by-the-sweat-of-our-brow-may-june-1999

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EFORMATION VOLUME 8 NUMBER 3

By the Sweat of Our Brow

By the Sweat of Our Brow FEATURES 4 The Doctrine of Vocation: How God Hides Himself in Human Work Gene Edward Veith In his earthly kingdom, just as in his spiritual kingdom, God works through means. When we seek to love our neighbor via our various callings, he is at work.

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How to Discover Your Calling Michael S. Horton Distinguishing between God’s common grace and his saving grace allows us to identify legitimate secular callings as well as sacred callings.

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15 God’s Vocation, Our Vocation Mark R. Talbot Declaring that “God is love,” and that he is “kind toward all he has made” is not all that needs to be said about God and his posture towards creation.

21 Neither Individualism Nor Statism: Kuyper on Christian Concern for Laborers W. Robert Godfrey In the 1890s, Dutch theologian and politician Abraham Kuyper delivered an address which we still need to hear.

29 To Join or Not to Join? The Calling of Church Membership Preston Graham Democracy leads us to recognize the need for voluntary societies. But we dare not conceive of submission to the Church in voluntary terms.

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In This Issue…

Letters Quotes Ex Auditu

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Review In Print Endnotes On My Mind

34 Death, the Final Calling R. C. Sproul Every one of us is called to die, and that vocation is as much a calling from God as is a “call” to the ministry of Christ.

Cover: Jean Francois Millet, The Angelus.

Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY

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IN THIS ISSUE…

By Michael S. Horton

Vocation rom my misspent youth I recall that hit song by the band Loverboy: “Everybody’s Working for the Weekend.” Of course, not everybody is, but many people these days sense a lack of purpose and meaningintheirlivesrelatingtotheirwork. Yet “workingfortheweekend”notonlydishonorsGod— the author of creation and all legitimate callings—it also devalues our service to our neighbors. And if enough peoplethinkthatway,workenvironmentsaredehumanizedasselfishmenandwomentrytofigureouthowto makemoremoneybydoingless.

But a steady diet of jeremiads against the demise of the Protestant work ethic accomplishes little; it only leads to frustration. Besides, a work ethic can only follow the theology from which it springs, and if the theology of the Reformation is lacking, we can hardly blame mass society because it works for the weekend. Furthermore, it is not just the decline of Reformation theology and practice that is responsible for the empty feeling many seem to experience in their routines. There are other significant factors—such as technology, high levels of mobility and transience, consumerism, and constant expectations of entertainment—which play key roles in reshaping our work lives.

Part of what we want to accomplish in this issue is to take a fresh look at this business of calling or vocation. Is it wrong to base our identity, at least in part, on what we do for a living? How can we see our vocation as more than a job? What about discerning God’s will—is that even possible? What if I want to change callings—is that tantamount to abandoning God’s purpose for my life? And what about the evangelical thinking which elevates so-called “full-time Christian work” over secular employment?

Here we must remember the reformers’ liberating proclamation that God does not conceive of the church officers as the genuinely committed Christians, and laypeople are somehow second-tier. For there are no “second-class” Christians! Our Creator and Redeemer is the author of all callings, and he is honored by both secular and sacred vocations.

Yet, as important as this discussion of employment is, it is not the only purpose of this issue. We should pause before we accept the common cultural definition of “vocation” as simply one’s occupation in a monetary economy; for there is an older meaning to the term. The word comes from the Latin “vocare,” meaning “to call” or “to summons.” And that verb is related to “vox”—the Latin noun for “voice.” The voice in question is the voice of God. In other words, a vocation is a call from God—not merely a call to a job, but a call to any task or office.

In addition to laboring for our bread, God calls all of us to church membership. He calls all of us to love our families and neighbors. He calls some of us to be spouses and parents. And he calls all of us to die. The aim of this issue then is to attempt to think about our multiple callings, and how they relate. In all of them we are being sanctified and are able to work toward the glory of God. Hopefully this discussion will aid you and your family as you NEXT ISSUE: seek to serve God out of gratitude in the stations to which he has called you. Whoever said that Hermeneutics Reformation theology isn’t practical?

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A publication of Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals Editor-in-Chief Dr. Michael S. Horton Assistant Editor Benjamin E. Sasse Production Editor Irene H. Hetherington Column Editor Brian Lee Copy Editors Ann Henderson Hart Deborah Barackman Layout and Design Lori A. Cook Proofreader Alyson S. Platt Production Assistant Kathryn Baldino Alliance Council The Rev. Alistair Begg Dr. James M. Boice Dr. W. Robert Godfrey Dr. John D. Hannah Dr. Michael S. Horton Mrs. Rosemary Jensen The Reverend Ken Jones Dr. J. A. O. Preus Dr. Rod Rosenbladt Dr. R. C. Sproul Dr. Mark R. Talbot Dr. Gene E. Veith, Jr. Contributing Scholars Dr. Sinclair B. Ferguson Dr. Allen C. Guelzo Dr. D. G. Hart Dr. Carl F. H. Henry Dr. Arthur A. Just Dr. Robert Kolb The Rev. Donald Matzat Dr. John W. Montgomery Mr. John Muether Dr. Richard A. Muller Mr. Kenneth A. Myers Dr. Tom J. Nettles Dr. Leonard R. Payton Dr. Lawrence R. Rast Dr. Kim Riddlebarger Mr. Rick Ritchie Dr. David P. Scaer Dr. Rachel S. Stahle Dr. David F. Wells Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals © 1999 All rights reserved. The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals exists to call the church, amidst our dying culture, to repent of its worldliness, to recover and confess the truth of God’s Word as did the Reformers, and to see that truth embodied in doctrine, worship and life. For more information, call or write us at: ALLIANCE OF CONFESSING EVANGELICALS 1716 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103 (215) 546-3696 • ModRef@Alliance Net.org www.AllianceNet.org

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LETTERS I enjoyed reading about predestination and the freedom of God in the November/December 1998 issue of modernREFORMATION. What most encouraged me was the overall appeal to the Holy Scriptures throughout the articles which argued the case for a sovereign God who “does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth” (Dan. 4:35).

When I first scanned Dr. Baugh’s article, “God’s Purpose According to Election,” my eye caught the heading to one of the sections, “Answer to Objection that Predestination Removes Responsibility.” I fully expected to find a forceful polemic based on theories of the will or some other speculation. What I found was indeed a forceful argument, but rather than appealing to a theory of the mind or will, it was the inspired argument presented by the apostle Paul in Romans 9. In addition, Sasse’s article reiterated the point made by Luther that the theologian’s task is assigned by the Word of God not by the sinful conceptions of the mind.

I teach an adult Sunday School class where, several times each year, our studies bring us face to face with the topic of predestination or issues related to it. Inevitably there are a few who become quite agitated and take me to task after class. I praise God for this agitation since it is evidence, I believe, that they correctly understand God’s freedom of choice. When I read Dr. Horton describe how he threw his Bible across the room after “finally getting” Romans 9, I smiled. “Yes,” I thought, “this is an excellent starting point.” Sadly, some agitated people react by constructing arguments that oppose God’s freedom. It seems that culturally derived notions of “common sense” and an idea of fairness, which suppose that God owes us all a shot at choosing our own salvation, shed the guiding light in these arguments rather than the Holy Scriptures. I long for each of us who struggles with God’s freedom to submit our hearts and minds to the authority of the Word of God rather than appease our feelings of frustration by trying to explain away God’s freedom with ideas which ultimately exalt self over God. Only through this, will we ever find comfort for our distress and be revived—or, as Horton says, “discover that God is greater, I am smaller, and salvation is sweeter.”

— John D. Moody Livermore, California

Your January/February 1999 issue on eschatology was, as usual, excellent. When I hear our dispensationalist brethren ramble on in their speculations which sound more like magic than anything found in Scripture, I am reminded of the closing verses of the Book of Daniel. When told of things to come including the bodily resur rection on the day of judgment, he exclaimed: “Although I heard, I did not understand. Then I said, ‘My Lord, what shall be the end of these things?’” (12:8). The response? “Go your way, Daniel” (12:9a), “But you, go your way until the end; for you shall rest, and will arise to your inheritance at the end of the days” (12:13). The command is for all of us in a way. As Reformed and Lutheran believers, we affirm the concept of calling. We are, in the words of the late Dr. Halverson, to grow where we are planted, and leave the speculation to the soothsayers.

I would suggest to your readers, in addition to the resources you offered, Herman Ridderbos’ The Coming of the Kingdom.

— Robert E. Woodward Via Internet Although I just learned about the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals and modernR EFORMATION magazine last October, I have already been highly blessed. MR is especially uplifting given how sparse Reformed teaching is here in the desert. The magazine is a bimonthly feast of spiritual food! I have also read and enjoyed a number of books by Alliance Council members. Thanks.

— Bob Mattes Via Internet

Join the Conversation! modernREFORMATION: Letters to the Editor 1716 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103 Fax: (215) 735-5133 ModRef@AllianceNet.org www.AllianceNet.org

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The Doctrine of Vocation: HOW GOD HIDES HIMSELF IN HUMAN WORK GENE EDWARD VEITH

For instance, to take one of Luther’s examples, we pray in the Lord’s Prayer that God give us our daily bread, which he does. He does so, not directly as when he gave manna to the Israelites, but through the work of farmers and bakers—and we might add truck drivers and retailers. In effect, the whole economic system is the means by which God gives us our daily bread. Each part of the economic food chain is a vocation, through which God works to distribute his gifts. Similarly, God heals the sick. While he can and sometimes does do so 4

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Ruth Naomi Floyd

The word “calling,” or in its Latinate for m “vocation,” had long been used in reference to the sacred ministry and the religious orders. Martin Luther was the first to use “vocation” to refer also to secular offices and occupations. Today, the term has become commonplace, another synonym for a profession or job, as in “vocational training.” But behind the ter m is the notion that every legitimate kind of work or social function is a distinct “calling” from God, requiring unique God-given gifts, skills, and talents.

Moreover, the Reformation doctrine of vocation teaches that God himself is active in everyday human labor, family responsibilities, and social interactions. directly, in the normal course of things he works through doctors, nurses, and other medical experts.

God protects us from evil, with the vocation of the police officer. God teaches through teachers, orders society through governments, proclaims the Gospel through pastors.

Luther pointed out that God could populate the earth by creating each new generation of babies from the dust. Instead, He ordained that human beings should

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come together to bring up children in families. The offices of husband, wife, and parent are vocations through which God works to rear and care for children.1 In other words, in his earthly kingdom, just as in his spiritual kingdom, God bestows his gifts through means.

God ordained that human beings be bound together in love, in relationships and communities existing in a state of interdependence. In this context, God is providentially at work caring for his people, each of whom contributes according to his or her God-given talents, gifts, opportunities, and stations. Each thereby becomes what Luther terms a “mask of God”: All our work in the field, in the garden, in the city, in the home, in struggle, in government— to what does it all amount before God except child’s play, by means of which God is pleased to give his gifts in the field, at home, and everywhere? These are the masks of our Lord God, behind which he wants to be hidden and to do all things.2 God, who pours out his generosity on the just and the unjust, believer and unbeliever alike, hides himself in the ordinary social functions and stations of life, even the most humble. To use another of Luther’s examples, God himself is milking the cows through the vocation of the milkmaid.3 Demonstrating Love of Neighbor All of the vocations are thus channels of God’s love.

Gustaf Wingren, the Swedish theologian whose Luther on Vocations is probably the best book on the subject, summarizes the point: In his vocation man does works which effect the well-being of others; for so God has made all offices. Through this work in man’s offices, God’s creative work goes forward, and that creative work is love, a profusion of good gifts.

With persons as his “hands” or “coworkers,” God gives his gifts through the ear thly vocations, toward man’s life on earth (food through far mers, fisher men and hunters; external peace through princes, judges, and orderly powers; knowledge and education through teachers and parents, etc., etc.).

Through the preacher’s vocation, God gives the forgiveness of sins. Thus love comes from God, flowing down to human beings on ear th through all vocations, through both spiritual and earthly governments.4 Thus, God is graciously at work, caring for the human race through the work of other human beings. Behind

the care we have received from our parents, the education we received from our teachers, the benefits we receive from our spouse, our employers, and our government stands God himself, bestowing his blessings.

The picture is of a vast, complex society of human beings with different talents and abilities. Each serves the other; each is served by others. We Americans have an ideal of self-sufficiency and often dream of being able to grow our own food, build our own homes, and live independently of other people. But our proper human condition is dependence. Because of the centrality of love, we are to depend on other human beings and, ultimately and through them, on God. Conversely, other people are to depend on us. In God’s earthly kingdom, we are to receive his blessings from other people in their vocations.

The purpose of one’s vocation, whatever it might be, is serving others. It has to do with fulfilling Christ’s injunction to love one’s neighbor. Though justification has nothing to do with good works, vocation does involve good works. The Christian’s relationship to God is based on sheer grace and forgiveness on God’s part; the Christian’s relationship to other people, however, is to be based on love. As Wingren puts it, “God does not need our good works, but our neighbor does.”5 Certainly, human beings still sin in vocation.6 We violate God’s law and neglect our responsibilities to love and serve others selflessly in our work and offices.

Though we resist God’s project of working through us, there is something about vocation itself that makes good things happen despite ourselves. There is, in fact, as Wingren shows, a great conflict and irony, between our generally selfish motivations and the way the masked God works in vocation: Here we come across what for Luther is the decisive contrast between God’s self-giving love and man’s egocentricity. The human being is self-willed, desiring that whatever happens shall be to his own advantage. When husband and wife, in marriage, serve one another and their children, this is not due to the hear t’s spontaneous and undisturbed expression of love, every day and hour. Rather, in marriage as an institution something compels the husband’s selfish desires to yield and likewise inhibits the egocentricity of the wife’s heart. At work in marriage is a power which compels self-giving to spouse and children. So it is the “station” itself which is the ethical agent, for it is God who is active through the law on earth.7 The vocation of marriage itself causes selfish human beings to care for each other and support each other more than they would on their own. The vocation of MAY/JUNE 1999

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parenthood causes normally selfish adults to sacrifice themselves for the well-being of their children.

By the same token, the owner of a company may have no interest whatsoever in loving his neighbor or serving others. His sole motivation may be greed. And yet, because of his vocation, he manages to give jobs to his employees so that they can support their families, his company provides products that other people need or enjoy, and, he is, inadvertently, a blessing to his neighbors.

Beginning Where We Are How do we know our vocation? Strictly speaking, a vocation is not something we choose for ourselves; rather, it is given by God, who “calls” us to a particular work or station.

Talents, skills, and inclinations are part of one’s calling. So are external circumstances, which are understood as being providentially arranged by God. Since vocation is not selfchosen, it can be known, too, through the actions of others. Getting offered a job, being elected to an office, finding someone who wants to marry you are all clues to vocation.

Essentially, one’s vocation is to be found in the place one occupies in the present. A person stuck in a deadend job may have higher ambitions, but for the moment, that job, however humble, is one’s vocation. Flipping hamburgers, cleaning hotel rooms, emptying bedpans all have dignity as vocations, spheres of expressing love of neighbor through selfless service, in which God is masked. Perhaps later, another vocation will present itself. But vocation is to be found not simply in future career decisions, but in the here and now. Nor can one use the excuse of “not having a vocation for marriage” for getting a divorce, or claim “not having a vocation for parenthood” as a way to dump child-raising responsibilities. If you are married, that’s your vocation.

If you have children, they are your vocation.

Vocations are also multiple.8 Any given person has many vocations. A typical man might be, simultaneously, a husband (serving his wife), a father (serving his children), a son (serving his still-living parents), an employer (serving his workers), an employee (serving his bosses), a citizen (serving his country). Note how a person at a particular job can be both a “master,” charged with supervising subordinates, and, at the same time, a “servant,” answerable to superiors, whether a CEO or

stockholders. Leadership and submission may both be called for, as the different vocations make their claims.

Different vocations have their own kinds of authority and spheres of action, and they operate under different rules. It would be the grossest immorality for someone to make perfect strangers take off their clothes and cut them open with a knife. But this is permissible for someone who is carrying out the vocation of being a doctor.9 Having sex is immoral outside of marriage, but it is a great good within the vocation of marriage.

When someone injures us, our impulse is to take personal revenge, which is sharply forbidden by Scripture.

Punishing crimes— whether this involves highspeed chases, shoot-outs, throwing someone in jail, or executing them— simply is not our vocation.

This is, however, the vocation of police officers, judges, and the rest of the legal system (Rom. 12:19-13:4).

A corollary is that problems will arise when people try to act outside of their vocations.

When we work outside of our vocation—that is, without regard to our God-given abilities, authority, and station in life—we usually bungle the job or, more seriously, violate the moral law. It is possible—and common—to pursue occupations for which we have no aptitude. I have taught many students who choose their major in college based on which job pays the most, regardless of their own gifts. They turn themselves into accountants or managers or engineers, though they end up hating their work and not being very good at what they are trying to do. Their true vocation might be music or art, but they are trying to be “practical”—as if vocation were self-chosen—and they deny their true God-given gifts to pursue talents they do not really have.

There are people in the teaching profession who do not really have gifts that enable them to be good teachers.

There are politicians who just are not cut out to be rulers. On the one hand, the person in those stations does have a calling and a responsibility to serve as politician or teacher, but they would do better to build on their own specific gifts.

More serious confusion comes when those with one vocation trespass on the prerogatives of another vocation. Again, private citizens have no right to “take the law into their own hands,” nor do rulers of the state have the right to take over the rearing of children, which is the vocation of parents. Luther was particularly

The purpose of one’s vocation,

whatever it might be, is serving others. It has to do with fulfilling Christ’s injunction to love one’s neighbor.

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vehement when earthly rulers presumed to tell pastors what to preach, expressing himself in a way that should put to rest the accusation that he was servile to secular rulers: “You fool,” he told them, “you simpleton, look to your own vocation; don’t you take to preaching, but let your pastor do that.”10 All Christians are “called” by the Gospel into faith.

The pastor’s “calling” is, of course, a vocation of particular importance. Through the pastor’s preaching, teaching, shepherding, and administering of the sacraments, God himself is working, bringing sinners to himself through the work of a human being. Laypeople too have vocations they can bring into the life of the church—playing the organ, administering property, singing in the choir, helping with the various committees and programs, and otherwise using their gifts in service to the church. The notion that “everyone is a minister,” however, is a confusion of vocation.11 There have been times when I have had church obligations every night of the week—sometimes to the neglect of my vocation as husband (I need to spend time with my wife) and my vocation as father (I need to spend time with my children). Those vocations are “my ministry,” more so than explicit “church work.” To be sure, laypeople need to witness to their faith—but we can be most effective in doing so, not when we do the same things a pastor does, but when we witness in our vocation. At the workplace, we are in contact with people the pastor may never see. In the family, we can witness to our spouse and children. As we serve people in vocation, we can help to bring them into the church.

But to think that the “church work professions” constitute the only true service of God is to repeat the mistakes of the medieval church, which exalted “the religious orders” but considered the secular orders— including marriage and ordinary productive work—as having less spiritual value.

Thus, making a living, going shopping, being a good citizen, and spending time with one’s family—that is, the “ordinary routine”—are all spheres in which God is at work, through human means. In a time when we define ourselves by our work and yet question its value, when we crave family values but are confused about our social roles, the doctrine of vocation can transfigure everyday life. MR

Dr. Veith, a member of the Council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, is professor of humanities and dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Concordia University—Wisconsin. This article is adapted from his The Spirituality of the Cross: The Way of the First Evangelicals, forthcoming from Concordia Publishing House.

A seminar on reformation theology for pastors and laypeople.

The church in sixteenth-century Europe needed a reformation. Might the evangelical church of today be equally in need of a reformation?

Many evangelical leaders say yes. This seminar shows that truth is recovered only when the Bible has its rightful place as the supreme authority in the life of every Christian and every church. Here We Stand! calls believers to return to the authority of the Bible and to apply it faithfully to their lives and worship.

Boston, MA • July 24, 1999 James Boice & R. C. Sproul Philadelphia, PA • September 11, 1999 James Boice, R. C. Sproul, & Michael Horton $29 per person • Call 215·546·3696 MAY/JUNE 1999

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How to Discover Your Calling MICHAEL S. HORTON “But we urge you, brethren, to … aspire to live quietly, to mind your own business, and to work well with your hands, as we directed you, so that you may behave properly toward outsiders and be dependent on no one” (1 Thes. 4:11-12).

At once simple and profound, the apostle’s commonsense approach to piety is revolutionary for many of us who were reared with quite different expectations. For instance, the experience in many churches involves being collectively castigated from the pulpit as “lukewarm” or short of “sold out” to Jesus for doing just what is prescribed here: living quietly, minding their own business, and paying close attention to their work. If the average layperson is not doing what the office-bearers are supposed to do, the fault is often placed at the feet of

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the for mer rather than the latter. Pietistic fundamentalism and evangelicalism taught us that whatever couldn’t be justified in terms of soul winning and personal piety was somewhat inferior. Then along came Francis Schaeffer, who told us that all vocations are sacred: a liberating announcement for saints weary of despising creation. Neo-Kuyperians added their terminology, sanctifying all callings as “kingdom work.”

The Reformation doctrine of “the priesthood of all believers” seemed to be restored to its rightful place.

Ironically, however, these recent attempts by wellmeaning and often helpful Reformed thinkers tend to undermine the very point they are attempting to make by still tacitly accepting the pietistic premise that all legitimate activity in this world has to be justified in relation to redemption. There is every reason to believe

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that the newer “Reformed” identification of secular vocation with “the sacred” and “kingdom work” is inferior to the older Reformed distinction between legitimate secular callings (common grace) and the office of the Ministry of Word and Sacrament (saving grace). Let me explain what I mean.

The theolog y from which Paul derives his admonition is world-affirming and world-embracing. It begins with creation, not the fall, and therefore there is a sense in which creation is more basic than redemption; nature more primal than grace. In Eden, cult (worship of God) and culture (the development of human relationships) belonged to one united kingdom. Picking apples (from the good trees, that is) was kingdom work.

Tilling the soil was a sacred vocation. Nevertheless, after the banishment from Paradise of the human race through its federal head, Adam, the era of the divided kingdoms began. Cain built a city of power and wealth, while Seth (God’s replacement for Abel) was the patriarch of the City of God (Gen. 4:17-26). Cain’s descendants were praising themselves for their achievements, while it was under Seth that people “began to call upon the name of the Lord.”

But in the Mosaic covenant, God restored the union of these divided spheres. There was to be no separation of cult and culture. While there remained a distinction between the cultic office-bearers (viz., the priests, from the Levites alone) and the cultural office-bearers (viz., the kings), Israel was to be a united kingdom under the sole monarchy of God who would reign over both Church and state through his servants. In this way, this holy land which God had given his people for an inheritance would be thoroughly theocratic.

But, as in Eden, Israel violated the terms of this works covenant and was banished from God’s land, sent into captivity, never to finally be restored as a united kingdom under God. The theocracy ended and Israel was no different from so many other colonies of the Roman Empire when the true and faithful Israel appeared. “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children” (Gal. 4:4). Born under the terms of the Mosaic economy as well as the ever-abiding moral Law, Jesus Christ fulfilled the covenant of works which had been violated by the federal headship of Adam and repeatedly trespassed by Israel. The everlasting kingdom of Christ has come, not only enduring the persecution of the Roman Empire (that kingdom identified in Nebuchadnezzar’s vision interpreted through Daniel), but as that vision in Daniel prophesied, has overwhelmed those kingdoms which thought to destroy Christianity. Nevertheless, “we do not yet see all things in subjection to him” (Heb. 2:8-9).

Only when the glorified King comes in power to judge the living and the dead will the earth hear that glad announcement of the seventh angel, “The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever” (Rev. 11:15). Cult and culture, the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world, will be finally reunited as in Eden, with no possibility of being divided ever again.

But until that time, the two cities are divided and with them the goals to which they are directed and the means through which these goals are attained. The kingdom of God advances through Word and Sacrament in the power of the Holy Spirit, while the kingdoms of this world advance through the arts and sciences, technology, literature, education, agriculture, business, medicine, and so forth. When a Christian is called to cabinet-making, he or she is not engaged in “kingdom work” or a sacred calling. But that is not to demean this trade, as it was in the case of medieval Rome and much of modern Evangelicalism. Rather, it is to liberate us from thinking that something has to be justified by its usefulness to redemption, as if creation is not sufficient as a sphere in and of itself. A calling to make cabinets is the same for Christian and non-Christian alike. Because the unbeliever is still created in God’s image and is the beneficiary of God’s common grace, he or she is given a vocation by God in this world. God did not abandon the world and creation in order to work with his elect people, but rather he patiently endures the world’s rebellion during this interval, restraining wickedness, while he extends his kingdom of grace to the ends of the earth (2 Pet. 3:1-13). This creates space for this shared sphere of human activity which is neither sacred nor sinful, but common and eminently worthwhile.

So let’s stop blurring distinctions on this matter.

Oil painting does not a “minister” make. It is not kingdom work (if it is the kingdom of God that is meant), but cultural work. The only reason we would find that distinction offensive to our secular callings is if we already assume that whatever is not somehow a part of the kingdom of Christ is unworthy of a believer’s passionate attention and interest. We need to recover creation as a sphere of common g race activity.

Christians need to be freed to embrace the world which God has created without being burdened with trying to justify everything in terms of its “kingdom value.” It is enough to serve one’s neighbor and society without having to figure out how it all contributes to the regime of “redeeming culture.”

Now that we have argued the case for secular vocations in this current stage of redemptive history, let us consider some of the misunderstandings that often arise and confuse us when we are trying to find our vocation or calling in life.

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The Promiscuous Soul of Modernity Although we are used to identifying promiscuity with dissolute sexual behavior, it seems to capture the spirit of our age in more general terms. Like Proteus, the Greek sea god, the average person today (including both the author and reader of this article) is capable of enormous transfigurations and metamorphoses. Never mind “finding” yourself; in much of postmodern thinking these days, there is no self to find. As cultural historian Jackson Lears has observed, the earlier gravitas (weightiness) which both God and man seemed to possess has, in American culture, devolved into “sentimental religiosity” and then, finally, into a loss of self entirely.

However all of this happened, there is no doubt that the loss of a solid sense of self has contributed to the promiscuity that marks our lives, including our callings.

But this vocational promiscuity was a problem in the reformers’ day as well. Calvin urged believers to “learn to measure carefully their powers, lest they should wear out, by ambitiously embracing too many occupations. For this propensity to engage in too many things … is a very common malady… . God has so arranged our condition, that individuals are only endued with a certain measure of gifts.”1 Similarly, in the Institutes he advised: The Lord bids each one of us in all life’s actions to look to his calling. For he knows with what great restlessness human nature flames, with what fickleness it is borne hither and thither, how its ambition longs to embrace various things at once. Therefore, lest through our stupidity and rashness everything be turned topsy-turvy, he has appointed duties for every man in his particular way of life. And that no one may thoughtlessly transgress his limits, he has named these various kinds of living “callings.” Therefore each individual has his own kind of living assigned to him by the Lord as a sort of sentry post so that he may not heedlessly wander about through life (3.10.6).

Undoubtedly vocation and self-identity are inextricably linked. Sometimes this is viewed with suspicion: “Why, when asked to introduce yourself, do you say, ‘I’m a dentist’?” Well, for a very good reason.

The dentist introduces herself that way because that is not just what she does, but part of who she is. Adam knew who he was, at least in part, because of what he did (and vice versa). God had called him to be prophet, priest, and king over the created world as his covenant steward. This calling was further confirmed by his naming of the animals. And after the fall, he would still work the land, but it would be difficult—accompanied by pain, suffering, frustration.

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Calvin seems to be on the mark, then, when he urges us to look to our calling, to curb our restlessness and fickleness, including the promiscuous “ambition … to embrace various things at once.” Each person’s calling is “his own kind of living assigned to him by the Lord as a sort of sentry post so that he may not heedlessly wander about through life.”

But now the urgency of discovering one’s calling seems even more acute. If one must find a special vocation, a unique calling, to properly honor God and attain some sense of self-identity, shouldn’t we make every effort to search out God’s “perfect will for our lives”?

God’s Will for Your Life Many readers will recall instances of being counseled to discover God’s will for their lives. Gripped by fear of stepping outside of “God’s perfect will,” many believers thought of this much as a subway on its tracks: so long as the conductor stays on the rails, he will arrive at his destination safely. But first one has to find these tracks. Any number of things could constitute “stepping-outside-of-God’s-perfect-will.”

Unconfessed sin, an unteachable spirit, or simply a failure to patiently search out this hidden plan in any number of ways: earnest prayer, fasting, “hanging out a fleece” (in imitation of Gideon), or otherwise testing God, until we are confident of God’s will. Those who did not think or act in these terms were (and are) regarded as having placed self on the throne of one’s life, and so on.

Where did we get this sort of thinking? The only reference to God’s “perfect will” is in Romans 12:2: “… that you may prove what is that good and perfect will of God.” But God’s good and perfect will, as the same writer makes clear, is simply that will which he has revealed in Scripture. The apostle there admonishes us not to be conformed to this world’s pattern of thinking, but to “be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” It is not as if God has a revealed will (Scripture) and a perfect will. Rather, God’s revealed will is that which defines what is good and acceptable and perfect. The same point is made in Micah: “He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Mic. 6:8). The whole moral law can be summarized in the command to love God and neighbor.

The Law, then, is God’s revealed will for our lives. But the Gospel is God’s revealed will for our salvation. In other words, the Law reveals God’s will for our direction, but the Gospel reveals God’s direction toward us: saving us from the guilt and lostness of having wandered from that course.

MODERN REFORMATION

There is only one will we can access, then: God’s revealed will. God does indeed have his secrets, mysteries to the moral mind. “For who has known the mind of the Lord?” (Rom. 11:34). Why does God predestine some and not others? “But who are you, a mere mortal, to answer back to God?” (Rom. 9:20).

Who are the elect? How can we discern them? “But God’s firm foundation stands, bearing this inscription: ‘The Lord knows those who are his’” (2 Tim. 2:19). It is revealed that God had chosen many to be included in Christ, but it is not revealed in either nature or Scripture the number or the identity of these people. “With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph. 1:9-10). And this revelation of God’s evangelical will toward us in Christ is what is necessary, not the answer to such questions as: Why did God choose some and not everyone?

When asked what God was doing before he created the world, Augustine replied, “Creating hell for curious people.” Calvin likewise calls such speculation a presumptuous entrance into a maze from which there is no safe exit. We must stay with what is revealed instead of attempting to penetrate God’s secrets. As Scripture reminds us, “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the revealed things belong to us and to our children forever, to observe all the words of this law” (Deut. 29:29).

Luther also spoke of the “hidden” and “revealed” God, the for mer unknowable in his mysterious transcendence; the latter known by his own initiative and not by human striving. We all want to climb into God’s secret chamber and snoop around where angels fear to tread. But this can only lead to disaster. Instead, we should look to God through the revealed Son. So how can we know God’s will in relation to whom we should marry, where we should live, and what calling we should pursue? If it is not revealed in either nature

or Scripture, then its discovery is neither our responsibility nor even a possibility. How then do we discover our calling if it is not revealed by God directly in nature or in Scripture? Actually, both nature and Scripture are sites of such discovery, even if it is by indirect ways. And this brings us to our next point.

Guidelines for Discerning Your Calling Search the concordance of your Bible or the realm of nature and you will not find any statement like, “Bob, your calling is to be a lawyer.” Nevertheless, both Scripture and nature can help. First, let’s take Scripture.

God’s Word does give us guidelines for directing our lives in a broad sense. Beneficiaries of wisdom in a variety of genres, we who have been reared on Scripture often take for granted just how much we are indirectly informed in our decision-making by Scripture. But it is just that: indirect. For instance, Scripture invites us to seek God’s wisdom: “If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you” (Jam. 1:5). But nowhere does it invite us to seek God’s hidden or secret plan. Further, it tells us that living alone tends to feed self-indulgence (Prov. 18:1); that it is better to be poor with a clear conscience than to be rich with a guilty one (Prov. 19:1); that “It is better to live in a desert land than with a contentious and fretful wife,” while a prudent spouse is better than riches (Prov. 21:19); a weakness for luxury means poverty in the long run (Prov. 21:17). And on we could go, through Proverbs alone. Godly wisdom from Scripture and from other believers who are guided by Scripture is indispensable for making decisions about vocation, whether the calling at issue happens to be education, work, or marriage.

But the Scriptures are not a handbook for decision making and it may well be that after saturating oneself with biblical wisdom there will still be many questions left before a wise decision can be made. Here is where nature comes into the picture. First, what are your gifts and skills? What do you enjoy doing? The Psalmist

In these promiscuous times,

when people find it difficult to stay in one community or church for more than ten months, and with one spouse for more than ten years, it is no surprise that we jump around from calling to calling, often reducing a vocation to a job and thereby finding little satisfaction.

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sings to the Lord, “You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing” (Psalm 145:16). He gives us the desires of our hearts. So much for the “God’syes-was-louder-than-my-no” school of guidance counseling. Many of us have heard the stories—usually associated with the ministry—in which the individual “ran from God’s call all my life” as far as he could until God just wore him out. In some cases, at least, this displays a degree of arrogance. It is as if God doesn’t have many first-round draft picks and, like the NFL scout dealing with a free agent, has to try to sway the player to his team. If God can create children of Abraham from rocks, he can certainly find ministers from the swamps.

God does give us the desires of our hearts. He is not out to get us, or to make us wander the vocational wilderness forever. Sometimes we are “dumped” into shor t-ter m vocations which to us seem utterly meaningless and yet in some way providentially equip us with a skill which will be vital in our as yet unknown calling in life. We just cannot figure out God’s secret plan, but we can trust it and learn from natural as well as biblical sources how we might better discern our calling.

The questions, What are your skills?, What do you really enjoy?, What would get you up on Monday morning?, are in the realm of nature. Super-spirituality may look down on such mundane questions and try to steal into God’s secret chamber, but biblical piety is content to leaf through the book of nature. God has created us a certain way, given us certain habits, skills, longings, and drives. In no single calling would we be able to employ all of our interests, skills, and drives.

That is why there are avocations. An avocation is a sidevocation: a hobby, sport, or pastime. Let’s say there is this person named Ralph who enjoys painting. He finds it relaxing and fulfilling. It is something he enjoys. But does that mean that it is his calling? Not necessarily. It may be an avocation rather than a vocation; something he does to wind down on Saturday, not something he does to bring home the bacon on Monday. He might have a better idea whether it is an avocation rather than a vocation if, over time, the general response to his work is favorable from close relatives but nobody else in town will take his work on consignment or exhibit it in any gallery. It doesn’t require a period of prayer and fasting to figure this out.

So we cannot place expectations on this calling or vocation which are so unrealistic that we end up becoming despondent, paralyzed with fear because we cannot find the one calling in which all of our skills and interests may be satisfied. We need to realize that our calling in terms of work is only one of our vocations. We are also called to be saints, parents, children, siblings, citizens, and a host of other things. These are truly vocations or callings. We 12

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may find satisfaction from our involvement as a den parent for a scouts group that we simply could not obtain at work. We cannot put all of our vocational eggs in that important but limited basket, even though we should locate a single calling for our work. Otherwise, if our family life is suffering, we may transfer our frustrated parental urges to our employees; or if our passion for our work so dominates us that we expect our spouse to understand it and care about it as much as we do, we are being unfair. God has wisely ordered our lives so that we have a number of relationships and commitments—or, vocations. Putting too much stress on work, spouse/family, church, social groups, can make an idol which, when it cannot bear the strain, is sure to be smashed just as quickly as it was raised. We need to learn to use all of the vocations or callings God has given us in life and to distribute that stress, much as multiple stilts support a house on a steep hill.

We have addressed the question of avocations; now we should briefly mention prevocations, although I am fully conscious that this is not a real word. But the idea certainly is. Sue flips burgers this year so that next year she can begin a master’s degree in English literature. She believes that she is called to teach literature to college students. Her ten-year high school reunion is coming up and she is unsure how to explain what she is up to these days. She can comfort herself (and perhaps others) with the thought that this is “kingdom work” and she is redeeming the culture of fast-food consumerism—making common ground holy by her vigilant evangelism, counseling, and, of course, her solid Protestant work ethic. Or she can find another way of justifying her temporary vocation; that is, by relating it to the broader process of enjoying her ultimate calling.

Right now, make no mistake about it, flipping burgers is Sue’s calling. It is not that she is called to teach literature, and this work at Burger King is beneath her; she is fulfilling her calling. For now, Burger King is her calling. But she knows that it is not her long-term calling, as it may be for others. Sue can get up every morning and go into work knowing that what she does now is providing the means for realizing her long-term calling.

She aspires “to live quietly, to mind [her] own business, and to work well with [her] hands … so that [she] may behave properly toward outsiders and be dependent on no one.” Nothing is said here about kingdom work or redeeming Burger King.

Many people (especially white and more affluent folks) find it next to impossible to take up a temporary vocation which they find dishonoring to their skills and long-term aims. Cheating themselves out of industry, patience, character, and financial means which will allow them to support themselves in future education or employment, they prefer idleness, luxury, having fun, MODERN REFORMATION

and living off of the sweat of other peoples’ brows. Just as having various other vocations takes the stress off of anyone, working with different expectations in relation to temporary and long-term vocations can also free us up to vigorously pursue callings for the moment which may well seem beneath us in terms of challenge.

In these promiscuous times, when people find it difficult to stay on one thought for more than ten seconds, the same channel for more than ten minutes, in one community or church for more than ten months, and with one spouse for more than ten years, it is no surprise that we jump around from calling to calling, often reducing a vocation to a job and thereby finding little satisfaction. Identity and labor are intimately linked: Marx at least got that one right. At some point, paralysis must end and a decision has to be made. Choosing a long-term calling is not like choosing a spouse: it can change. Sometimes life experiences alter one’s course.

But mid-flight corrections are different from the promiscuous habits of mind and heart to which we are so prone in these times. It is difficult for many today to say, “I believe…,” to take a stand, and it is much easier to be a connoisseur of life’s delicacies—a consumer rather than a producer. We would rather stand aloof and play with an endless variety of beliefs, lifestyles, choices, products, callings, and institutions than be committed to a future course over which we do not have sovereign knowledge or sovereign control. But for those of us who have entrusted our souls and bodies to Jesus Christ and our futures to a fatherly providence, ignorance of the details committed to the secret will of God should work against this tendency. God has located us, has addressed us, seen and examined us in all of our naked depravity, and yet instead of condemning us he clothed us with Christ’s righteousness. Who would not entrust his or her future to that kind of God? MR

CALLING FOR A MODERN REFORMATION OUR VISION—Our vision is to enlist and engage church leaders at the local and regional level throughout America, with the goal of biblical reformation in the churches. To this end we envision informal, voluntary Reformation Societies, where church leaders will meet for the joining of hearts and minds in pursuit of actual and practical reformation in their churches.

WHY A CALL TO ACTION?—We must act because worldliness—both in the means we employ and the goals we pursue—has gripped the evangelical Church. We must act out of obedience to the exalted Lord of the Church and devotion to His Gospel, which alone “is the power of God for the salvation of those who believe” (Rom. 1:16).

WHY A SOCIETY?—Reformation means standing against the spirit of the age, so leaders must join together to embolden and support one another, to advise and to cooperate. Most importantly, a society brings the Word of God and prayer to bear on the leaders themselves, strengthening them for the work of a faithful shepherd.

OUR GOAL—The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals calls upon pastors and Christian leaders to unite in our effort to bring reformation to the Church by joining in a local or regional fellowship.

Dr. Horton is associate professor of historical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in California, and serves on the Council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.

REFORMATION SOCIETIES For more information contact the Alliance at (215) 546-3696 1716 Spruce Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 for local listings see www.AllianceNet.org

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QUOTES “Whatever your task, work heartily, as serving the Lord and not men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you are serving the Lord Christ.” — Col. 3:23-24.

“Companionship is completed in work and in the interplay of economic exchanges. Human fellowship is realized in relationships which flow from the division of labour wherein each person has been called of God to a particular and partial work which complements the work of others. The mutual exchange of goods and services is the concrete sign of the profound solidarity which unites humanity.”

— Andre Bieler, summarizing Calvin’s view of work, The Economic and Social Thought of John Calvin, 321.

“Through his work, man shares the creation-purpose of God in subduing nature, whether he be a miner with dir ty hands, a mechanic with greasy face, or a stenographer with stencil-smudged fingers. Work is permeated by purpose; it is intended to serve God [and to] benefit mankind… .To consider work a channel of divine creation, by which the creature serves God and man, carries certain consequences for one’s attitude toward labor. The Christian becomes morally obligated to withhold producing, and even purchasing (since money is the conversion of his talent into cash) culturally worthless, let alone wicked and harmful, items. Nor will he engage in their promotion or distribution. As Treglown remarks, ‘There can be no sense of purpose in making trash.’”

— Carl F. H. Henry, Aspects of Christian Social Ethics, 48.

“Better is a little with the fear of the LORD, Than great treasure with trouble.

Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, Than a fatted calf with hatred.”

— Prov. 15:16-17.

“Before the Reformation vocation was understood … [as] being called away from the world into a religious and higher order—be it priestly or monastic—that attains a life that is closer to the perfection God has promised, a view made popular by the medieval church.

Martin Luther modified these views and redefined vocation as a call to serve the neighbor in the world rather than withdrawing from the world. In his sermons … Luther used the German word for vocation (Beruf) for the first time to describe a wide range of callings.

On the basis of the biblical injunction of 1 Cor. 7:20, Luther labeled the medieval hierarchical stations a series of vocations established, through love and law, for the purpose of keeping order in the world.

On the one hand are the basic vocations of family, temporal government, and church, which embody what Luther called ‘three hierarchies’ of ‘natural law’… . On the other hand are the various secondary vocations linked to work, such as trade, manufacturing, and providing services for the community. All vocations are subject to sin and abuse, but they… [are by God’s g race] sufficiently powerful to evade total chaos.”

— Eric W. Gritsch, “Vocation,” in the Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation.

“But we urge you, brethren, to … aspire to live quietly, to mind your own business, and to work well with your hands, as we directed you, so that you may behave properly toward outsiders and be dependent on no one.”

— 1 Thes. 4:11-12.

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MODERN REFORMATION

God’s Vocation, Our Vocation MARK R. TALBOT

Recently, some evangelicals have been trying to revise some longstanding Christian convictions about God’s nature and his ways with human beings. This g rowing coalition of theologians and philosophers argues that the statement “God is love,” when properly interpreted, tells us virtually all we need to know about who God is, why he created the world, and how he relates to us. As Richard Rice puts it in his chapter in the recent book, The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God, “From a Christian perspective, love is the first and last word in the biblical portrait of God… . The statement God is love is as close as the Bible comes to giving us a definition of the divine reality.”1 Rice’s task, in this collaborative effort, is to argue that this new perspective is found in the Scriptures.

Love, he goes on to say, “is the one divine activity that most fully and vividly discloses God’s inner reality… .

Love is what it means to be God.” Love, moreover, “is not only more important than all of God’s other attributes, it is more fundamental as well,” for it is “the basic source from which all of God’s attributes arise.” So a “doctrine of God that is faithful to the Bible,” Rice concludes, “must show that all of God’s characteristics derive from love.” In this way, “the assertion God is love incorporates all there is to say about God.”2

Corey Wilkinson, scratchboard

The Scriptures declare that “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 4:16) and that he is “kind toward all he has made” (Ps. 145:17). But is this all that needs to be said about God and his posture towards creation?

At first glance, these claims may not seem very remarkable. Yet reducing all of God’s attributes to love has tremendous ramifications for our faith. More particularly, it has deep implications for how we view our vocation—for how we think about what God has called us to be and to do. In the Scriptures, the Hebrew and Greek words for vocation are used primarily to signify God’s calling or summoning us to become his people. The same words are used, secondarily, to signify God’s calling or summoning his people to lead a particular kind of life—a life of holiness, purity, righteousness, love, and peace that manifests who God is and what he is about (1 Cor. 1:2, 7:15; 1 Thes. 4:3-8; 2 Tim. 1:9; 1 John 4:7; 1 Pet. 1:13-15, 3:9-12). Our work is to do God’s work (John 9:4). So, as Rice and his fellow authors say, our view of God affects not only “our understanding of the incarnation, grace, creation, election, sovereignty and salvation;” it also “has direct impact on practices such as prayer, evangelism, seeking divine guidance and responding to suffering.”3 MAY/JUNE 1999

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It is worthwhile, then, for us to contrast this new way of thinking about God with the conception of God it is attempting to replace.

The Historical View For most of Christian history, as the proponents of this new view freely admit, Christian theologians have thought about God and his relation to the world in terms of his “sovereignty, majesty and glory.” Working from the Scriptures, these theologians have claimed that God is a sovereign, whose will is irresistible, so that whatever he dictates ineluctably comes to pass (Is. 55:10-11; Gen. 1:3, 9; Heb. 11:3). In this view, it is part of God’s majesty that nothing can thwart or hinder the accomplishment of his purposes and that, consequently, his will is “the final explanation of all that happens” and his relation to the world “is thus one of mastery and control.”4 In this historical view, God’s glory is “the ultimate purpose that all creation serves.”

God’s glory includes the fact that he is “supreme in goodness as well as in power,” as well as that he “is caring and benevolent toward his creatures.” Yet the historical view implies that “God is equally glorified and his purposes are equally well served by the obedience of the righteous, the rebellion of sinners, the redemption of the saints and the destr uction of the wicked.” 5 And this, the proponents of this new perspective believe, is at least “existentially repugnant” and perhaps even “logically incoherent.”6 So to avoid a claim like this, Rice and his colleagues offer their new perspective.

Rice and his co-authors recognize that “agreement with Scripture is the most important test for any theological proposal,” because “[b]y definition, the task of Christian theology is to interpret the contents of the Bible.”7 Rice, however, goes on to say that “[it] is a challenge to ascertain the biblical view of almost anything,” because Scripture “contains an enormous range of material, and on almost any significant topic we can find diverse statements if not diverse perspectives as well” (16). In an endnote he adds, “This is why biblical scholars often object to expressions like ‘the biblical view of ’ or ‘according to the Bible.’ They insist that there are biblical views, but no one biblical view” (177n7). This comes dangerously close to denying that God, who

cannot contradict himself and cannot lie, is the primary author of the Scriptures. So, Rice concludes, unless a good case can be made that the new perspective is at least as well-grounded biblically as the historical perspective, “it has little to recommend it to believing Christians.” To that end, Rice argues both that the historical view “does not reflect faithfully the spirit of the biblical message, in spite of the fact that it appeals to various biblical statements” and that “[t]he broad sweep of biblical testimony points to a quite different understanding of the divine reality.”8 Yet when we examine Rice’s actual arguments for these two conclusions, we find them to be very weak.

The Scope of God’s Love Of course, everyone should concede that, while the assertion God is love appears only in 1 John, it “succinctly summarizes a pervasive biblical theme.”9 For, as Rice observes, the Old Testament Scriptures are full of claims about God’s “everlasting love for his people”—indeed, about his love being “the rationale for Israel’s beginning as a nation”— as well as about his love being the explanation of his “steadfast commitment to his people in spite of their infidelities.”10 And surely none of us should doubt that “God’s love comes to its fullest expression in the life and death of Jesus.” Rice’s quotation of Romans 8:32—“He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”—as well as of Romans 5:8—“God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us”—and of John 3:16 makes that quite clear. So, as Rice claims, “the statement God is love embodies an essential biblical truth. It indicates that love is central, not incidental, to the nature of God.” Yet is love, as Rice immediately goes on to claim, “the one divine activity that most fully and vividly discloses God’s inner reality”? And, even more importantly, does Scripture show love to be “the basic source from which all of God’s attributes arise”? In order to answer these questions, we must determine the scope of God’s love in the Scriptures—we must, in other words, see how widely (or narrowly) his love extends. Is love, according to the Scriptures, God’s basic posture towards all human beings?

We need these reminders

because, as C. S. Lewis observed, it is tempting for us to put God in the defendant’s dock and ourselves on the judge’s bench.

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MODERN REFORMATION

None of the Scriptures Rice has quoted establishes this. In fact, the Scriptures make it quite clear that God’s love for human beings is properly understood only within the context of his calling or electing some human beings—and not others—to be his people.11 In the Old Testament, God issued a corporate call to the nation of Israel to become his people through his first calling Abraham to leave his homeland and then his subsequently calling Abraham’s descendants out of Egypt (Is. 51:1-2, Hos. 11:1). And, thus, as theologian Geerhardus Vos argued almost a century ago, divine love has a “particularistic character” in the Old Testament, so that while it is not at all unusual for the Old Testament writers to talk of God’s universal benevolence or goodness or kindness to all human beings and to all the rest of his creation, they reserve terms like “love” and “lovingkindness” to characterize only Yahweh’s special relationship to Israel, his covenant people.12 Indeed, as Deuteronomy makes clear, when God set his love upon Israel, he did so to the exclusion of all other peoples (4:19f., 10:14f.).

In the New Testament era, God’s love for human beings becomes, in one sense, more general, even as, in another sense, it is for the first time clearly seen to be more particular. God’s love becomes universalized by becoming denationalized: the Good News of God’s g racious and fatherly love to all who believe in redemption through his Son is now, in this new era, to be preached to all nations and not just to the Israelites (Matt. 28:16-20, Rom. 10:1-13). Yet this gracious, redeeming love is now also revealed to be individualized, for it now becomes apparent that this love extends only to the particular individuals whom God specifically calls to faith (Acts 13:48; Rom. 1:6-7, 8:28-30, 9:1-11:32; Eph. 2:1-10; Rev. 17:14).13 Of course, there is still a corporate aspect to election, even in the New Testament, since the individuals are called to be part of Christ’s church. And so a passage like John 3:16-17: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. must be read as proclaiming God’s “purpose to save the world organically”—or as a whole—and not as “a purpose to save every person in the world individually.”14 God’s Love and God’s Wrath So the scope of God’s eternal, saving love is restricted in the Scriptures. But this, of course, suggests that love may not be “the one divine activity that most

fully and vividly discloses God’s inner reality.” It also suggests that love may not be “the basic source from which all of God’s attributes arise.”

And, indeed, when we read the statement that “God is love” in its context, it is clear that the kind of love that John is claiming God has manifested to believers must be understood in relation to his holiness. For John understands God’s love for us in terms of his righteous wrath, which is the inevitable response of his holiness to our sin. So immediately after John declares that “God is love” he goes on to say that “[t]his is how God”—this God of love—“showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.” And so “[t]his is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as the one who would turn aside his wrath, taking away our sins” (1 John 4:9-10). The fact that the plural personal pronouns in these claims refer only to believers (5:13) means, then, that it is God’s wrath, and not his eternal saving love, that is generally disclosed to human beings.

So in spite of Rice’s claims to the contrary, God’s love—or God’s redeeming love, at least—is clearly not the source of all of his attributes, since that love is his merciful response to his righteous wrath. In attempting to show otherwise, Rice says that we must see God’s wrath “not as a contradiction of his love but as an expression of it.”15 So, following the Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel, he notes “the striking contrast between God’s anger and love as the two are described in the Hebrew Scriptures.” In the Old Testament, there is “a profound difference in their duration”: “God’s anger is temporary, his love is permanent.” Moreover, “God is also reluctant to get angry, but eager to show mercy (Ex. 34:6, Ps. 103:8).” From this, Rice concludes, with Heschel, that in the prophetic view of God love is essential, while anger is only incidental. God’s “normal or original pathos,” [Heschel] observes, “is love or mercy.” “The pathos of anger is … a transient state,” “by no means regarded as an attribute, as a basic disposition, as a quality inherent in the nature of God.” It is always described “as a moment, something that happens rather than something that abides.”

Insofar as we are considering Israel, as God’s Old Testament covenant people, there is no reason to question the essential truth of what Heschel has said.

For, as we have seen, the Old Testament Scriptures are full of claims about God’s “everlasting love for his people” as well as about his love being the explanation of his “steadfast commitment to his people in spite of their infidelities.” Yet is God’s love as everlasting and as steadfast towards all human beings? The New MAY/JUNE 1999

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Testament’s answer is no, for nearly all of its authors make it quite clear that God’s wrath shall remain, for all eternity, on those to whom he does not grant saving belief (John 3:31-36; 1 Thes. 5:4-10, 1:4-10; Rev. 14:613, 19:1-3; Mark 9:42-48).

Of course, throughout the Scriptures, God is portrayed as a holy God whose eyes are too pure to look on evil: long before there is any articulation of God as a God of love, 16 it is revealed that God is a God of holiness who calls his people to be holy (Ex. 15:11, 19:1-6; Lev. 19:1f.).17 It is a fundamental aspect of God’s inner reality, then, that he cannot tolerate wrong (Hab. 1:12-13). So throughout the Scriptures, God is portrayed as a God who must by his very nature call sinners to account: in fact, the Scriptures declare that he hates those who do wrong (Ps. 5:4-6).

The Scriptures also assert that nature, conscience, and history reveal enough of God and his purposes for all human beings to know that they owe him obedience, thanks, and praise (Ps. 19:1-6; Acts 14:16f., 17:24-31; Rom. 1:18-2:16). And yet the Scriptures also assert that this general revelation of God has not led even a single human being to seek him (Rom. 3:11). It has not led even one of us to be righteous or to do what is good (Rom. 3:10,12). Every single human being has sinned and fallen short of God’s glory (Rom. 3:23). Indeed, not one of us has found in God’s continuing kindness, patience, and tolerance towards us an adequate occasion for repenting of our sins (Rom. 2:4).

Because of this, each of us is storing up wrath against himself or herself on the day when God in his holiness will righteously and decisively judge all people (Rom. 2:5).18 Romans 1:18-32 makes it clear that those who refuse to honor God properly experience his wrath now as well as store it up for the future day of judgment. As Adam’s children, we are all accounted sinners (Rom. 5:12-21)19—in fact, in some mysterious, not-fully-fathomable sense, we have been acting sinfully from the time when we were conceived (Ps. 51:5). So sinfulness is now our “natural” state, whereby we are alienated from God—indeed his enemies (Col. 1:21 and Rom. 5:9f.)—and thereby children of his wrath (see especially Eph. 2:1-3).

Now it is only in this context that the sort of love of which John speaks makes any sense. For that love is redeeming love—love that has been willing to pay the only price adequate to deliver human beings from God’s righteous wrath, the price of the death of God’s own Son (Mark 10:45, Eph. 1:3-8, Heb. 9:15, 1 Pet. 1:18f., Rev. 5:9).20 Such love consists in Christ standing in the place of sinners and taking the wrath that they deserve upon himself (see Rom. 5:6-11 with Gal. 3:13 and 2 Cor. 5:21). As Paul puts it, God’s righteousness is demonstrated both in his publicly displaying Jesus as a 18

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sacrifice for our sins—so that it is clear that no sins are ever left unpunished—and in his justifying us by our faith in that sacrifice (Rom. 3:21-26). The love that John attributes to God is, then, holy love—love that exhibits both God’s justice and his redeeming mercy.

And, indeed, in the light of all of the biblical evidence it is not inappropriate to say that “[i]f there is one attribute of God that can be recognized as allcomprehensive and all-pervading, it is his holiness, which must be predicated of all his attributes, holy love, holy compassion, holy wisdom, etc.”21 God’s Vocation So here is one clear instance where one of God’s attributes, properly understood, cannot be reduced to love. Declaring that “God is love” and that he is “kind toward all he has made” is not, then, all that needs to be said about God and his posture towards creation; in order to remain true to the Scriptures, God’s holiness and his consequent wrath toward sin must also be declared.

As D. A. Baer and R. P. Gordon say after a careful survey of God’s kindness, faithfulness, and steadfast love in the Old Testament, God’s wrath is still “a true word, a right word, [and] sometimes an inevitable word.”22 Of course, for those whom he calls to be his people, it is true that redeeming love does indeed have the honor of being God’s last word (Ps. 25:10). But as long as the scope of God’s gracious, redeeming love does not extend to every human being, we cannot say that such love is the last word in the biblical portrait of God for all human beings. And if the reason God’s redeeming love doesn’t extend to all human beings is because he has not chosen for it to do so—as the Scriptures seem to make clear (see especially Rom. 9:1-29 and Prov. 16:4), then why isn’t the conception of God that this implies “existentially repugnant”? For if God can save all, then shouldn’t he?

In order to answer these questions it is useful for us to ask about God’s “vocation,” about what God is called or summoned to be and to do. Ultimately, Scripture makes clear, all initiative always lies with God and so, in the final analysis, God is not subject to anyone’s call. He has no vocation set for him by any other being. For he is “the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords” (1 Tim. 6:15) who “has established his throne in heaven” and whose “kingdom rules over all” (Ps. 103:19). Like Nebuchadnezzar, we shall all one day be brought to acknowledge that before God: All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing.

He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth.

No one can hold back his hand or say to him: “What have you done?”

(Dan. 4:35).

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Yet to speak of God’s “vocation”—of what God himself is called or summoned to be and to do—can accomplish at least two things. First, it can remind us that what God does is not arbitrary, that he is bound to act in particular ways. And, secondly, it can drive home the fact that God is not at our beck and call, that human beings exist to fulfill his purposes and that he does not exist simply to secure our happiness.

We need these reminders because, as C. S. Lewis observed, it is tempting for us to put God in the defendant’s dock and ourselves on the judge’s bench.23 Even among evangelicals, there is a widespread (and sometimes not fully recognized) tendency not to acknowledge God as our Judge but to make ourselves judges over him. It then becomes all too easy for us to remake God into our image of what we think God should be.

So what does Scripture tell us about God’s “vocation”—about what God himself is called or summoned to be and to do?

It tells us, as Jonathan Edwards established in indisputable detail over two centuries ago, that God’s glory is indeed “the ultimate purpose that all creation serves.” As Edwards summarized the scriptural evidence: It is manifest that the Scriptures speak on all occasions as though God made himself his end in all his works, and as though the same being, who is the first cause of all things, were the supreme and last end of all things.24 God’s “vocation,” in other words, is to manifest his own glory. This, as Edwards argues, can be established by examining what the Scriptures say or assume about God’s ultimate end in creation and in providence, about what God has set as the ultimate end and final good for human beings, and about what Christ ultimately seeks.

There are, in addition, many Scriptures that either declare or assume that God created the world for his own name’s sake, so that his perfections would be known, and his praises sung.25 In addition, Edwards argues philosophically and theologically that God must make his own glory his own last end, and that his doing so is in no way selfish or inappropriate.26 Edwards understands that, when God manifests himself, it is his holiness that is visible as his beauty or glory.27 Furthermore, God’s holiness makes him zealous; and it is his zeal that motivates him both to create and especially to redeem. God’s people experience the glory of his holy zeal as his redeeming love, while those who are not his people experience that glory as his damning wrath.28 God, according to the Scriptures, can remember either his redeeming love or our sin but not both (Ps. 25:7 and 51:1). It is part of God’s glory that he

remembers all wickedness and sin as well as that he punishes it appropriately. This means that God must punish any unatoned sin everlastingly. 29 In the Scriptures, this aspect of God’s glory is presented as completely reasonable and wholly predictable.30 The Scriptures also make it clear that part of the gloriousness of God’s electing and redeeming love is that it is completely voluntary and spontaneous: God is not bound to place his redeeming love on anyone and so, whenever he chooses to do so, it is not because of anything that we are or do.31 It is part of God’s glory— that is, of his goodness and name—that he is merciful and compassionate to whom he wishes (Ex. 33:18-34:7).

Indeed, the very “grammar” of mercy is that it cannot be compelled.32 From very early in Israel’s history it is clear that “[i]f there is unpredictability in Yahweh, it is in his extension of grace, not judgment.”33 The proper question for us to ask, then, is not, If God can save all, then shouldn’t he?, but, rather, Why does he save any? And Scripture’s answer is: because the salvation of his people brings God glory (Ps. 79:9; Is. 44:23, 48:10f.; Eph. 1:3-14; John 13:31f., 17:1-4; 2 Cor. 4:14f.; 1 Pet. 2:9f.).

Our Vocation Of course, we must not minimize the difficulty in our understanding why, if God can save all, he does not do so. Yet we also must not minimize Scripture’s witness to the fact that God everlastingly punishes the wicked (Rev. 20:10-14 and Mark 9:42-48)—and that his doing so is not unjust and is indeed part of his glory (see especially Rom. 9:14-24 and 2 Thes. 1:6-10).34 As I have argued elsewhere, I think we can show why God must punish unatoned sin everlastingly;35 and I think we can understand that God is not unjust in deciding to pass some sinners by, leaving them in their sin. It is, however, much more difficult for us to understand why God does not choose to save all if he can, and how exactly it is glorious for him to execute everlasting wrath upon those whom he has not chosen to save.36 What we can be sure of, however, is that God does not take the same kind of simple and direct pleasure in the destruction of the wicked as he does in the redemption of his saints. For, as Edwards notes, God’s pleasure in redeeming and doing good to human beings is different in kind than his pleasure in manifesting his anger and wrath: According to the Scripture, communicating good to the creatures is what is in itself pleasing to God. And this is not merely subordinately agreeable, and esteemed valuable on account of its relation to a further end, as it is in executing justice in punishing the sins of men; but what God is MAY/JUNE 1999

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inclined to on its own account, and what he delights in simply and ultimately. For though God is sometimes … spoken of as taking pleasure in punishing men’s sins [Deut. 28:63 and Eze. 5:1337] … yet God is often spoken of as exercising goodness and showing mercy with delight, in a manner quite different and opposite to that of his executing wrath. For the latter is spoken of as what God proceeds to with backwardness and reluctance; the misery of the creature being not agreeable to him on its own account.38 So there is indeed a sense in which love is more basic to God’s character than anger and wrath.

Yet it is our vocation to adopt God’s vocation. So Scripture calls us to share in God’s glory (Rom. 8:17, 1 Pet. 4:13f., John 17:22); indeed, to see everything that happens to us as for his glory (2 Cor. 4:15; Eph. 1:6, 12, 14; Phil. 1:9-11) and to do everything we do to glorify him (1 Cor. 10:31, Rom. 15:7, 1 Pet. 4:11). We are to glory in what God glories in. And so it is an integral part of our vocation—of what God calls us to be and to do—to glory in not only his love but also in his holiness and, consequently, in his inevitable wrath against sin.39 In this way, as Edwards reminds us, we embrace and practice true religion by “repenting of sin, and turning to holiness.” 40 And so, when John the Baptist came as a herald of the Gospel, he came preaching God’s coming wrath and the need for repentance from sin (Matt. 3:1-12), just as our Lord himself did (Luke 13:1-5 and Matt. 11:20-24). Indeed, warning people of “the coming wrath” has always been an integral part of the Gospel message (1 Thes. 1:10, 2 Thes. 1:5-9, 1 Pet. 4:1-6). The Good News is good precisely because it proclaims that God redeems all who will come to him from the wrath that rests upon them because of their sin.

Undoubtedly, the distinguishing mark of the Christian is love (John 13:34f.) and that everything we do is to be an expression of love (1 Cor. 16:14)—a reflection and extension of God’s love in Christ for us.

As John says, “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). And while most of the New Testament’s injunctions to love refer primarily to the love we ought to show to other believers,41 there is no doubt that we are to be loving and merciful to all human beings because God has been loving and merciful to us (Matt.

5:43-48, Luke 6:27-36, James 3:13-18). In practice, then, although we know that God has not chosen to save all human beings, we are to tender his love and his mercy to each one of them, that through our offering of his love and mercy to all he may save some.

Yet what does offering such Christian love and mercy consist in? Its essence is that we set forth the 20

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truth plainly so that we commend the Gospel of God’s utterly free and sovereign love in Christ to each person’s conscience (2 Cor. 4:1-6)—to each person’s inescapable awareness that he or she has done that which deserves death (Rom. 1:32) and that God would be utterly just if he passed each of us by, leaving each one of us to die in our sins. It is always and everywhere part of our vocation, then, to preach to everyone the fact that God’s wrath rests on all human beings, yet that “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ” (2 Cor. 5:19) as well as that whoever wishes may take the free gift of salvation in him (Rev. 22:17). For it is through such preaching that the sovereign God moves to call to himself those whom he has chosen before the world’s creation (Eph. 1:3-14). But in doing so, we must emphasize not just the love, but the holy love of God. For God’s holy judgment is the one g reat and inescapable reality in every human being’s life (Matt.

11:28), and the one reality that every human being must acknowledge in order to appropriate the redeeming love of Christ (1 John 1:8-10)—and so it would be unloving for us to emphasize anything else.

Richard Rice and his fellow authors are to be commended for taking the Christian proclamation seriously enough to want to be sure that they represent it accurately and in the best possible light. God forbid that we represent what God has done for us in Christ in a way that throws any unnecessary stumbling blocks before those whom his Son came to save. Yet for those of us who, as evangelicals, still subscribe to sola Scriptura as the Reformers understood that great rallying cry of the Reformation, the ultimate test of whether we affirm that the first and last word about God is love depends on how well that claim coheres with all of Scripture. I have argued that the case is exactly opposite what Rice and his co-authors maintain: that it is their new perspective, and not the historical perspective, that “does not reflect faithfully the spirit of the biblical message, in spite of the fact that it appeals to various biblical statements” and that “[t]he broad sweep of biblical testimony”—as well as its details—“points to quite a different understanding of the divine reality.” The mere fact, then, that Rice and his colleagues find some of Scripture’s claims to be “existentially repugnant” is not reason enough to reject those claims, especially since Scripture itself tells us that it is only through the secret work of God’s Spirit in our hearts that we are ever moved to accept the Gospel for what it actually is (1 Cor. 1:18-2:16). MR

Dr. Talbot, a member of the Council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, is associate professor of philosophy at Wheaton College.

MODERN REFORMATION

Neither Individualism Nor Statism: KUYPER ON CHRISTIAN CONCERN FOR LABORERS W. ROBERT GODFREY

Abraham Kuyper (1837-1921) was one of the most remarkable Christian thinkers of the modern era. Though reared in the home of a Dutch Reformed minister, he did not experience a conversion to orthodox Calvinism until he was a minister himself. His work and thought then consciously flowed out of that or thodox commitment. Yet his thinking was much broader than theology and the church. Kuyper

deliberately related Calvinism to the modern world, showing great creativity and sympathy for the distinctive character of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

Most notably, Kuyper’s interests extended beyond the church to politics. He made the Anti-Revolutionary Party the Netherlands’ first genuinely mass political party. He served in parliament and also as prime minister. The initial focus of Calvinist politics was freedom for Christian parents to create Christian schools MAY/JUNE 1999

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for their children. That great issue helped Kuyper think through fundamental matters of the relation of Christian faith to modern society. In addition to his political activity, he founded (and for many years edited) a daily newspaper. He also helped begin the Free University in Amsterdam as a Christian university free from state control.

By 1891 Kuyper gave more specific attention to the issues of workers and their needs in the modern world.

He recognized the new problems facing workers in the nineteenth century and the growing attractions of socialism for many. He helped to organize a Christian Social Congress and spoke to its first meeting on November 9, 1891, on the subject, “The Social Question and the Christian Religion.” This remarkable address displays Kuyper’s vision for labor and the Christian calling to work. Tracing Kuyper’s reflections in this historic address can stimulate us to think more carefully about work and calling in our time.

Kuyper began by acknowledging that he and other Christians had been neglectful in facing the social question of his day: “So our own debut [on this social question] does not come too early, but too late, and we lag behind others when we could have preceded.”1 He noted that the great Dutch Reformed poet Willem Bilderdijk as early as 1825 had seen the social problem developing and had written of the lower classes: You sigh and languish in poverty and decay While luxury defiantly feasts on the fruit of your own hands2 Kuyper described the present situation—labeling it utterly untenable3—in these terms: “And so in all of Europe a well-to-do bourgeoisie r ules over an impoverished working class, which must steadily increase the wealth of the ruling class, and which is doomed, when it can be of no more use, to sink into the morass of the proletariat.”4 Kuyper acknowledged that there had been efforts to correct this situation. Liberalism tried: “But what did it offer them? Reading, writing and arithmetic! And what did it take away from them? Faith, the courage to live, moral dynamic. And what did it withhold from them? Trade schools and a share in capital.”5 He noted too that “Socialism is in the air”6 as a suggested solution to the social tensions. But while recognizing great varieties of socialism, Kuyper concluded that each form of socialism was too radical. The socialist “considers himself justified in overthrowing everything which stands, and does not shrink from the giant’s task of building anew on the vacant plot.”7 For Kuyper the secular approaches of the nineteenth century must be rejected and a genuinely Christian 22

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solution found. To find such a solution, the reality of the problem must be acknowledged. The first step was to recognize that at all times both rich and poor must turn to God: Jesus flattered no one, neither rich nor poor, but put both in their place. Exactly on this account Jesus occupies so eminent a position. With our men of influence you generally find either scorn for the poor and flattery of the rich, or abuse for the rich and flattery for the poor. This is in conflict with the Christian religion. Both must be convicted of their sin. But this fact remains: that Scripture, when it corrects the poor, does so much more tenderly and gently; and in contrast, when it calls the rich to account, uses much harsher words. And yet our poor also are falling away from their faith, if they build their hopes on all kinds of help from the state, and not singly on their Father who is in Heaven.8 The universal need of rich and poor took a special form in the nineteenth century, however. Kuyper realized that the Industrial Revolution had complicated the plight of the poor: “I do not deny that the application of steam to machinery, the more rapid transportation between countries and the rapid increase in population contributed to the worsening of social relations.”9 But he also insisted that the philosophy of the French Revolution was equally to blame. Its secularism, materialism, and individualism led it “first, to represent possession of money as the highest good, and second, in the struggle for money, to set every man against every other.”10 How should Christians respond to the universal problem of the poor and the particular problems they faced in the nineteenth century? First, they must reassert unequivocally the absolute sovereignty of God in this area of life.

Of primary significance is the problem of the majesty of our God, for, though we will come presently to concrete measures, we must first take up the general ideas which lend form and color to all our conception of life… . Therefore the first article of any social program which will bring salvation must remain: “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.”… [whoever] says I believe in God thereby also acknowledges that there is an ordering of nature

by God, and an ordinance of God over our conscience; a higher will, to which we as creatures have to submit ourselves.11

MODERN REFORMATION

Christians, then, have not only a heavenly and spiritual calling, but also a calling to what later Calvinists called “the cultural mandate”: “human art acts on every area of nature; not to destroy the life of nature, much less, mechanically to juxtapose another structure, but rather to unlock the power which lies concealed in nature; or, again, to regulate the wild power which springs from it.

God so wills it. While yet in paradise man received the order to ‘preserve and cultivate’ the material world.”12 Jesus also taught this responsibility: “the ‘blessedness’ which He brought to humanity had a promise ‘not alone for the future but also for the present life.’ (I Timothy 4:8); though always so that man’s eternal welfare remained primary, so that soul and body might not be corrupted in hell.”13 Sin has greatly complicated this cultural task and set man against man. As sinners “men regarded humanity apart from its eternal destiny, did not honor it as created in the image of God, and did not reckon with the majesty of the Lord, who alone is able to hold in check, through His grace, a race sunk in sin.”14 The solution Kuyper outlines must be found in overcoming individualism through a “God-willed community, a living, human organism.”15 He saw the conflict between real community and radical individualism as the great divide in the social thought of his day: “…the Christian religion sought personal human dignity in the social relations of an organically associated society—the French Revolution destroyed the organic tissue, broke these social bonds, and finally, in its work of atomistic trifling, had nothing left but the monotonous selfseeking individual, asserting his own self-sufficiency.”16 Kuyper called the diaconate of the Christian church to show the reality of this Christian commitment to community most clearly. Jesus “through an organized ministry of charity, which in the name of the Lord, as being the single owner of all goods, demanded the community of goods to this extent, that in the circle of believers no man or woman was to be permitted to suffer want or to be without the necessary apparel.”17 While calling for the state to act for the poor in assuring justice and an end to oppression, Kuyper recognized a special responsibility for the Church: “Never forget that state

relief for the poor remains always a blot on the honor of your Savior. So, have sympathy for the suffering of the oppressed and suppressed. In nothing so strongly as in this holy suffering together can you be ‘followers of God as beloved children.’ In that holy dynamic of pity lurks the whole secret of that heavenly power which you as Christians can exercise.”18 For society generally, Christians must insist that all property is given to members of society so that they may be stewards for God. Such stewards will recognize that progress in social conditions can only come gradually in light of the distinctive history and character of a society. “…[o]ur calling as Christians, with the apostolic word on our lips, [is] to warn against all violation of authority, bravely oppose every deed of violence or lawlessness, and make resound loudly and clearly the demand that the thread of our historic growth be altered only through gradual change and in a lawful way.”19 Kuyper had a vision of the role that the state should play in helping workers: [T]he government should help labor obtain justice, and also for labor there must be created the possibility of independently organizing and defending rights. And as regards the other type of state intervention, which consists of the distribution of money, not of justice, under whatever form and pretext, it is certain that such intervention is not excluded in Israel’s lawgiving, but it is there held to a minimum. Therefore I say that, unless you would enervate the position of the laboring class and destroy its natural MAY/JUNE 1999

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dynamic, always limit the material assistance of the state to an absolute minimum.20 Kuyper, always a master rhetorician as well as fine thinker, summarized his concerns for labor in these terms: The worker must be able to live as one created in the image of God. He must be able to fulfill his calling as man and as father. The worker has a soul to lose, and so he, as well as you, must be able to serve his God. Hence a Sabbath is given to him; especially to him, whose work tends to pull him down to a material level. And God created also this worker as a frail creature; that is, as one whose strength can be broken through sickness and accident, and decreases through age; and he must also, when he can no longer toil in the sweat of his brow, be able to eat the bread of the labor of his days of vigor. So speaks God in His Word; and your worker reads that too; he must and may read it; and when he reads it, does not God’s Word itself give him the right—true, not to grumble, much less to rebel, but at any rate—to complain and indict a social arrangement which makes him so painfully go without that which the ordinance of a divine mercy had destined for him? And although this suffering does not oppress most of us personally, must it not then oppress us for the sake of our brothers? Have we then ever the right to cease from offering, with God’s Word in hand, an annihilating critique of such an unhealthy society? Indeed, have you the right to take your ease as long as this society remains—even though there be state intervention—not again repatterned according to God’s Word? To mistreat the workmen as a “piece of machinery” is and remains a violation of his human dignity.

Even worse, it is a sin going squarely against the sixth commandment, thou shalt not kill, and this includes killing the worker socially.21

Legislation as such will not cure our sick society; the medicine must also reach the heart of rich and poor. Sin is so terrifically powerful that, mocking all your dikes and sluices, your legal regulation, it will ever flood anew the field of human life with the waters of its passion and its egotism… . If this present life is all, then I can understand that a man would desire to enjoy it before he dies, and would find the mystery of suffering wholly insoluble.

And therefore, you who profess our Lord Jesus Christ, it is your duty to place in the foreground, with a gripping earnestness and a soul-penetrating emphasis, on every occasion, for rich and poor alike, the life eternal. Only he who reckons with an eternal life knows the real value of this earthly life.22

Christians, then, have not only a heavenly and spiritual calling, but also a calling to what later Calvinists called “the cultural mandate.”

The remarkable address of Kuyper on the social question as he saw it in 1891 should give American Christians pause more than a century later. We face a society in which the conditions which concerned Kuyper in many ways have come to even sharper expression.

Christians on the right in politics too often seem to feel that unbridled capitalism is inherently good and moral and that there is no role for government in restraining business. Christians on the left are often drawn to some form of a welfare state that drains the will to work.

Kuyper calls us all to reflect more carefully and more deeply. We need to think how our confession of a sovereign God and of his purpose in creation and redemption should inform our understanding of the calling to serve Christ both in our own work and in a truly Christian concern for other workers. MR Dr. Godfrey is president and professor of church history at Westminster Theological Seminary in California and a member of the Council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.

He concluded his reflection by returning to his theme that this life can be understood only in relation to the Gospel and eternal life: 24

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MODERN REFORMATION

EX AUDITU EXAMPLES OF CHRIST-CENTERED SERMONS

BEHOLD THE LAMB OF GOD LUKE 23, JOHN 19 KENNETH F. KORBY Abraham was right. That faithful old man, the “father of believers,” was caught in the deepest anguish of his faith when God struck him on the spear-point of his order to sacrifice his son. Laden with wood on his back, the boy asked, “Father, where is the lamb?” With fire in his tinderbox—and in his own heart—and with the knife in his hand, Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the burnt offering, my son.” Abraham was right. That is, Abraham was faithful.

God provided the Lamb for the burnt-offering.

And so that you and I and the rest of the world might not miss the Lamb or get muddled with the claims of a thousand and one other Messiahs who promote themselves—willing to make us sacrifices to their ideologies and dreams—God took the pains to send John the Baptizer to point to Christ. John, that strange and brave man, was sent for your service. Let him do his divine service for you as you listen with due attention to his speech: “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Follow the direction of John’s bony finger when he points to that burnt-offering sacrifice on the cross.

Contemplate that Lamb on the cross, the sacrifice offered once and for all time for our redemption. The fire of God’s wrath, fanned by his mercy and passionate love to be our God, roasts this Lamb. Stretched out on the cross, this Lamb is God’s embrace of the world of his enemies: his is our peace. Like a magnet drawing filings to itself, this Lamb, when he is lifted up, “draws all men” to himself. Into himself this Lamb draws the poison of our death: his death is ours. When he dies, we all died.

The curse of death is everywhere in the world. It is in us, too. The slavery of death causes us terror in our loneliness, fear in our boredom, anger and grief in our loss. That curse gives us no rest, no Sabbath. It hunts us down, drags us out of hiding, and snatches us away from all we love. Death—and its curse—dog our days mercilessly and mock our deceits of culture, religion, and civilization to escape them.

And yet Israel lived safely in its houses when death passed over the land. Hiding behind the blood of the Lamb, they could eat, talk to each other, and rise up to

walk to the land promised to them. So you too hide yourselves in these sweet and glorious wounds of Christ.

Look on the Lamb of God and consider: •

On the Head of the Lamb are the wounds that heal your minds in the heavenly joy of repentance. Learn to think with a new mind about God and yourself by contemplating the wounds of his head.

•

In those hands are the wounds that heal the works of your hands, making them fruitful again in the service of God and your fellows.

•

In those dear feet are the wounds that heal your straying feet so that you may walk with your Lord on the way of your Lord.

•

On that back are the wounds of stripes that heal all your wounds of self-inflicted flagellation or the blows you receive from the hostility of your fellow victims. Your backs are healed to stoop down and pick up on your shoulders the lost and the straying and the bruised among your fellows.

•

And from the side of the Lamb, where the spear of our curiosity about death, where the hatred and violence of our hearts, are rammed deeply into his heart, there flows the mystery of the love of God. There flows the holy Church, the mystery of the unity with God as she is bound together in cleansing and forgiving. Water from his death cleanses you in the baptismal washing and cools down the feverish conscience. Blood fills the chalice you drink that your mortal and condemned body, riddled with disorder, might be ordered sweetly again with God in the forgiveness of sins that is lively and salvific.

In those wounds you may hide safely from the curse and sin and death. From those wounds flows to you the life that is full of blessing, fidelity, and vitality.

“Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”

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“Father, Forgive Them” And now, look at those parched, chapped lips. No chap-stick of mortals can heal or soothe them, for in his mouth he suffers the cost of the scorn, the lies, and the blasphemous abuse of his Name. The healing comes rather from his mouth. He utters through those cracked lips the words that heal you—at cost to himself. He is the Author of those gracious words. Therefore, those words have authority—authority to heal you in and with and through those words. He heals not himself but you.

His first and last words are addressed to his Father and ours. First: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” He does not scorn us in contempt for our ignorance and willfulness. He does not wither us with words of disgust and revulsion. He does not drive back into our souls the resentment, the bitter hatred we pour out on him. He embraces it all—and us—to himself, into his body to carry it all to the grave and bury it. The lethal, murderous hatchet is buried. It sinks deeply into his soul and by him the sin is extracted from our souls. We are delivered.

In his body—the body of Mary, of the Tree, of the Table—he carries the sin. But out of that body’s mouth he speaks the word of the forgiveness of sins, the word which creates his body, the Church. And by that word he fills the Church chock-full of forgiveness of sins.

Into that body, the Church, created by his word of the forgiveness of sins, you have been placed for the daily and generous forgiveness of sin so that you may as freely forgive as you have been forgiven. As the forgiveness springs from the heart of God, you can freely and heartily forgive those who sin against you.

His first word opens the door to life forever. That word, hot with the fire and passion of God, welds us to the faithfulness of the Speaker, creating the faith that embraces him. That union of his mercy and our trust heals us forever in the eternal redemption.

“Father, Into Thy Hands” And his last word, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit,” finishes what he began. At the end of his life and work he prays the prayer of his boyhood, the prayer he learned from the lips and laps of his parents. It was his “Now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep” prayer. Having gathered us together in himself he lifts us up into the Father’s hands as he returns whence he came. With a loud voice he roars into our confused ears and minds what our end is. These words tell us where we are going.

He carries us with himself. As he offers himself on the cross, he takes us along that where he is we may be also.

Without ceasing day and night, he who alone can condemn you rather prays for you.

Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and hear the words of his prayer. His first 26

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word is your beginning, your origin, your creation anew in righteousness. His last word is the way you are finished out in perfection. It is the word of your destiny, the word that teaches you to die well, to end your life where it has begun: in him with the Father.

Hold that cross before your closing eyes. By faith enfold in your heart this One who has enfolded you in his.

Who dies thus dies well.

“Today, You Shall Be with Me in Paradise” In between the first and the last word of Jesus, those gracious lips of the suffering Lamb nurture our life for living. To the thief on his right Jesus speaks the word that gives courage to suffer with patience and with hope the rewards we receive for our wrongdoing. This is no superficial smile, condescendingly turned to look at a wasted life, botched opportunities, and broken hearts.

Here is no look of regret at a life that is full of plain evil and harm unleashed on others. Here is no sentimental muttering about the evil of “the system” as the painful, shameful verdict falls on the perpetrator of evil. Here is the deep and terrible truth about us who are the proper targets of God’s infallible detection system.

But the deep and terrible truth is caught up in a deeper truth and the terrible good. “Remember me, Lord,” is the cry of faith in the midst of pain—pain justly deserved and suffered. And we, with nothing else than death on our hands, are taught by our Lord’s words how to pray and how to confess the truth. From our cross we learn to pray to him on his cross: “Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Jesus, our Priest, says the Amen: “Truly (Amen), today you shall be with me in paradise.” For his shame there is the gracious look, the beauteous word that covers the thief with glory. For despair and anger there is the lifegiving promise. For the empty sorrow of regrets there is the vivifying hope, the root of courage.

Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world that you may be filled with patience, courage, and hope.

“I Thirst” Do not trick yourself, or deceive yourself, or deprive yourself of the benefits of this Lamb by imagining that his pain and sorrow were somehow not real, as if God’s only-begotten Son would not feel the brute pain as you would. His is real pain—as real as his real death. He hurt. He died. And for hours, he had been mocked and scorned. He was the Victim of coarse injustice.

Physically he had been knocked around, whipped, and slapped. Now he is thirsty: plain, burning, parching, painful thirst. Indeed, he thirsts for your salvation, too.

We heard him say in last night’s Gospel (Luke 22) how he longed and thirsted to eat this Passover meal (the MODERN REFORMATION

Lord’s Supper) with his disciples. But his thirst is also plain thirst. Don’t by-pass this plain pain. The recollection of it will sustain you at times when you are in plain pain. Remember his thirst so that you may know the thirst for the Holy Supper when you are in pain and when the help offered to you seems as cynical and manipulative as the vinegar he received when he wanted a drink of cool water. Recall his pain with yours so that you may also learn to have pity on those of your fellows who are hungry and thirst. In them, Christ, incognito, still cries out, “I thirst”; he still waits for you to care for him in his pain with something other than vinegar.

Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world so that in your pain you may have the companionship of him who feeds you, and the comfort of him who knows the real and inescapable pain.

“Woman, Behold Your Son” However, the pain goes deeper than the body.

Loneliness and “lostness,” division and separation, loss and rejection, conflict within the circle of family, friends, and loved ones are aches of the heart and soul, too. Mary was a Jewish mother. Can you imagine the confusion that could beset the mind of this pious and God-fearing mother when her son had been tried, deemed worthy of death by God’s law as a blasphemer, despised, and now killed on this instrument of damnation and curse? Her son had been generous and faithful, good and true. He had borne the stamp of divine pleasure in his conception, birth, and baptism. And now she watches this scene.

What would you women think if this were your son?

Would that now be the cause of confusion compounded?

Would you not wonder: “What on earth is God doing?”

And then think of John, Jesus’ special friend. What do you do when you stand by and see a friend abused?

How desolate John and Mary must have been. They are impotent sufferers, and silent. But in their confusion, grieved by the loss of their love, they receive the look of tender love from his eyes. With the gracious look of the God who sets the solitary in families, who wraps in the care of his arms those devastated by death, he says, “Woman, see your son; son, your mother.” The separation in his death is the death to our separation: he gives us to each other as mother and son in the company of the holy Church.

A pledge of peace from God I see When thy pure eyes are turned to me To show me thy good pleasure.

Jesus, thy spirit and thy word, Thy body and thy blood, afford My soul its dearest treasure.

Keep me Kindly In thy favor, O my Savior!

Thou wilt cheer me; Thy word calls me to draw near thee.

— “How lovely shines the Morning Star” (stanza 4) Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world and from his gracious look and gracious words, receive “your mother” and “your son” in your family and in your church.

He Was Forsaken Look at him, too, when he must go alone, even though our closest attention to him cannot enter his terrible God-forsakenness. The depth of the abyss of hell and damnation, the wretched loss of God himself, is beyond our knowledge and experience. He alone goes to that far country. He has come from the secret heart of God. Now he opens up that secret.

Angels sang at his birth. Angels came to serve him in the wilder ness of temptation. Angels came to comfor t him in his Gethsemanic sweat. But now there are no angels.

Ten thousand times ten thousand of powerful and shining spirits, faces ablaze with indignation, swords drawn and swinging, mounted on steeds, chomping at the bit, and pawing the sky for release, would have swooped to work a rescue that would have made the most powerful cavalry charge seem like a twitch of the nose. But God looks down on this Man of Sorrows, Grief, and Death, and says to the angels who love to do his will: “Stand back. Do not raise a finger to help. Verily, do not raise an eyelash.”

And God himself turned away.

The burden is the burden of the Lamb alone.

We are that terrible and lonely burden. He is the God who comes to us in our loneliness, forsakenness, and curse. Lost in the “non-place” of our aloneness, he comes to be our place. We cannot go to him. He comes to us. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins

In those dear feet are the

wounds that heal your straying feet so that you may walk with your Lord.

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of the world. Caught in the enchantment of our selflove, bound in the enslavement of our own sin, strapped down by the Law’s verdict of condemnation, and writing in our shameful servitude, this Lamb comes to us. Well do we sing, “Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord! Hosanna—please save us.” Enough of this religious prattle that speaks of our doing this and deciding that. First he comes to us. He helps us, not by stepping on us, and not by shouting out commands for self-improvement at us, but by coming, by stooping down even under us to lift us up on his neck. He humbled himself and became obedient unto death—even death by the cross. We are his burden. “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”

He isn’t finished. You are not yet finished. But the work is finished: redemption is perfected and completed for you. The price has been paid, in full. Redemption by the Lamb has no missing pieces that you must fill in.

It is perfected in order to perfect you. By his cross he has brought joy to the whole earth: he is out to perfect you in that joy. He who won the prize and paid the cost through suffering and death speaks the word of the perfected redemption to you so that you may know what you will be like when he is finished with you.

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Adore him. Adore his cross. In him on that cross the perfection of heaven, with pure joy, is given to you. He was put to death that he might vivify his people.

Merciful Jesus, Lamb of God, look on us that we may cling to you, and in your mercy have our peace forever.

Dr. Korby, now retired, spent more than twenty years on the theological faculty of Valparaiso University and later pastored Chatham Fields Lutheran Church in Chicago. This sermon was originally preached at a Good Friday service at Valparaiso’s Chapel of the Resurrection.

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The Heart of an Executive: Lessons on Leadership from the Life of King David

R i c h a r d D. P h i l l i p s

The Heart of an Executive chronicles the career of David, one of the best-known figures in the Bible, from his humble origins as a shepherd boy to the slaying of Goliath, to his triumphant crowning success as the king of Israel. David's story is that of a career executive, and in it Richard D. Phillips sees reflected the trials and triumphs that mark our own lives in today's business world. While following his career, the reader witnesses the fashioning of a leader, as David's heart is shaped by his faith in God, his love for his people, and his passion for real and lasting achievement. The lessons in The Heart of an Executive are clear, biblically based, and will challenge and equip men and women to raise their aspirations and heighten the impact of their leadership.

B-PHIL-1 $21.00 To order call (800) 956-2644.

MODERN REFORMATION

To Join or Not to Join?

THE CALLING OF CHURCH MEMBERSHIP PRESTON GRAHAM In 1568, a prominent Heidelberg physician named Erastus wrote on the subject of the church, setting off a controversy that rages even to this day.

The dispute centered on the various responsibilities of the church and the state, especially regarding the decision of who could and could not partake of the Lord’s Supper. Simply put, Erastian theory denied the authority of Christ’s office-bearers in the visible church. He advocated taking the power of the keys (Matt.

16:19) from these ecclesiastical officers and giving it to the civil magistrates. The two most famous documents refuting the Erastian position were the 1578 Scottish Second Book of Discipline and the famous One Hundred and Eleven Propositions, which was placed by George Gillespie before the Westminster General Assembly of 1647.

Accordingly, “the great debate was over the proposition, Jesus Christ as King and Head of his church, hath appointed a government in the hands of church officers, distinct from the civil government.”1 At stake was the vocation of church work itself under a jurisdiction distinct from state-related work.

The Lord’s Table represented the earthly expression of the Church’s heavenly mandate to exercise authority over matters pertaining to Christ as Redeemer (special grace), distinguished from the state’s jurisdiction to exercise authority over matters pertaining to God as Creator and Sustainer (common g race). If Erastianism had

prevailed, the Church as a unique society with her own officers and particular spiritual mission would have ceased to exist. Whatever concerned the state would concer n the Church, and discipleship would be domesticated under the state’s cultural agenda. To put it simply, the vocation of church membership as a “calling” from God (including the work that comes with it), as distinguished from a “calling” in the civil sphere, would have become a moot point. The Church as a divinely charted society would have been subsumed under the state, and there would not have been any “kingdom not of this world.”

Happily, Erastianism was solidly rejected at Westminster when it affirmed the proposition that the “Lord Jesus, as King and Head of his Church, hath therein appointed a government in the hand of church officers, distinct from the civil magistrate” (WCF, 30.1).

The Assembly further stated that outside of the visible Church, “there is no ordinary possibility of salvation” (WCF, 25.2).

A Modern Version of Erastianism?

But what does this 300-year-old statement (written under a civil monarchy) have to do with us now under a MAY/JUNE 1999

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civil democracy in America? For our American system, via the separation of church and state, prevents civil magistrates from controlling church cour ts and admission to the Lord’s Table.

Before concluding that Erastianism is impossible today because we do not have a king, and no state agency explicitly aims to govern the church, we should consider this proposition: Erastianism is less about who governs in the place of church officers—and more about the fact that the keys are taken from those appointed by Christ.

Might there be a new “magistrate,” one altogether different from an intruding congress or king—a different type of ruler, which negates the church’s unique charter?

Nathan Hatch, in his masterful description of American religion since the revolution entitled The Democratization of American Religion, explains that the “magistrate” within our civil democracy ceased to be the monarch and became the “sovereign audience.”2 Today, our democratized voluntarism appoints the private individual as the acting magistrate over the Lord’s Table specifically, and over the sphere of redemption generally.

In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Erastian theory, the state magistrates assumed the power of the keys in the Church—which at the very least determined a person’s visible relationship to Christ as represented in his communion table. But in today’s democratized political sociology, the individual assumes the power of the keys.

Popular sovereignty has replaced state sovereignty. For example, don’t many sincere Christians on any given Sunday admit or demit themselves to Christ’s heavenly meal merely by self-examination? And if Gillespie’s reasoning is applied to the current context, Christ’s mediatorial authority as regulated and mediated through church officers has been democratized within the individualized self. This is the new Erastian theory.

At issue is whether redeemed people are called to submit themselves to the jurisdiction of a church. Are all Christians required to be members of the visible church as a matter of Christian discipleship? In short, is there a vocation of church membership for the Christian, with a calling to participate in its work? It really comes down to whether or not we believe that God has established a visible church!

As Stuar t Robinson, a nineteenth-century Presbyterian pastor, noted: “[Can] a theology without a church any more than a church without a theology fulfill all the conditions of a pure Gospel? Was Jesus Christ merely a teacher, or also a legislator and the founder not only of a school but also a commonwealth?”3 How we answer these questions will profoundly impact our idea of calling and vocation in life. Is our “calling” to one sphere of work in the civil sphere, or to two spheres of work including the “spiritual” or “churchly” sphere?4 First, to help us discern the Erastian principle in modern life, consider these three common scenarios.

Scenario One: No Time for Church A person has worked hard all week at his or her “vocation” when Sunday comes around. What does a person who believes in a “one-sphere conception of vocation” think? Put another way: if we believe that the paid employment of Monday through Friday is our only vocation, what do we think about Sundays? Perhaps the need to recuperate is primary; therefore, if the person attends church at all, it should consume the least amount of energy and time possible. Or maybe the person brings “job”related ambitions to church, and looks for that much desired “inspiration” in order to go back to work on Monday. Or perhaps he or she hopes for a kind of “divine” workshop on how to be more successful at the job.

Under these ambitions, is there a separation of “church and state”—or better, “civil and spiritual”? Hasn’t the spiritual simply been domesticated under the civil?

In other words, under a “one-sphere conception of vocation,” the person is not thinking, “How might I offer myself a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God which is my spiritual service of worship?” (Rom. 12:1). Nor, “how might the grace of God that has appeared in Christ now instruct me as to how I might ‘deny ungodliness and worldly desires … in the present age?’” (Tit. 2:12). The person with an Erastian concept of vocation soon grows uneasy if the sermon requires a zealous mind directed at God and his interests rather than at themselves (Rom. 12:2). Perhaps the person even resents the request to help set up for worship or teach Sunday school class, protesting, “Haven’t I worked

Influenced by the modern notion of individualism, a person’s faith as nurtured from childhood in a Christian home in cooperation with the faithful ministry of a local church is considered inauthentic.

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MODERN REFORMATION

hard already throughout the week?” The bottom line for this person is: “My vocation and calling doesn’t include a ‘churchly’ sphere of work.” Compare this mindset with Paul’s exhortation concerning the vocation of churchrelated work, “Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them.” (Rom. 12:6).

Under Erastian theory, “work” is synonymous with “career” or “job” in the civil sphere. Church work, the kind that every Christian has been called to participate in with respect to the Gospel’s unique “commonwealth,” is lost under the power of civil or state-related work. We might just as well rename this new Erastianism careerism.

“Careerism” is defined by Wheaton professor Leland Ryken as “an attitude, a life orientation in which a person views career as the primary and most important aim of life,” such that “work is viewed so as to establish one’s self worth and becomes the controlling center of one’s life and is the last in a series of priorities to go.”5 A churchly sphere of “work” is at best downplayed—possibly even denied—under this Erastian conception of life.

Scenario Two: The Individual Versus the Church A person is asked to tell how he or she came to embrace Christ as Redeemer. Sheepishly, the person begins to apologize that his or her “story” doesn’t compare to the standard dramatic, individualistic testimonies. Our embarrassed Christian can’t offer the familiar spiritualized “I pulled myself up by the bootstraps” narrative. Rather, the believer can only offer the rather boring (so it seems) story of how faithful parents together with a faithful church “parented” him or her to Christ with no major bumps along the way. This Christian, therefore, declines the invitation to tell of God’s faithfulness through his/her church and family with words something like, “There’s nothing really to tell about.”

Here again, we see an indication of the Erastian conception of the church. It is as if we believe that discipleship and conversion are more authentic when less influenced by the church! Sociologist Robert Bellah has noted that American individualism results in a strange view of religious institutions.

For Americans, the traditional relationship between the individual and the religious community is to some degree reversed. On the basis of our interviews, we are not surprised to learn that a 1978 Gallup poll found that 80 percent of Americans agreed that an individual should arrive at his or her own religious beliefs independent of any church or synagogue. From the traditional point of view, this is a strange statement—it is precisely within the church or synagogue that one comes to one’s religious beliefs—but to many Americans, it is the Gallup finding that is normal.6

We see in Bellah’s summation what some have described as one of the most prominent legacies of modernity—a legacy that has been fairly disdainful of all “social parenting” through institutions of any kind, religious institutions proving no exception.7 Influenced by the modern notion of individualism, a person’s faith as nurtured from childhood in a Christian home in cooperation with the faithful ministry of a local church is considered inauthentic. Just compare such nurture with the testimonies so often celebrated at Christian conferences. But how does this contrast with the biblical pattern of passing down the faith from generation to generation—a pattern that was celebrated by Paul with respect to Timothy? (2 Tim. 1:5). Tradition itself in the nurture of faith is discounted under the Erastian theory of the church. Yet Paul says, “brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle” (2 Thes. 2:15).

And so we see again the Erastian conception of the church as subsumed under the civil sphere and “sovereign audience sociology.” Here, the “spiritual” has been domesticated under a “civil” sphere of individualism: the work of the church is now viewed as secondary (at best) to the work of private individuals.

The spiritual keys, if managed by a church, are viewed with suspicion in comparison to the spiritual keys that reside in every human heart.

Scenario Three: The Non-Churchly Evangelistic Agency A Christian or perhaps some Christian foundation is approached for the purpose of financially supporting evangelism in the world. The peculiar demographic being targeted begins to excite the potential donor. But when the potential donor discovers that the evangelist’s strategy entails planting a church under the jurisdiction of a denomination, the conversation turns cold. Why? Because many believe that evangelism is better accomplished when not encumbered by all the “organizational stuff ” related to creating a new and visible society complete with confessional constitution, order of worship, and form of church government.

Evangelism, in short, is thought of most highly when undertaken by an itinerant speaker, governed by a nonchurchly agency. Why? Because the person or agency is not thinking about a Gospel defined by the saving presence of God being mediated through sacramental worship, authorized confessions, and pastoral government. Rather the person or agency acting under this Erastian conception of the church views the Gospel as merely a rational message that changes a person’s “world-and-life-view,” or perhaps merely an experience that results in a decision to accept Christ. Not that the Gospel doesn’t include some aspect of these things. But MAY/JUNE 1999

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the messy stuff of forming a new and definable “household of God” (complete with all the pastoral issues associated with people in every stage of life) is viewed as an encumbrance at best. Again, discipleship is seen as an individual matter outside of the communal context defined and regulated by God himself as a means of grace.

But how does this third scenario measure up to the great evangelist Paul and especially the record of evangelism recorded in Acts? Did Paul consider his work completed when converts were made? Not at all!

Rather he made it his business to finish the task by appointing elders in the places where he had seen a harvest (Acts 14:23). The ultimate object of his labors was new churches. And while we clearly see “preaching” as one of the means used by the apostles in Acts (2:41, 47, 4:4, 5:14, 6:7, 8:4-7), we come to the striking observation that “then the churches throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and were edified” (Acts 9:31). In other words, we see that the apostles’ church planting was always co-extensive with preaching.

Numerous churches were the result of the apostle Paul’s “evangelism.” And when he instructed his young evangelist protégé Timothy with the “pattern of sound words,” these words included such instructions as qualifications for church officers (1 Tim. 3:1-13) and worship (1 Tim. 2:1-15). Moreover, these instructions were not merely Paul’s personal preferences; rather, they were how one “ought” to “conduct oneself in the household of God,” described then as the “church of the living God,” even “the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:14-15).

The Necessity of the Church The Erastianism of the “sovereign audience” is expressed in modern times wherever the divinely chartered church is ignored. Too often the work of the church acting in its particular, local, and visible manifestations is viewed as nonessential—despite the protest of Scripture. We therefore urgently need to reassert the biblical truth that the church is an essential element of the Gospel, and that by implication, the vocation of church membership is essential to Christian discipleship.8 First, that the Church is an essential element of the Gospel can be demonstrated in Scripture several different ways.

We can, for instance, show that the Church was divinely established by Christ (Matt. 16:15-19). The Church on earth included a basic form of government, worship, and confessional standard after the foundation laid by the apostles (Eph. 2:19-20). Therefore, what Christ has organized ought to be considered “essential” with respect to the Gospel. This would be the argument from Divine institution. A second line of thought could be described as Christology applied. Christ’s work for our 32

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salvation can be summarized under the three offices of prophet, priest, and king (see Heb. 1:1-2, 10:11-18, and 1 Cor. 15:24-25 respectively). These three offices can also be derived from the foreshadowing offices in the Old Testament. These offices (or ministries) constitute the defining marks of the church. The Church’s ministry in its prophetic, priestly, and kingly aspects corresponds to the charge of confessional preaching, sacramental worship, and pastoral government (see Rom. 10:14 and Titus 1:5-9, 1 Cor. 10:16ff, and 1 Pet. 5:2ff and Acts 20:28-31 respectively). In other words, the Church is essential to the Gospel since it mediates the essential ministry of Christ to us in this present age.

A third line of argument is particularly interesting given post-modern disenchantment with what some have described as the “vinyl religion” of the Church. As one observer notes, “just as shopping malls simulate the great outdoors … danger [is simulated] with amusement park rides, friends or enemies with talk-radio hosts… [so] we simulate real life … and end up mistaking what is real for what is only artificial.”9 Like the leaves on Disney World’s Swiss Family Robinson Tree House, so are the various vinyl replications that try to fabricate life as we wish it to be.10 Marva Dawn observes this shallow world in the Church without a Gospel authenticated by a real and divine presence. Such a situation begs for a Gospel more defined by saving presence than merely efficiently run programs or well-crafted media and entertaining messages. Nothing short of a Gospel that mediates a regulated and divinely appointed presence will sufficiently satisfy. I am tempted at this point to reclaim the cliché “full Gospel”—as developed in Ephesians where “Christ fills all in all.” And clearly what is not here in mind is the individual filling by an individualized Holy Spirit, but rather that kind of filling that is explicitly stated in the passage, “for the church which is his body…” (Eph. 1:22, see also Eph. 2:19-22 and then Eph. 4:10ff). This Church is made visible in its sacramental worship, confession and pastoral oversight (see 1 Tim. 1-3).

Another way to demonstrate the necessity of the Church is by tracing redemptive-history. Ever since Adam and his posterity were excommunicated from “before the face of God” (Gen. 3:8), until the elect are reunited back into God’s immediate presence (Rev. 21:34, using language from Lev. 26:9ff), God has in a provisional way mediated his saving presence through divinely appointed sacramental rituals, governments, and confessions. King David certainly understood the omnipresence of God in the world, yet he still longed for that saving presence which was mediated through the ordinances and worship of the Old Covenant (Ps. 84:2).

Orthodoxy in the Old Testament era was described in ter ms like “dwelling place,” “living God,” “tabernacle”—even as covenants were initiated and MODERN REFORMATION

sealed through rites whereby God manifested his presence to his people.11 The New Covenant, although under new apostolic forms, proves no exception as promised by Christ in Matthew 28:18-20, “I am with you until the end of the age.” For in the words of Calvin about the Lord’s Table, “his word cannot lie or deceive us: Take, eat, drink: this is my body which is given for you; this is my blood which is shed for forgiveness of sins… .”12 The Church is essential to the Gospel insofar as the Gospel in the present age is made “full” when mediated through the visible Church.

The Obligation of Church Membership It only follows therefore that the “vocation of church membership” is, morally speaking, an involuntary calling for the Christian. On the most basic level, every Christian is called formally to join a church—if only from the simple observation that Christians are commanded by Christ to participate in things which would be impossible apart from formal relation to the visible Church. One could immediately turn to passages that command “shepherds” and church officers to “watch over the flock of God that is in your charge” (Heb. 13:7, Acts 20:28, and 1 Pet. 5:1-3). But how could this happen if the conscientious shepherd was unable to “define” those within his jurisdiction? This is church membership! We have seen already how participation in the Lord’s Supper itself comes by admission to the Table by the those acting on behalf of the Church. For how could the Church, acting through its apostolic government, be authorized in Scripture to excommunicate (demit) someone from the Lord’s Table (1 Cor. 5) if it doesn’t have the power to admit the person to the Table? Therefore, while each person should examine himself or herself with respect to their participation in the Lord’s Supper, this is not a private self-examination as some would suppose, but one done in the context of oversight by those authorized in Scripture.

But church membership is not merely having one’s name on a church role, or even being admitted to the Lord’s Table. Rather it is a vocation of “work” insofar as there is a “churchly” kind of work that needs to be done by every member of the body, that when combined with the other members is “essential” to the Gospel. A twosphere mandate to vocation (one that is civil/cultural and one that is spiritual/cultic) can be further demonstrated from the creation account itself. Old Testament theologian Meredith Kline notes, “[As] a gardenparadise it would occupy humanity with the royal-cultural labor of cultivating its bounty and beauty. As a sanctuary of God it presented humanity with the cultic vocation of priestly guardianship.”13 This I take to be Paul’s point concerning our citizenship in the church (Rom. 12), contrasted with the duties of citizens of the state

(Rom. 13). Paul’s point is not that all people are called to a career in church work. Rather, all people are called to some vocation in the church insofar as they are Christians who ought not to think “more highly of himself than he ought to think” but rather in accord to God’s “allotment to each a measure of faith” (12:3).

In summary, the Erastian conception of the church today subsumes the church sphere of work under the state sphere, thereby reducing “calling” to merely civil vocations. Subtly then, the state or civil sphere now in the hands of the “sovereign audience” is charged with mediating both the grace of God as Creator and the grace of God as Redeemer. Are we then advocating a return to a pre-Reformation concept of vocation? In no way! Both the medieval doctrine and the Erastian doctrine of vocation are incorrect, for both are “onesphere” conceptions. The medieval period allowed church work to swallow the civil sphere; today Erastianism allows the civil sphere to swallow the spiritual sphere.

This article does not aim to swing the pendulum back to the medieval conception of vocation, for the Reformation did us a good service when it “reformed” the doctrine of vocation and calling so as to include the civil sphere for the common good. Rather, the point here has been to reaffirm the Reformation’s “two-sphere conception” of work. Every Christian wears two vocational hats: churchman/churchwoman and citizen.

In the fourth century, Augustine in his Confessions reminded us of the necessity of church membership.

For he introduced us to Victorinus who said to Simplicianus, “not openly, but secretly, and as a friend, ‘know thou that I am a Christian’ to which [Simplicianus] replied, ‘I will not believe it nor will I rank you among the Christian unless I see you in the Church of Christ.’” (VII.ii.4). Against Erastianism, we ought to stand with Simplicianus. MR

Rev. Graham is senior minister of Christ Presbyterian Church (PCA) in New Haven, Connecticut.

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Death, the Final Calling R. C. SPROUL Dare we think of death as a vocation? The author of Ecclesiastes thought so: “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die” (Eccles. 3:1-2). Likewise the author of Hebrews: “And it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgement” (Heb. 9:27).

Notice the language of Scripture. It speaks of death in terms of a “purpose under heaven” and of an “appointment.” Death is a divine appointment. It is part of God’s purpose in our lives. God calls each person to die. He is sovereign over all of life, including the final experience of life.

Usually we limit the idea of vocation to our careers, but the word vocation comes from the Latin word vocare, meaning “to call.” Used in the Christian sense, vocation refers to a divine calling, a summons that comes from God himself. He calls people to teach, to preach, to sing, to make cars, and to change diapers.

There are as many vocations as there are facets to human life. Though many of our vocations are not universal, we all share in the vocation of death. Every one of us is called to die, and that vocation is as much a calling from God as is a “call” to the ministry of Christ. Sometimes the call comes suddenly and without warning. Sometimes it comes with a notification in advance. But it comes to all of us. And it comes from God. I am aware that there are teachers who tell us that God has nothing to do with death. Death is seen 34

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strictly as the fiendish device of the Devil.

All pain, suffering, disease, and tragedy are blamed on the Evil One. God is absolved of any responsibility. This view is designed to make sure that God is absolved of blame for anything that goes wrong in this world.

“God always wills healing,” we are told. If that healing does not happen, then the fault lies with Satan—or with ourselves. Death, they say, is not in the plan of God. It represents a victory for Satan over the realm of God. Such views may bring temporary relief to the afflicted, but they are not true, and they have nothing to do with biblical Christianity. In an effort to absolve God of any blame, such teachings do so at the expense of God’s sovereignty.

Yes, there is a Devil, and he is our archenemy. He will do anything in his power to bring misery into our lives, but he is not sovereign. Satan does not hold the keys of death. When Jesus appeared in a vision to John on the Isle of Patmos, he identified himself with these words: “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death” (Rev. 1:17-18). Jesus holds the keys to death, and Satan cannot snatch those keys out of his hand. The grip of Christ is firm. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him. The angel of death is at his beck and call.

We remember the words of the great spiritual, “God’s Trombones.” Here the scenario is in heaven.

The Lord speaks with the thunderous tones of divine authority. “Call Death!” he declares, “Send Death for sister Caroline, down in Atlanta, Georgia.” The pale MODERN REFORMATION

horse of the Apocalypse is summoned and dispatched

by God alone.

World history has witnessed the emergence of many forms of religious dualism. Dualism affirms the existence of two equal and opposite forces. These forces are variously called Good and Evil, God and Satan, Yin and Yang. The two forces are locked in eternal combat.

Since they are equal as well as opposite, the conflict goes on forever, with neither side ever gaining the upper hand.

The world is doomed to be forever the battleground between these hostile forces. We are the victims of their struggle, the pawns in their eternal chess game.

Dualism is on a collision course with Christianity, which has no stock in such a dualism. Satan may be opposite to God, but he is by no means equal. Satan is a creature; God is the Creator. Satan is potent; God is omnipotent. Satan is knowledgeable and crafty; God is omniscient. Satan is localized in his presence; God is omnipresent. Satan is finite; God is infinite. The list could continue. But it is clear from Scripture that Satan is not an ultimate force in any way.

We are not doomed to an ultimate conflict without hope of resolution. The message of Scripture is victory—full, final, and ultimate victory. It is not our doom that is certain, but Satan’s. His head has been crushed by the heel of Christ, the Alpha and Omega.

Above all suffering and death stands the crucified and risen Lord. He has defeated the ultimate enemy of life, vanquished the power of death. He calls us to die, but that call is a call to obedience to the final transition of life. Because of Christ, death is not final; it is a passage from one world to the next.

God does not always will healing. If he did he would suffer endless frustration from the thwarting of his plans. He did not will the healing of Stephen from the wounds inflicted by stones that were hurled against him. He did not will the healing of Moses, of Joseph, of David, of Paul, of Augustine, of Luther, of Calvin.

These all died in faith.

To be sure, there is ultimate healing that comes through death and after death. Jesus was gloriously healed of the wounds of crucifixion, but only after he died.

Some argue that there is healing in the atonement of Christ, and indeed there is. Jesus bore all of our sins upon the cross. Yet none of us is free of sin in this life. None of us is free of sickness in this life. The healing that is in the cross is real. We participate in its benefits now, in this life. But the fullness of the healing of both sin and disease takes place in heaven. We still must die when it is our appointed time. Certainly God answers prayers and gives healing to our bodies during this life, but these healings are temporary. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, but Lazarus died again. Jesus gave sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf, yet every person Jesus healed eventually

died. They died not because Satan finally won over Jesus, but because Jesus called them to die.

When God issues a call upon us it is always a holy call.

The vocation of dying is a sacred vocation. To understand that is one of the most important lessons a Christian can ever learn. When the summons comes we can respond in many ways. We can be angry, bitter, or terrified. But if we see it as a call from God and not a threat from Satan, we are far more able to cope with its difficulties.

Finishing the Race I will never forget the last words my father spoke to me. We were seated together on the living room sofa.

His body had been ravaged by three strokes. One side of his face was distorted by paralysis. His left eye and left lip drooped uncontrollably. He spoke to me with a heavy slur. His words were difficult to understand, but their meaning was crystal clear: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.”

These were the last words he ever spoke to me. Hours later he suffered his four th and final cerebral hemorrhage. I found him collapsed on the floor comatose, a trickle of blood oozing from the corner of his mouth. Mercifully, he died a day and a half later without regaining consciousness.

His last words to me were heroic. My last words to him were cowardly, rude even: “Don’t say that, Dad!” There are many things that I have said in my life that I desperately wished I had not said. None are more shameful than those. But words can no more be recalled than an arrow after the bow string has snapped. My words were a rebuke to him for I refused to allow him the dignity of a final testimony to me. He knew he was dying. I refused to accept what he had already accepted with grace.

I was seventeen. I knew nothing of the business of dying. It was not a very good year. I watched my father die an inch at a time over a period of three years. I never heard him complain. I never heard him protest. He sat in the same chair day after day, week after week, year after year. He read the Bible with a large magnifying glass. I was blind to the anxieties that must have plagued him. He could not work; there was no income, no disability insurance. He sat there, waiting to die, watching his life savings trickle away with his own life. I was angry at God, my father was angry at no one. He lived out his last days faithful to his vocation: he fought the good fight. A good fight is a fight fought without hostility, without bitterness, without self-pity. I had never been in a fight like that.

My father finished the race. I was not even in the starting blocks. He ran the race for which God had called him. He ran until his legs crumbled, but somehow he kept going. When he couldn’t walk anymore he still was at the table each night for dinner.

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He asked me to help him. It was a daily ritual. Each evening I went to his room where he was seated in that same chair. I stooped backward, facing away from him so that he could drape his arms around my neck and shoulders. I clasped his wrists together and lifted my body, bringing him up from the chair. Then I dragged him, fireman style, to the dining room table. He finished the race. My only consolation is that I was able to help him, to be with him at the finish line.

I carried him one last time. When I found him unconscious on the floor, somehow I managed to get him into the bed where he died. On that trip he could not help me drag him. He could not put his arms around my neck. It took effort mixed with adrenaline to get him from the floor to the bed, but I had to get him there. It was unthinkable to me that he should die on the floor.

When my father died I was not a Christian. Faith was something beyond my experience and beyond my understanding.

When he said, “I have kept the faith,” I missed the weight of his words.

I shut them out. I had no idea that he was quoting the apostle Paul’s final message to his beloved disciple, Timothy. His eloquent testimony was wasted on me at the time, but not now. Now I understand, now I want to persevere as he persevered. I want to run the race and finish the course as he did before me. I have no desire to suffer as he suffered, but I want to keep the faith as he kept it.

If my father taught me anything, he taught me how to die. For years after my father died I had the same recurring nightmare. I dreamed the same intense dream.

I would see my father alive again. The beginning of the dream was thrilling, for in my slumber the impossible became real. He was alive! But my joy would change quickly to despair as his appearance in my dream was always the same. He was crippled, paralyzed, hopelessly and helplessly dying. The scene was never of a healthy, vibrant father, but of a father caught in the throes of death. I would wake up sweating with a sick empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. Only as I studied the Scriptures did I discover that death is not like that.

Only when I discovered the content of the Christian faith did the nightmares finally cease.

Passing through the Valley of the Shadow I met a young lady whose mother had recently died.

She had been grieving deeply, assaulted by attacks of despair. She had a morbid preoccupation with her mother’s death. Then, one evening, she had a profound spiritual experience. She was alone, meditating on the words of Scripture when suddenly she experienced a profound sense of the presence of God. As she prayed, some words thrust themselves forcibly into her mind.

They were emphatic words: “Leslie! Death’s not like that!” The grief was over. Leslie was delivered from her morbid spirit. A flash of understanding rescued her soul. A new view of death was bor n in her understanding.

When God gives us a vocation to die, he sends us on a mission. We have indeed entered into a race. The course may be frightening, like an obstacle course with pitfalls. We wonder if we will have the courage to make our way to the finish line, for the trail takes us through the valley of the shadow of death.

It is a valley where the sun’s rays often seem to be blotted out. We approach it trembling, preferring to seek a safe bypass. But men and women of faith can enter that valley without fear. David tells how: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4). David was a shepherd, and in this psalm he identifies with the sheep. He sees himself as a lamb under the care of the Great Shepherd. He enters the valley without fear for one overarching reason: the Shepherd goes with him. He trusts himself to the care and the protection of the Shepherd. The lamb finds comfort in the Shepherd’s weapons, the rod and the staff. The ancient shepherd was armed. He would use the crook of his staff to rescue a fallen lamb from a pit. He would wield his rod against hostile beasts that sought to devour his sheep.

Without the shepherd the sheep would be helpless in the shadowy valley, but as long as the shepherd was present the lamb had nothing to fear. If a bear or lion attacked the shepherd and killed the shepherd, the sheep would scatter. They would be vulnerable to the lion’s jaws. If the shepherd fell, all would be lost for the sheep.

But we have a Shepherd who cannot fall. We have a Shepherd who cannot die. He is no hireling who

The vocation of dying is

a sacred vocation. To understand that is one of the most important lessons a Christian can ever learn.

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abandons his flock at the first sign of trouble. Our Shepherd is armed with omnipotent force. He is not threatened by the valley of shadows. He created the valley, he redeems the valley.

David’s confidence was rooted in the absolute certainty of the presence of God. He understood that with a divine vocation comes divine assistance and the absolute promise of divine presence. God will not send us where he refuses to go himself.

My best friend in college and seminary was a man named Don McClure. Don was the son of pioneer missionaries. He had grown up in the remote interior of Africa. Don personally discovered several tribes of primitive natives for whom he was the first white man they had ever seen. He had killed spitting cobras in his bedroom. He had a close encounter with a crocodile that had jumped into his small canoe with him. He had been rescued by his father at the last minute when he was surrounded by a hungry pride of lions. I called Don “Tarzan” because his life mirrored the exploits of Johnny Weismuller. He was the most fearless person I ever met. If I were trapped in a foxhole behind enemy lines in combat, the one man I would want with me is Don McClure.

I keep a newspaper clipping in my Bible that reports the martyrdom of Don’s father. Don and his father were camped in a remote area of Ethiopia. During the night they were awakened by a surprise attack from Communist guerrillas. Don and his father were captured and dragged before a firing squad. Don stood next to his father when the guerrillas opened fire. First they shot Don’s dad, killing him instantly. Don heard the shot and saw the flame from the rifle that was pointed at him from six feet away. He fell next to his father, shocked to realize he was still alive.

In the confusion of the night, the guerrillas fled as quickly as they had appeared. Don hugged the ground, feigning death until all was quiet. He had suffered only minor flesh wounds though he was covered with powder burns.

Fighting the impulse to flee, Don remained long enough to dig a shallow grave with his bare hands. There he committed his father’s body to the ground. I still would be proud to have Don McClure at my side in the valley of the shadow. But I have one greater than Don who promises to go with me.

The presence of God is our refuge and our strength in times of trouble. His promise is not only to go with us into the valley. Even more important is his promise to guide us to what lies beyond. The valley of the shadow of death is not a box canyon, but a passageway to a better country. The valley leads to life—life far more abundant than anything we can imagine. The goal of our vocation is heaven. But there is no route to heaven except through the valley.

David understood that. Though he lived before Christ, before the Resurrection, before the New

Testament revelation of glory, nevertheless God had not been altogether silent on the matter. Already there was the hope of the bosom of Abraham. David confessed his faith: “I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” (Psalm 27:13). The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the God of the living. The God of David is the God of the living. The God of Jesus is the God of the living. There is life beyond the shadow of death.

My father ran a race because God called him to run the race. He finished the course because God was with him through every obstacle. He kept the faith because the faith kept him. This powerful legacy is the legacy the risen Christ gives to his sheep. MR

Dr. Sproul, a member of the Council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, is chairman of Ligonier Ministries. Another version of this article was published as part of his Surprised by Suffering (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1988).

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REVIEW AN INTRODUCTION TO THE COMPANIONSHIP OF EDWARDS A Review of God’s Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards (with the complete text of Edwards’ The End for Which God Created the World), by John Piper. Crossway Books, 1998. $17.99.

When I was a young scholar, I was given some excellent advice. “Choose one or two great thinkers,” I was told, “and make them your specialties. Live with them, reading them regularly, and you will become a better thinker for it.”

I chose Augustine and Jonathan Edwards, and I have no regrets.

No matter who else I study, these two continue to grow on me.

If—heaven forbid!—I were forced to choose between them, I would choose Edwards. This is not primarily because he loves the same Refor med and Puritan theologians I love, nor because he interacts with the early modern philosophers who occupy me professionally, but because his whole outlook is so thoroughly steeped in Scripture. Of course, Augustine was a great biblical scholar, and his ever-increasing commitment to the Scriptures is displayed in his works. But Augustine star ted reading Scripture relatively late in his life, when he was about thirty; and consequently some of his earlier works are more neo-Platonic than scriptural. Edwards, by contrast, had the Scriptures before him from his earliest days. One of his teenaged resolutions was “to study the Scriptures so steadily, constantly, and frequently, as that I may find, and plainly perceive, myself to grow in the knowledge of the same.”

He kept that resolution. As Iain Murray remarks, “The key to an understanding of Jonathan Edwards is [to see] that he was a man who put faithfulness to the Word of God before every other consideration.” Or, as pastor and theologian John Piper puts it, in God’s Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards, Edwards saw “the unlimited expanse of divine Reality” that is 38

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deposited in the Scriptures, and this led him to erect a banner over all his philosophico-theological explorings: “We have scarcely begun to see all of God that the Scriptures give us to see, and what we have not yet seen is exceedingly glorious.”

Piper’s book is his testimony to what living with Edwards can do.

It can invigorate and transform one’s Christian heart and mind.

For Piper was given essentially the same advice as I was when he was in seminary, and he too chose Edwards for his constant companion. The first half of Piper’s book is his account of how reading Edwards’ “Godcentered, soul-satisfying, sindestroying vision of reality” has shaped him over the past thirty years. The second half reprints Edwards’ dissertation on The End for Which God Created the World.

As Piper observes, there are primary and secondary teachers in theology as in every other great intellectual discipline. A primary teacher is one of the centuries’ great minds who does as much to shape his time as his time does to shape him. A secondary teacher learns from such masters. So a secondary teacher’s function should not be to aggrandize himself and thus eclipse his masters, but to introduce his students to his masters, teaching them how to learn directly from the great books on which he himself has fed. This book is Piper’s most deliberate attempt to function as a secondary teacher.

In his introduction, Piper strives to convince us of what we shall miss if we don’t read Edwards—and particularly if we don’t read The End for Which God Created the World. In general, what we shall miss is what Wheaton MODERN REFORMATION

professor Mark Noll has called Edwards’ “Godentranced worldview”—his “theocentric emphasis.” It is possible, Noll says, to get Edwards’ piety or his theology secondhand, but it is not possible to get his Godintoxicated vision of life in any other way than by reading him. More specifically, what we shall miss if we don’t read The End for Which God Created the World is Edwards’ biblical, theological, and philosophical defense of the claims that what God seeks, in both creation and redemption, is his own glory and that our reveling in that glory is our only real and ultimate happiness. But, as Piper says, “the depth and wonder and power” of Edwards’ book is his demonstration “that these two ends are [not two but] one.” God’s glory is most fully realized, in other words, in the happiness that his intelligent creatures obtain by seeing and celebrating it.

So in seeking his own glory and requiring us to seek his glory, God is not being selfish but rather offering us the greatest good there is—himself.

This is among the most profound thoughts that can enter a human mind: “God in seeking his glory seeks the good of his creatures, because the emanation”—or outgoing or manifestation—“of his glory … implies the…excellency and happiness of his creatures” (Edwards’ text, 114). It is one, as Piper realizes, that present-day Evangelicalism, with its “drift … into pragmatic, doctrinally vague, audience-driven, culturally uncritical Christianity” is unlikely even to consider; and it is one that many Christians, when they do consider it, just don’t get. Indeed, the situation is even worse than this. For as I have observed elsewhere in this issue, many evangelicals now are arguing that God’s glory ought not to be taken to be the ultimate purpose that all creation serves—that God’s seeking his own glory would indeed be somehow selfish, immoral, and bad. But what follows from accepting that contention is a massive revision of biblical Christianity, including a rejection of the scripturally based claim that God is glorified in the everlasting destruction of the wicked as well as in the everlasting redemption of his saints.

Edwards’ book, with Piper’s introduction to it, is simply the best way to confront these issues. Edwards’ text is tremendously difficult, as we should expect, since it is dealing with an issue that is right at the edge of human comprehension and one that can only be grasped and gloried in through God’s Spirit illuminating our minds and regenerating our hearts as we labor to understand some of Scripture’s profoundest claims.

Piper helps us to understand these life-transforming claims, not only by first surveying Edwards’ thought in ways that make it more accessible, but also through his very helpful addition of extra headings and explanatory footnotes to Edwards’ text. He has also been wise enough to suggest ways to read Edwards’ text that can

make it more relevant to the common reader—and he even tells us which parts to skip if we are finding the going too tough.

Most of us, as readers of modernReformation, have already had our hearts, minds, and lives transformed by our coming into direct or indirect contact with one or another of the Church’s great primary teachers—with Augustine, Luther, Calvin, John Owen, or someone who has drunk deeply from masters like these. Most of us know, moreover, that a rallying cry of the Reformation was “Ad fontes”—or back to the fount or original sources.

For the Refor mers this meant back primarily to Scripture, but it also meant back to the Church Fathers—and especially Augustine—because they and he opened the Reformers’ eyes to scriptural truths that they otherwise might not have seen. Here is a book that encourages and enables us to come in direct contact with one of the Christian Church’s greatest masters in one of his greatest works, and by that contact to be ushered into a greater appreciation of what the Scriptures themselves say. Crossway Books is to be commended for publishing it; indeed, I hope that they and other evangelical publishers will print many more such texts. In the meantime, I recommend this particular book very highly.

Mark Talbot is associate professor of philosophy, Wheaton College.

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IN PRINT The Fabric of This World: Inquiries into Calling Lee Hardy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990) Work concerns all of us: we spend more of our waking hours working than doing anything else. The importance of work and the need to reflect more fully and meaningfully on it make Lee Hardy's The Fabric of This World a highy relevant book. Thoroughly researched, historically grounded, philsophically and theologically informed, and practically oriented, The Fabric of This World makes a unique contribution to the evangelical literature on work and career choice.

B-HARD-1 Paperback, $14.00 Two Cities, Two Loves: Christian Responsibility in a Crumbling Culture James M. Boice (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1996) In the contemporary “culture wars” of our day Dr. Boice finds a spiritual replay of an event that shook the Western world centuries ago: the fall of Rome to the barbarians. Deeply biblical in argument, thoroughly conversant with contemporary culture and informed by personal involvement in urban ministry, he speaks with challenge and encouragement to Christians in the midst of turbulent times.

B-TCTL Hardcover, $10.00 Caring for Creation: Responsible Stewardship of God's Handiwork Calvin B. De Witt (Grand Rapids: Baker and the Center for Public Justice, 1998) Is there a Christ-centered response to such environmental crises as global warming, land degradation, and species extinction? There certainly is, according to Calvin DeWitt. In Caring for Creation, he presents a biblical approach to being a good steward of the earth. This book reminds us that the resurrection 40

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means creation is not a lost cause and that we must not claim to love God while remaining apathetic to his creation. Ultimately our attitude must become like Christ's - that of a servant.

B-DEWI-1 Paperback, $12.00 The Good Society Robert Bellah, et,al.

(New York: Knopf, 1991) With The Good Society, Bellah and his co-authors propose a new response to the country's growing social ills as America moves its domestic, economic, and social crises to the top of the political agenda. Acknowledging that we all live in and through institutions—family, school, community, corporation, religious group, the nation - they show how we can and must take responsibility for making these institutions work, and thereby take responsibility for ourselves. The authors argue that a shared understanding of the common good can lead to a truly effective democracy and that public discourse and debate about our national problems must be renewed and enriched.

B-BELL-1 Paperback, $13.00

OUT OF PRINT: (available at your local library) Stronger than Steel: The Wayne Alderson Story R.C. Sproul (New York: Harper and Row, 1983) Where in the World Is the Church?: A Christian View of Culture and Your Role in It Michael Horton (Chicago: Moody, 1995) Luther on Vocation Gustaf Wingren (Evansville, IN: Ballast Press, 1994) All books (except out of print) are available from MR by calling (800) 956-2644. Phones are answered from 8:30 am through 4:30 pm Eastern Time, Monday through Friday. For further book recommendations and an on-line resources catalogue, please visit our website at www.AllianceNet.org.

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WHITE HORSE INN RADIO BROADCAST FEATURING HOSTS MICHAEL HORTON, KEN JONES, KIM RIDDLEBARGER, & ROD ROSENBLADT Arizona Phoenix KPXQ 960 AM, Sun. 9 pm Tucson KVOI 690 AM, Sat 12 Noon California Lake Tahoe KNIS 91.9 FM, Sat. 8 pm & Sun. 12 Noon Lancaster KAVL 105.5 FM, Sun 4 pm Los Angeles KKLA 99.5 FM, Sun. 9 pm Mammoth KNIS 89.9 FM, Sat. 8 pm & Sun. 12 Noon Modesto KCIV 99.9 FM, Sun. 9 pm Palmdale KAVL 105.5 FM, Sun. 9 pm Riverside KKLA 1240 AM, Sun. 9 pm Salinas KKMC 800 AM, Sun. 3 pm San Diego KPRZ 1210 AM, Sun. 9 pm San Francisco KFAX 1100 AM, Sun. 3 pm Ventura KDAR 98.3 FM, Sun. 9 pm Colorado Colorado Springs KGFT 100.7 FM, Sun. 10 pm Denver KRKS 94.7 FM, Sun. 10 pm District of Columbia Washington, DC WAVA 105.1 FM, Sun. 9 pm & 12 Mid. Idaho Boise KBXL 94.1 FM, Sun. 10 pm Illinois Chicago WYLL 106.7 FM, Sun. 11 pm Kansas Hays KPRD 88.9 FM, Fri. 8:30 pm Wichita KSGL 900 AM, Sun. 8 pm Maryland Baltimore WAVA 1230 AM, Sun. at 9 pm

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The White Horse Inn is a weekly radio program produced by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. Each week the hosts talk about important theological topics from both the Lutheran and Reformed perspectives.

Dr. Michael S. Horton is the author/editor of ten books, including Beyond Culture Wars and Putting Amazing Back Into Grace. The Reverend Ken Jones is the pastor of Greater Union Baptist Church in Compton, California. Dr. Kim Riddlebarger is co-pastor of Christ Reformed Church in Anaheim, California. Dr. Rod Rosenbladt is a Professor of Theology and Christian Apologetics at Concordia University in Irvine, California.

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UPCOMING TOPICS March 14—May 2: The Book of Hebrews May 9–16: Vocation May 23–30: Finding a Church June 6–13: Heaven and Hell

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RECENT RADIO SERIES NOW AVAILABLE ON TAPE The Book of Hebrews This four-tape White Horse Inn series looks in-depth at the supremacy of Christ as laid forth by the author of the book of Hebrews. Michael Horton, Ken Jones, Kim Riddlebarger and Rod Rosenbladt discuss how this great New Testament book passionately illuminates the superiority of the new covenant over the old.

C-H-S, 4 tapes in an album, $23.00 Predestination This White Horse Inn series focuses on the Scriptural view of God’s sovereignty in election. Michael Horton, Ken Jones, Kim Riddlebarger and Rod Rosenbladt cover the practical implications of predestination. They also give a thorough critique of Arminianism.

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ENDNOTES THE DOCTRINE OF VOCATION—Gene Edward Veith 1 Exposition of Psalm 147, quoted by Gustaf Wingren, Luther on Vocation (Evansville, IN: Ballast Press, 1994), 138.

2 Exposition of Psalm 147, quoted by Wingren, 138.

3 Cited by Wingren, 9.

4 Ibid., 27-28.

5 Ibid., 10.

6 And there are some occupations—such as robber, drug dealer, hit-man, or pornographer—that are not vocations at all, since they are intrinsically sinful, being incompatible with the love of neighbor, aiming to hurt and corrupt rather than to serve.

7 Wingren, 6.

8 Ibid., 5.

9 A doctor who does such things outside of his vocation, on the other hand, would still be liable for the crimes of sexual assault or murder.

10 Exposition of John 1 and 2, quoted in Wingren, 114.

11 See modernR EFORMATION , March/April 1997, especially Michael Horton, “What About Bob?,” 8-15, and D. G. Hart, “Recovering the Keys of the Kingdom in an Age of Equipped Saints,” 16-20.

HOW TO DISCOVER YOUR CALLING—Michael S. Horton John Calvin, Four Last Books of Moses, I:303.

1

GOD’S VOCATION, OUR VOCATION—Mark R. Talbot Clark Pinnock, Richard Rice, John Sanders, William Hasker, and David Basinger, The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity; and Carlisle, England: Paternoster, 1994), 18. (Unless otherwise noted, all endnotes refer to this book.)

2 19, 21, 21, 21.

3 8.

4 11, 11. Scriptural support for these claims includes the fact that the New Testament repeatedly portrays God as a master, sovereign, or despot—the Greek word in all of the following passages is despotës—whose will is (and ought to be) all-determining (see Luke 2:29-32; Acts 4:23-31; 2 Tim. 2:21; 2 Pet. 2:1-10; Jude 3-16; and Rev. 6:10) and that God is portrayed in both Testaments as the rightful Disposer of all persons and things (see, e.g., Ex. 33:19 and Rom. 9:10-29). Indeed, it is part of God’s very glory to work out everything “in conformity with the purpose of his will” (Eph. 1:11).

5 11, 12, 12. This was, for instance, the position of Augustine (354-430), Anselm (1033-1109), Aquinas (1225-1274), Luther (1483-1546), and Calvin (1509-1564). Scripturally, Rom. 9:1-29 is the locus classicus for the claim that God is as glorified by the rebellion of sinners and the destruction of the wicked as by the obedience of the righteous and the redemption of the saints, which I discuss in my final two sections.

6 102, 143.

7 16. The next quotation is from the same page.

8 15.

9 18f. As has been frequently noted, in Hosea 11 the Old Testament comes very close to saying that God is love. See, for instance, Alan Richardson, ed., A Theological Word Book of the Bible (New York: Macmillan, 1950), 132, s.v. “Love”; and Willem A. VanGemeren, ed., New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997), Vol. I, 280, s.v.

10 19. The rest of the quotations in this paragraph are from the same page.

11 It would take many pages of close argumentation to show this. For readers who wish to corroborate it for themselves, the articles mentioned in note 9 are both important, along with the entry on “Love” in Colin Brown, ed., The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1976), Vol. 2, 538-551. But the best place to start is with the address by Geerhardus Vos that is cited in the next note.

12 Geerhardus Vos, “The Scriptural Doctrine of the Love of God,” in Richard B. Gaffin, ed., Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1980), 440. Cranfield, in his article on “Love” in A Theological Word Book of 1

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the Bible claims that selectiveness is one of the main features of God’s love in the Old Testament—“The word bachar (choose) occurs in connection with God’s love, Deut. 4.37, 7.5f., 10.15, Is. 43.4 with 10, 20. It is a distinguishing, selective love. Cf. Amos 3.2, Exod. 19.5, Deut. 14.2, 26.17f., Ps. 135.4, Mal. 3.17” (op. cit.).

13 This is particularly clear in Paul’s writings. As W. Günther and H. G. Link say, “Rom. 9:13ff. and 11:28 show in particular how Paul’s thought links up with the [Old Testament] election-tradition [see, also, Rom. 9:11f.; Eph. 1:4f.; 1 Thes. 1:4; and 2 Thes. 2:13]. The klëtoi (“called”) are the agapëtoi (“beloved”) (Rom. 1:7; Col. 3:12)” (The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, op. cit., 544).

In the New Testament, those who are beloved by God are those who will inherit eternal life. Election to eternal life, then, in spite of many recent arguments to the contrary, is always “individual, personal, specific, [and] particular” (F. H. Klooster, in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, edited by Walter A. Elwell [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984], s.v. “Elect, Election,” 349).

For a survey of the theological options, along with a careful argument from Scripture for individual election, see Bruce Demarest, The Cross and Salvation (Wheaton: Crossway, 1997), chapter 5. For careful theological rebuttal of nearly all of the recent arguments against individual election, see Thomas R. Schreiner, “Does Romans 9 Teach Individual Election unto Salvation?,” in Thomas R. Schreiner & Bruce A. Ware, eds., The Grace of God, The Bondage of the Will (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), Vol. 1, 89-106.

14 Vos, op. cit., 443. My use of the word “must” in the preceding sentence in the text presupposes that we subscribe to the doctrine that there is just one divine Author behind the many human authors of Scripture, and that we consequently must not pit Scripture against Scripture in a way that denies that it makes a consistent set of claims.

15 178n28. The remainder of the quotations in this paragraph are taken from 19f.

16 No doubt, God showed his love for his chosen people long before he declared himself to be a God of love. Yet it cannot be denied that his declaration that he is a God of love comes much later than his declaration that he is holy.

17 As John E. Hartley says: “In Leviticus, Yahweh makes himself known to Israel as their holy God. Holiness is not one attribute of Yahweh’s among others; rather it is the quintessential nature of Yahweh as God. This is supported by the declaration that his name is holy (20:3; 22:32), for as Eichrodt says, ‘[God’s] nature and operation are summed up in the divine Name’” (Word Biblical Commentary, Vol. 4, Leviticus [Dallas: Word Books, 1992], lvi). Later passages, such as Is. 6:1-3, Amos 4:2, and Rev. 4:8 portray God’s holiness as the expression of his inmost self.

18 It may seem, from what Paul goes on to say in verse 7, that there are some who will earn eternal life by persistently seeking “glory, honor, and immortality” through their repentance and good works. But the larger context of 1:18-3:20 makes it is quite clear that Paul thinks there is no one who persistently does that.

19 For a clear defense of the claim that Paul is asserting in Rom. 5:12-14 that we have all sinned in and with Adam and not merely that we all have sinned like him, see John Stott, Romans: God’s Good News for the World (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1994), 150-154.

20 To understand why the death of God’s Son is the only adequate price that can be paid for our sins, see the last section of my “Morality of Everlasting Punishment,” in Reformation and Revival Journal, Volume 5, Number 4 (Fall, 1996), 117-134.

21 R. A. Finlayson and P. F. Jensen in New Bible Dictionary, third edition, edited by J. D. Douglas and others (Leicester, England, and Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1996), 419, s.v. “God.” 22 D. A. Baer and R. P. Gordon in VanGemeren, ed., New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, op. cit., Vol. 2, 214, s.v.

23 See “God in the Dock,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), edited by Walter Hooper, 240-244.

24 Jonathan Edwards, The End for Which God Created the World, in John Piper, God’s Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards, With the Complete Text of The End for which God Created the World (Wheaton: Crossway, 1998), 183 (Chapter Two, Section One of Edwards’ text). Piper’s book, which includes a 123-page introduction and many clarifying headings and explanatory footnotes, is by far the best way to introduce oneself to Edwards’ text.

25 See Piper, 185-220 (Chapter Two, Sections Two through Four). As Donald Guthrie and Ralph Martin note, “It is astonishing how frequently the NT

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writers in general mention the glory and majesty of God” (in Gerald F. Hawthorne and Ralph P. Martin, eds., Dictionary of Paul and His Letters [Downers Grove, IL and Leicester, England: InterVarsity, 1993], 360, s.v. “God”).

26 See Piper, 137-181 (Chapter One, especially Sections One and Four).

27 In this paragraph, I am generalizing not only on what Edwards says in The End for Which God Created the World but in some of his other works, such as his great A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (New Haven: Yale, 1959). Piper surveys much of Edwards’ thought in his introduction to Edwards’ book.

28 For Scriptural corroboration of all these claims, see Hartley, op. cit., lvif.

29 I argue for this claim as well as for the claim of the previous sentence in “The Morality of Everlasting Punishment.”

30 See the article on “Anger” by Bruce Baloian in VanGemeren, ed., New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, op. cit., Vol. 4, 377-385.

31 For confirmation of these claims, see Cranfield, op. cit.

32 See D. E. Garland in Geoffrey W. Bromiley and others, eds., The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, revised edition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), Vol. 3, 323, s.v. “Mercy; Merciful.”

33 Baloian, op. cit., 382.

34 See Piper, 207-209, 215f., and 226. We do not have to agree with everything that Edwards claims on these pages to appreciate his attempt to understand these difficult claims of Scripture.

35 See my “Morality of Everlasting Punishment.”

36 John Piper makes one of the best attempts to make sense of this claim in his The Justification of God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:1-23 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993). See, especially, 186-189.

37 The NIV does not bring out the aspect of emotional satisfaction that God is declaring he will get in executing his wrath at Eze. 5:13. A more accurate translation would be: “Then my anger will cease and my wrath against them will subside, and I will be comforted. And when I have spent my wrath upon them, they will know that I the Lord have spoken in my zeal.”

(For corroboration, see VanGemeren, ed., New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, op. cit., Vol. 3, 1071, s.v.) God’s comfort (or emotional rest) will result from the fact that the spending of his anger and his wrath will have manifested his holiness.

38 Piper, 220f.

39 For the considerations that can lead us to do so, see the section entitled “Justice and Punishment” in my “Morality of Everlasting Punishment.”

40 Piper, 196. Among the passages Edwards cites in support of this claim are Rev. 11:13; 14:6f.; 16:8f.; Is. 66; and Rom. 15:5f.

41 As the references to “one another” at John 13:34f. and 1 John 4:7, and to “his brother” and to “the children of God” in 1 John 4:20f. and 5:2, make clear.

TO JOIN OR NOT TO JOIN?—Preston Graham Quoted from Stuart Robinson’s, True Presbyterian, “Gillespie’s Account of Erastianism,” April 10, 1862. See also The Works of George Gillespie, One of the Commissioners from Scotland to the Westminster Assembly, Vols. 1-2 (reprints by Still Waters Revival Books).

2 Nathan Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale, 1989).

3 Stuart Robinson, “Theology with a Church,” True Presbyterian, October 29, 1863.

4 I would argue that the family is a third sphere of calling as distinguished from the civil and spiritual spheres. But in the family, there is the seed of both the civil and the spiritual. Therefore, in terms of grace, there are two spheres: one common/civil and the other special/spiritual, under the authority of the “state” and the “church” respectively.

5 Leland Ryken, Work and Leisure: A Christian Perspective (Portland: Multnomah, 1987).

6 Robert Bellah, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1985).

7 See for example Thomas Oden, After Modernity, What? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990).

8 Much of what follows I published under the title: The Church Question: Is the Church Essential for the Gospel?, A Rationale for Church Membership and Church Planting (1997). Available from Christ Presbyterian Church Study Center, 135 Whitney Ave., New Haven, CT 06510.

9 Joey Earl Horstman, “Channel Too: The Postmodern Yawn,” The Other Side, vol. 29, num. 3 (May/June 1993), 35, quoted by Marva Dawn, Reaching Out without Dumbing Down (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995).

10 This is Stephen Fjellman’s critique in Vinyl Leaves, as summarized by Richard Lints, “The Vinyl Narratives: The Metanarrative of Postmodernity and the Recovery of a Churchly Theology,” lecture delivered at the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals’ Colloquium, Colorado Springs, June 1998.

11 E.g., Gen. 15, 26:24, Ex. 29:42, 40:34, Lev. 22:3, Num. 35:34, Deut.

12:5, and Ps. 76.2.

12 John Calvin, Institutes, 4.7.1,3,5.

13 Meredith Kline, Kingdom Prologue (privately published, 1993), 42.

1

NEITHER INDIVIDUALISM NOR STATISM—W. Robert Godfrey Cited from Abraham Kuyper, Christianity and the Class Struggle, translated by Dirk Jellema (Grand Rapids: Piet Hein Publishers, 1950), 14. All citations are to this article.

2 14.

3 40.

4 36.

5 36, note 20.

6 43.

7 44.

8 29, note 13.

9 34.

10 35.

11 51.

12 19.

13 26.

14 22f.

15 41.

16 33f.

17 30.

18 63.

19 53.

20 58 21 56f.

22 59.

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ON MY MIND

By James Montgomery Boice

For Us or for Our Enemies? everal years ago I was out to dinner with a group of people many of whom were not Christians. When one of the diners found out I was a minister he thought he would have a bit of fun by saying, “You’re a Christian. Don’t you agree that if Jesus were here today he would be a Democrat?”

I am not very good at picking up on that kind of challenge, and the best I could do was to ask him why he felt that way. He said that it was because Democrats care for the poor, the weak, and common people more than Republicans do. He was obviously a Democrat himself! I agreed that Jesus certainly cares for the poor, and we went on from there. But I have thought about his challenge since, and I have concluded that if anyone ever asks me that kind of question again, I want to point him to the last verses of Joshua 5, where the Lord takes command of the armies of Israel at the time of the Jewish conquest of Canaan. For the point of the story, if I may put it this way, is that Jesus is neither a Democrat nor a Republican. He does not enlist under our banners, however attractive we may think they are. On the contrary, he comes to take charge of us and whatever causes we may or may not be pursuing. He comes to enroll us in his army—not to enlist in ours—to make us his soldiers and to direct the battles.

When Joshua asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?”, the Lord said, “Neither, but as commander of the army of the Lord I have come.”

That is a fascinating response. We might have expected the Lord to have said, “Yours, of course; I am for you and the armies of Israel.” Instead, he began with a negation, and the point seems to be that it was not for Joshua to claim the allegiance of God for his cause, however right it was, but for God to claim Joshua. They would fight together in the end, but Joshua would be following the heavenly commander and would be fighting for his kingdom rather than it being the other way around.

It is a principle we easily forget. We try to enlist God for our programs rather than following wherever God leads. As a result, the kingdoms we tend to establish are our own and they strike outsiders as being merely earthly and partisan, which they truly are. We need to remember that God is not building the Presbyterian Church or the

S

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Lutheran Church or the Baptist Church. He is building his kingdom, and most of us have very little idea how, when, or where he is going to do it, or with what tools.

The only way we will find out what God is doing is by watching as he does it and by being sure we are actually following him and not trying to use him to carry out our own limited plans and small desires.

There is another point to the story. When Joshua asked, “What message does my Lord have for his servant?”, he undoubtedly expected plans for the battle.

But instead of saying, “Here is what I want you to do to capture Jericho,” God told Joshua, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy” (v. 15). At that point, if he had not recognized it before, I am sure Joshua knew he was standing before the Lord himself.

For this is exactly what God had told Joshua’s predecessor Moses when Moses had met God at the burning bush.

Joshua must have been changed by this encounter.

We have all known Christians who are so partisan in their views that they are sure God only approves of those in their own denomination or ministry and are unpleasantly intolerant of all other expressions of faith.

But here and there we have encountered people who are quite the opposite. It is not that they do not belong to a denomination or do not have strong beliefs about the doctrines of the Bible, proper for ms of church government, or Christian worship. They do. They have very strong beliefs. But they have something else, too.

They have a larger, grander view of God, and as a result they are primarily interested in serving God above all else and are looking to him to lead them in his own way and bring blessing. They are conscious of God’s holiness, and they are bowing low before him.

These people reflect the fact that they have been with God. They manifest a touch of heaven in their lives, and they speak words which are in a true sense the very words of God. We need leaders like that, and we need to be like that ourselves. Don’t we?

Dr. Boice is the president of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals and senior minister of Tenth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia.

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