, NC

I appreciated the interviews with Jerry Walls and Robert Peterson in the September/October ‘06 issue.

Assuming that neither participant was able to challenge the statements made by the other, I will. As a Calvinist pastor of forty-five years, I counseled many people troubled by doubt and uncertainty. Jerry Walls’ assertion that a Calvinist pastor is left speechless before the question, “Does God really love me?” represents a misunderstanding of Reformed pastoral counsel.

The counsel a Calvinist pastor gives to the uncertain is not based on whether the individual is elect or not.

We know that election is beyond the ken of mortal men. Whether you are a Calvinist or an Arminian, assurance of salvation (and therefore election) is based on the witness of the Spirit

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who can be grieved, the fruit of the Spirit which can vary greatly from time to time, and ultimately upon the promise of Christ. No pastor can dole out assurance. We can encourage people to bear fruit, avoid grieving the Spirit of God, and trust the free offer of salvation in the gospel of Christ. If they do these things, in due time, their hearts will be assured — if they are elect. We do not encourage speculation about whether people are elect or not, since apart from perseverance it is futile. The comfort Calvinists offer is not based on election which we cannot see, but on evidences that we can see. In this respect, I fail to see how we Calvinists are that different from the Arminians in advising wavering souls.

Rev. Dr. John P. Clark Dade City, FL

Very good, and irenic, of you to have interviews with Jerry Walls and Robert Peterson on Calvinism and Arminianism in your recent issue (September/October ’06). However, most Baptists, most Bible Churches, Dallas Seminary, and much of the evangelical establishment hold neither of these positions. They hold, with the Arminians, to decisional regeneration; they believe that God tries no harder to save those who are saved than those who are not. But they believe that regeneration makes it impossible to apostasize truly, and that all who are decisionally regenerated will persevere to the end and be saved. I personally would regard this position as a sub-type of Arminianism, but it is held by enough important people and institutions in the evangelical world to deserve equal space with "Wesleyan" Arminianism and Calvinism and you should have given that view equal space in your issue.

Howard Ahmanson Irvine, CA

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William Edgar’s article, “Is Rock Dying?” (September/October ‘06) reveals a deft finger on the pulse of society. I also sense a “boomers” bias toward Rock. The phrase, “Rock and Roll,” was and is a euphemism for sexual relations and we have been exhorted to “Rock Around the Clock.” Elvis was not nicknamed “The Pelvis” because he twiddled his fingers. The ubiquitous guitar can be seen as and is intended to be a phallic symbol that oscillates to the sound of that sexual drum beat that undergirds many a performance. A rock concert was often close to a sexual orgy with pubescent teens rocking in sync with the band. (Would you encourage a sixteen-year-old daughter to attend unsupervised?) Not surprisingly, the revolution associated with the music style was more of a sexual nature than political. The styles that replace (and those replaced by) rock music don’t fare much better and give little comfort.

It seems to me that one can be enamored with and hopeful about rock music only if he assumes that the medium has no bearing on the message. Is rock dying? I hope so.

William H. Kooienga Ocean Springs, MS

Brian J. Lee’s article, “Govern Well or Be Governed?” (November/ December ’06) was very well written, especially in light of the turbulent times that we’re in today. Congress is run by a different party than it was a year ago. This same party is already saying that they will push their agenda: stem cell research, gay marriage, anti-war, etc. We may not like the results of the elections, but as Christians we pray daily for our elected officials.

Mr. Lee’s last paragraph doesn’t seem as well thought out as the rest of his article. He states, “…the Anabaptists in the Reformation era rejected their civil rulers and sought to establish God’s kingdom on earth by force.” Mr. Lee would have been better informed if he had read The 6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

Reformers and their Stepchildren by Leonard Verduin and Franklin H. Littell. Mr. Lee should have told us what force he was talking about and also who the civil rulers were. If he is referring to the Catholic church as civil rulers, then were the Anabaptists wrong? Mr. Lee, was John Bunyan wrong? Remember, John Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress in prison because he wouldn’t succumb to the civil rulers. Who were his civil rulers anyway? Mr. Lee, were Peter and John in Acts 4:13-21 tumultuous spirits?

I would agree with Bob Fu’s article, “God and Caesar in China” (November/December ’06), it is about the lordship of Christ. The church has from the beginning tumultuous spirits — the apostles who were killed for their loyalty to Christ, the saints in Fox’s Book of Martyrs, the Anabaptists, the Dietrich Bonhoeffers, and such in the twentieth century and even all those dying under the yoke of tyrant governments today. They all died with Christ’s kingdom sufficiently established in their hearts and being obedient to Christ, to proclaim to all that there is hope in a dying world.

Thank You.

truth, and indeed I explicitly abjure “passive quietism” in the penultimate paragraph. Calvin is explicitly referring to those who disobey Christ and take up the sword in the name of the gospel. Neither Peter nor John, nor Bunyan, nor the vast majority of faithful martyrs ever did so. The tumult that results from preaching the gospel and leads to persecution, prison, and martyrdom is entirely in keeping with the submission that Paul the martyr enjoins. Indeed, the death of a peaceful martyr is the height of submission for the sake of the gospel.

The example drawn from Acts is illustrative, as we see the Sanhedrin seeking to enforce the civil authority of the Mosaic Era — or at least a corrupted form of it — at a time when it has been abrogated by the proclamation of the gospel. The contrast couldn’t be more vivid or complete.

No matter how much the proclamation of the gospel may have unnerved the civil rulers, I don’t see any leaders of the New Testament church taking up the sword.

Jerry VanVeelen Gaines, MI

Brian J. Lee responds: Given the fact that Anabaptists in general are often referred to as “the Radical Reformation,” my use of the phrase “radical Anabaptists” might have led to confusion. Mr. VanVeelen’s omission of “radical” suggests that he thought I was referring to all Anabaptists in general. I was in fact referring pointedly to that segment of the movement that used violent, physical force in opposition to the civil authorities. This is the force I was referring to, the force which Christ (and Paul after him) referred to as the “sword,” both literally and figuratively.

Mr. VanVeelen seems to think that I quote Calvin to suggest that any opposition to the state is impermissible. Nothing could be further from the

Modern Reformation Letters to the Editor 1725 Bear Valley Parkway Escondido CA 92027 760.741.1045 fax Letters@modernreformation.org Letters under 200 words are more likely to be printed than longer letters. Letters may be edited for content and length.

New Departments in 2007 Beginning with our next issue (March/April 2007), four new departments will debut in Modern Reformation: Why We Believe, edited by William Edgar; Diaries of a Postmodern Christian, edited by Brenda Jung; Common Grace, edited by Eric Landry; and Required Reading for Twenty-first Century Christians. Here is a preview of what you can expect.

Why We Believe ith the next issue of Modern Reformation, we inaugurate a new column featuring Christian apologetics. The word “apologetics” is found at the center of the familiar directive from the Apostle Peter: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone that asks you to give the reason for the hope you have” (1 Pet. 3:15, emphasis added). Throughout the centuries, the task of apologetics has been to defend the faith, but it has also become much more oriented to commendation as well. After all, we are meant to give reasons for our hope as well as to answer our detractors.

It is our conviction that apologetics has never been more timely in the life of the church. Of course the Bible requires it. But apologetics had fallen on hard times until recently.

Some objected for theological reasons, feeling it intellectualizes the faith. Others thought the world needs toleration and healing, rather than argument. But today that is changing.

We are receiving challenges that simply must be answered.

Is not religion always violent? Is there only one true religion? Is the New Testament against women? Can Genesis possibly be relevant in a Darwinian setting? If God is powerful and good, how can there be evil? But also, the world is not asking questions it ought to be asking. We have become masters at silencing those voices that try to make us think about ultimate issues, such as purpose or life after death.

So in this column we will feature some of the outstanding leaders in the field of apologetics, and will ask them to comment on the most critical issues coming to challenge the faith in our times. We hope it will encourage and embolden you.

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— William Edgar Required Reading for Twenty-first Century Christians ife in modern America is making it increasingly difficult for Christians to dedicate any significant amount of time to knowing what they believe and why they believe it. The pie chart of our days is sliced into so many segments that most of us cannot spend extensive time doing what we know we need to: understand our God and our faith. Between work, family, friends, church responsibilities, church activities, and—of course—reality TV, time to read is increasingly scarce. And in the limited time we do have to read, there are thousands of titles to choose from. What would Modern Reformation choose for you to read? MR believes that some books that are indispensable for any Christian are unfortunatley not going to be found at your local Christian bookstore. But since there is much to glean from early books and late authors, we believe you

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should be informed of them. Our new column, “Required Reading,” will feature the books that we believe are worth your time. These books will correlate to the respective doctrines featured in each issue. We hope you’ll consider adding these titles to the treasury of your mind.

— MR Editors Diaries of a Postmodern Christian lthough the gospel is a simple message, it isn’t always easy to understand. As the hosts of the White Horse Inn have said, the law is intuitive knowledge, but the gospel is counterintuitive. It takes time for somebody to “get” the true gospel message that Jesus preached, especially if we have been taught other “gospels” in church that were less than biblical. What goes through the minds of believers as they learn the Christian doctrines and live the Christian life? In this column, we will feature personal accounts of believers coming to terms with what they know to be true. Whether the truth is freeing, binding, easy or difficult to accept, honesty is the name of the game. If you would like to contribute to this column, please send an e-mail to the editors at letters@modernreformation.org.

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— Brenda Jung Common Grace he maxim, “All truth is God’s truth,” has been famously ascribed to Saint Augustine. Whether or not the North African bishop actually said those words, the sentiment retains its force: God has so gifted even those outside his kingdom that his truth shines through their own speaking, doing, and creating. In the Reformed branch of the Protestant Reformation, this idea has become known as the doctrine of common grace. This doctrine answers one important question with which all of God’s pilgrim people must grapple: “What explanation can be given of the special gifts and talents with which the natural man is endowed, and of the development of science and art by those who are entirely devoid of the new life that is in Christ Jesus?” (Louis Berkhof). This year, the editors are asking leaders in the fields of film, music, literature, architecture, and art to reflect on God’s truth as it is expressed through these “common” endeavors. What will we discover? Though God’s saving grace may not be manifested in the lives of all those who follow God by their own creating activities, in our Father’s world, God does shine in all that’s fair.

— Eric Landry

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A TIME FOR TRUTH

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God without wrath brought men without sin into a world without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.” In this famous and more than slightly scolding description of Protestant liberalism in the 1950s, Yale’s H. Richard Niebuhr actually put his finger on the perennial heresy of the human heart since humanity’s fall in Adam. In this article, I will lay out in very broad terms the rationale for the theme we have chosen for 2007: “A Time for Truth.”

The Glory Story: Why Pelagianism Always Makes Sense British monk named Pelagius arrived in Rome and set about to initiate a widespread moral clean-up operation. Augustine, a North African bishop of great standing in the church, stood in his path.

Hardly uninterested in holiness, Augustine himself had been set free from a licentious life. Nevertheless, he knew that the power of that liberation was the gospel of God’s free grace. By the time the fracas was over, Pelagianism, with its denial of original sin and rigorous demand that people save themselves by following Christ’s moral example, was condemned by more church councils than any heresy in church history.

Nevertheless, it has remained the most constant threat to the gospel. Why does it keep growing back so quickly right after it has been cut down? Because Pelagianism just makes sense to us. It’s the “glory story.”

Following Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, which was following Romans 10 and 1 Corinthians 1 and 2, the Reformation contrasted the theology of glory with theology of the cross. As Gerhard Forde nicely summarized,

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The most common overarching story we tell about ourselves is what we will call the glory story. We came from glory and are bound for glory. Of course, in between we seem somehow to have gotten derailed—whether by design or accident we don’t quite know—but that is only a temporary inconvenience to be fixed by proper religious effort. What we need is to get back on “the glory road.” The story is told in countless variations.

Usually the subject of the story is “the soul.” … The basic scheme is what Paul Ricoeur has called “the myth of the exiled soul.”

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MICHAEL HORTON

While, as a monk, Luther had spent his days trying to ascend to God through mystical contemplation, speculation, and merit, his preparations for class lectures on the Psalms, Galatians, and Romans finally led to his discovery that we don’t find God, but that he finds us.

Finding us, God delivers the gospel, creating faith through it by the Spirit, justifies us on the basis of Christ’s J A N U A RY / F E B R U A RY 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 7

wonder Jesus concluded “a wicked and that adulterous generation seeks after signs” (Matt. 12:39).

A classic example of this sign-signified pattern is found in the miraculous provision of fish and loaves, culminating in Jesus’ announcement that he is the Bread of Life who came from heaven. In John 6, after having provided the fish and loaves, the crowd follows Jesus and his disciples to the other side of the lake. Yet instead of using a bait-and-switch church growth technique (get them in with glory and then get around to the cross if you can), Jesus immediately offers his “hard teachings.” It is not the sign—a miraculous provision of bread—that they need most, but the Bread from Heaven (vv. 26–27). It is Christ who has descended from heaven as the life-giving food of his people, but instead of embracing him they demand, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” (v. 28). They want to ascend, when Jesus is now announcing and offering himself as the God who has descended to save them. Jesus replies, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (v. 29).

So the contrast between the glory story and the cross story appears once more. Yet unless they eat his flesh and drink his blood, the people—regardless of their connection to Moses and the manna in the wilderness—have no life in them (vv. 49–58). He came down from heaven to save the people whom the Father gave him, none of whom will be lost (vv. 38–40). In response to all of this, the crowd began stirring. “Jesus therefore answered and said to them, ‘Do not murmur among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day” (vv. 43–44). Now, not only does Jesus refute their ambition to ascend to God through their works, he says that they cannot even come to him unless they are drawn.

At the end of the sermon, “many of his disciples, when they heard this, said, ‘This is a hard saying; who can understand it?’” (v. 60). Yet instead of backing off and perhaps performing another sign to keep them interested, Jesus pushes further with his hard sayings:

Jesus decided that it was more important to have eleven disciples than five thousand consumers. righteousness. In the “marvelous exchange,” our sin (both original and actual) is imputed to Christ and Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us.

The gospel therefore cuts the glory story off at the pass.

While “the righteousness that is by works” sets itself to the task of ascending to Christ, “the righteousness that is by faith” receives Christ as he has descended to us and as he continues to accommodate to our weakness by sending a preacher to tell us the good news (Rom. 10:1–17).

The world in bondage to sin will always understand the glory story. It will always make sense when religion talks about ethics, civics, and wisdom for daily living. Children of Adam are always looking for yet another map to help them find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. How to Have Success—whether in personal, family, or public life—will always gather a worldly crowd. Talk about religion as suggestions for practical living, as a source of moral virtue and social activism, and as the fountain of health, wealth, and happiness, and the world is only too happy to see if there is something there that can be usefully added to the mix of personal therapies. The place for God in the glory story is life coach, and even the proudest souls can concede a need for this kind of assistance.

On the other hand, the story of the cross is “foolishness to those who are perishing” (1 Cor. 1:18). After all, “Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jew a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength” (vv. 22–25).

In the remainder of this article, I want to take up Paul’s contrast in the light of his comments about the specific “felt needs” of the Jews and Greeks of his day.

First of all, the fascination of Jews with signs and wonders made sense. God had given Israel numerous signs pointing forward to the Messiah and, understandably, people were wondering when they would be fulfilled. Israel was in a holding pattern, mistakenly thinking that the Messiah and his kingdom would come by the earnest moral effort and preparation of the people. But the signs were there merely to point to the person whom they signified. Jesus proclaimed himself the Light, but few accepted the Light. He healed on the Sabbath and then announced himself as the promised rest. The point of Lazarus’ resurrection was his public declaration that he was the Resurrection and the Life. Yet the signs did not create faith. Apart from faith, the signs could only lead to a false dependency on immediate spectacle and instant gratification. No 8 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

Does this offend you? What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing.

The words that I speak to you are spirit and they are life. But there are some of you who do not believe … Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to me unless it has been granted to him by my Father. (vv. 61–64) On this day, there were no multitudes coming forward during the invitation to “do the works of God,” and the people were uninterested in—in fact, angered by—Jesus’ call to believe in him. “From that time many of his disciples went back and walked with him no more. Then

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Jesus said to the twelve, ‘Do you also want to go away?’” (v. 66). What a test! At no point does Jesus turn away from the cross that lies ahead of him to fuel the glory story that the people want. However, Peter replied, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.

Also we have come to believe and know that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (vv. 68–69). Even this core group would lose one of its members: Judas (v. 70).

The important thing to recognize, however, is that an event that, according to the glory story, could only be conceived as a tragedy in the ministry of Jesus is actually a banner day. On it, Jesus decided that it was more important to have eleven disciples than five thousand consumers. Even from a merely historical angle, Jesus’ strategy is vindicated. After the resurrection appearances of Jesus, it would be these eleven who would turn the world upside down by their witness, whereas the crowd of sign-gazers would not have stayed with the program as soon as the fireworks were over.

If Jews seek signs, then Greeks seek wisdom, Paul said.

Indeed, there is a treasure trove of wisdom that we can find in the ancients. Paul could even appeal to some of them in his famous speech in Athens (Acts 17). Yet in that speech, Paul does not offer Jesus as the answer to the philosophical and ethical problems that were hotly debated regularly in that auspicious arena. He doesn’t first ask them what they consider to be the big questions and the greatest needs of humanity and then try to show how Jesus is the answer. Instead, he gently but directly assaults their intellectual pride by saying that they “worship” what they do not know and points to Jesus Christ and his resurrection as the revelation of God’s purposes for history, including their own arraignment before the bar of judgment on the last day. The results were similar to those we encountered in John 6 with Jesus: “And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, while others said, ‘We will hear you again on this matter’” (v.

32). The glory story cannot make room for the story of the cross and resurrection; neither can accommodate the other. A choice has to be made.

The glory story is all about our progress—ethical, mystical, personal, social, psychological, and emotional, ascending rung by rung up the staircase until we finally return to Paradise. The story of the cross and resurrection, however, is all about God’s progress, descending to us in what can only appear to us as weakness and foolishness but is in fact the power and wisdom of God. The whole Bible is an unfolding drama of that condescending grace of the Father, in the Son, through the Spirit.

The crisis in which the church always finds itself in this redemptive history is whether to judge by what we think we see, do, know, experience, and demand, or conclude with Peter, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also we have come to believe and know that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Are we willing not only to offend, but to be offended, by the news that—however marvelous—is received by the flesh as an

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assault against our autonomy, put-togetherness, and felt needs?

All of the other so-called solae (“onlys”) of the Reformation—sola Scriptura (by scripture alone), sola gratia (by grace alone), sola fide (through faith alone), soli Deo gloria (to the glory of God alone)—find their alpha and omega in solus Christus (by Christ alone). In fact, all of these watchwords are assumed in 1 Corinthians 1:30–31: “But it is by his doing that you are in Christ Jesus, who has been made for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption—so that, as it is written, ‘He who glories, let him glory in the LORD.’” As Always, A Time for Truth n this anniversary year, we have selected a theme that summarizes our vision for a new reformation in our day: “A Time for Truth.” Of course, every age is a time for truth and every generation is in the process of losing its focus on the truth of the gospel. Given the bent of human nature toward self-salvation and pride, the glory story will always be more superficially alluring even though it can only fuel a craving that it never satisfies.

Over the last fifteen years, Modern Reformation and the White Horse Inn radio program have tried to help Christians know what they believe and why they believe it. Numerous surveys, polls, and sociological studies have conclusively shown that evangelical Christians—that is, those who profess to take Scripture, Christ, and the gospel seriously—are increasingly unaware of or unclear about some of the most basic issues of Christian faith and practice. While many pastors and elders out there are faithfully devoted to their ministry, it must be concluded with a grave sense of duty as well as soberness and humility that this is the exception rather than the rule.

Almost no one alive today has done more to integrate a passion for truth and mission than John R. W. Stott, a person whom David Brooks (himself Jewish) identified in a 2004 New York Times article as the leader of global Evangelicalism. Yet when asked in the latest issue of Christianity Today to evaluate this worldwide movement, Stott could only reply, “The answer is ‘growth without depth’” (October 2006, p. 96).

Yet, as Paul pointed out in Romans 10, it is not simply knowledge of truth in general, but the knowledge of the justification that comes through faith alone that is most tragically ignored despite a “zeal for God.” Niebuhr’s description of Protestant liberalism quoted at the beginning of this article appears to be as relevant now in relation to Protestant Evangelicalism. To be sure, this is sometimes due to the same factors that motivated the liberal drift toward secularization—reducing supernatural claims to therapeutic and practical usefulness here and now. Liberalism and conservatism both evidence a similar drive to make the church visible in this world: powerful, relevant, and necessary.

However, there are differences as well. On paper, it would seem that evangelicals often stand on the side of

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no longer finds justification essential not only for becoming a Christian but for human decision and effort rather than to God’s electing, sustaining the entire Christian life.

More directly, redeeming, regenerating, and preserving action in even many self-professing Lutheran and Reformed Christ, it can only be regarded as divine assistance theologians and pastors have joined a growing chorus of rather than as divine rescue. dissatisfaction with the doctrine of justification orthodox Christianity, affirming the authority of Scripture, entirely. Whether relegated to a place among other the centrality of Christ as the God-Man and his saving doctrines or outright rejected, this heart of the gospel work on the cross, the inability of human beings to save remains, as always, the most important place where the themselves, and the necessity for the new birth. In church has to decide whether it will remain a church at all. practice, however, things look somewhat different.

The gospel is also a glory story in its own right.

Scripture is appealed to, but expository preaching is However, it is not a story of our striving upward, but of being increasingly replaced by topical pep talks and God striving downward and rising again. God’s glory is marketing, psychology, sociology, and managerial manifested in creation and providence, even in techniques are often more normative at least implicitly in judgment on the last day. Yet God’s greatest glory is ordering the life of the church and its mission. manifested in his grace that he shows to those who Grace remains as popular a term as ever in Protestant, deserve the very opposite. If we believe that we are as in Roman Catholic, conversation. However, its sinners saved solely by the grace of God in Christ meaning has changed significantly. Where Scripture, (as through faith alone, then it will follow that there is no the reformers recognized) understands grace to be God’s place for human boasting. God alone is glorified when favor toward sinners on account of Christ, grace is often he alone is recognized and exalted as our redeemer. If treated today as an extra push up the glory-hill. “God will our public worship and witness are reliable indicators, not deny his grace to those who do what lies within then the contemporary church seems more preoccupied them”—the medieval slogan—receives a nod by the with its own glory than with God’s, and that follows majority of evangelicals, according to one survey logically from a lack of confidence in the message of conducted by the Barna Research Group. As long as salvation in Christ alone, revealed in Scripture alone, salvation is credited at any point to human decision and received through faith alone. effort rather than to God’s electing, redeeming, Modern Reformation and the White Horse Inn have regenerating, and preserving action in Christ, it can only reiterated these themes in numerous ways, from a variety be regarded as divine assistance rather than as divine of angles, with specific applications to current movements, rescue. trends, and practices. These resources have been widely The name of Christ is also frequently spoken, yet when recognized, even by our critics, as major mouthpieces for sin and salvation are redefined in therapeutic, moralistic, the cause of a new reformation. They have been at the and cultural terms, someone less than the God-Man and forefront of debates over open theism, the church growth something less than a radical rescue operation will do. movement, the signs-and-wonders movement, the Seeing Christ primarily as life coach and model is different prosperity gospel, the self-esteem gospel, the politicization from witnessing to the Lamb of God who takes away the of the gospel by both left and right, “Evangelicals and sin of the world. In our day, not only is the sufficiency of Catholics Together,” the “new model” view of the Christ’s finished work challenged by self-improvement atonement, and the New Perspective on Paul. schemes; the doctrine of substitutionary atonement itself is “A Time for Truth” means, for me at least, a time for increasingly challenged by some evangelical theologians. confessing the faith, which means a time for being Justification by Christ alone through faith alone is confessional. Obviously, speaking for myself, I would prefer similarly challenged both indirectly (via countless it if everyone were confessionally Reformed, but Modern distractions that advertise themselves as the big story) and Reformation and the White Horse Inn have helped forge a directly. Even where it is officially affirmed, justification is new ecumenism that instead of either ignoring each other often treated in more conservative circles as an important or finding the lowest common denominator of agreement doctrine that we can nevertheless move beyond once we has sought to witness to the same central teachings of our are “saved.” It is important, but not all that relevant for various Protestant confessions with all of the gusto and the Christian life. Few actually say that, perhaps, but that intensity that each confessional perspective brings to the is the impression often given. In the words of a recent table. Not everyone has agreed with this course. Some article by an evangelical pastor in England, this is “the think we’re too broad, since our writers and White Horse assumed gospel.” Degeneration begins when the church Inn hosts include everyone from Lutherans to Southern

As long as salvation is credited at any point to

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Baptists. Others think we’re too narrow, since we advocate a consensus that runs contrary to many of the trends in our own traditions today.

Confession is good for the soul—and for much else besides. We not only confess our sins, we confess a common faith in Christ. The verb here is homologein—to say together. It’s not just that we are individuals who happen to think the same thing, we are a people who together say the same words. “If anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words,” Paul warns Timothy, “even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which accords with godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing, but is obsessed with disputes and arguments over words, from which come envy, strife, reviling, evil suspicions, useless wranglings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain. From such withdraw yourself” (1 Tim. 6:3–5). He adds, “Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, to which you were also called and have confessed the good confession in the presence of many witnesses” (v. 12). In 2 Timothy 1:13, he reiterates, “Hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me, in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. That good thing which was committed to you, keep by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us.” As the Lord’s Prayer structures our extemporaneous prayers, “the pattern of sound words” that we find in our creeds and confessions trains our daily witness to Christ.

This does not mean, of course, that our confessions will save us or substitute for our own act of confessing Christ in our time and place. It simply means that we must confess the same faith with our brothers and sisters in all times and places. Being confessional is not the same as being a confessionalist. According to the former, one not only confesses Christ but does so according to a common and well-defined though not overly defined summary. “Confessing” signals our extroverted witness to the world (viz., the action itself), while “confessional” points to the proper concern with housekeeping: the inner integrity of our faith and practice upon which our act of confessing to the world depends (viz., the kind of action). If we are confessional without confessing—or, in other words, being orthodox without being oriented outward in mission to the world, we are hardly in the position to criticize others.

Recovering our confessional identities (whether Lutheran, Anglican, or Reformed) is vital in our day for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the unity of the church. I know that this reason must sound terribly surprising, since it is routinely assumed and actually said by not a few Reformed theologians and pastors that an interest in being confessional necessarily breeds narrowmindedness and a schismatic tendency. Although that is probably true of a certain type of ingrown and reactionary “confessionalism,” it is not true of being simply confessional. In fact, in Paul’s instructions to Timothy, holding fast the confession that he was taught was the

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Protestantism with an Attitude: Modern Reformation at 15

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ong before George H. W. Bush spoke of a kinder, gentler America—almost fifty years before to be exact—American evangelicals had tried to fashion a less abrasive and more affirming version of their faith. The year was 1924 and a variety of fundamentalists assembled to put aside acrimony and mudslinging, and to put forward a positive expression of conservative Protestantism.

Such figures as Carl Henry, Harold Ockenga, and Billy Graham emerged as the strategists responsible for a new range of institutions—the National Association of Evangelicals, Fuller Seminary, and Christianity Today—that were supposed to unite conservatives more effectively in common cause against the ills of the age: secularism, Communism, theological liberalism and Roman Catholicism.

When Modern Reformation started in 1991, it spoke for many Protestants who were embarrassed both by their father’s Oldsmobile and his middle-of-the-road Protestantism. The magazine’s authors and readers wanted a faith more substantial and angular than the bland moderation attempted by evangelical leaders and institutions. Perhaps because of its success, born-again Protestant was like Breyer’s vanilla ice cream, good for what it was, but without the depth or complexity of Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk.

The search for a more bracing expression of Protestantism naturally led back to Martin Luther and John Calvin, Protestant reformers who were as biblically and theologically astute as they were unafraid to engage in controversy. Their deity, as John Crowe Ransom once put it, was a “God of Thunder,” not simply sweetness and light.

Modern Reformation deserves credit for reminding conservative Protestants of their better selves. It has been a vehicle for reflecting on the whole counsel of God, even when it means disagreements among Protestants, as opposed to rallying around a “mere Christianity.” Even better, the magazine has held up a God who cannot be reduced to several heart-warming truths. Modern Reformation, like the Reformation of the sixteenth century, has endeavored to do justice to a God who does not conform to human expectations.

—D.G. Hart Intercollegiate Studies Institute (Wilmington, DE)

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very means of opposing trivial disputes over words and personalities.

We may take the United States as our well-surveyed example in this respect. American Christianity is simultaneously the most sectarian and the most anticonfessional of all Christian traditions. That is not how things are supposed to go.

According to the brochures at least, if we give up denominations, labels, creeds, confessions, liturgies, and the like, we will at last just be Christians. Having shed the labels of yesteryear, therefore, we embark on a new quest of restoration of the pure ecclesial Idea, which never existed even at the time of the apostles. No longer Presbyterians, Reformed, Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Baptist, Mennonite, Brethren, Methodist, and so forth, we are now divided into countless other sects that concern either peripheral issues or have nothing at all to do with theology. Churches today are more likely to be divided over public policy or generational, racial, and socioeconomic demographics or the charismatic movements and personalities that come and go than over any “pattern of sound words” that a church confesses together.

American religion is consummately quirky—full of contradictions that are simultaneously affirmed with the greatest intensity, and one of those contradictions is the charge made by adherents of sectarian movements that confessional distinctiveness is divisive. Whatever can be said of the divisions among the Reformation churches, as defined by their separate confessions, they pale in comparison to the proliferation of anticonfessional sects that are the creatures of their master’s charisma, lucky breaks, persuasive eloquence, and eccentric hobbyhorses.

Even in Reformed circles, we are drawn toward individuals and movements like moths to a flame. We wouldn’t want to restrict the definition of “Reformed” to the Reformed confessions, despite the fact that this is their intention and apart from this subscription they serve no purpose besides pious historical advice. So instead, we end up carving up the Reformed camp into other factions that are not related to our confession.

Of course, the White Horse Inn and Modern Reformation are not a church, and are therefore not authorized to draw up confessions or heal divisions. Our vision at White Horse Media is simply to facilitate a conversation between Baptists, Lutherans, Anglicans, and Reformed Christians that will help our churches maintain a common witness wherever we can as well as indicate our age-old differences.

So far, this conversation has been instrumental in bringing many to a richer faith and some even to saving faith and a concern to belong to faithful churches. As someone who adheres both to the ecumenical creeds and to the Three Forms of Unity (Belgic Confession, Heidelberg Catechism, Canons of Dort), I am nevertheless confident that if I have a couple of hours on a plane with a Lutheran who is as convinced of the testimony of the Book of Concord or a Baptist committed to 1 2 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

the London Baptist Confession, we will at least have a lot more in common with each other than either of us would with many in our own traditions whose default setting is the generic piety of a vapid Evangelicalism. In this way, I suggest, a confessional Christianity can be the antidote to both institutionalized and anti-institutional forms of sectarianism that plague our churches, distracting us from the major issues as they also sap us of our vitality.

To conclude, the glory story is not all it’s cracked up to be. Jean-Paul Sartre recognized that “we are condemned to be free,” living like Atlas with the world on our shoulders. That is the glory story, whatever its version.

Yet Jesus promises, “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). That is because the truth that Jesus proclaims—and the Truth that Jesus embodies—is nothing less than the gospel which in this and any age remains “the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16). ■

Michael Horton is the J. Gresham Machen professor of systematic theology and apologetics at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California).

In this article, Dr. Horton’s quotation from Gerhard Forde is taken from On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation, 1518 (Eerdmans, 1997), p. 5.

Reflections on Modern Reformation…

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odern Reformation is a consistent clarion call in recovering the core of our Reformation heritage, largely lost in brand-name Protestant bodies as they accommodate to a culture desperately in need of sound teaching regarding grace, justification, sanctification, imputation and other Reformation essentials. In a time in which conservatives speak of the “authority of Scripture,” Modern Reformation provides the blend of scholarship and piety that evokes “trust of Scripture.” Fallen scholars easily slide from the solid ground of doctrine into making the great teachings, even justification, a morass of laws rather than vehicles and windows of God’s grace.

A significant factor in the contemporary contempt for doctrinal integrity is the failure to recognize the relationship between sin and heresy. The gospel’s good news is ubiquitously resisted by human fallen wills.

Human nature comes out of the womb seeing itself as the center of the world and “naturally” clashes with the selfcenteredness of siblings, parents, neighbors, and especially the true center, God. This human perspective of self-as-center is the cause of rivalry, disobedience, party-spirits, and wars. In spite of claims of perfection in some sects, this self-center is, to some extent, always with us in this life. As it inhabits the hearts of scholars, their tendency is to overlook this factor in the treatment of doctrine and heresy. History of doctrine is often presented as an academic hopscotch game in which one endeavors to avoid stepping on some heretical line, or changing rules and “pushing the envelope” purposely stepping on the lines.

What is missing is the appreciation of the pastoral cruelty of heresy and that heresy is not a matter of the mind but of the heart, a yet self-centered heart. Samuel Taylor Coleridge once commented on a statement of the seventeenth-century Anglican Bishop Jeremy Taylor: “For heresy is not an error of the understanding but an error of the will.” Coleridge commented: “Most excellent. To this Taylor should have adhered and to its converse: Faith is not an accuracy of logic but a rectitude of the heart.”

Teaching and proclaiming the Christian faith must be directed to the heart, a heart in desperate need of a new center, a need to die to self, a need to be baptized into God’s center and be born again. Doctrines, no matter how true and orthodox, will never evoke this needed “new creature” unless they are perceived as antidotes to the selfdamaging results of self-centeredness and guardians of the Good News of our true center.

Gerhard Forde is a theologian who understands how sin can blind our eyes to the light of the gospel. He writes, “Writing a book on Luther’s Bondage of the Will is a foolhardy business – not because the arguments are so hard to understand but rather because they are difficult for

sinners to take.” The assumption of freedom before grace that undermines all Reformation doctrine and precludes compassion for sinners is tenaciously held, not because the argument against it is flawed, but because we sinners don’t want to acknowledge our slavery.

As an example of a sinful view of doctrine, I myself feel a great gravitational tug to Gnostic distortions. I do not like suffering. I would like a religion that saved me from my own and other peoples’ suffering. The whole incarnational theme in Christianity opens me up to the vulnerability of suffering. Yet in spite of my natural proclivities much of the grace I have known has been in that very suffering the gospel has drawn me into, the fellowship of Christ’s passion. Docetism, Apollinarianism, and Eutychianism would have misled me and withheld me from this deep and invaluable treasure of the use of suffering in redemption, community, and health (soter).

I also have a heart for that aspect of Arianism that needs no rescuer and for Nestorianism that panders to my natural Pelagian self-righteousness, that poisonous aspect of my natural self-centeredness that precludes any compassion for sinners and makes me anything but a winsome example of a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Modern Reformation is a scholarly witness, not only to the great Reformation doctrines, but also to their true functions as mediating the essential, biblical Good News of Jesus Christ.

— C. FitzSimons Allison Former Bishop of the Episcopal Church, South Carolina

There’s a growing movement across the U.S. of young Reformed thinkers—people who are thirsty for solid doctrine and hungry for a rigorous and sturdy faith grounded in the whole counsel of God’s Word. I sense the Spirit of Christ is calling God’s people to a higher view of the Father, a sobering perspective on sin, and a deeper gratitude for the awesome mercy and grace of our wonderful Savior. I’m grateful that for fifteen years, Modern Reformation has served as an invaluable resource for those who are hungry and thirsty for more—much more—than modern evangelicalism can offer. I thank my friends at Modern Reformation for giving guidance to the growing movement of Christians who ascribe to the faith once delivered to the saints!

— Joni Eareckson Tada Joni and Friends International Disability Center (Agoura Hills, CA)

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A TIME FOR TRUTH

The Way Forward BY

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s Modern Reformation celebrates its fifteenth anniversary, the editors have been considering what lies ahead for this publication. How should we purposefully plan for anniversaries yet to come? To do that, we’re looking both to real history and to the real challenges that lie ahead to fix a bearing for the publication. Doing so ensures that we are not just setting in motion a plan whose only purpose is to exist. Nor do we want to constantly redefine a plan for the future based on our own organizational needs. Instead, we’re connecting the pressing issues of today and tomorrow (some of which are outlined below) with the strength of our history: pressing the case that doctrine matters and theology is practical.

Modern Reformation at fifteen years of publication is very similar in some ways to its first year as a glossy magazine and even its previous incarnation as a four-page newsletter—hot off the copy machine in a certain editorin-chief’s back room: Words still dominate the space; not pictures, not ads, but words that are carefully considered, weighed, and applied to issues facing the church. Ideas lay behind those words—lasting ideas, ideas of consequence, ideas sometimes out of sync with the contemporary church scene. These words and their ideas are meant to be savored slowly, to be digested, and to be used for the maturing and health of the church. The design that frames those words has changed over time. The number of words has generally increased, but this magazine continues to be published to further a conversation about God, this world,

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and our lives in it.

In MR’s January/February 2000 issue, then executive editor Benjamin Sasse charted a course for the magazine that depended upon the participation and support of thoughtful laypeople who wanted to engage in theological conversation. In spite of that vision, Modern Reformation has not always been a considerate conversation partner.

Some might suppose that our mea culpa is related to the sometimes polemical nature of our articles. We have never apologized for being polemical. Hard things need to be said in the interest of preserving and advancing truth.

But we have sought to say those things with respect. In our dialogue with those within and without our circles, we always want to make sure that we’re dealing with real issues, not caricatures, and that the conversation leads to change, not hostility. Polemics is not the problem.

Instead, the editors have been overly concerned sometimes to teach certain concepts without engaging more pressing concerns that are affecting the churches in which we all worship and serve. At other times, the magazine has erred in another direction by fixating on important theological concerns, yet forgetting that our intended audience was laypeople—not academics.

Dr. Sasse’s vision and statement of editorial intent was not novel. He had merely picked up the vision cast in the very first issue of Modern Reformation (pre-glossy edition!), when Michael Horton pitched this new venture to the average Christian and worked hard to convince them that their thoughtful engagement and challenge to the “spirit of

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the age” was vital if the church was to enjoy another reformation of doctrine and practice. Modern Reformation has achieved more or less numerical and critical success as it has faithfully adhered to or deviated from that vision, first laid out in the inaugural issue of its pre-magazine existence and then later expanded in Dr. Sasse’s 2000 article (“We Wish for…Laypeople Willing to Engage in an Ongoing Conversation on Confessional Christianity”). It should come as no surprise then to read that a renewed commitment to our unique identity as a theological magazine for thoughtful laypeople will mark the next phase of our life in print.

Modern Reformation has achieved a certain niche over the past fifteen years. Even though the proliferation of new technology has provided numerous opportunities for various groups and individuals to stake out a “place” and a “voice” on the issues of the day, MR continues to be a magazine of record in the marketplace of ideas. When the church at large wants to know what confessional Protestants think on any issue, thought-leaders often turn to the pages of Modern Reformation for the answer. Our strength—now fifteen years in the making—of uniting the voices of Anglicans, Congregationalists, Baptists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and the Reformed on issues of common concern has ensured that this magazine is considered, cited, defended, and disparaged by friend and foe.

This unique identity will help focus our efforts in the coming years. As we survey the landscape of American

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Christianity, certain issues that should concern us all are already flowering. Some of the stakes in play are explained below, but the general nature of the problem is that truth is being left behind in a mad dash for power and relevance. Over the next ten years, Modern Reformation will take up these issues and others like them as we provide a forum for the ongoing conversation that has marked our existence so far.

The Collapse of the Mainline Denominations ince Modern Reformation is a magazine that crosses confessional and denominational boundaries, we have been privileged to feature the work of mainline and so-called “sideline” authors—often side by side—in our pages. We delight in drawing attention to the renewal efforts within the mainline Protestant churches and we hope that our own work has been of some encouragement to those faithful who continue the struggle. But since the evangelical resurgence in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the final future of the mainline denominations has been nearly settled. The most recent acts of apostasy in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), for instance, have shaken even the firmest convictions of those who feel compelled to stay and fight. Is there anything left to fight for when both the content (Trinitarian Christianity) and the Constitution (the fifth recommendation of the Peace, Unity, and Purity report) have been eviscerated? The death and interment of the mainline, however, will take some time and may radically alter the face of

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has been the subject of intense scrutiny for several distinctive voice, Modern Reformation stands in a very years now. As the leaders of the movement begin to unique position to help by providing historical, articulate competing visions for the future of their ecclesiastical, theological, and exegetical resources to individual congregations as well as the movement at large, we might see a support them in their search. resurgence of denominational-like loyalty that looks very different from contemporary American Christianity as denominations what we currently conceive of as denominationalism. formed by various reuniting efforts in the middle of the Emergent’s laudable concern to recover historic forms last century are blown apart and scattered. of individual and corporate worship may also be a The particular challenge of the mainline’s collapse will harbinger of a recovery of other denominational not be found in the individual stories of denominational distinctions. Consider just the pragmatic reasons: a town labels and property disputes. Instead, it will be found in of 100,000 people will have an average 120 Protestant the leavening effect of the scattered mainline churches churches. If the majority of those churches sing the same which find new homes as independent congregations, join songs, structure their worship services in the same way, existing denominations, or form new alliances. For at least have generally the same kind of preaching (if not in form, the last three decades, Evangelicalism has been able to feel then certainly in content), and utilize the same some measure of safety in its distance from the problems programmatic structure what will distinguish one from the of the mainline denominations. But with the collapse of other? What will be their “selling point”? A recovery of those same denominations, those problems will no longer particular ways of doing and being the church, especially be localized in some distant religious ghetto, they will find as they are considered historically, will be one answer to their way into the denominations who have long thought this problem. As evangelicals rediscover their history and that part of their distinguishing characteristics was the their distinctive voice, Modern Reformation stands in a very settled nature of these issues. Having failed to stop the unique position to help by providing historical, erosion of orthodoxy from within their own ranks, ecclesiastical, theological, and exegetical resources to evangelicals within the mainline denominations will be support them in their search. unwitting carriers of the disease into the congregations On the opposite end of the spectrum, other evangelicals and denominations that welcome them with open arms. will rush to fill the gap left by the decline of the mainline.

They will do so by embracing old-style Liberalism (of the Post-Evangelicalism theological nature) and christening it as the “next big vangelicalism’s future isn’t so bright, either. The thing.” Popular forms of this ecclesiastical amnesia are old, post-World War II evangelicals found unity in already making headway in widely diverse environments. their rejection both of Fundamentalism’s withdrawal from the world and modernism’s denial of Third World Syncretism in First World Drag Scripture and the supernatural character of the Bible. umerous scholars have demonstrated that the Their powerful unity required the evangelicals to hide the fastest and future growth of Christianity is found confessional and denominational distinctions that used to in the two-thirds and third-world countries of separate them from each other. After several years of Africa, Asia, and South America. Although some stories of sitting in their ecclesiastical attics, no one could remember the success of Reformation churches can be found, the why those distinctions were important anymore and they predominant character of this religious revival is of a were lost to newer pressing concerns of relevance and radically charismatic and outlandishly Pentecostal origin. pragmatism. With the convenient marriage between While the charismatic and Pentecostal missionaries of evangelicals and conservative politics, the ecclesial nature North America might be seeing the fruit of their labors of Evangelicalism deteriorated even further. Moral values over the last one hundred years, they cannot be pleased (a.k.a. “traditional American culture”) were substituted for with the way their doctrinal particulars are being co-opted creedal and confessional faithfulness. to make room for traditional religious practices (mostly As the standard bearers of the old Evangelicalism die, a pagan, but also with Roman Catholic influences). new generation is emerging that rejects many of their With the American church softened up by a new forebear’s distinguishing traits but continues to follow in onslaught of “soft” prosperity teachers like Joel Osteen and their footsteps. The Emergent Church Movement—which Joyce Meyer, the syncretism that defines the fastest we understand is so diverse that it begs the “one size fits growing strains of world Christianity will soon make its all” moniker—stands ready to fill the gap. The movement mark in our local churches as well. With “Truth” being

As evangelicals rediscover their history and their

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defined according to need and preference (for more on this, see Brenda Jung’s article in this issue), American Christians have no real way of understanding or stopping this influx because they have lost sight of the creedal character of their enterprise. Add this new missionary movement to a culture already saturated with and addicted to superstition and the resulting pagan revival will present a significant challenge to every thinking Christian.

We are already seeing the advance guard of this new paganism in the pluralism that seems to threaten our national unity on matters of morality in the public square.

The church will increasingly find itself marginalized in a society that values ill-defined tolerance over matters of faith, conviction, and fact. Waiting in the wings to take advantage of this cultural idolatry will be other world religions: the Eastern moral and religious philosophies to embrace the new status quo and Islam to challenge it with its stark dogmas. In the future, a full-orbed and vibrant expression of biblical Christianity may be disregarded (at best) or oppressed (at worst), but it is the only viable answer to the many challenges that we face.

The Gender Game he gender and sexuality wars that provided the burning match to the mainline’s flammable edifice will not retire quietly from the scene with the mainline’s collapse. Finding strength of purpose with the new spirit of the age, proponents of unbiblical ways of understanding male/female relationships both within and outside of the church will find new battle grounds in unwitting evangelical and conservative congregations. Some of those denominations that are yet to be rocked by these debates were formed in reaction to women’s ordination, particularly. My own denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America (which was formed in 1973 as a rejection of an anticipated North-South Presbyterian reunion that would have introduced women pastors to the Southern church), has lost several prominent congregations in the last five years over this issue.

In a recent interview with Christianity Today, Mark Driscoll, the founding pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington, called men “the lost gender.” The recovery of biblical manhood has been underway for a number of years now, but the problem of men disappearing from the church has seen more recent attention. With all of the challenges already facing a weakened American church, the absence of their men could be a fatal blow. But, the manner in which they seek to win those men back to the church could do more damage to their biblical fidelity and future viability than their absence alone would have created. Evangelical attempts to sell the Faith as “muscular religion” are as wrong-headed as attempts to feminize men out of the church.

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Reflections on Modern Reformation…

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or fifteen years now, “Mod Ref” (as we groupies call it) has supplied its readership with a uniquely valuable theological perspective. It has provided a one-of-a-kind venue for conservative Reformed and Lutheran dialogue and collaboration (continuing and building on the legacy of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy). It has showcased serious confessional theological reflection in combination with impressive cultural analysis (an all-too-rare duet in the conservative evangelical community). It has focused our attention on and provided searching criticism of important theological trends (both academic and popular) influencing the evangelical community. It has championed confessional reformational theology in an anti-confessional and anti-theological age, and in so doing has played a part in creating the current young Calvinistic resurgence. It has provided helpful interviews with major figures and timely book reviews of important works. My thanks for and congratulations on fifteen fruitful years of faithful theological journalism—to Mike Horton and the whole Modern Reformation staff. We at the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals salute you.

— J. Ligon Duncan, III Senior Minister, First Presbyterian Church (Jackson, MS) President, Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals (Philadelphia, PA)

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odern Reformation offers a serious examination of biblical and theological issues that face the church in our time. It helps raise awareness of orthodox Reformation theology in a time when doctrine has become deeply muddled in the church.

— R.C. Sproul President, Ligonier Ministries (Orlando, FL)

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finally, by communicating that message to the broader biblical Christianity may be disregarded (at best) or audience that looks to MR for answers.

With a name like Modern oppressed (at worst), but it is the only viable answer to Reformation, our goal in taking up each of these issues the many challenges that we face. cannot be missed. But we are not advocating some Public Theology and the Public Square return to a “golden age” of church history. Instead, we any of the issues we have examined so far, firmly believe that the resources provided to the church albeit briefly, have concerned the identity and through the Protestant Reformation (particularly through mission of the church in light of challenges its exegetical insights and resulting ecclesiastical from within its own ranks and from pressures applied to it applications), can be faithfully applied to our from the outside. This final category is no different, but contemporary situation. If the church recovers this lost the results will not be felt in individual congregations. treasure trove and uses it wisely, it may be blessed to see How the church engages these issues will help define the as remarkable a transformation of its faith and practices as church’s role in society at large. was seen in the Reformation.

One movement, known as Radical Orthodoxy, has Is that, then, how we will measure our future success? captured headlines in contemporary theology. Advocating Must we see a cross-denominational reformation in order a recovery of Christian neoplatonism, John Milbank and to achieve our purpose? The short answer is, no. The last other writers in this circle are sharply critical of time this magazine celebrated an anniversary was with our Reformation theology, particularly its emphasis on the tenth anniversary issue—January/February 2002. In the substitutionary atonement and extrinsic justification. introductory article, then executive editor Darryl Hart Although Radical Orthodoxy is primarily Roman Catholic asked a few hard questions. He wondered whether or not in its orientation, it has attracted a wide following in MR had lived up to its self-proclaimed mission to help carry evangelical circles as well. By recovering a neoplatonic out another Reformation into the new millennium. He vision of all of reality participating in God, Radical wondered whether the issues that first informed the Orthodoxy thinks that the nihilism of modern and original mission of Modern Reformation had been replaced by postmodern culture can be overcome. more pressing problems in American Christianity. He Over the last two election cycles, a number of books wondered, frankly, whether ten years of Modern Reformation have been written, which alternatively defend or decry had made a difference. With Dr. Hart, we freely admit that Christianity’s (un)holy marriage to Republican politics. A the ambitious aim of this publication must be tempered Secular Faith, written by Modern Reformation contributor with a realistic assessment of the process of sociological and and former executive editor Darryl Hart, advocates a ecclesiastical change. But if we can continue to be that renewed emphasis on the proper bounds of a faith that is mouthpiece of confessing Protestants—evangelicals who concerned primarily with the world to come—especially in are eager to reclaim their heritage and their unity on the light of the kinds of compromises that characterize core concerns of the Reformation—then we can be assured government in this present age. As American evangelicals that the work which lies ahead of us is significant enough begin to shift their focus away from “culture of life” issues to demand that we still take up the issues of the day and to broader social concerns (the environment, global work toward promoting the truths and practices of the human rights, AIDS research), the well-trenched culture Reformation to the contemporary church. ■ warriors may wake up to ever newer and stranger bedfellows. Can evangelical theology keep up with the Eric Landry is executive editor of Modern Reformation and shifting landscape? What part could a renewed emphasis pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church (Murrieta, California). on the doctrine of the two kingdoms play in the conversations that must be had among Washington power-brokers and local church leaders?

These are not the only issues on the horizon; they may not even turn out to be the most important issues to work through. But they do provide a glimpse of the challenges and opportunities ahead of us. There is no shortage of work to be done, but the work that will be done through the efforts of this magazine will make a difference by challenging the errors that are sometimes passed over in ignorance or false piety; convincing our readers of the Reformation perspective on doctrine and practice; and,

In the future, a full-orbed and vibrant expression of

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A TIME FOR TRUTH

2007: A TIME FOR TRUTH

BY BRENDA JUNG

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ew pursuits in life are more important than the pursuit of truth. What one believes to be true, especially about God, humanity, and the relation between them, will govern one’s entire life—thoughts, affections, attitudes, actions, desires, and decisions. Most importantly, one cannot worship God rightly without right knowledge about who God is. Truth serves as “true north,” orienting us in the right direction for our living, our being, and our worship. Truth is worth pursuing, worth wrestling with, and once found, worth fighting for.

Christians who live in the twenty-first century are privileged to stand behind a long line of those who have gone before us and given their entire lives and souls to the pursuit and defense of truth. Some of those to whom we are indebted are the reformers. Martin Luther, in particular, blazed the trail on which we walk today. His nailing of the Ninety-Five Theses to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, marked the beginning of the Reformation. Luther’s theses were a list of refutations of the power and efficacy of indulgences, which were being sold by Roman church authorities for the building of St. Peter’s Basilica: [The laity] ask, e.g.: Why does not the pope liberate everyone from purgatory for the sake of love (a most holy thing) and because of the supreme necessity of their souls? This would be morally the best of all reasons. Meanwhile he redeems innumerable souls

for money, a most perishable thing, with which to build St. Peter’s church, a very minor purpose.

(Thesis 82) Luther led the Protestant Reformation with bold intent to recover the identity of Christ’s church, including its spiritual integrity, its authority (Scripture), and most of all, its message—the doctrine of justification. It was Luther’s discovery of justification by faith alone in his study of the Book of Romans that caused him to rethink his entire life and system of doctrine. He wrote, My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement “the just shall live by faith.” Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning … This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven. (emphasis added) The Reformation was not an overreaction to a squabble over whose understanding of salvation was better—the Roman J A N U A RY / F E B R U A RY 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 19

think outside of the box rather than within it. Some believers who want to remain within the box of orthodoxy would rather push the lines and enlarge the box than exclude anybody from it. But objective truth, by nature, must exclude and reject opinions which are incompatible with the facts. For Luther, truth disallowed the inclusion of some Catholic practices, particularly those of buying and selling indulgences; truth required rejection of unbiblical preaching and praxis, even if it came at a high personal cost.

Following the Diet of Worms, Luther was pronounced a heretic, outlawed by the emperor. The modern quest for truth is qualitatively different from that of Luther’s quest.

Unlike Luther, we are willing only to be freed by the truth, but not to be bound by it.

What exactly is the box that defines orthodoxy today?

What are the truths that both free and bind Christians?

Where are the lines that protect orthodoxy against heresy?

We have forgotten that truth often offends us before it free us.

Catholic Church’s or Martin Luther’s. The Reformation was a serious debate over whose understanding of salvation was right. In other words, the Reformation’s primary concern was truth—truth about how salvation is accomplished and attained. In order to determine this, both Rome and the reformers were required to dig into the pages of Scripture and meticulously examine its teaching in lexical and grammatical detail. It testifies to the lengths they went in order to determine truth and falsehood. The sixteenthcentury Protestant Reformation can be called “a time for truth,” when the reformers and the laity sought the truth formally, intentionally, and publicly.

Thinking Inside the Box esus declared in John 8:32 that “the truth will set you free,” but what is the nature of this truth? For Luther, the truth not only freed him, it bound him. Before the imperial assembly at Worms (known as the Diet of Worms) in 1521, Luther refused to recant his view of salvation, declaring, “Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason … my conscience is captive to the Word of God.” Scripture served as the “box” within which Luther could think and live with a clear conscience before God. Christians are to “think God’s thoughts after him,” and Scripture is the revelation of God’s thoughts, will, and ways. Today, truth is still bound by the Word of God. But today it is uncomfortable and constricting to think of truth as binding.

We have forgotten that truth often offends us before it frees us. Today we want to be freed by the truth without necessarily having to be bound by it. But part of truth’s nature is its binding character. The writer to the Hebrews warns of the punishment that will result from ignoring the truth that we have heard—the message of salvation.

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We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.

For if the message spoken by angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard him. God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will. (Heb. 2:1–4) Once confronted by truth, one is bound to it. There are consequences for ignoring, dismissing, and rejecting the facts. The choice to ignore, dismiss, or reject the facts does not change them. The facts are the reality, and we are bound to reality simply by living within it. The truth frees us when we swallow hard and submit to it.

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Defining the Lines he solas of the Reformation are the objective truths that define the Christian faith, not in comprehensive terms, but nevertheless, in critical terms. They are the espresso in a latte, if you will, and a latte without espresso is just a cup of milk. In other words, the solas are the indispensable doctrines of Christianity.

They were the answer to the ultimate question asked during the Reformation: How are sinners justified? More specifically, is salvation a monergistic or synergistic work?

That is, does God alone accomplish salvation? Or is salvation a cooperative effort between God and human beings? The answer to this question is not only what separates Protestantism from Roman Catholicism; it is also what separates Christianity from all other world religions.

Salvation, or justification, is a monergistic work of God. That salvation is a work of God alone was explained by the reformers in what became five Latin phrases: Sinners are justified by grace alone (sola gratia), through faith alone (sola fide), in Christ alone (solo Christo), for God’s glory alone (soli Deo gloria), as revealed by the authority of Scripture alone (sola Scriptura).

In an over-simplistic sense, one word (sola) divided the two parties (Rome and the reformers). While Rome affirmed salvation by grace, by faith, and by the work of Christ, it did not affirm salvation by grace alone (sola) through faith alone (sola) because of Christ alone (sola), which the reformers contended is taught in Scripture. According to Reformed theologian and church historian R. Scott Clark,

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Confessional Protestants do not disagree Rome over whether justification is by grace. Rome has always taught justification by grace. We disagree over the definition of grace. Protestant define grace as the unconditional favor of God and Rome defines grace as the infusion of sanctity or even the divine nature.

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Of course Rome also confesses justification by faith and once again we disagree over the definition.

Protestants say faith, in the act of justification, is nothing more than a trust or resting in Christ’s finished work. Because it looks to Christ’s finished work alone as the ground of justification, faith (receiving and resting) is the sole instrument of justification. Rome, however, defines faith as faithfulness or sanctification, i.e., cooperation with grace, and says that justification is sanctification whereas we confess that justification produces sanctification or fruit. Rome confesses we are justified because and to the degree we are sanctified and we confess that we are justified by Christ’s righteousness imputed received through faith alone and that justification necessarily produces sanctity.

This helps us to understand why the Reformation was just that: a reformation, a refining of Christian doctrines rather than an entirely new construction of them (of course, what was refined during the Reformation does redefine salvation entirely). It was in the details where the big differences between Rome and the reformers lay. All that is good about the Good News is tucked into this word: alone (sola).

The solas are the doctrines that will prove practical for addressing many of the challenges to truth that face the church today (for some of these specific challenges, see Eric Landry’s article in this issue). Thus, every generation will profit from instruction in the Reformation solas.

Sola Scriptura ola Scriptura declares the Protestant doctrine of Scripture: Scripture alone is the sole and absolute authority over what is true and necessary concerning salvation. Over against the modern tendency to reduce Scripture to a moral handbook, a guide for living, a history textbook, an ancient book of extraordinary stories, or even a “love letter” from God, Scripture is the inspired revelation of reality. It is the highest authority and standard by which we have to judge all traditions and truth claims. This view of Scripture, however, is waning. No doubt, believers and nonbelievers alike are willing to grant that the Bible is a source of truth, but fewer and fewer people are willing to grant that the Bible is the source of truth. Recovering the truth about the nature of Scripture—its infallibility, inerrancy, perspicuity, and sufficiency will strengthen believers’ faith in Scripture and motivate their submission to it for all things concerning life and godliness (2 Pet. 1:3).

Contrary to the advice being offered by psychologists and well-meaning counselors who argue that the truth about oneself can be altered and improved by confronting childhood experiences and by understanding “your story,” returning to Scripture is the first step toward reinterpreting our lives according to reality.

In order to trust Scripture alone for “teaching, for reproofing, for correcting, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16, ESV), believers must

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familiarize themselves with the content of Scripture, particularly the Old Testament. Rather than memorizing Bible stories and verses in isolation from their context, believers must learn the grand story in Scripture and learn to interpret the parts in light of the whole. Only when we learn to recognize Christ as the center of Scripture and the “star” of the redemptive story can we afford not to view reality through our own coming into the world but through Christ’s.

The gospel that saves us from God’s wrath and all forms of self-justification is found in the Bible. Without knowledge of the true gospel as recorded in the pages of Scripture, we can only compose our own (false) gospels, which offer a false salvation.

Solo Christo olo Christo declares that Jesus Christ alone is given the credit for justifying sinners by living a meritorious life and dying a satisfactory death in their place. Solo Christo is in need of reiteration today for many reasons.

Here are two: First, the acts of confessing, repenting, forgiving, praying, and loving are often seen today, as in the medieval church, as contributing to our salvation. Christ’s atoning work is thereby treated as a necessary but not entirely sufficient ground for our acquittal. For example, one Presbyterian pastor has exhorted his congregation to find freedom in forgiveness by confessing their sins—as though forgiveness is attained rather than acknowledged and received by the act of confession. Confession, as well as repentance, forgiveness, prayer, love, and all other benefits of Christianity are only effective because they are performed in Christ and on the basis of his atonement. It is worth restating that faith does not save; Jesus saves. J. I. Packer has observed:

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One of the unhealthiest features of Protestant theology today is its preoccupation with faith: faith, that is, viewed man-centeredly as a state of existential commitment.

Inevitably, this preoccupation diverts thought away from faith’s object, even when this is clearly conceived—as too often in modern theology it is not. Though the reformers said much about faith, even to the point of calling their message of justification “the doctrine of faith,” their interest was not of the modern kind. It was not subject-centered but object-centered, not psychological but theological, not anthropocentric but Christocentric.

Faith is only as efficient as its object, and for Christians, the object of our faith is the person and work of Jesus Christ – not our faith in him.

Second, as long as believers seek for righteousness from any source other than the Righteous One, solo Christo will be a relevant doctrine.

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to choose him. Sola gratia is what reminds us that humans are not able to earn or deserve is a factually true, historic faith, their confidence often lies salvation; salvation is “not from yourselves,” guarding not in the objective doctrine of the Christian faith; it lies against any boasting of our (Eph. 2:8, 9). The works in their subjective experience of the Christian life. doctrine of sola gratia properly assigns all credit in the work righteousness is found in Christ and we are made of salvation to God. Not because of obligation or duty, but righteous by what Christ has done for us (external only because of his gracious character, God chose to send imputation). However, according to the Roman Catholic Jesus to do for us what we could never do for ourselves. position (shared today by most Protestants), justifying righteousness is found in Christ and in us. That is, we are Sola Fide declared righteous by what Christ has done in us (internal ola fide declares that the means of justification is by infusion). The Westminster Confession of Faith states the faith alone, inviting sinners to rest in the meritorious Protestant position explicitly: work of Someone Else—namely, Jesus Christ. “Faith alone” is in contrast to the Roman teaching of faith as only Those whom God effectually calleth he also freely part of, rather than the whole of, what is necessary for justifieth; not by infusing righteousness into them, justification: but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for anything If any say that the sinner is justified through faith wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s alone, in the sense that nothing else is necessary that sake alone; not by imputing faith itself, the act of cooperates to obtain the grace of justification, and believing, or any other evangelical obedience, to that it is not necessary for the sinner to prepare them as their righteousness; but by imputing the himself, by means of his own will, let him be obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them they anathema. (Council of Trent, Session 6.7, Canon 9) receiving and resting on him and his righteousness by faith; which faith they have not of themselves; it Reformation Christianity does not regard faith as a is the gift of God. (Chapter 11, Section 1) meritorious work of sinners but as an instrument by which they trust in the meritorious work of Christ and receive it Righteousness is found outside of ourselves in Christ and as their own. J. I. Packer explains, “Faith is our act, but not can only belong to us by God’s gracious act of imputing, or our work; it is an instrument of reception without being a crediting, it to us. Solo Christo frees us to accept the Apostle means of merit; it is the work in us of the Holy Spirit, who Paul’s words to the Romans: “There is no one righteous … both evokes it and through it ingrafts us into Christ.” no one who seeks God … no one who does good” (Rom. Regeneration is a monergistic work of the Holy Spirit, not 3:10–12) and to receive a righteousness from without that a synergistic (cooperative) work between the Holy Spirit and the sinner. we could never produce from within.

In sola fide, the very gospel is at stake, which is why it is Sola Gratia said that the entire Reformation turned on this phrase.

Luther went so far as to say that justification is the chief ola gratia declares that the basis for justification is God’s article of the church. R. Scott Clark has put it in stark grace alone. God’s gracious nature is the efficient cause terms: “What did Jesus mean when he hung on the cross of spiritual life emerging from spiritually dead souls of sinners. Kim Riddlebarger has put it succinctly: “Our and said, ‘It is finished’? Did he mean ‘It is finished’? Or, salvation from the wrath of God is because of something ‘I’ve done my part, now you do yours’?” The battle cry of good in God, not because of anything good in us.” the reformers was “It is finished.”

Sola gratia is a practical doctrine worth our attention so long as people (Christians included) hesitate to accept the Soli Deo Gloria sin and guilt of Adam as theirs—not hypothetically, but oli Deo gloria declares that God’s glory alone is the actually. So long as Christians hesitate to admit that they purpose of salvation. As stated in the Westminster are totally depraved and therefore unable to desire God or Shorter Catechism, the chief end of man is to glorify choose him, sola gratia will defend the truth that sinners God and enjoy him forever (Question and Answer 1). are always at the mercy of God, and God is never at the However, ever since Cain built a city named after his son mercy of sinners. instead of his God (Gen. 4:17ff), and proud human beings That regeneration and every part of salvation is God’s constructed the Tower of Babel to “make a name for choice alone and not man’s frees the believer’s conscience [them]selves” (Gen. 11:4), God’s glory has been from wondering whether he has done enough good for God threatened by the pursuit of our own glory. Even

Though many believers will readily affirm that Christianity

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Christians seek to establish empires, build kingdoms, and leave legacies in their remembrance. But for those in Christ, these are vain and futile pursuits, for “those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” (2 Cor. 5:15). That God always has, always does, and always will receive his due glory rebukes those who abuse God’s gifts by using them for their own selfish ends.

One little word, sola, allows both God and man to take their proper positions in redemptive reality: God as gracious, righteous, sovereign, self-sustaining Creator, and humanity as the ethically marred image of God, desperately dependent recipient of grace.

Conclusion oday, Christianity, like truth, is being redefined in primarily subjective terms, such as it’s being “personal,” “helpful,” and “practical.” What needs to be recovered is not only an objective view of Christianity—that is, Christianity as true, not just personally beneficial—but also confidence in the objectivity of Christianity. Though many believers will readily affirm that Christianity is a factually true, historic faith, their confidence often lies not in the objective doctrines of the Christian faith; it lies in their subjective experience of the Christian life. In other words, objective truth today is only as valuable as one’s subjective experience of it. Until the objective doctrines of Christianity are plainly presented to the modern church, believers cannot place their confidence in the facts.

Once believers learn the true gospel as articulated by the solas, they will be able to more easily sniff out false gospels, in the same way that they judge that a carton of milk is spoiled by knowledge of what good, fresh milk is supposed to smell like. The solas provide the measuring stick by which orthodoxy can be measured. Thus, it behooves every twenty-first-century Christian to invest time and energy in learning the doctrines formulated in the sixteenth century. In 2007, Modern Reformation will focus its attention on the Reformation solas in order that our current generation may reap all the benefits of the gospel that are offered in them. ■

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Brenda Jung is managing editor of Modern Reformation.

In this article, Luther’s quote can be found in Preface to the Complete Edition of Luther’s Latin Writings (1545), in Luther’s Works: American Edition (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House and Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1955– ), vol. 34, p.

337. See also AE 54:193-4, 308-9. The quotes from J.I. Packer were taken from his article, “Sola Fide: The Reformed Doctrine of Justification,” and the quote from Kim Riddlebarger was taken from his article, “Grace Alone: An Evangelical Problem?” Both articles can be found online at monergism.com.

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Reflections on Modern Reformation…

Modern Reformation vs. Modern Substitutes

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istory will not recognize the twentieth century as a golden age for religious publishing, especially for magazines. Too many have come and gone, and some survive only by becoming more colorful and less coherent. One periodical, now its second half-century of publishing, recently observed the revival of Reformed theology in the same issue that it urged readers to embrace their “inner Pentecostal.” Indeed, charismatic Calvinism may agree with our eclectic times. But seventy years ago, in the inaugural year of the late, great Presbyterian Guardian, John Murray insisted that the Reformed faith could not be defended and propagated by such a schizophrenic synthesis. Rather, it had to be distinguished from its “modern substitutes.” Murray had in mind not only liberalism but other brands of evangelicalism that were making dangerous inroads into Reformed and Presbyterian churches. For fifteen years, Modern Reformation has bucked evangelical trends and published in the spirit of Murray’s agenda. It has faithfully guarded the borders of Reformed orthodoxy, and twenty-first century Calvinists owe it a debt of gratitude.

— John R. Muether Associate Professor of Church History Reformed Theological Seminary (Orlando, FL)

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Who Are the Reformers?

Martin Luther (1483–1546) Luther is credited as the founder of the German Reformation. Luther’s study of the writings of the Apostle Paul and Augustine of Hippo led him to the belief that men and women could only be justified by the grace of God, through faith rather than through good works or religious observances. Luther’s writings include On Christian Liberty (1519), To the Christian Nobility (1520), The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), and On the Bondage of the Will (1525). In his Small Catechism (1529), Luther commented briefly in question and answer form on the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. The Small Catechism explains the theology of the Lutheran Reformation in simple yet colorful language.

Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560), Lutheran Melanchthon shared a lifelong friendship with Luther.

Having arrived at Wittenberg with a strong humanist background, he was won to the Reformation by Luther, and became the reformer’s leading associate. It was Melanchthon who urged Luther to translate the Bible into the German of his day for the common people. In Wittenberg, Luther had little time to systematize the various doctrines of evangelical theology, so in 1521 Melanchthon took on this task, writing the first systematic summary titled Loci Communes. Based on several already completed writings and on the negotiations of Augsburg, Melanchthon also wrote the first great confession of the Reformation, the Augsburg Confession (1530). Lutheran pastors to this day are ordained with this confession.

John Calvin (1509–1564), Reformed Calvin was the French reformer best known for his work in Geneva and his seminal work, The Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536). Calvin’s teachings shaped the beliefs of most Reformed churches. Calvin had a great commitment to the absolute sovereignty and holiness of God. Because of this, he is often associated with the doctrines of predestination and election, but it should be noted that he differed very little with the other magisterial reformers regarding these difficult doctrines. The five points of Calvinism are a reflection of the thinking of the great reformer, but were actually a product of the Synod of Dort, which issued its judgments in response to five specific objections that arose after Calvin’s time.

In 1541, Calvin began to reform the institutional church in Geneva. He established four categories of offices: Doctors held an office of theological scholarship and teaching for the edification of the people and the training of other ministers; Pastors were to preach, to administer the sacraments, and to exercise pastoral discipline, teaching and admonishing the people; Deacons oversaw institutional charity, including hospitals and physical welfare; and Elders were twelve laymen whose task was to oversee the spiritual well-being of the church.

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Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575), Reformed After the death of Ulrich Zwingli in 1531, Bullinger became pastor of the principal church in Zürich and a leader of the Reformed party in Switzerland. He played an important part in compiling the First Helvetic Confession (1536), a creed based largely on Zwingli’s theological views as distinct from Lutheran doctrine. In 1549, the Consensus Tigurinus, drawn up by Bullinger and Calvin, marked the departure of Swiss theology from Zwinglian toward a more Calvinist theory. His later views were embodied in the Second Helvetic Confession (1566), which was accepted in Switzerland, France, Scotland, and Hungary and became one of the most generally accepted confessions of the Reformed churches.

Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556), Anglican In 1533, Cranmer was chosen to be Archbishop of Canterbury. With Thomas Cromwell, he supported the translation of the Bible into English. In 1545, he wrote a litany that is still used in the church. Under the reign of Edward VI, Cranmer was allowed to make the doctrinal changes he thought necessary to the church. He is credited with writing and compiling the first two Books of Common Prayer (1549, 1552), assisted by the Strasbourg Reformed leader Martin Bucer, and the Thirty-Nine Articles, which established the basic structure of Anglican liturgy for centuries.

Hugh Latimer (c. 1485–1555), Anglican Hugh Latimer was Bishop of Worcester in the time of King Henry, but resigned in protest against the King’s refusal to allow the Protestant reforms that Latimer desired. When Mary came to the throne, he was arrested, tried for heresy, and burned together with his friend Nicholas Ridley. His last words at the stake are well known: “Be of good cheer, Master Ridley, and play the man, for we shall this day light such a candle in England as I trust by God’s grace shall never be put out.” In October 1555, he was burned at the stake. The deaths of Hugh Latimer, Nicolas Ridley, and later Thomas Cranmer are now known as the Oxford Martyrs.

John Knox (c. 1513–1572), Reformed John Knox was a Scottish teacher who embraced the principles of the continental Reformation. As chaplain to Edward VI he was involved in the revision of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. After a period in exile following the accession of Mary he returned to Scotland, where he pioneered changes along Reformation principles. He was primarily responsible for the First Book of Discipline and the Book of Common Order, which were adopted by the newly formed Church of Scotland.

This information was gathered from the URCNA website, Wikipedia, and other online sources.

Remembering Our First Year In 1992, Modern Reformation magazine first appeared as a monthly, glossy magazine after existing as a quarterly newsletter for six years.

That year, it competed for the attention span of readers with the likes of the Rodney King beating, a new audio format gaining in popularity called “compact discs,” and something called the World Wide Web, which could only be accessed with a text-based browser. The magazine only had a few hundred subscribers its first year, but it immediately took up timely topics in a slightly off-key fashion (its calling card for the next fifteen years).

We’re reprinting three articles from that first year of publication. These articles are not the most important that we’ve ever published, but they are representative of our enduring identity and mission: to feature authors who represent a broad Reformation perspective and write with equal doses of wit and sincerity about issues that matter to the everyday Christian who had questions about God, this world, and his life in it. We commend these three articles to you, not just for fond recollection but also for your edification.

Wanted: Apathetic Lutherans and Calvinists

by Michael Horton bout fifteen years ago, my brother, then an assistant football coach at Arizona State, introduced me to Danny White, who was then the star quarterback for the Sun Devils. I was only twelve years old and in awe of White. Meeting him was one of those moments when you are aware of every movement you make, of every nervous gesture. As we walked toward him on the football field where he was running, I could feel my feet become lead. Fear gripped me and I almost wanted to go back, but there was no turning back now. With a dry throat and clumsy handshake I met White—just when my brother announced that he needed to take care of some business with the trainer. So here we were, Danny White and this awkward teenager who was unusually short on words. But Danny immediately broke the tension when he said, “Hey, Horts, how about a few passes?” “You mean passes to a game?” “No,” he replied, “I mean throwing some passes here on the field for a while.” For the next 20 minutes or so there we were, Danny White and Mike Horton, throwing the ball around and getting to know each other— not just as a fan gets to know a hero by following his career, but as one person gets to know another.

Since then, I have had the opportunity to meet some other people who made me feel pretty nervous: other sports stars, actors, writers, and a few foreign dignitaries. But no meeting presents a greater challenge than when we meet God

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in the person of the Holy Spirit. It is a wonderful opportunity, to be sure, but it is also a challenge. We do just fine in the stands, shaking our heads at the unbelievable skill and energy of the Holy Spirit, and we follow his work closely through the years. But to actually meet him? To get to know him, not just as an awestruck fan meets a celebrity, but as two friends out on the field together? We often find such intimacy beyond what we can (or should even attempt to) reach. But it is at God’s invitation that we leave the stands, walk out to the field, and befriend him through the person of the Holy Spirit.

God the Father longs to have a relationship with us. He “loved the world so much that he sent his only begotten Son” to save us so long ago. When God the Son took on flesh, suffered, died, and rose again, he brought us everlasting peace with God. If it were not for the Holy Spirit, we would still be up in the stands, unrelated to God as anything other than an admiring fan. It is through God the Holy Spirit that the Father’s initiative in Christ—adoption and reconciliation—is finally fulfilled. It is he who brings us into the benefits planned for us by the Father and purchased for us by the Son. The Reformation tradition, while eschewing the fanaticism of “those who think they’ve swallowed the Holy Spirit, feathers and all” (Luther’s phrase), recovered the legitimate biblical teaching concerning the Spirit by training J A N U A RY / F E B R U A RY 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 25

their lens once again on his role as the one who reveals Christ, illumines our souls to understand the Word, and enables us to believe it and to repent of everything that stands up to challenge it. In fact, Calvin has been called “the theologian of the Holy Spirit,” not, of course, because he instructed the third person of the trinity, but because so much of his emphasis falls on the work of the Holy Spirit in bringing us into union with Christ and communicating to us the benefits of that union. In the remainder of this article, I want to challenge us all to return to the classical doctrine of theTrinity as we attempt to recover what we who claim to be heirs of the Reformation have lost concerning the person and work of the Holy Spirit in our day.

Back to the Trinity There is only one God. On that Christians and Jews (as well as Moslems) are agreed. But the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. Yet, there are not three Gods, but one. The biblical writers do not explain this apparent contradiction, but affirm it nonetheless. In the second century, the church father Tertullian came up with the phrase, one in essence, three in person, and the term trinitas (trinity) was employed for the first time to explain the relationship of those two affirmations: three persons (tri); one God (unity).

And yet, this staggering mystery has proved easier to affirm in public worship than in personal faith. In every age the church seems to carve up the trinity and emphasize one person of the Godhead above the others. Sometimes this is done to redress imbalances, but it often results in other imbalances.

In our day, many hyper-Calvinists are so fascinated with the sovereignty of God that the person and work of the Son and the Holy Spirit get short shrift, while many hyperLutherans and Barthians risk embracing a form of Christomonism, in which the Father and the Spirit are footnotes to the person and work of Christ. Like the sovereignty of God for hyper-Calvinists, justification for hyper-Lutherans can become not only the central doctrine (after all, it must occupy that spot for all evangelicals), but the only doctrine in the system, divesting the biblical message of its fullness, driving the Father and the Spirit into the shadows, and leaving the flock unbalanced and malnourished.

In the meantime, the Charismatic movement has brought much attention to the reality of the third person of the Godhead, while often underplaying the study of the divine attributes and the objective character of Christ’s person and work. It’s not doctrine that concerns most Charismatics, as it concerns most Calvinists and Lutherans, but experience. So, the Holy Spirit becomes the central Trinitarian figure. Just as the Holy Spirit’s person and work can be ignored when we emphasize only the objective side of salvation (the Father and Son’s work outside of us in history), so also it is true that the Father’s 2 6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

and Son’s saving work can be pushed aside in an obsession with the real and alleged experiences and gifts of the Holy Spirit. But for us as Reformation Christians, emphasizing the objective character of salvation in the face of so much subjective introspection and emotionalism, we risk keeping the work of Christ external and “outside us.”

What the reformers meant by emphasizing Christ’s saving work “outside” and “external” to us was that our justification does not refer to inner renewal by the Spirit or the life of Christ within us, but to the once-and-for-all work of Christ for us. Nevertheless, as Calvin wrote, “It is not enough to have Christ working outside of us for our salvation unless this gift becomes ours and is brought into us by the Holy Spirit.” There must be a spiritual union with Christ if we are to receive the blessings. There must be faith if we are to be justified, sanctified, and glorified; this faith we have by virtue of our union with Christ, the gift of the Holy Spirit.

What we desperately need, then, is a return to a practical, real-life, realization of the doctrine of the trinity in our daily thinking: God the Father so loved the world that he gave Christ to his people and his people to Christ; then the Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit.

If the person and work of any member of the trinity is overlooked or underplayed, to that degree we will be unbalanced Christians.

The Shy Member of the Trinity The Holy Spirit, often called the “shy member of the trinity” because he does not draw attention to himself, but chiefly to Christ, is not, therefore, an impersonal “force” or appendage to the Godhead, but the vibrant, life-giving, renewing partner of the Father and the Son, whose essence he shares. As the Father has assigned to the Son a name which is above every other name, so Jesus himself declared, “It is good that I go, for if I go I will send the Comforter.” In other words, Jesus measures the importance of the Holy Spirit’s coming by the fact that it will compensate for the loss of his leaving. But our Lord further states, “It is he who testifies concerning me.” The Holy Spirit is essential in the redemptive mission, but he does not “blow his own horn.” Rather, he trumpets the glories of Christ’s person and work. I worry that the Charismatic movement, generally speaking, misses this chief role of the Holy Spirit by trying to make him the center of attention. The Holy Spirit refuses to be center stage and any group or movement that seeks to put him there gravely misses the point of his mission.

But if our Reformation tradition has erred, especially of late—and it has—it has been on the side of denying experience, subjectivity, emotion, and the application of redemption. Sanctification, inner renewal, life in the Spirit, victory over sin: Because these have been so emphasized, twisted, disfigured, misinterpreted, and

misapplied in our day, we risk becoming cynical about some very holy matters, quenching the same Spirit who brought us everything Christ purchased for us. While we find it easy (and, too often, delightful) to apply to Charismatics the Apostle Paul’s lament, “They have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge,” can anything be said in favor of knowledge without zeal? In fact, which is the more inexcusable offense: serving God in spite of poor theology, or ignoring him in spite of better?

In every great move of God in his church, reformation (doctrinal purification) and revival (spiritual renewal and awakening) have gone hand-in-hand. In the Reformation, Luther was hardly afraid of the Holy Spirit. The German reformer wrote, “Without the Holy Spirit hearts are either hardened in sins or they despair. . . . Now, this is the article which must ever be and remain in operation; for creation is an established fact, and redemption, too, is finished. But the Holy Spirit carries on his work without ceasing until the Last Day.” In Calvin’s crest there is a hand holding out a heart, with the inscription, “Behold, I offer you my heart, promptly and sincerely.” The divorce between doctrine and piety, the mind and the heart, characteristic of both orthodox Reformation folk on one side and pietists and Charismatics on the other, is a course for disaster, not for either reformation or revival.

Reformation without revival can change the way we think, but it will never transform our attitudes, feelings, and actions. It will be a short-lived, mid-flight course correction. Revival without reformation cannot happen in any case, for revival is the sovereign work of the Spirit of God and he will not bless with revival a church that refuses to conform its teaching and preaching to the Word of God. The first Great Awakening in the eighteenth century was great because it called the colonies back to the Reformation truths and encouraged people to make those truths their own in an experiential, personal way. Combining the mind and the heart, Edwards, Whitefield, and others used the Word of God to bring the whole person into confrontation with the truth and presence of God’s Spirit.

Conclusion The Heidelberg Catechism, from the Reformed churches, has the right idea. After every major doctrine, it asks, “How does this comfort you?” Sometimes we get so caught up in defending particular doctrines and frustrated at being told so often, “But doctrine isn’t practical,” that we stop trying to answer that question, “How does this comfort you?” Our own tradition calls us back to go beyond rehearsing doctrinal formulae and formal terms— not to ignore them, but to go beyond them, to take these great truths on board and use them in daily life. Further, the Westminster Shorter Catechism answers that the chief end of man is “to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.”

Glorify, sure. That’s a word we orthodox folk can

understand. But enjoy? That’s a bit too emotional. To enjoy God is a delight that only children enjoy. Like an awestruck fan, it’s more comfortable to glorify God from the stands than to enjoy him on the field. But let’s not settle for anything less than God’s very best.

Michael Horton is the the J. Gresham Machen professor of systematic theology and apologetics at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California).

This article originally appeared in the September/ October 1992 issue of Modern Reformation.

Reflections on Modern Reformation…

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odern Reformation has contributed in many ways to the religious dialogue in America, but none more significantly, at least in my estimation, than its restoring the discussion of doctrine within the life of the church.

Too often, Christians groan at the idea of doctrine.

Many of us have heard the demand of our people to give them the Bible rather than doctrine, suggesting that the Bible builds people and builds them together while doctrine serves only to divide.

Modern Reformation has made clear the importance of doctrine as something the Bible teaches. It has challenged preachers to preach doctrinally, as the appropriate means of reflecting the conviction of the inspired unity of the Scripture. Otherwise, if I believed that all the different teachings in the Bible disagreed with each other, I wouldn’t bother trying to preach on “the doctrine” of anything.

Modern Reformation has challenged congregations to listen to and desire doctrinal preaching as reflecting that conviction that the Bible is God’s Word, and because God is not a God of confusion or contradiction, what the Scripture says on various themes will fit together.

It has made preachers and people more conscious that we will both be wiser, deeper, and less open to prejudice as we listen to the whole message of the Bible on its important themes.

— Robert M. Norris Senior Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church (Bethesda, MD)

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Was Martin Luther A Born-Again Christian?

by Rick Ritchie artin Luther was a Protestant. He was the father of Protestantism. Martin Luther was an evangelical. He defended the authority of Scripture and restored the gospel to its central position in the church. Martin Luther was a Protestant and an evangelical, but was he a born-again Christian?

Absolutely yes! Jesus told Nicodemus that he had to be born again to enter the kingdom of heaven (John 3:3).

Clearly, in order to be a Christian, one must be born again in the way Jesus intended. If Martin Luther was a Christian—and he certainly was—then he must have been a born-again Christian.

Absolutely no! In twentieth-century America, there are many zealous Christians whose experience of the faith bears little resemblance to that of Luther. We may think that if we just strip away the cultural accretions that have attached themselves to today’s born-again Christianity, we might discover the type of faith that Luther advocated, but that is mistaken. When all the cultural layers are peeled back, what is revealed is, at best, the faith that Luther left behind in the monastery when he discovered the gospel. If Martin Luther was a born-again Christian in the biblical sense, he was not a born-again Christian in the modern sense.

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Born-Againism versus the Gospel The thought of pitting born-again Christianity against the gospel is bound to strike some as bizarre. If it is not the born-again Christians who know the gospel, who does? How many times have we heard of staunch church-goers who were converted at a Billy Graham crusade after years of spiritual deadness in their mainline churches? Are we to discount all of these stories? If not, what does it mean to say that bornagain Christianity is in conflict with the gospel?

It is not its emphasis on evangelistic outreach for which the born-again movement is to be faulted. Its evangelistic crusades and campus ministries are probably responsible for more unchurched Americans hearing the gospel than all other means combined. The born-again movement is to be commended for preaching the cross to those who have not heard, wherever it has done this faithfully. The real problem is that this movement preaches not only two births, but two gospels, and is not even aware of it. One gospel tells us of our estrangement from God and how, while we were dead in 2 8 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

sin and hostile to God, God reconciled us to himself on the cross. The other gospel tells us how we can be saved by making a decision for Christ and asking him into our hearts.

Most of us were taught to think that these teachings were two parts of the same message. When we study the life of Martin Luther, we find that the Reformation occurred when Luther abandoned the second message for the first.

Martin Luther the Monk Just like their spiritual brethren today, Christians in the Middle Ages liked to pattern their lives after the great saints in the Bible. It has been said that the entire monastic movement was a commentary on the text, “We have left all to follow you.”

Like St. Paul before him, Martin Luther had a catastrophic conversion experience while journeying on a road. In his youth, Luther, caught in a storm, was struck by lightning. This experience filled the young man with dread at the majesty of God. He knew that he had to get right with his divine Judge.

Luther did this by vowing poverty, chastity, and obedience. He dedicated himself to a lifestyle of learning about God and subduing the flesh. Praying and fasting, his consecration and effort was to no avail, however. The harder Luther strove to please God, the more distant God seemed.

The harder Luther struggled, the greater his sense of sin became. To make matters worse, God could read Luther’s heart, and know that he was motivated by fear and not love.

How could Luther escape?

Mortifying the flesh would not help. One cannot get to heaven by works. But what about love? Luther was advised by the mystics to come to God by loving him. This mystical piety was the sixteenth-century version of “Christianity is not a religion, but a personal relationship.” Instead of being a solution to Luther’s spiritual anxiety, however, it only made things worse. He wanted to love God so that God would grant him salvation, but how could he produce this love within himself ? How could he be sure that his love for God was genuine when it sprang not from a desire for God, but a desire to escape wrath? No, this would not work. If lawkeeping was an impossibility, producing a pure love for God in oneself was doubly impossible.

Luther the Evangelical If the new life that Luther found after his conversion

experience was a living death, Luther found true life when he repented of his youthful repentance. While teaching on the book of Romans as a university professor, Luther’s anxiety was only intensified by those passages that spoke of the righteousness of God. At first Luther thought that this righteousness meant solely his justice—that God must punish the wicked. Then he came to see that if the righteous were to live by faith (and if there were to be any righteous), then God’s righteousness must find its foremost expression in his demonstration of mercy, when he declared the wicked to be righteous by punishing Christ in their place. It was in abandoning the manufacture of a new life within himself (yes, even with the help of the Holy Spirit—medieval Christians were quite familiar with that!) that Luther discovered the gospel.

Luther the Enemy of Free Will Luther discovered that trying to find peace with God apart from the work of Christ was a dead end, even if pursued by a devoted person desiring a personal relationship with God. Fine. This may be an indictment against the excesses of born-again Christianity, but Luther’s criticisms of medieval Catholicism do not seem to militate against its essence. What about those churches where people are warned that the only way to God is through Christ? Surely Luther would not have had harsh words for any of them—or would he?

Many of those who were raised in churches that advocated born-again Christianity were taught that they were the true heirs of Luther’s reformation. The evidence used to support this claim was the fact that we could compare born-again Christianity to medieval Catholicism, and of the two, born-again Christianity had produced a more biblically literate laity which was less attached to superstitious ceremony. Was not this the result that Martin Luther had envisioned for his work?

The problem with this reasoning is not that there is no difference between today’s born-again Christian and his medieval Catholic cousin, but that this contrast does not run deep enough. This becomes more apparent to us when we discover how hospitably today’s born-again Christianity would have been received by one of Luther’s opponents. While Pope Leo would have been irate over the success of our present born-again Christianity, one of his fellow churchmen, Desiderus Erasmus, would have been quite pleased.

Erasmus was a brilliant contemporary of Luther who agreed with Luther concerning the need for church reform, but disagreed with Luther’s understanding of the gospel. For Luther, the gospel was an offense to our reasoning, harsh in its condemnation of sinners, and generous in forgiving them. It was a message of guilt and grace. For Erasmus, the Bible was God’s guide to a better lifestyle: an owner’s manual. During the early years of the

Reformation Erasmus and Luther appeared to be heading in the same direction. Erasmus’ scholarship had provided Luther with the Greek New Testament from which Luther produced the first widely circulated German translation of the Bible. Both men hoped that increased Bible knowledge among the laity would bring about a changed society. It was later that the divergence between the two men’s understandings of reformation was made evident.

In 1524, seven years into the Reformation, Erasmus wrote a work entitled The Freedom of the Will in which he argued that individuals were saved by a combination of God’s mercy and their efforts. Whereas he tried to give proper credit to the operation of God’s grace in salvation, Erasmus’ focus was on the need for human effort. In his response to Erasmus in The Bondage of the Will, Luther thanked Erasmus for uncovering the true difference between Erasmus’ Romanism and Luther’s Protestantism.

It was not in the presence or absence of ceremony, in the formality or informality of one’s approach to God, but in how they were to be made right with God in the first place.

Scripture is clear that in salvation God must act first.

Had our debt not been paid on the cross, there would have been no way back to God for us no matter what we did. The question then arises as to what part we play now that the debt has been paid. Did God merely set up a system whereby we could now use our free will to save ourselves? That is what synergism (the teaching that we work together with God to save us) always boils down to, and this is what Luther saw in Erasmus’ teaching.

Erasmus taught that our salvation resulted from the working of new powers imparted to fallen humans by God’s grace. At first this sounds like a grace-centered theology. God makes the first move; we cannot save ourselves without his help. Who is supposed to use these new powers, though? Fallen man? The Bible teaches that man is dead in trespasses and sins and hostile to God. Will a dead man follow his doctor’s orders? Will a hostile man help his enemy to conquer him? We have wills that can choose to follow one course or another, but these wills always will sinfully even when they will what is outwardly good. As Luther used to say, we have all the free will in the world to choose which path to follow to hell. Getting into heaven will require something other than our sinful wills, even contrary to them. Perhaps it might be asked “Might credit not be shared with the new wills which God gives us?” At best this is how Erasmus’ position can be understood.

While Luther insisted that God does change our wills in salvation, he would flatly deny that our new nature was the cause of salvation. If God chose to save us when we were hostile, would it make sense to say that we were saved because we were not hostile? Even when credit was given not to fallen man, but to the new nature, Luther saw lurking behind this the desire of the old sinful nature to J A N U A RY / F E B R U A RY 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 29

steal God’s glory. What Erasmus really wanted to do was to give credit to the old nature. If the new nature were responsible for salvation, how come it did not turn out the same for all? All are equally sinful, and one would suppose that God gave equally good new natures to people, yet in the end some were not saved. Erasmus was trying to locate the explanation for this in man. Whether we were rewarded for cooperating with the new nature or for resisting it less, Erasmus really taught that some people were more deserving of salvation than others. Luther would have none of it. The only credit man could receive was for his own damnation.

All glory, honor, and credit for the salvation of the saved belonged to God who could save us in spite of our wills.

Is it not strange that many who call themselves Protestant teach that a person is saved by doing that which Luther, the father of Protestantism, declared that a lost person could not do? Is it not even stranger that the type of conversion experience that evangelicals take to be the litmus test of genuine Christianity is based on the doctrine of free will, a doctrine that Erasmus had to defend against Luther, against Protestantism, and against the gospel which had just been rediscovered?

Reflections on Modern Reformation…

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hese are days when theological confusion abounds in the evangelical church. Among several troublesome trends I could mention is the increasing denial of the substitutionary atonement of Christ by writers who profess to be evangelicals. In the midst of this confusion, I believe God has raised up Modern Reformation as a voice to call us back to the Scriptures as our only infallible guide to truth. I appreciate, however, the spirit in which this is done. The articles in each issue are always positive, fair and gracious. There is never any suggestion of ad hominem arguments against those of opposing views. I congratulate the staff of Modern Reformation on its 15th anniversary and pray that God will continue to use you to hold forth the truth in these turbulent times.

Rick Ritchie lives in southern California, where he is a member of a congregation in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. He is a longtime contributor to Modern Reformation.

— Jerry Bridges Staff, The Navigators (Colorado Springs, CO)

This article originally appeared in the January/February 1992 issue of Modern Reformation.

Are You Sure You Like Spurgeon?

by Alan Maben

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he doctrine of justification itself, as preached by an Arminian, is nothing but the doctrine of salvation by works.”

C. H. Spurgeon

Praised by many evangelicals as a great preacher, Charles H. Spurgeon is considered a successful and “safe” example of a “nontheological” minister. His works are recommended as a means to lead many aspiring pastors into developing their own successful ministries. His 3 0 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

Lectures to My Students are often used for this purpose, emphasizing the “practical” aspects of evangelism. But while the form of Spurgeon’s successful preaching is often studied by would-be pastors, the content of this Christian giant’s preaching and teaching is often ignored. Rather, Spurgeon is popularly thought to have heartily approved of the same theology that is presently dominating American culture: Arminianism.

Many Christian leaders, for instance, like to point out Spurgeon as one who also had no formal college training.

They ignore the fact that he had a personal library containing more than 10,000 books. It is further argued that the success of his ministry in the mid-to-late 19th century was due to his anti-intellectual piety, “his yieldedness to the Spirit,” and his Arminianism. The fact is, Spurgeon was not anti-intellectual, nor did he entertain delusions of being so holy that he could allow God to work only if he was “yielded.” Most importantly, he was not an Arminian. He was a staunch Calvinist who opposed the dominant religious view of his day (and of ours), Arminianism. Even toward the end of his life he could write, “From this doctrine I have not departed to this day.” He was grateful that he never wavered from his Calvinism. “There is no soul living who holds more firmly to the doctrine of grace than do I.” Reading Spurgeon’s beliefs, one will see that this tremendously fruitful ministry was built upon the preaching of the biblical gospel.

In his work, “A Defense of Calvinism,” he states unequivocally: [T]here is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him crucified, unless we preach what nowadays is called Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the gospel, if we do not preach justification by faith, without works; nor unless we preach the sovereignty of God in His dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love of Jehovah; nor do I think we can preach the gospel, unless we base it upon the special and particular redemption of His elect and chosen people which Christ wrought out upon the cross; nor can I comprehend a gospel which lets saints fall away after they are called, and suffers the children of God to be burned in the fires of damnation.

Here Spurgeon affirms his agreement with what are usually called “The Five Points of Calvinism.” Spurgeon’s own summation was much shorter: A Calvinist believes that salvation is of the Lord. Selections from his sermons and writings on these subjects make his position clear.

Regarding total depravity and irresistible grace: When you say, “Can God make me become a Christian?” I tell you yes, for herein rests the power of the gospel. It does not ask your consent; but it gets it. It does not say, “Will you have it?” but it makes you willing in the day of God’s power…. The gospel wants not your consent, it gets it. It knocks the enmity out of your heart. You say, I do not want to be saved;

Christ says you shall be. He makes our will turn round, and then you cry, “’Lord save, or I perish!”

Regarding unconditional election: I do not hesitate to say, that next to the doctrine of the crucifixion and the resurrection of our blessed Lord—no doctrine had such prominence in the early Christian Church as the doctrine of the election of grace. And when confronted with the discomfort this doctrine would bring, he responded with little sympathy: “’I do not like it [divine election],’ saith one. Well, I thought you would not; whoever dreamed you would?” Regarding particular atonement: [I]f it was Christ’s intention to save all men, how deplorably has he been disappointed, for we have His own testimony that there is a lake which burneth with fore and brimstone, and into that pit of woe have been cast some of the very persons who, according to the theory of universal redemption, were bought with His blood.

He has punished Christ, why should He punish twice for one offence? Christ has died for all His people’s sins, and if thou art in the covenant, thou art one of Christ’s people. Damned thou canst not be. Suffer for thy sins thou canst not. Until God can be unjust, and demand two payments for one debt, He cannot destroy the soul for whom Jesus died.

Regarding the perseverance of the saints: I do not know how some people, who believe that a Christian can fall from grace, manage to be happy. It must be a very commendable thing in them to be able to get through a day without despair. If I did not believe in the doctrine of the final perseverance of the saints, I think I should be of all men most miserable, because I should lack any ground of comfort.

The selections above indicate that C. H. Spurgeon was without a doubt an affirmed, self-professing Calvinist who made his ministry’s success dependent upon truth, unwilling to consider the Five Points of Calvinism as separate, sterile categories to be memorized and believed in isolation from each other or Scripture. He often blended the truths represented by the Five Points, because they actually are mutually supportive parts of a whole, and not five little sections of faith added to one’s collection of Christian beliefs. Spurgeon never presented them as independent oddities to be believed as the sum of Christianity. Rather, he preached a positive gospel, ever J A N U A RY / F E B R U A RY 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 31

mindful that these beliefs were only part of the whole counsel of God and not the sum total. These points were helpful, defensive summaries, but they did not take the place of the vast theater of redemption within which God’s complete and eternal plan was worked out in the Old and New Testaments.

Certain that the Cross was an offense and stumbling block, Spurgeon was unwilling to make the gospel more acceptable to the lost. “The old truth that Calvin preached, that Augustine preached, is the truth that I must

Refusing to compromise the gospel in any way, he soundly refuted and rejected common attempts to unite Calvinism and Arminianism into a synthesized belief. preach today, or else be false to my conscience and to God. I cannot shape the truth; I know of no such thing as paring off the rough edges of a doctrine.” Elsewhere he challenged, “I cannot find in Scripture any other doctrine than this. It is the essence of the Bible…. Tell me anything contrary to this truth, and it will be heresy.”

Spurgeon believed that the price of ridicule and rejection was not counted so high that he should refuse to preach this gospel: “[W]e are reckoned the scum of creation; scarcely a minister looks on us or speaks favorable of us, because we hold strong vies upon the divine sovereignty of God, and his divine electings and special love towards His own people.”

Then, as now, the dominant objection to such preaching was that it would lead to licentious living. Since Christ “did it all,” there was no need for them to obey the commands of Scripture. Aside from the fact that we should not let sinful people decide what kind of gospel we will preach, Spurgeon had his own rebuttals to this confusion: [I]t is often said that the doctrines we believe have a tendency to lead us to sin…. I ask the man who 3 2 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

dares to say that Calvinism is a licentious religion, what he thinks of the character of Augustine, or Calvin, or Whitefield, who in successive ages were the great exponents of the systems of grace; or what will he say of the Puritans, whose works are full of them? Had a man been an Arminian in those days, he would have been accounted the vilest heretic breathing, but now we are looked upon as the heretics, and they as orthodox. We have gone back to the old school; we can trace our descent from the apostles…. We can run a golden line up to Jesus Christ Himself, through a holy succession of mighty fathers, who all held these glorious truths; and we can ask concerning them, “Where will you find holier and better men in the world?”

His attitude toward those who would distort the gospel for their own ideas of “holiness” is clear from the following: No doctrine is so calculated to preserve a man from sin as the doctrine of the grace of God. Those who have called it “a licentious doctrine” did not know anything at all about it. Poor ignorant things, they little knew that their own vile stuff was the most licentious doctrine under heaven.

According to Spurgeon (and Scripture as well), the response of gratitude is the motive for holy living, not the uncertain status of the believer under the influence of Arminianism and its accompanying legalism. “The tendency of Arminianism is towards legality; it is nothing but legality which lays at the root of Arminianism.” He was very clear on the dangerous relationship of Arminianism to legalism: “Do you not see at once that this is legality—that this is hanging our salvation upon our work—that this is making our eternal life to depend upon something we do? Nay, the doctrine of justification itself, as preached by an Arminianism, is nothing but the doctrine of salvation by works.”

A status before God based upon how we “use” Christ and the Spirit to feign righteousness was a legalism hated

by Spurgeon. As in our day, Spurgeon saw that one of the strongholds of Arminianism included the independent churches. Arminianism was a natural, God-rejecting, selfexalting religion and heresy. As Spurgeon believed, we are born Arminians by nature. He saw this natural aversion to God as encouraged by believing self-centered, selfexalting fancies. “If you believe that everything turns upon the free-will of man, you will naturally have man as its principal figure in your landscape.” And again he affirms the remedy for this confusion to be true doctrine.

“I believe that very much of current Arminianism is simply ignorance of gospel doctrine.” Further, “I do not serve the god of the Arminians at all; I

have nothing to do with him, and I do not bow down before the Baal they have set up; he is not my God, nor shall he ever be; I fear him not, nor tremble at his presence … The God that saith today and denieth tomorrow, that justifieth today and condemns the next … is no relation to my God in the least degree. He may be a relation of Ashtaroth or Baal, but Jehovah never was or can be his name.”

Refusing to compromise the gospel in any way, he soundly refuted and rejected common attempts to unite Calvinism and Arminianism into a synthesized belief. Nor would he downplay the importance of the differences between the two systems: This may seem to you to be of little consequence, but it really is a matter of life and death. I would plead with every Christian—think it over, my dear brother. When some of us preach Calvinism, and some Arminianism, we cannot both be right; it is of no use trying to think we can be—“Yes,” and “no,” cannot both be true.

Truth does not vacillate like the pendulum which shakes backwards and forwards…. One must be right; the other wrong.

Alan Maben is a graduate of California State University, Long Beach and Simon Greenleaf School of Law. In this article, Mr. Maben provides facts about Spurgeon found in the following sources: J.E. Johnson, “Spurgeon, Charles Haddon”, in Walter A. Elwell, ed., Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1984); a sermon cited in Iain Murray, The Forgotten Spurgeon, 2nd ed. (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1986); C.H. Spurgeon, “A Defense of Calvinism”, in S. Spurgeon and J. Harrold, eds., C.H. Spurgeon Autobiography, rev. ed., vol. I, The Early Years 1834-1859 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1976: reprint); and Spurgeon’s Sermons, Vol. 6 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1989). In addition to the aforementioned sources, Mr. Maben recommends these sermon collections for more information: Charles H. Spurgeon, New Park Street Pulpit, and Charles H. Spurgeon, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit.

This article originally appeared in the May/June 1992 issue of Modern Reformation.

Reflections on Modern Reformation…

T

he enduring contribution of Modern Reformation to the church and, to my way of thinking, to the galaxy is its willingness to take “the hard right against the easy wrong” (Book of Common Prayer, 1928).

So much of what I read today has no edge.

Things in the world, and certainly in the church, are sanitized, smoothed out, and made to conform to a political correctness deeply foreign to the blood-red heart of Pauline, Augustinian Christianity.

In my own denomination, The Episcopal Church, this means that we are swamped by the “New Age”.

We even hear from our Presiding Bishop that Jesus is our Mother! They talk about Hildegard of Bingen and Blessed Julian, but nevermore concerning Bucer and Brenz. The result is miles and miles of labyrinths! And as The Who sang, “I can see for miles, and miles,” it all leads to the Antichrist!

What Modern Reformation has done is to stand.

The magazine has stood and not backed down, and has also spoken with humor and impressive courage.

This has not necessarily driven its circulation through the roof. Yet it is a project whose hour has come. Let’s take back the church—our declining main-line churches—and set them back upon firm ground.

Modern Reformation reminds me of a Wittenberg masterpiece, the painting by Lucas Cranach the Younger entitled “The Vineyard of the Lord,” which hangs in the south transept of St. Mary’s Church.

Two gardens are depicted, one the parched wilderness of the old church’s Law; the other, the thriving landscape of flowery, fruitful hope, representing the grace of the Reformation’s church.

Our beloved magazine is helping the first, a desert, to become the second, a garden. This is a fruit of real Christianity, and Modern Reformation is its handmaid.

— Paul Zahl Dean and President Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry (Ambridge, PA)

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INTERVIEW f o r

d i a l og u e

i n

and

out

of

our

circles

An Interview with Eugene Peterson

A Discussion of Spirituality and the Christian Life Dr. Peterson, it’s an honor to have you with us. You’ve written a lot on the Christian life. What do you know about the Christian life now that you didn’t know when you first became a pastor?

Well, it’s not a matter of knowing more things as much as it is getting a feel for the depth and the intricacies of the life. You know when I was younger I thought it was simple, that you could just do it. But all this living the life requires an enormous amount of maturity, and you only acquire that through living it. But I wouldn’t say there’s new information that I get; it’s just living into what I grew up with and acquired along the way. The living part—that’s really where the art is, where the patience comes, and the community comes. I think I used to think that I could do it all by myself and I found out I need a whole community to do this with.

Do you think that in our American church life in particular we separate doctrine and life, and we have one group that takes the doctrine without the life and another group that takes the life without the doctrine, and then we separate the individuals from the community? Do you think there is too much separation in our theology and practice today?

Oh, certainly. It’s a very American thing.

Yes, you speak of the Americanization of spirituality.

What exactly do you mean by that?

I mean the individualization of it,

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or exterior way, then people get pretty tired of that.

Just get your facts right, then and I mean the consumerism of it. move on to something else?

The gospel is packaged as a product That’s right. and we’ve used salesmanship methods to advertise it So this whole problem The reason instead of do true evanof this anti-doctrinal gelism. So that’s what I spirit of our times can that doctrine mean. Religion is comalso be caused by modified in our culture, sometimes gets stressing doctrine but just like everything in that kind of imperbad press is else…But the sad thing sonal way? because it’s used That’s right. is that many churches just accept the comin an impersonal modification and indiYou’ve encouraged the way. But doctrine church to live and do vidualization without any critical discernis very personal things personally and ment. relationally rather than when used impersonally and funcA lot of people today tionally.

How do you properly. seem to think that think doctrines should doctrine gets in the way of life. If relate to personal relationships you really want to be a relevant and congregational life?

Christian in the world today, you Well, see, I’m a pastor. And all my need to concentrate not so much life I’ve spent in community and on doctrine lived but on what is relationships. And I just don’t considered useful in our culture, believe that you can take doctrine in our society. Do you think there and teach doctrine or uphold dochas been a sort of technologizatrine apart from the community of tion of truth and living in the relationships of worshiping church today?

Christians who are being forgiven, Oh, certainly. You know, the reawho are experiencing grace…You son that doctrine sometimes gets see, all of us have been educated in bad press is because it’s used in an schools that separate information impersonal way. But doctrine is from living. We go to school for very personal when used properly, twelve, eighteen years, and we when used the way the church has learn that knowledge is something always used it. It’s a way of giving you pass exams on. But when you form and structure to your life. walk into the church, it’s just someBut when people take doctrine thing entirely different. And we and use it in a kind of impersonal bring those old habits of secular

education into the church and it doesn’t work. And then people— you know, people who are really looking for a new life—they come in and say, “I don’t want that doctrine stuff, I just want to feel good and- trust the Lord, and have fun.”

Is the ministry of Word and Sacrament one place where we have an opportunity for this dualism to be overcome?

Well, certainly. That provides a focus for it because the sacraments are embodiments and they’re material, and you’ve got to be a flesh-and-blood person to participate in them. And when Word and Sacrament are separated, which they are so often in evangelicalism, you weaken both of them. Our whole gospel is incarnational from the beginning to the end, and if you don’t have a body, you don’t have a faith.

Do you think, Dr. Peterson, that one of the reasons why there seems to be a lot of hunger and thirst for spirituality—especially among a lot of young people today—is perhaps because so many people have grown up in evangelical churches where Word and Sacrament ministry was not really front and center? There was either more of a “lecture” kind of approach or more of a “feel good” kind of orientation?

Yeah, I think so. I think a lot of this can be attributed to cultural conditions, but that’s no excuse. You know, the task of the church is to be Christian, to do this the way Jesus did it, and too many times we use the name of Jesus and the ideas about Jesus, but we haven’t done it the Jesus way, which is—you’re touching people, you’re talking with people, you’re listening to people…

See, I’m not very enthusiastic about enthusiasm for spirituality because many times, it seems to me, they just want an easy way out. They don’t want to have to deal with the truth. They don’t want to have to deal with tradition, which is like

paying attention to your parents. So they want some sort of shortcut. But you know part of the reason is, the people who have taught them the doctrine haven’t been living it and haven’t been using it as a way to understand what you’re doing. You know, Christian faith without doctrine is kind of like being a jellyfish.

There’s no bone structure. We need some bones. But, here’s the thing: When you look at a person, you don’t see the bones. And if you do, there’s something wrong. You have a skeleton and it’s Halloween all over again, which is kind of scary.

have to enter into something larger than you; there’s no “way” to receive holy Communion—you just take what’s given to you; there’s no “way” to be baptized—you have to let somebody else do it to you; so, it requires our participation, but it doesn’t permit our taking charge.

So the sovereign self gets dethroned in all of these activities.

That’s right.

Dr. Peterson, your most recent book is Eat This Book. What is the major message of that book?

Well, it’s about reading the Bible. It Can you summarize the points you has to do with getting away from make in Christ Plays in Ten reading the Bible for information Thousand Places? and entering it as a meal. Chewing What I tried to do was provide a on it. Assimilating it. And we have a structure and a foundation for spirilong, long tradition in the Christian tuality that is grounded in Scripture church of spiritual reading, which and is kerygmaticallyhas been virtually centered—that is, Jesus ignored by the modern Christian faith church. Reading the is the center of it, and it’s given a Trinitarian without doctrine Bible is an informationstructure so that there’s al act —we learn the is kind of like doctrine, we learn the something comprehensively whole about it. being a jellyfish. stories, but then we go And then I have tried to on and do whatever we There’s no take each major area of want to do. But this is a our lives—creation, salbone structure. painstaking task and vation, and the comnobody trains us how to We need some do this—except some munity and set them in those contexts and poets and, ideally, propbones. But, show how those things erly, some pastors and here’s the thing: professors in the work together. And each section comes into When you look church. But you know, a focus in something we have more Bibles at a person, we do: creation comes around the world right into focus in Sabbathyou don’t see now and less skill in keeping, salvation reading them than ever the bones. And before. So, this is the comes into focus in the eucharist, and commu- if you do, there’s second volume in a nity comes into focus in spirituality project, but I something wrong. thought I’ve got to get baptism. So, none of these things is left to be this in early because this just ideas. They all end up doing is our text and we’ve got to learn something. But they aren’t doing how to read the text. something that you’re in control of; there’s something that you have to And so this is the biblical emphasis enter into. When Americans start on meditative reading and meditalking about doing something, tative learning? they’re usually talking about pragYes, although I hesitate to use the matics: how do I do it? Well, there’s word meditative. It sounds kind of no “way” to keep the Sabbath—you insipid. I don’t want people to put J A N U A RY / F E B R U A RY 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 35

Nothing is supposed to happen when you go to church.

It’s supposed to get you out of the way, sit you down, and say okay, just be here and see what it feels like not to be in control. this in the category of Zen meditation. This is something much more participatory.

Participatory in the sense that this kind of reading is done in a group setting?

Not necessarily. But it has to be done in a community; you’ve got to be part of a community before you can read this way accurately.

But not necessarily in the same room with people. But the community’s very much there. No, it has to do with always asking the question, How can I obey this?

You know the Bible study questions are: What does this mean?

How do you interpret this? How do you apply this? But in spiritual reading, you’re asking how can I obey? You’re not trying to master the text; you’re trying to let it master you, which is a very different way of approaching the Bible than what we’re used to.

way, sit you down, and say okay, just be here and see what it feels like not to be in control. And that takes some training and effort…

People are scared to death of being bored. Well, anybody who’s done any creative work knows that boredom is part of it. It’s when you quit being in charge and you’re not the center of things. So, we have a difficult time these days in worship. Worship is being corrupted terribly all over the place.

Now, the entertainment kind of worship where there’s loud music which requires a lot of action, a lot of physical participation…there’s nothing wrong with that—except when that’s dominant, and there’s no quiet, no listening, there’s no boredom...Someday I’m going to write a book on being bored as one of the gifts of the Spirit (laughs).

Yeah, we even speak of mastering the scriptures.

I know (chuckles).

Some of the most exciting things happen to us when we’re bored, in other words, when we’re not expecting it.

That’s right.

And how much of that, too, is due to our tendency to privilege the reading of the Bible by ourselves over the public hearing of the Bible in preaching?

Yeah, I think that’s true. I don’t think we can have a mature church that isn’t worshiping. You know, one of the things that people are in great rebellion against these days is going to church and not having anything happen. So we have all this entertainment kind of worship. But you know the fact is, nothing is supposed to happen when you go to church.

It’s supposed to get you out of the

How do you think the church can recover this integration between faith and practice, the grace that imputes Christ’s righteousness to us and the grace that transforms us?

Well, I don’t think we have to recover it; it’s there. It’s just that people who are talking loudest about it don’t enter into it. But it’s happening all over the world, all over the country, mostly in small churches. I know a lot of pastors who are doing this all the time. I’m in conversation with them and correspondence with them. There’s an enormous amount of really good worship and pastoral work, but

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unfortunately our obsession with bigness, which inevitably becomes a depersonalized way of life, is ruining us. But there are a lot of people who are ignoring that. I’m ignoring it.

So rather than either embrace it as the next new thing or spend our whole lives in vain against it, we ought to just go on as if Christ’s promise to the church is actually true: the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

It’s taking place. It’s taking place right now.

Eugene H. Peterson is a writer, poet, and retired pastor. He has authored more than twenty books, including the popular translation of the Bible, The Message.

He is Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia and founding pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church (Bel Air, Maryland), where he ministered for twenty-nine years.

REVIEWS what’s

b ein g

read

Books That Still Matter: 15 Years in Print In each issue, we’ll look at a book published during Modern Reformation’s 15-year history, considering why this book was and still is significant.

D

avid Wells’s No Place for Truth may have been the most important book about Evangelicalism published in the 1990s. For instance, reading it

want to scruple over what is inconsequential, who are not loyal, and who are, in any case, quite irrelevant.

influenced James Montgomery Boice and played a part in the forma-

tion of the Alliance of C o n f e s s i n g Evangelicals and later the signers of the Cambridge Declaration (1996). In No Place for Truth, Wells expresses deep concern over the increasing theological void in evangelical churches. By that he means not simply that evangelical laypeople and clergy are not as well-read theologically as their forebears, but that there is a growing attitude of disdain for theology, an impaNo Place for Truth tience with rigorous

by David F. Wells and robust theological William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.,1993 thinking, and a corre330 pages (paperback), $24.00 sponding loss of knowledge of and concern for historic, biblical, confessional doctrine. These things are seen as irrelevant to life and ministry. He believes that there is an audience condition in Evangelicalism that almost prevents the very possibility of taking theology seriously or doing it right.

Wells says that he “has watched with growing disbelief as the evangelical Church has cheerfully plunged into astounding theological illiteracy.” This change, he says, is evident not only in seminaries but also in publications, churches, and pastors: It is a change so large and so encompassing that those who dissent from what is happening are easily dismissed as individuals who cannot get along, who

Provocatively, however, Wells suggests “those who are most relevant to this world are those who are judged most irrelevant.”

Wells’s book is about how the audience (the evangelical audience, in particular), and the condition of the audience (their mindset) affects the possibility of actually doing theology, thinking theologically, or speaking theologically to them. Wells is well aware that many of the current approaches to theology are wrongheaded, and thus to blame for some of the disinterest of the church, but he wants to take his criticism in a different direction. Wells argues that, “Theology is a knowledge that belongs first and foremost to the people of God and…the proper and primary audience for theology is therefore the Church, not the learned guild.”

The purpose of theology, then, is not primarily to participate in high-powered academic conversation but to nurture the people of God. So, the theologian’s proper audience is the community of faith, since theologians profess to teach a knowledge received by faith and sustained by faith. Nevertheless, Wells suggests that we must not blame the loss of theology on professional theologians; rather we must look at the Church herself. Wells argues that rather than to professionals and methods, he looks for the recovery of the place of theology in “a reformation in the way that Christian people go about their business of being Christian in the midst of the extraordinary changes that modernity has wrought in our world.”

Wells states the thesis of his book this way: theology happens in three places or “worlds”—(1) the academy [schools, universities, seminaries, books, journals], (2) the church, and (3) the “middle men” [academics and pastors who transfer the teachings from 1 to 2], but the connections between these worlds is now severed, and they are even breaking down within themselves. For instance, scholars in the field of biblical studies often attack the idea of systematic theology today, and pastors often minister with minimal theological knowledge (or even an antithe-

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ological spirit). Wells says, in effect, if we lose the ability to think like Christians about the world, then there ceases to be a reason to do theology in the pulpit or classroom (it’s like writing books for people who can’t read).

This situation in the church is a reflection of a broader theme in our culture. One effect of modernization has been to break the unity of human learning into highly segregated specializations. Rational absolutes have been, by and large, abandoned. The effect of secularization has been to marginalize God, making the absolute and transcendent irrelevant to daily life. The net result of this force in the church has been the triumph of diversity over unity. That is, our world, even our religious world, has become fragmented. And the evangelical churches, too, have experienced the effects of “modernity.” Theological unity has been lost. We have no “center” in Evangelicalism anymore.

In this cultural context, with all the fragmentation of knowledge, one might expect people in our society to believe less and less, but in fact now they believe more and more. Indeed, we’ll believe almost anything. The same goes for Christian circles.

In contrast, Wells calls himself a believer in the truth and disbeliever in the fabric of modern life. However, he says, evangelicals are believers in modernity. They are “antimodern only across a narrow front” whereas he is antimodern across the entire front. In other words, it is only when the culture directly and obviously challenges Christianity that evangelicals oppose it, and except in those instances evangelicals tend to view the culture as neutral, or even indeed a useful vehicle for conveying Christian truth. However, culture is not neutral; it is laden with values and hidden influences. Because evangelicals believe in the innocence of modern culture, they cannot believe in historic Protestant orthodoxy. Because Wells believes in historic Protestant orthodoxy he cannot believe in modernity.

Wells suggests that Evangelicalism is hampered by a pervasive worldliness and is seeking to liberate itself from historic Protestant orthodoxy. It has sometimes done so in the name of sola Scriptura or semper reformanda. However, it has not become more faithful to Scripture, but less.

There is “less interest in the truth, less seriousness, less depth, and less capacity to speak the Word of God to our own generation in a way that offers an alternative to what it already thinks.”

Wells says his central purpose is to explore why theology is disappearing. He is interested in the recovery of a theology in the churches, characterized by a passion for truth and an embrace of historic confessional Protestant orthodoxy. Why has Evangelicalism lost its passion for truth? Why has it lost contact with the past? In answering these questions, many attempts at explanation seem to diverge or conflict. Nevertheless, Wells believes that the disappearance of theology in both church and academy, and the break between Evangelicalism and the historic confessional orthodoxy of the past is to some extent the result of the churches being unwittingly influenced by 3 8 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

modernity.

Wells’s thesis still packs a punch in our day and age when so many think that they have moved beyond the constraints of modernity (to postmodernism).

Ligon Duncan serves as the senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church (Jackson, Mississippi). He is also the president of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.

Getting the Gospel Right: The Reformation and New Perspectives on Paul

by Cornelis P. Venema Banner of Truth Trust, 2006 112 pages (paperback), $6.00 The current controversy over the doctrine of justification touches upon several interrelated questions beginning with the nature of Judaism as the Apostle Paul experienced it, covenant theology, and the doctrine of justification. These questions and particularly the doctrine of justification are at the heart of historic Protestant theology and piety.

Beginning with the work of Krister Stendahl in 1963, E. P. Sanders in 1977, and continuing with the work of James D. G. Dunn in 1982, and N. T. Wright following them, there has been a revolution in New Testament studies and biblical theology known as the New Perspective(s) on Paul (hereafter NPP). Arguing that Paul was misunderstood by the Reformation, and that the confessional Protestant doctrine of justification is misguided or irrelevant, the work of these and other scholars has sent shockwaves through the Protestant churches. In North America, this movement has spawned an ecclesiastical (and para-ecclesiastical) movement self-described as the “Federal Vision.” If the NPP is correct, then the Reformation must be abandoned, ecclesiastical confessions junked or revised radically, and the entire institutional church reordered. Consequences of such magnitude demand our attention.

Despite the importance of the issues, many pastors will be hard-pressed to become expert in the several fields covered by these developments and even fewer elders and laity will be equipped to address these issues.

Overwhelmed by the magnitude and number of the questions, many have perhaps been tempted simply to dismiss them as too complex or too remote. Until now, such reac-

tions might have been plausible, but with the publication of this volume, pastors, elders, and laity are without excuse. This short volume written by the professor of doctrinal studies and president of Mid-America Reformed Seminary (Dyer, IN)explains clearly the major issues and personalities behind the NPP and provides the outline of a confessional Protestant response.

The book is in three parts. The author first provides a brief survey of the Reformation “alones,” that is, the formal principle of the Reformation: justification, “Scripture alone,” and the material principle of the Reformation by grace alone, through faith alone. Second, he surveys the main arguments of three of the principal proponents of the NPP. In the final section, he offers a series of six criticisms of the movement.

Some of the academic and popular proponents of the NPP defend their movement by appealing to sola Scriptura, thus Cornelius Venema begins with a brief discussion of sola Scriptura, namely by saying what it is not.

“Reformation according to the Word of God” is not the same as “fascination with new views simply because they are new,” or one might add, because they claim to be more biblical. The appeal to “Scripture alone” is a little ironic since the proponents of the NPP are typically quite hostile to other aspects of the Reformation, despite the fact that, as Venema notes, in their writing one seldom finds “any sustained treatment of the doctrine of justification that was advocated by the Reformers.”

He notes that according to the Reformation, justification is a “legal declaration by God which pronounces the justified person righteous or acceptable to him.” This view is in stark contrast to the Roman definition of justification, which maintains that justification is grounded in “moral transformation” or sanctification. In contrast to Rome, confessional Protestants hold that justification is definitive and not progressive. We hold that the ground of justification is Christ’s perfect righteousness, which is imputed to us. Rome teaches that we are justified by Christ’s righteousness wrought in us. Because the legal basis of justification is extrinsic to believers, the object of faith is also extrinsic. In justification, faith does not look to anything wrought within the believer but to Christ’s work for the believer. For this reason we speak of faith alone. This is why Calvin called faith, in justification, a receptive thing, like an empty hand, and the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF 11.1) speaks of faith as “receiving and resting.”

According to Venema, E. P. Sanders rejects the view that Judaism was mainly a religion of works righteousness.

Rather, according to Sanders, Judaism in the time of Paul was a gracious religion of “covenantal nomism,” which he summarizes in eight points that are themselves summarized thus: one gets into the covenant by grace and stays in by obedience to the law.

James D. G. Dunn has augmented Sanders’s recharacterization of Judaism by arguing that Sanders failed to explain adequately Paul’s relations to Judaism. Dunn argues that Paul was most concerned about Jewish exclu-

sivism, not legal righteousness before God. The Judaizing “works of the law” were not about standing before God as much as they were social boundary markers.

The longest part of the survey of the NPP authors is reserved for N. T. Wright who agrees that the Reformation misunderstood the setting of Paul’s teaching and read its own reaction to Rome back into the New Testament.

According to Wright, the problem of the Judaizers was a perverted nationalism. They were boasting in their national privilege of being the people of God rather than exercising faith in Jesus the Messiah. According to Wright, justification is not as much concerned about how a sinner is righteous before God as much as it is with answering the question: Who is Lord? Justification is really about submitting to the Lordship of Christ. Further, Wright concludes, the idea that God imputes to sinners an alien righteousness is completely unnecessary; one might even call it “gratuitous.” The “righteousness of God” refers to his faithfulness to his covenant, but the ground of our standing before God remains ambiguous. According to Wright, faith is the badge of membership in the covenant community. Indeed, on this reinterpretation of justification, as it turns out, the Reformation divide between Rome and the Protestants was a colossal mistake. Since we all have faith in Jesus the Messiah, we are all members of the covenant. Indeed, justification refers to Christ’s historic resurrection and our present faith, but chiefly it refers to our future vindication as those who have had the law written on our hearts and lives. Wright’s view of the atonement is also fuzzy. Though he clearly teaches a sort of Christus victor (Christ the conqueror) view of the atonement, it is unclear how he relates that aspect of the atonement to Christ’s work as substitute or whether he sees Christ as a substitute at all.

In response, Venema offers six points of criticism of the NPP, which can be stated briefly: The proponents of the NPP exaggerate the achievement of Sanders. Venema criticizes Sanders for begging the question, that is, assuming the conclusion in premise of his work. Does the evidence Sanders adduces to prove a “gracious” Judaism really prove that Judaism was not also teaching justification by works? It is perhaps true that Judaism in Paul’s day did not teach a bald doctrine of salvation by obeying the law without the aid of grace. In the history of Christian theology, this view is known as Pelagianism. Quite helpfully, however, Venema points out that the doctrine of salvation Sanders describes is accurately described as semi-Pelagian, that is, justification by grace and cooperation with grace, and it was precisely this doctrine of salvation that the reformers rejected.

Venema concedes that the NPP has a point when it places Paul’s polemic in the context of Jewish exclusivism, but, he argues, Paul’s attack against justification through “works of the law” cannot be reduced to mere sociology.

There is too much evidence in Paul’s epistles that he had an abiding concern with salvation of sinners from the just judgment of God. Venema also criticizes Wright’s truncated account of the biblical doctrine of “the righteousness of J A N U A RY / F E B R U A RY 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 39

God.” It means more than simply God’s covenant faithfulness. It also refers to his retribution against lawbreaking.

Venema fundamentally rejects the move to recast justification in sociological terms. Through a brief survey of Romans, he points out the numerous places where the NPP cannot account for Paul’s language without doing serious harm to the text of Scripture. He also criticizes the high-handed dismissal by the NPP of the biblical categories of substitution relative to the atonement and the intimately related Pauline doctrines of imputation and faith as the sole instrument of justification. His last criticism pertains to Wright’s doctrine of “final justification.” If the NPP’s redefinition of justification is wrong, there is no ground for Wright’s notion of future justification based on works.

Instead, Venema reminds us of the distinction between a judgment “according to works” and a judgment “on the basis of works.” We believe the former and deny the latter.

For those with little or no familiarity with the work of Sanders, Dunn, and Wright, this volume is the place to begin the journey. From here, readers will want to go to the work of Guy Waters, the third volume in Michael Horton’s series on a covenantal approach to Reformed theology, and finally, to Venema’s expanded version of this book to be published at the same press.

The only fault this reviewer can find is the author’s characterization as Lutheran the conviction that justification is the article of the standing or falling of the church.

To the best of my knowledge, the expression, “the article of justification is said to be the article of the standing or falling of the church” was used by the Reformed theologian J. H. Alsted in 1608.

This work has four great virtues: First, it is brief.

Though a minister might balk at handing out a weighty tome to an elder or layperson, one can have no hesitation in distributing this book. It can be read easily in a couple of evenings. Second, it is accessible. Venema presents a series of potentially unfamiliar ideas in ways that is quickly grasped. Third, it is accurate. Indeed, he expresses the views of the NPP clearly, and he allows them to be ambiguous where they choose to be. Proponents and defenders of the NPP complain more than usual about being misrepresented. Though doubtless they will also complain about this book, such complaints should be regarded as groundless. Venema has represented their views with more care than they have ever expended in representing Protestant orthodoxy. Fourth, it is helpful. The book offers excellent summaries of the Reformation doctrines and interests and relates his critique of the NPP to those concerns. One cannot read this volume and come away uncertain about what is at stake: the future of confessional Protestantism.

R. Scott Clark is associate professor of historical and systematic theology at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California).

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No One . . .

J. D. Wetterling Christian Focus Publishers, 2006 128 pages (paperback), $11.99 I was enticed to read this book on account of its title, or even more so, its subtitle.

Before I acquired the book I pondered the subtitle and how I might respond. I imagined Wetterling’s focus would be on law verses like “No thief shall enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Does Scripture mean this when it says it? Yes. But Jesus can still say to a thief, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”

The warning was a real one.

But the proposed punishment fell upon Christ rather than the thief. When God says it, God means it. But sometimes he finds a way to follow what he said with something new.

Yet when I received the book, I found that Wetterling had chosen a different set of verses on which to focus. He does not come across as the Pharisee closing the legal loophole on the dejected sinner. He comes across as the pastoral heart not wanting postmodern confusion to allow people to meander off a cliff because somebody before him had tried to obscure the warning signs. In fact, despite the firmness of Wetterling’s writing, I happily find the tone of the title, at least the tone in which I first read it, a bit misleading. This is a confident book that could be given out to an unbeliever.

Wetterling examines six verses from John that he calls “Unshakeable Certainties.” They are John 3:3, 6:44, 14:6, 10:18, 10:27–28, and 16:22b. The tone of the book can be conveyed through looking at a couple of these.

The first to look at is John 14:6: “No one comes to the Father except through me.” This verse was one of the first I was given to memorize, for which I am forever thankful.

I was visiting the Sunday school of another church, and this verse was the verse of the week. It inoculated me against the idea that there was a way other than Jesus to get to God. So many well-meaning and generous people would like to find another way. Wetterling explains why this is dangerous, and does so not as one who is happy to see any ill befall people outside his little community. His breadth of life experience as, among other things, a Vietnam fighter pilot, convinces the reader that this insistence on “only one way” is not rooted in a narrow-minded bigotry against people who are different from himself.

The second is John 16:22b: “No one will take away your joy.” Not all “No one” verses are threats. This one is a promise. Next time you read Wetterling’s title, imagine this promising verse. “No one will take away your joy.”

When Jesus says it, he means it. I have no complaint.

As a Lutheran note, Wetterling presents a Calvinist view of eternal security with John 10:27–28. He presents this winningly. If there were never any apostates in the Bible or from church history or among my friends, I would see no reason to disagree with Calvinists on this. But when you equate true Christians with the elect, then the apostates make it harder to identify true Christians, since no apostate ever was one. The problem of the “missing ingredient” looms as large for these groups as the problem of the “non-elect true Christian” does for others. That is, if you have known convincing apostates, you must conclude that there was a missing ingredient that kept them from being true Christians. “But that’s an easy one.

Faith!” Yes. But they appeared to believe. I cannot believe it was a mere act in every case. If they were deceiving me, they were deceiving themselves, too. So how do you or I know we are not deceiving ourselves?

One way or another, there is a problem for assurance. You cannot draw a straight line from coming to faith to final glory with no anxiety in between.

But this is not enough of a defect in Wetterling’s book for me to fault it in a major way. Everybody has some trouble in this area. And I do think John 10:27–28 does present comfort, which Wetterling’s pastoral focus drives home in a mostly good way. He doesn’t draw the erroneous practical conclusions that some writers draw from his doctrine. He doesn’t write such that sorrowing Christians would be driven to despair, or such that impenitent sinners would be strengthened in their malice. Most of his treatment does the good task of giving “sorrowing and tempted people the permanently abiding comfort of knowing that their salvation does not rest in their own hands” (Formula of Concord, SD XI 90).

Rick Ritchie lives in southern California, where he is a member of a congregation in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. He is a longtime contributor to Modern Reformation.

Storytelling in Christian Art from Giotto to Donatello

by Jules Lubbock Yale Press, 2006 256 pages (hardback), $45.00 “I know that it is pretty much an old saw that images are the books of the uneducated… But … the prophets totally condemn the notion, taken as axiomatic by the papists, that images stand in place of books.” (Institutes, Book 1, Chapter 11, Section 5) With these words, John Calvin expresses what has been the standard Reformed objection to the liturgical use of images in the late medieval Catholic Church. There is an impiety and liability to idolatry in the very nature of reli-

gious imagery, and beyond that they draw attention away from the Word, the place where the power of God for salvation is truly found.

In light of this tradition, the Reformed community has arguably tended to disregard or be outright suspicious of religious art from this period, especially as to its attempt to visually narrate Biblical stories. That is precisely what makes Jules Lubbock’s Storytelling in Christian Art from Giotto to Donatello so intriguing. Lubbock attempts to explore the narrative quality of this art, which he sees as having been neglected similarly by the art history community. “The history of style … and the theory of art have succeeded one another as the latest fashion in art-historical writing about the Renaissance,” he writes. “All have their place, but the neglect of narrative is regrettable.

Likewise the fact that such images were made to assist instruction in Christian doctrine, serving religious and moral ends to which aesthetic ingenuity is the means, is also somewhat neglected. This book is an attempt to remedy the situation.” His analysis unearths a profound sophistication in the way these images tell their stories, so much so that he suggests viewing them is better described as reading than as observation.

He introduces the book with a brief history of Christian thinking about the visual arts. “Early Christians, like the Jews,” he writes, “had largely observed the second commandment, proscribing both the fabrication and the worship of representational images.” By the mid to late fourth century, however, images began to be standard in the decoration of churches, and two centuries later an official approval came from Gregory the Great.

Lubbock takes particular note of the way in which Gregory speaks of images, especially his speaking of them as something to be read. Gregory writes, for example, that “those who do not know letters may at least read by seeing on the walls what they are unable to read in books” [emphasis Lubbock’s]. According to Lubbock, “the implication is that just as the literate, those who could read Latin and Greek, can read the words on the pages of a book to learn the substance of a story, so too an illiterate … can ‘read’ the story from the visual images, and tell the story either to him- or herself, either in silence or reading aloud to others. A picture, therefore, is not a mere reminder of a written text, nor an illustration, it is a text in its own right, a witness to the events or a statement of doctrine just as much as the verbal record.”

Lubbock notes that as iconoclastic controversies emerged over the centuries to follow, the precedent for the use of images was taken back to the time of the apostles.

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religious images in those days. This apostolic precedent not only served to justify the ongoing production of images but also suggested that images were part of the apostolic deposit of faith. As such, they were of value to even the most literate members of the church. By the time of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, then, there was a broad perception that religious images served a vitally important storytelling function that was of benefit to both the literate and the illiterate. To fail to appreciate that, Lubbock argues, is to fail to appreciate something central.

The bulk of the book is Lubbock’s painstaking analysis of the way in which various artists attempted to achieve this objective. Among other things, he considers an altarpiece by Duccio, chapel frescoes by Giotto and Masaccio Brancacci, pulpits by Giovanni Pisano and Donatello, and baptistery doors by Ghiberti and Brunelleschi. After a brief introduction, each chapter moves through several frames of each piece (and sometimes all of them), noting the symbolism of sometimes minor details and the ways in which the elements coalesce to form an overarching story. The chapters are full of helpful photographs (many in color) deliberately taken from the angles at which spectators would originally have viewed the images. Lubbock concludes by considering whether spectators can actually be expected to have picked up on the complex meanings he has suggested. He admits that there is not much evidence to go by, but argues that “the little written material which does exist suggests that this kind of spectatorship was indeed practiced … that artists could count upon spectators to linger over and puzzle out their images.”

Beautifully bound and printed, the book would be of obvious interest to those with a background in art history or art criticism. It is written at a level, however, where it would also serve well for those without such backgrounds who are simply interested in a deeper appreciation of Christian art from the late medieval and Renaissance periods.

Additionally, Lubbock’s thesis presents an interesting foil to the stereotype of the Middle Ages as being obsessively concerned with technical scholastic distinctions and less attentive to the narrative structure of Scripture. The book may also be of interest, then, to those with an interest in medieval intellectual history or the history of hermeneutics.

At the same time, the book does not contain much by way of sustained theological analysis of the nature or religious use of images. There is little, for example, that would directly engage the objections Calvin outlines above. Consequently, it would not be as profitable to readers who are interested in theological reflection on the nature of art and its role in liturgy or the history of Protestant–Catholic debate on those questions. The questions it does engage, however, are engaged quite thoroughly, so that the reader comes away with a strong impression of how central the concern for storytelling has been in the history of Christian art.

Michael Vendsel teaches at LaSalle University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).

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A Field Guide to Evangelicals & Their Habitat

by Joel Kilpatrick Harper SanFrancisco, 2006 170 pages (paperback), $14.95 Satire is alive and well. For every person who has ever cringed at boxes of “Christian” breath mints or “Christian” perfume at the checkout counter of the local Christian bookstore, here is a writer who understands your pain. Like his fake news website LarkNews.com, aimed at evangelicals and their trends, editor Joel Kilpatrick brings us A Field Guide to Evangelicals and Their Habitat. The effective humor of LarkNews.com—known online for confusing the satirically challenged—fills every page of this book.

But be warned, Kilpatrick is an evangelical insider, and as such, his humor cuts so close to the truth that at times it will make you simultaneously laugh and squirm.

Kilpatrick’s book purports to help nonevangelicals identify the evangelical “in the field” by detailing their beliefs, political sympathies, theological issues, clothing preferences, educational institutions, decorating habits, and even their mating habits. But with chapter titles such as “What Evangelicals Believe, Plus a Master List of Who is Going to Hell,” and “How to Talk and Act Like an Evangelical Without Being One,” the evangelical reader should get the hint—this book is actually a lesson in laughing at oneself.

Kilpatrick begins by asking the reader to assess their EHQ or Evangelical Hostility Quotient. For example, he asks, “When you see someone toting a Bible in public you: 1. Think to yourself, ‘I wish that person would share his or her personal faith with me.’ 2. Feel grateful that our country ensures freedom of religion. 3. Express loud annoyance at this intrusive public display of faith. 4. Beat the person with available objects.” After you’ve determined how tolerant you are of evangelicals, you are encouraged to read on with care.

Chapter 1 digs at a handful of evangelical beliefs. Here we learn that “heaven is the ultimate gated community”; that evangelicals believe they can figure out God’s will “through prayer, fasting, Bible reading, and watching The O’Reilly Factor”; that being a backslider includes being “a fan of original HBO programming” and smoking the “occasional cigar or pipe (except in Australia or England or at meetings of the C. S. Lewis Society).” Kilpatrick includes a checklist of those going to heaven (evangelicals, Jews for

Jesus, Mel Gibson, and Ronald Reagan) and those going to hell (ACLU members, Al Franken, Catholics, SpongeBob SquarePants, Mormons). Apparently, there is a special level of hell for the French, who are destined to be “locked in a room with Richard Simmons and Charo.” Be warned, Dante!

In Chapter 2, we learn how to find and identify evangelicals. Likely places to spot them include Wal-Mart (which is later compared to an evangelical megachurch); evangelistic crusades, of which Kilpatrick notes 98.7 percent of attendees are already saved; and Denny’s Restaurant, Sundays, 11:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m. From evangelical bumper stickers (“Don’t drive faster than your angel can fly”) to vanity plates (“GOT JESUS”), Kilpatrick picks up on all the evangelical identifiers.

Say you’re adventurous enough to go into the heart of evangelical territory. How do you distinguish evangelical churches from the other congregations listed in the phone book? Employ a few handy rules of thumb, such as: “Cross off any church named after a saint—these are Catholic or Episcopalian” and “Cross off houses of worship whose names include Jewish words and the word Temple.

These are Jewish temples. But watch out! ‘Bethel Temple’ and ‘Calvary Temple’ are common evangelical church names that only sound Jewish.”

Once you arrive at the service, you need to know how to fit in, so Kilpatrick translates the worship leader lingo for you: “Lift him up” means “Sing louder.” He also includes charts of “Common Hand-Raising Postures” in worship and helpful job descriptions for worship leaders and assistant pastors.

If you really want to fit in, you must decorate your home like an evangelical. Kilpatrick instructs you to remove all “‘real’ art in the home” and place a Thomas Kinkade print over the sofa, a missionary magnet on the fridge, and a needlepoint sign that says “Bless this Mess!”

Then volunteer for a short-term stint on the mission field.

Want to know the difference between a short-term missions trip to Cancun and a spring break party trip to Cancun? One requires a 40-oz. bottle of Purell, the other a 40-oz. bottle of Jose Cuervo.

Each chapter includes clippings of fake but humorous articles such as “Worship leader closes eyes, forgets where he is,” plus plenty of sidebars, including a recipe for that church potluck staple ambrosia.

Some readers who have adopted the evangelical lifestyle portrayed by Kilpatrick may be offended by his frankness. For example, Kilpatrick says of home schooling families that “they believe that educational liberty sets America apart from the world’s oppressive regimes, like the Taliban, where homogenous groups of religion-minded children in tightly controlled environments learned only ideas approved by their religious leaders.” Possibly more offensive is his chapter on evangelical mating habits, which contains some explicit language—although ironically, much of it is in the form of quotes from Tim and Beverly Lahaye’s book The Act of Marriage and the Song of

Solomon. (By the way, Kilpatrick concludes from his research that evangelicals have “highly satisfying” sex lives.)

Kilpatrick displays a clear grasp of general evangelical quirks, but at times his understanding of evangelical pop culture is a bit dated. He provides more of a panoramic of all the conservative evangelical oddities from the time of Reagan, leaving out other camps across the evangelical spectrum, like the Sojourners crowd, for example.

Theological nuances are rare, but the lack may be overlooked, keeping his purpose in mind; when was the last time you heard someone say, “That Charles Hodge—what a satirist!”

This is a quick read and a great conversation starter.

Much as one might find on The Simpsons or The Daily Show, Kilpatrick’s book serves the evangelical reader as a mirror, providing a glimpse as to how the outside world views evangelical Christianity. More than simply pointing out evangelical silliness or hypocrisy, the book leaves the reader with the overall impression that evangelicals do what they do because they are serious about their beliefs—a badge of honor some evangelicals will wear with pride.

Though not destined to become a classic like Erasmus’ The Praise of Folly, Kilpatrick’s A Field Guide to Evangelicals & Their Habitat is worth every chuckle and wince.

Brandon G. Withrow is adjunct professor of church history at Beeson Divinity School (Birmingham, Alabama).

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FAMILY MATTERS r e sou rces

fo r

homes

The Classical Model: Could We Use It in Church Education?

(Part 1 of 3)

This is the ideal time to teach a subject’s grammar. Math facts, names and dates from schools spring up all the time. One advantage of this model is its tendency to “go with history, grammar rules, poems, songs—children the grain” in children rather than against it. The classical model matches children’s memorize them all with ease.

Sayers defines the middle natural characteristics at certain ages to specific teaching school years as “the Pert stage,” when children want to argue. It methods that appeal to them at those ages. The result: is, therefore, time to teach them logic, so they can argue (and engaged learners, building on an ever-growing, ever-deepening think!) correctly. At this age, children begin to think abstractly. base of understanding. Could some of the features of classical They ask “But what about?” and “What if?” The dialectic phase of education help us teach children in our churches? I believe they learning fits the Pert stage well. It enables these new abstract could. In this column, I will briefly explain some of the main feathinkers to comprehend the facts they have mastered, to notice tures of the classical model Christian schools use. In subsequent connections and contradictions, to think clearly and to underarticles, I hope to suggest some of the more obvious ways churchstand. The mid- to later teen years Sayers names “the Poetic age.” es might benefit from using these features.

At this age, people want to express themselves. They long for Most classical Christian schools base their methodology on an independence. This corresponds to the rhetoric stage of the trivessay entitled “The Lost Tools of Learning” by Dorothy Sayers. ium, the crown of the education process, when students apply In her essay, Sayers explains the “trivium” (the basis of classical what they have learned and express it to others. education) in terms of tools that enable a student to thoroughly With a little creative thinking, we could use the classical master a subject. The trivium’s first component is grammar (the model in our Sunday school classrooms. What is the “grammar” tool of knowledge). We think of grammar as relating to lanof Bible and doctrine our young children should be memorizing? guage, and of course it does, but every subject has its own “gramHow can we help our early teens “put together” all the Bible facts mar.” All the rules that must be learned before a particular suband doctrines they have learned and reason accurately about ject can be used comprise that subject’s grammar. The grammar them? How can we teach them to recognize the world’s (and of history consists of dates, names, facts, and events. Addition, sometimes the church’s) fallacies? What opportunities can we subtraction, times tables, and division make up the grammar of make for our older teens to express their understanding of their math. faith and to communicate it to others? Here is a fruitful field for The second part of the trivium is dialectic (the tool of underthought! standing and reason). Dialectic includes analysis, logic, and disputation. In this stage, having mastered the grammar of a subject, the student learns to observe all its parts fitting together as a Starr Meade is author of Training Hearts, Teaching Minds: whole, to see its cause-and-effect relationships, to discern fallaFamily Devotions Based on the Shorter Catechism (P&R, cies concerning it.

2000).

The final stage of the trivium is rhetoric (the tool of communication). The student of rhetoric demonstrates the knowledge and understanding he has gained through his own written and oral presentations. A student can study any subject in these three phases of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. The desired result is a student who knows and understands the subject, and who can apply it to himself and explain it to someone else.

What makes Sayers’s proposal so appealing is her claim that these three main aspects of the trivium correspond to three main phases of child development. Children younger than eleven or twelve are in what Sayers calls “the Poll-Parrot stage.” Their memories, like sponges, soak up words, facts, stories, and jingles.

T

he classical Christian model of education gains adherents daily. New classical Christian

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