christless-christianity-may-june-2007

JESUS IN GETHSEMANE ❘ ATONEMENT THEORIES ❘ SOLO CHRISTO

MODERN REFORMATION

Christless Christianity

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

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Christless Christianity 10 Christless Christianity: Getting in Christ’s Way How is it possible that Christ is no longer the center of contemporary Christian faith? The author reveals how Christianity is becoming increasingly “Christless” by means of denial and distraction.

by Michael Horton

17 Solo Christo Solo Christo (in Christ alone) was one of the five “solas,” or formulas, of the Reformation. The author explains what it means and why it remains one of the most important Christian doctrines.

by Robert Norris Plus: Preaching Christ from All the Scriptures

21 Christ’s Impossible Prayer in Gethsemane What does Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane reveal about his crucifixion? The author helps us to see the gospel in Gethsemane.

by Brent McGuire

25 The Historical Jesus Over the centuries, many scholars, historians, and theologians have set out to discover the Jesus of the Bible. The author presents and evaluates the three famous “quests” for the historical Jesus.

by Paul Zahl

26 Chart: The Threefold Work of Christ 32 A More Perfect Union?

Justification and Union with Christ What is the relationship between the doctrines of justification and union with Christ? The author explains.

by John Fesko Plus: Song of Redemption: One Truth in Many Atonement Theories CHURCH PHOTO BY MEDIOIMAGES/GETTYIMAGES. COVER COMPOSITE BY LORI COOK

ISSN-1076-7169

S UBSCRIPTION I NFORMATION US US Student Canada Europe Other

TABLE OF CONTENTS may/june

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Keeping Time page 2 | Letters page 3 | Why We Believe page 4 | Common Grace page 6 Diaries page 8 | Interview page 39 | Required Reading page 43 Reviews page 44 | Family Matters page 52

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KEEPING TIME i n

t hi s

is su e

Apostles Creed Jesus Christ Victorious

325 A.D. NICENE CREED Bust of Constantine

c. 500 A.D. ATHANASIAN CREED Triquetra

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

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

1580 BOOK OF CONCORD

Martin Luther’s Seal

1646 WESTMINSTER CONFESSION Westminster Abbey

1689 LONDON BAPTIST

Christless Christianity

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or those immersed in the piety of American Christianity, the prospect of a Christless faith is unsettling. How can Christianity exist without Jesus at its center? What would we do without the J in WWJD? To whom will we sing our spiritual love songs? Whose image will appear on our sanctuary banners, bumper stickers, and t-shirts? But a correct understanding of who Jesus was, what he did during his short life here on earth, and why he did it will go a long way toward ensuring that Jesus is actually the center of our faith and not just a marketable icon or an interested bystander to our own religious experience, moral values, and transcendental truth claims.

Is that too harsh an estimate of contemporary church life? Reformed theologian and editor-in-chief Michael Horton charts the marginalization of Christ in American Evangelicalism in his article, “Christless Christianity: Getting in Christ’s Way.” The sort of diversions and distractions that make it easy to lose Christ in the church are swept aside by Presbyterian pastor Robert Norris in his impassioned reclaiming of the Reformation doctrine of “Solo Christo.” The work of Christ for us is the fount of all Christian hope: his life and death were effective agents of our salvation and the renewal of God’s kingdom in our midst. But was there another way? Christ’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane is the cliff hanger in the drama of redemption: Will Christ bend his will to the Father’s?

Lutheran pastor Brent McGuire shows us how “Christ’s Unanswered Prayer” becomes the basis of our faith. Every few years another scholar, popularizer, or entertainer makes an extravagant claim about the real Jesus: he never claimed to be God; he was married and fathered a line of kings who ruled Europe; he was buried in the city of Jerusalem. In response, Christians are tempted to take refuge in the “Christ of faith” at the expense of the “Jesus of history.” Episcopal theologian and president of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry Paul Zahl takes us on an entertaining romp through the scholarly quests for the historical Jesus and points our eyes to the rootedness of a faith tied to a real time, place, and person. Finally, Presbyterian pastor John Fesko takes a look at two important parts of the Christian’s relationship to Christ, justification and union, to show how a proper understanding of the relationship between the two might go a long way toward settling some current controversies.

We hope you’re enjoying our new series on the solas of the Reformation, “A Time for Truth.” Throughout the year, we will lay out for you the treasury of the Reformation faith and we trust that as your mind expands, your heart will be strengthened, as well. Perhaps you know a church leader, family member, or friend who would benefit from the topics and articles in Modern Reformation. Why not log on to our brand new website, www.modernreformation.org, and give a gift subscription? While you’re there, take a look at fifteen years worth of Modern Reformation articles, charts, interviews, and reviews now made available all in one place for the first time ever. Your generous support of the magazine—over and above the cost of a subscription—has made and continues to make exciting new ventures like this possible. Thank you.

CONFESSION Baptismal

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Eric Landry Executive Editor

NEXT ISSUES: July/August 2007: Grace: How Strange the Sound (Sola Gratia) September/October 2007: The Art of Self-Justification (Sola Fide)

LETTERS your

My concerns arise from two sections of Eric Landry’s article, “The Way Forward” (January/February “Post2007), Evangelicalism” and “Public Theology and the Public Square.” If I understand you correctly, you propose that a return to Reformed doctrine, creeds, and worship format will solve, at least partially, the problems facing the professing Church of Jesus Christ. At least, it would distinguish the church(es) that implement them from the other indistinguishable ones. Yes, the Church could use a return to the doctrines proclaimed by the reformers, because they proclaimed the truth. However, that alone will not bring the spiritual revival that we so desperately need. I have visited numerous churches, Reformed and non-Reformed, and realize that the changes that you and others propose will certainly improve the orthodoxy of the church. Orthodoxy alone, even Reformed orthodoxy, will not cure anything. The solutions presented today to cure the problems facing the professing Church of Jesus Christ leave out the most crucial element, the Holy Spirit. It seems that some believe that all we need to do is have the correct doctrine and all will be well. I wish that were the case. It is not. An emphasis solely upon doctrine resembles the emphasis that Paul denounced in 2 Cor. 3:5-6. It will not give life. That’s the sole work of the Holy Spirit. The church needs preaching and teaching under the supernatural authority of the Holy Spirit. Without it, the truth falls on deaf, hard, spiritually inoculated ears.

Thomas P. Hill East Lansing, Michigan

Eric Landry responds: Readers who may suppose that, in my article, I endorsed mere formalism as the answer to the problems that will face the church in the next decade are, fortunately, mistaken.

Formalism overemphasizes our ability to redress doctrinal and practical errors in the church apart from the power of the Holy Spirit, which, in my opinion, continues to lead to still more errors. My proposal assumed that a return to orthodoxy and the riches of the Protestant Reformation would include the Holy Spirit’s work of enlivening dead hearts, unstopping deaf ears, and opening blind eyes. However, since we are not God, nor can we really see how God is working and moving in an individual’s heart, our responsibility as pastors and leaders is to ensure that our churches are faithfully ordered and that we are orthodox in our doctrine and practice. Orthodoxy does not save; Jesus saves. But as a minister I must be responsible to my calling to protect the health and welfare of the sheep entrusted to me by finding good wells from which they may drink and green pastures from which they may eat—all the while believing with my whole heart that the Great Shepherd, himself, will give life to his sheep (even in spite of my best efforts).

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M AY / J U N E 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 5

WHY WE BELIEVE de f en d i ng

th e

faith

Religion Without Christ?

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here have never been more than a very few true atheists in the world. We could

such as globalization and Internet communication, think of famous ones, like the Baron d’Holbach, who died in the year of the or the iPod culture, which give us so much access to French revolution. He opined, writing in The System of Nature (1770), “If we go so many points of view and religions. One unique back to the beginning we shall find that ignorance and fear religion just does not appear likely when there are so many created the gods.” A few others, such as Karl Marx, others vying for our attention. Or think of the almost Sigmund Freud, Bertrand Russell, and Jean-Paul Sartre universal appeal to you, from Time magazine’s person of made names for themselves as anti-God thinkers, claiming the year, to YouTube, to the canonical dictum, “If it works a similar, patronizing, idea about religion: it’s a crutch for for you, then go in peace.” weak people, an opium for the masses, or a higher power But stop. We must be very careful here: just being for those inclined to need one. They are very few. In plausible is not enough. Is it true? is what we need to know, reality, most unbelievers are not atheists but deists. Deists and if it is, then what difference does it make? Here’s a gladly accept that there is something out there better way to go at the question. somewhere. Perhaps he (or “it”) generated the universe.

Try to put yourself back in first-century Palestine, Perhaps he is “the man upstairs,” who watches over us to where you might have met Jesus and heard him speak. bless us in the things we really hope we can achieve.

Say you were in the house where some friends lowered a Perhaps he approves good behavior but is not too harsh on paralytic on a stretcher down through the roof of the those who stray from it. house where Jesus was teaching (Mark 2:1–12). Here he Deism is the ultimately reasonable religion. Today, it was, interrupted by this zealous group wanting their friend is surely one of the important alternatives to Christian to be healed. Everything came to a halt, and then you faith, at least in the West. Deism says yes to heard the astonishing words, “Son, your sins the nearly universal moral principle, “do unto are forgiven.” Shocking. The lawyers in the others as you would have them do unto you,” room did not miss the implications but but no to such radical discipleship which him of blasphemy. And then Jesus In reality, most accused requires giving up everything for Christ’s sake simply remarked that it was no more difficult unbelievers are to forgive sins than to heal the man, which he (“let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God,” Jesus promptly did. No one missed the point. Only not atheists said). It says yes to God as One, but no to the God could do either. but deists.

Trinity. It says yes to the celebration of Again, imagine you were in the crowd at Christmas and Easter, but no to daily prayers the Feast of the Dedication at Jerusalem, and and intensive Bible study or weekly public you heard Jesus remark, “I am the light of the worship. It wants to say yes to spirituality, but world” (John 8:12). When opposed, instead no to “organized religion.” Bottom line: yes to God, no to of backing down, he went on to make this astonishing Jesus (except, perhaps, as an amazing human being, or statement, “before Abraham was, I am” (8:58). So they something like the “one solitary life” of James Allan took up stones. In the Jewish understanding, Jesus was Francis). claiming equality with the God who revealed himself to Our reasonable deists, though unable to accept an Moses as the great “I am” (Exod. 3:14). A bit later, he said embarrassing full-blown Christianity, will certainly it in different terms: “I and the Father are one” (John acknowledge the beauty or the cogency of the Christian 10:30). Astonishing. Again, the Jewish audience did not moral system. They may even deem it superior to other mistake the claim, nor did it mildly approve Jesus as a versions of being good or doing well. Where they just good moral teacher. They took up stones. cannot go is to accept the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. They And they were right. Unless … unless the whole thing stumble at the outrageous statements of Christians and of were true! Unless Jesus simply was who he said he was.

Jesus himself about who he really is, that is, if they know What about today? Does it matter at all? It is the one thing those statements in the first place. In a way, we can that matters at all. Jesus did not make these claims in a understand. Consider how many trends tend to make the vacuum. He considered himself the fulfillment of all the uniqueness of Christ implausible. Think of developments Old Testament promises about the coming Messiah, the

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A Christless religion is simply without effect. one who would deliver the people from their sins. For his first hearers a great surprise than his claims to deity (if that were possible), was his refusal at the moment to overturn the Roman oppressors. His Lordship would be exercised not by terror but by persuasion, and the power of the Holy Spirit. The Messiah must die for our sins before he could rise and triumph over them. Deism has no real way to accomplish this. A Christless religion is simply without effect.

Jesus, as the second person of the Trinity, the true representative of the true God, made sure his followers would always have access to his saving power. So he promised that he would lead the disciples into all truth.

Sure enough, they produced the New Testament documents, where we read about him as often as we like.

Furthermore, he commissioned the church to go into all the world and make disciples. Deism has no such legacy, no such love for lost humanity. Indeed, ironically, it has no real ability to take the message into all the world.

Ironically, that is, because it claims to be worldwide, based upon the universality of human reason. Unfortunately, human reason, unaided, leads people to very contradictory conclusions. Read the newspaper.

As C. S. Lewis puts it in his essay, “What Are We to Make of Jesus Christ?” Jesus was never regarded as a mere moral teacher. He did not produce that effect on the people who actually met him. “He produced mainly three effects—Hatred—Terror—Adoration.” Nor should he produce any other effect today.

William Edgar is professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).

In this article, Dr. Edgar has quoted from C.S. Lewis’ God in the Dock (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), p. 158.

We Confess …

I.

It pleased God, in His eternal purpose, to choose and ordain the Lord Jesus, His only begotten Son, to be the Mediator between God and man, the Prophet, Priest, and King the Head and Saviour of His Church, the Heir of all things, and Judge of the world: unto whom He did from all eternity give a people, to be His seed, and to be by Him in time redeemed, called, justified, sanctified, and glorified.

II.

The Son of God, the second person in the Trinity, being very and eternal God, of one substance and equal with the Father, did, when the fulness of time was come, take upon Him man's nature, with all the essential properties, and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin; being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the virgin Mary, of her substance. So that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion. Which person is very God, and very man, yet one Christ, the only Mediator between God and man.

III.

The Lord Jesus, in His human nature thus united to the divine, was sanctified, and anointed with the Holy Spirit, above measure, having in Him all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge; in whom it pleased the Father that all fulness should dwell; to the end that, being holy, harmless, undefiled, and full of grace and truth, He might be thoroughly furnished to execute the office of a Mediator and Surety. Which office He took not unto Himself, but was thereunto called by His Father, who put all power and judgment into His hand, and gave Him commandment to execute the same.

IV.

This office the Lord Jesus did most willingly undertake; which that He might discharge, He was made under the law, and did perfectly fulfill it; endured most grievous torments immediately in His soul, and most painful sufferings in His body; was crucified, and died, was buried, and remained under the power of death, yet saw no corruption. On the third day He arose from the dead, with the same body in which He suffered, with which also He ascended into heaven, and there sitteth at the right hand of His Father, making intercession, and shall return, to judge men and angels, at the end of the world.

V.

The Lord Jesus, by His perfect obedience, and sacrifice of Himself, which He through the eternal Spirit, once offered up unto God, hath fully satisfied the justice of His Father; and purchased, not only reconciliation, but an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, for all those whom the Father hath given unto Him. — Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 8, Sections 1–5, Of Christ the Mediator M AY / J U N E 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 7

COMMON GRACE G o d’s

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a rt

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culture

Truth in War

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recently found myself at New York’s Symphony Space, listening to the voices of

The arts speak into a void, creating a moment of soldiers. As a member of the National Council on the Arts, I was representing the clarity, a pause in the frenzy.

National Endowment for the Arts for the release of Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Then there are the J.R.R. Tolkiens and C.S. Afghanistan, and the Home Front (Random House, 2006).

Lewises of the world, whose front line experiences gave The N.E.A. gave returning soldiers from Afghanistan and birth to the most resonant, faith-filled literature of our last Iraq an opportunity to write down their war time century. Tolkien imagined through the dark trenches, experiences in workshops lead by Pulitzer-winning surrounded by dying friends, and chose to speak directly Vietnam-era writers. With actors highlighting the evening, against his own fear by naming, one by one, characters (Matthew Modine, Joan Allen, and, most memorably, and places of imagined reality that would later form the Stephen Lang) and sitting next to one of the basis for The Lord of the Rings. Lewis, too, injured in the war, soldier/writers, I had a strange and uncomfortable later recounts that his journey from atheism to faith was revelation: a revelation that surely had been bubbling up paved by his sense of loss, inconsolable violation (“the in me in recent years—How much of the world’s art and problem of pain”, he called it) that he felt in his bones. literature is linked to wartime experiences?

Having gone through such horrors is no guarantee of a The writings of soldiers, or writing about wars in recovery of faith, but it does suggest that faith and culture general, has indeed defined our literature and the arts, are linked to the crisis that surrounds us. from Homer to Dante to Hemingway. If you remove works T.S. Eliot would have found this dialogue not so of art that do not in some way relate to, or respond to unfamiliar. His war-time journey to write The Wasteland wars, our cultural landscape would be full of holes (think could also describe our survey of Darfur and Afghanistan. In of Picasso’s “Guernica”). Perhaps that’s what Jesus meant, Four Quartets, he describes “The unimaginable Zero Summer” when he warned us “such things (wars) must happen.” He of the atomic devastation but ends hopefully in the “still did not validate wars by saying this, but he wanted to point of the turning world,” producing a rare articulation of make sure we understood the inevitability of them: that the heart’s navigation from fear to love. But today, in the our inner malaise will surely be translated into greater shadows of our current chaos in Iraq, and bullet holes in an conflicts. But to have the Prince of Peace tell us that wars Amish school still fresh in our minds, such sentiment can must happen is more than troubling. Must we be haunted come across as too optimistic and even unkind. by wars as part of God’s plan of redemption? Must art exist I read recently that most of early Christian art (at least as primarily funerary? the examples that have survived) were funerary in nature.

In modern times, Rothko, Mondrian and other Apparently, even in the world of faith, art is obsessed with twentieth-century masters wove the horrors of the atomic death. Surely, it would be the darkest of confessions for age into their work, as if to visit Hiroshima over and over any artist working today to admit that his/her visions are again. Rothko gave that post-Atomic glow an ethereal driven by the haunts of war and death, and, like Dante, transcendence even as Mondrian stubbornly, and that imaginative reality is filled with a vision of purgatorio. valiantly, insisted on the order of grids against the On the contrary, our recent contemporary art scene is approaching chaos. In both cases, they were exiled to New rushing to escapism, lacking in engagement with the York, because of the dark specters of evil marching into present darkness, and without the disciplined skill to even their homelands. Surrealism (as the recent describe the horror. So such a confessional would seem MOMA/National Gallery exhibit showed) screamed welcome in today’s climate of superficiality. Pausing to against the insanity of fear birthed in the trenches of WWI. listen to the writings of soldiers in Operation Homecoming, These artists are often remembered for their anti-patriotic though, I have begun to see a glimpse of a new kind of rants, or at best being ambivalent observers, and most realism. definitely being anti-establishment. It is ironic that they These men and women chose to write staring into the are now seen as the establishment in the institutions of abyss: to record both their fears and hopes, in this time of museums and academia. But the best of arts still can rise certain chaos, grieve over lost lives and opportunities; but above the institutions and establishment that gave they also speak well of their pets and ordinary sun-lit days. permission for them, or the conflicts that they escaped.

Theirs is a stark realism, observing the life surrounding the

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such otherworldly gestures look as pathetic, or beautiful, as the string quartet that escapism, lacking in engagement with the present played on as the Titanic sank.

But I submit to you that darkness, and without the disciplined skill to even here, in a miracle nobody noticed, is a bugle call also describe the horror. directed toward us artists. It begins in a belief that our turmoil, wrestling against the fading memories of loved lives are to be lived for others. Arts should let “the other ones, comrades, and the stenches of war. So many of ones loose” from the bondage of decay, apathy and loss. To Operation Homecoming pages are filled with emails, which, the extent we are able to do that, to that degree we will see like radio dispatches, will remain deeply etched in our a new language of expression that is not self-centered, but minds as immediately potent. These are voices that are self-giving and generous. Yes, I believe that art can, and directed toward our private spheres, but now allowed to ought to, exist apart from wars. But the only place where be made public. They deserve our hushed attention for this has been the case in the history of the world, a place their honest grappling with inner turmoil. Their accounts called Eden where a poet named Adam dwelled, is today are true “Survivor” tales but without any shred of hidden inaccessibly beneath—or above—the rubble of sensationalism. Told sometimes gingerly, sometimes in Iraq. expletives, the soldiers seem to dwell, after a while, in my Operation Homecoming gives us authentic voices that seek consciousness as my imaginary neighbors, people whom I to be a responsible steward of their experiences. Why might encounter in my street, or kick a soccer ball around would that simple gesture seem so foreign and refreshing? with. I am surprised at how much humor fills these pages, Has our culture become so cynical that we no longer have not the sanitized kind, but the raw, grimy kind that the capacity to listen without having a wry, critical belongs in beer halls and late night comedy shows. distance? Or has the media become so profit-driven and Refreshingly free of showmanship, in our glitz-filled sensationalistic that they no longer can mediate cultural universe, their writings serve more than to information responsibly? Because the soldiers have faced recount the war: they speak into our lives with certain death and have stood over the rubble that might authenticity, and remind us somehow that, despite it all, have crushed them, but lived, they owned the experience, humanity can still reign in a cruel kaleidoscope of fear and chose to tell the tale artfully and carefully. If we all live called war. in a war zone of some kind, should we not do the same?

John Hewett, the development director of the N.E.A., Words alone can impregnate promise or despair in such a who is also an ordained minister, told me a poignant story precipice: the arts can inspire or despise humanity. recently. When the evil struck the sleepy Amish community near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, when a gunman/milkman systematically shot girls one by one, Makoto Fujimura is a world-renowned artist who assimilates there was a hidden story, in what he called “A Miracle the combinations of abstract expressionism explored in the U.S. Nobody Noticed.” He wrote: with the traditional Japanese art of Nihonga. He is founder of the International Arts Movement (IAM) in New York and was I’m convinced most of us get through most days without appointed to the National Council on the Arts in 2003. Fujimura’s thinking about God much. I was having one of those days art, essays, and blog, including the full version of “Truth in War,” a few weeks ago, until I heard about Marian and Barbie can be found at his website, www.makotofujimura.com.

Fisher, two of the ten girls in the West Nickel Mines Amish School. Marian, the oldest, was 13. Her sister Barbie, who lived, is 11. When it became obvious what was about to happen that ghastly morning, Marian turned to the killer and said, “Shoot me and leave the other ones loose.” “Shoot me next,” Barbie said. “Shoot me next.”

Our recent contemporary art scene is rushing to

Two children willing to lay down their lives for their friends. Wonder where they got an idea like that? That’s another miracle nobody noticed.

Such fragile, but heroic, voices in the face of violence can easily be ignored, or simply not audible with our doomed ears. It certainly did nothing to stop a milkman from unloading his anger by pulling the trigger. Perhaps M AY / J U N E 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 9

DIARIES OF A POSTMODERN CHRISTIAN t he

c a n d i d

c h r istian

life

Just Jesus

by Lydia Brownback “God won’t help you with that again,” I was told by a well-meaning friend about my lapse into a pet sin. “God helped you before, but you blew it.” She was referring to my days as a “baby Christian,” when God had delivered me from that sin in order to strengthen my fledgling commitment. But now, much farther along in my journey and recognizing the cost of true discipleship, my desire for that old sin took fresh hold, and down I fell. I marinated in discouragement; would I ever be free of this pull? I thought that coming to Christ was supposed to make things easier, not more difficult. My friend’s words, spoken to motivate me out of the depths, actually entrenched me deep in the mistaken idea that although I had received salvation solely by God’s grace, growing up in the life of faith was pretty much up to me. Sure, Christ’s sacrifice got me in the door, but now, apparently, staying inside was up to me. After all, didn’t the Bible tell me to put my sin to death? I was burdened, my heart made heavy by the requirement to put to death something I loved. There was a battle inside; I felt divided against myself. How could I win a war that only a part of me really wanted to win?

I tried to figure out how to kill my heart’s attachment to my sin. For years. I avoided people and places that might tempt me. I read every book on self-control that I could get my hands on.

But those efforts never drowned out my nostalgic thoughts of the sin’s pleasure. I craved it as one yearns for the companionship of a cherished but forbidden friend. The more I tried to make myself hate this sin, the more I desired it. I simply loved it too much. Next, I rationalized. Perhaps I could enjoy both God and my guilty pleasure; could that be what God’s grace is really all about?

How happy I would be if God and my beloved sin could co-exist peacefully in my heart! Over time I convinced myself that all the guilt I’d been carrying was nothing but legalism, and I latched onto other Christians who shared a love of this same thing and indulged it with impunity.

Still, my sense of God’s displeasure about my compromise was always lurking in the shadows of my heart. I knew my so-called exercise of Christian liberty was nothing more than sinful license.

While others seemed able to enjoy freedom here, I just could not. So, as awareness of my compromise convicted me, I dusted off my resolve, prayed afresh for overcoming strength, and, once again, turned my back on this fleshly love. It lasted anywhere from five minutes to five days. The cycle went on for years; that is, until I was brought to a crisis.

One day I lost a sense of God’s presence. I panicked. What had I done to drive God away? I hunted and searched for him. I asked for advice. I dredged out into the open every known indulgence, all the attitudes and actions that flirted with my sin and interrogated them. Had this sin (or perhaps another sin I wasn’t aware of) cost me God’s friendship? Out of fear, I did it—I finally got myself cleaned up, and my love for the sin dimmed and eventually disappeared.

Despite all this, I still couldn’t find God. He seemed farther from me than ever. I had done all I could do! If obedience wasn’t enough, I had nothing else to offer. I was on my knees crying out daily to God, who had abandoned me.

Finally, one night long into this dark season, I found myself in utter despair. I couldn’t even pray. But it was then, that night, that Jesus’ words flooded my mind: “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my

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burden is light.” I didn’t know the implications of his words at that moment. the more I desired it.

All I felt was a peaceful sense of relief, an oasis from fear. I awoke the next day asking, “What does all this mean?” Jesus had died for me and reconciled me to God. I had known that for a long time. But what did all that have to do with now, today? I wasn’t sure, except that Jesus is more than a simple tool of transaction between me and God.

The more I tried to make myself hate this sin,

That rediscovery of Christ marked a turning point. Although fear lingered, it began to diminish as I slowly realized that Jesus is still a living person, one whose work for me hadn’t ended two thousand years ago, but carries on today. Jesus hadn’t just died for me; he had lived for me, too—His perfect life applied to my utterly imperfect one. I began to understand the real meaning of grace, which offered the kind of rest that quenched my fear of God’s absence. Grace had saved me years before, and it is grace that will keep me safe until the day I die—not my ability to conquer sin, not my efforts to complete or clean up myself, not even my efforts aided

by Jesus. Just Jesus.

Now, much later, I know that God is always near to me, not because I always sense his closeness, but because I believe Christ lives in me. Sinful desires still take hold, and there still is many a day when my guilty conscience hides God’s smile, but I know Christ is interceding for me. When I am assailed by crippling accusations that I am unworthy of God’s love, I am learning to say, “Of course I am unworthy! Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now trying to be made perfect by the flesh?” When temptation is strong, when fleshly love makes its powerful appeal, I look at Jesus. I rest there. Only then am I able to turn away from temptation, not because I’m stronger, but because when I look at Jesus, I see how strong he is.

Lydia Brownback is an associate editor for Crossway Books.

Diaries of a Postmodern Christian asks “regular folk” to articulate the experience of living as a Christian in the postmodern age — that is, in general terms, a time when certainty is rejected and the meaning of life is largely centered around the subjective self. The works featured in this column may ask questions without necessarily offering a neat and tidy resolution. They do not need to be practical, but they do need to be personal. Writing style isn’t as important as thoughtfulness and honesty. If you are willing to let us “read a page of your diary,” email a manuscript of 1,000-1,200 words to letters@modernreformation.org, or send it by mail to Modern Reformation, 1725 Bear Valley Parkway, Escondido, CA 92027. If your work is going to appear in a future issue, you’ll hear from us prior to publication.

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Christless Christianity: Getting in Christ’s Way

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hat would things look like if Satan actually took over a city? The first frames in our imaginative slide show probably depict mayhem on a massive scale: Widespread violence, deviant sexualities, pornography in every vending machine, churches closed down and worshipers dragged off to City Hall. Over a half-century ago, Donald Grey Barnhouse, pastor of Philadelphia’s Tenth Presbyterian Church, gave his CBS radio audience a different picture of what it would look like if Satan took control of a town in America. He said that all of the bars and pool halls would be closed, pornography banished, pristine streets and sidewalks would be occupied by tidy pedestrians who smiled at each other. There would be no swearing. The kids would answer “Yes, sir,” “No, ma’am,” and the churches would be full on Sunday … where Christ is not preached.

Not to be alarmist, but it looks a lot like Satan is in charge right now. The enemy has a subtle way of using even the proper scenery and props to obscure the main character. The church, mission, cultural transformation, even the Spirit can become the focus instead of the means for “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith” (Heb. 12:2). As provocative as Barnhouse’s illustration remains, it is simply an elaboration of a point that is made throughout the story of redemption. The story behind all the headlines of the Bible is the war between the serpent and the offspring of the woman (Gen. 3:15), an enmity that God promised would culminate in the serpent’s destruction and the lifting of the curse. This promise was a declaration of war on Satan and his kingdom, and the contest unfolded in the first religious war, between Cain and Abel (Gen. 4 with Matt. 23:35), in the battle between Pharaoh and Yahweh that led to the exodus and the temptation in the wilderness. Even in the land, the serpent seduces Israel to idolatry and intermarriage with unbelievers, even provoking massacres of the royal family. Yet God always preserved that “seed of the woman” who would crush the serpent’s head (see 2 Kings 11, for example). The story leads all the way to Herod’s slaughter of the firstborn children in fear of the Magi’s announcement of the birth of the true King of Israel.

The Gospels unpack this story line and the epistles elaborate its significance. Everything is leading to Golgotha, and when the disciples—even Peter—try to distract Jesus away from that mission, they are being unwitting servants of Satan (Matt. 16:23). “The god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers”—not simply so that they will defy Judeo-Christian values, but “to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor. 4:4–5).

Satan lost the war on Good Friday and Easter, but has shifted his strategy to a guerilla struggle to keep the world from hearing the gospel that dismantles his kingdom of darkness. Paul speaks of this cosmic battle in Ephesians 6,

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directing us to the external Word, the gospel, Christ and his righteousness, faith, and salvation as our only armor in the assaults of the enemy. In Revelation 12, the history of redemption is recapitulated in brief compass, with the dragon sweeping a third of the stars (angels) from heaven, laying in wait to devour the woman’s child at birth, only to be defeated by the ascension of the promised offspring.

Nevertheless, knowing his time is short, he pursues the child’s brothers and sisters. Wherever Christ is truly proclaimed, Satan is most actively present. The wars between nations and enmity within families and neighborhoods is but the wake of the serpent’s tail as he seeks to devour the church, employing the same tried and tested methods: not only martyrdom from without, but heresy and schism from within. In the rest of this article, I want to suggest a few of the ways we are routinely tempted toward what can only be called, tragically, “Christless Christianity.”

Denial: The Sadducees he modern spirit has been dedicated to shifting authority from the outside (the church or the Bible) to the inside (reason or experience). Kant said the one thing he could always trust was his moral intuition, which led to the irrefutable fact of “the starry heavens above and the moral law within.” The Romantics said we should trust our inner experience. In fact, was it not the desire to usurp God’s throne that motivated the rebellion of Lucifer as well as Adam and Eve? Whenever we determine what really matters by looking within ourselves, we always come up with law. Some would object, “Not law, but love.” However, in the Bible, the Law simply nails down what it means to love God and our neighbor. Long before Jesus summed up the Law in this way (Matt. 22:39), it was delivered by the hand of Moses (Lev. 19:18, 34), and Paul reiterated the point (Rom. 13:8–10). We were created in the image of God, without fault, entirely capable of carrying out God’s moral will of making all of creation subservient to God’s law of love. The Fall did not eradicate this sense of moral purpose, but turned us inward, so that instead of truly loving God and our neighbor, we suppressed the truth in unrighteousness. The fall did not even mean that people became atheists, but that they became superstitious: using “God” or “spirituality” and their neighbors for their own ends.

The Enlightenment philosophers were right when they recognized that morality is the common denominator of humanity. Yet they concluded from this that whatever came to us from the outside—the reports of historical miracles and redemption—was the least essential to true religion. “All we need is love” and “All we need is law” make exactly the same point. Duty, love, or moral and religious experience lay at the heart of all the world’s

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never heard of. Madonna, Oprah, Dr. Phil, the Dali Lama, and probably a lot of That was the lesson of the Enlightenment.

Christian leaders will tell us that the point of religion is to get us to love each other. religions—their insides—while the historical packaging “God loves you” doesn’t stir the world’s opposition. (stories, miraculous claims, creeds, rituals) are the outer However, start talking about God’s absolute authority, shell that can be tossed away. holiness, wrath, and righteousness, original sin, Christ’s Kant distinguished these in terms of pure religion and substitutionary atonement, justification apart from works, ecclesiastical faith. The former has to do with our moral the necessity of new birth, repentance, baptism, duty. The latter consists of doctrines of sin, the incarnation Communion, and the future judgment, and the mood in and atonement, justification, supernatural rebirth, the the room changes considerably. If postmodernism is particular historical claims concerning Christ, as well as the simply a revival of modern romanticism (experience as official practices of the church (such as baptism and the sovereign), then it’s not very postmodern after all.

Supper). The story of the death and resurrection of Christ, Historians often point out that for all of their for example, could be accepted only to the extent that it differences, pietism and rationalism converged to create represented a universal moral truth (like self-sacrifice for the Enlightenment. The heirs of modernity looked others or for one’s principles). Taking it at face value inward, to autonomous reason or experience, rather than actually undermined pure morality. If you look to outward, in faith and repentance toward a God who someone else’s sacrifice to save you, then you won’t be as judges and saves. With Friedrich Schleiermacher, father of prone to fulfill your own duty yourself. One sect dealt modern Protestant liberalism, the emphasis fell on Jesus as with guilt by throwing children into volcanoes to pacify the supreme example of the kind of moral existence that the gods, while Christianity says that “God so loved the we can all have if we share in his “God-consciousness.” So world that he gave his only begotten Son … ” (John 3:16). while Christianity may represent the purest and fullest Yet once religion is refined of such “superstitions,” the realization of this principle, other religions are in their own residue left over is a pure morality that will at last lead us ways attempts to put this universal religious and moral to build a tower reaching to the heavens. Trust your experience into words. We just say things differently, but insides; doubt everything external to you. That was the we are experiencing the same reality. Where Kant located lesson of the Enlightenment. the essence of religion in practical reason (moral duty), The problem, of course, is that we have an outside God Schleiermacher located it in religious experience, but and an outside redemption. Everything inside of us is the either way the self is made the measure of truth and problem. The good news, however, is that the God who is redemption is something that we find within ourselves, completely other than we are became one of us, yet even if it is “Christ in my heart.” Revivalism, which is the without succumbing to our selfish pride. He fulfilled the mother of both Protestant liberalism and Evangelicalism, law, bore its judgment, and rose again as our solution to pressed the “deeds over creeds” and “experience over the curse of sin, death, and condemnation. Furthermore, doctrine” thesis to its limits. he sent his Spirit to indwell us, making us new from the This means, of course, that Christ is not the unique inside out, until one day our very bodies are raised. In one God-Man, but the most divinized human being. The sense, of course, the Enlightenment was right: the law is in gospel is not what Christ did for me, outside of me, in us by nature, since we are created in God’s image. The history, but the impression that he makes on me, the gospel is surprising, good news that has to come to us from nobility that he stirs up within me, to experience the same the outside. Everyone knows that we should treat others God-consciousness and love. Sin is not a condition from the way we would like to be treated ourselves: the Golden which I need to be saved, but actions that I can keep from Rule does not by itself provoke martyrdom. It does not doing with sufficient motivation and instruction. Christ’s need witnesses and heralds. In fact, it did not require the death is not an atoning sacrifice that satisfies God’s just incarnation, much less the atonement and resurrection. wrath, but an example of God’s love that moves us to So it’s not surprising that the world would think that repentance. Hence, “What would Jesus do?” is the main “all we need is love,” and we can do without the doctrine, question, not “What has Jesus done?” The inside takes since the world thinks it can do without Christ. Doctrine priority over the outside. is where the religions most obviously part ways. Doctrine is where things get interesting—and dangerous. As the Distraction: The Pharisees n contrast to the Sadducees, the Pharisees were playwright Dorothy Sayers said, doctrine isn’t the dull part scrupulous. The outside mattered, but in a legalistic of Christianity, rather, “The doctrine is the drama.” Jesus way. They believed in the resurrection, the last was not revolutionary because he said we should love God judgment, the truthfulness of the miracles reported in the and each other. Moses said that first. So did Buddha, Bible’s historical narratives, and were so eager for the Confucius, and countless other religious leaders we’ve

Trust your insides; doubt everything external to you.

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messianic age that they wanted everybody to get their house in order. Only when God’s people obey the law in all of its details (even the rabbinical rules designed to guard against violating the actual prescriptions of Moses) would the Messiah visit Israel and vindicate his people in the last judgment.

Now what could be wrong with a call to moral renewal and national righteousness? But the Pharisees were distracted from the real point of the kingdom. Expecting a king who would overthrow Roman rule and reestablish the Mosaic theocracy, they missed the real identity of the Messiah and his kingdom under their noses. The disciples themselves were also distracted, routinely changing the subject whenever Jesus spoke of the cross as they neared Jerusalem. They were thinking inauguration day, with the last judgment and the consummation of the kingdom in all of its glory. Jesus knew, however, that the only route to glory down the road was the cross up ahead. For all their emphasis on external righteousness and behavior, they too affirmed salvation from inside: by moral effort.

Jesus contrasts the false piety of the Pharisee with the genuine faith and repentance of the citizen of his kingdom in his famous parable in Luke 18: Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted. (vv. 9–14) Jesus told the Pharisees, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others, but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God” (Luke 16:15). While Jesus basically seems to ignore the Sadducees, since they probably viewed each other as irrelevant, he warns repeatedly of “the yeast of the Pharisees,” which is “their hypocrisy” (Luke 12:1).

In the parable that Jesus tells, the Pharisee even prayed, “I thank you that I am not like this tax collector.” The only thing worse than his hypocrisy and self-righteousness was that he pretended to give God a little credit for it. We have all witnessed awards ceremonies in which recipients acknowledged the many people without whom such success could not have been possible. This is quite different, however, from being a beneficiary of the estate of someone who, at the very moment of drafting the bequest, was treated as an enemy. Christless Christianity does not mean religion or spirituality devoid of the words “Jesus,” “Christ,” “Lord,” or even “Savior.” What it means

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is that the way the names and titles are employed will be removed from their specific location in an unfolding historical plot of human rebellion and divine rescue and from such practices as baptism and Communion. Jesus as life coach, therapist, buddy, significant other, founder of Western civilization, political messiah, example of radical love, and countless other images can distract us from the stumbling block and foolishness of “Christ and him crucified.”

In The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis has the devil (Screwtape) catechizing his minion (Wormwood) to keep the Christians distracted from Christ as redeemer from God’s wrath. Rather than clumsily announce his presence by direct attacks, Wormwood should try to get the churches to become interested in “Christianity and…”: “Christianity and the War,” “Christianity and Poverty,” “Christianity and Morality,” and so on. Of course, Lewis was not suggesting that Christians should not have an interest in such pressing issues of the day, but he was making the point that when the church’s basic message is less about who Christ is and what he has accomplished once and for all for us, and more about who we are and what we have to do in order to justify all of that expense on his part, the religion that is made “relevant” is no longer Christianity. By not thinking that “Christ crucified” is as relevant as “Christ and Family Values” or “Christ and America” or “Christ and World Hunger,” we end up assimilating the gospel to law. Again, there is nothing wrong with the law—the moral commands that expose our moral failure and guide us as believers in the way of discipleship. However, assimilating the good news of what someone else has done to a road map for our own action is disastrous. In the words of Theodore Beza, “The confusion of law and gospel is the principal source of all the abuses that corrupt or have ever corrupted the church.” When God’s Law (and not our own inner sentiment) actually addresses us, our first response should be, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner,” not the reply of the rich young ruler, “All this I have done since my youth.”

Another way we distort the proclamation of Christ in the “Pharasaic” mode is by what has sometimes been called “the assumed gospel.” This is often the first stage of taking our eyes off of Christ. Even where Christ is regarded as the answer to God’s just wrath, this emphasis is regarded as a point that can be left behind in the Christian life. The idea is that people “get saved” and then “become disciples.” The gospel for sinners is Christ’s death and resurrection; the gospel for disciples, however, is, “Get busy!” But this assumes that disciples are not sinners, too.

There is not a single biblical verse that calls us to “live the gospel.” By definition, the gospel is not something that we can live. It is only something that we can hear and receive.

It is good news, not good advice. The good news is that, “But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the Law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe,” since sinners “are now justified M AY / J U N E 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 1 3

genuine lives of witness, love, fellowship, community, and service—yet always its own requiring forgiveness and therefore always coming back to the good news concerning Christ.

Today, we have abundant examples of both tendencies: denial and distraction. On one hand, there are those who explicitly reject the New Testament teaching concerning Christ’s person and work. Jesus was another moral guide—maybe the best ever—but not the divine-human redeemer. However, evangelicals are known for their stand against Protestant liberalism. On the other hand, many who affirm all the right views of Christ and salvation in theory seem to think that what makes Christianity truly relevant, interesting, and revolutionary is something else.

Distractions abound. This does not mean that Jesus is not important. His name appears in countless books and sermons, on T-shirts, coffee mugs, and billboards. Yet it has become something like a cliché or trademark instead of “the name that is above every name” by which alone we are saved.

Jesus Christ as the incarnate God in the merciful service of redeeming and reconciling sinners is simply not the main theme in most churches or Christian events these days. And what happens when we stop being reminded of who God is and what he has achieved in human history for a world in bondage to sin and death—in other words, when doctrine is made secondary? We fall back on our natural religion: what happens inside, that which we always know intuitively: law. “Deeds, not creeds” equals “Law, not gospel.” For all their theoretical differences, liberals and evangelicals end up sounding a lot like each other. Evangelicals who say that they believe in Christ end up reducing Christ to a moral example just as thoroughly as liberals, not by outright denial but by distraction. The goal of this article is not to brand contemporary Christians “Sadducees” and “Pharisees,” but to point out that one doesn’t have to deny Christ and the gospel in order to end up with Christless Christianity. In fact, one can appeal to Christ and “make Jesus the center” in a way that drifts back toward “pure religion” (morality) and away from “ecclesiastical faith” (doctrine).

Today, partly in response to the appalling lack of genuine discipleship in a post-Christian era, many Protestants like Stanley Hauerwas and Brian McLaren encourage us to recover the Anabaptist legacy, which, as I mentioned, focused on Jesus as moral example. In A Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLaren explains, “Anabaptists see the Christian faith primarily as a way of life,” interpreting Paul through the lens of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount rather than vice versa. The emphasis falls on discipleship rather than on doctrine, as if following Jesus’ example could be set against following his teaching. What happens when the Sermon on the Mount is assimilated to a general ethic of love (i.e., pure morality), and doctrine

Only in Christ is discipleship the consequence of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, rather than contribution to human redemption. by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, received through faith” (Rom. 3:21–25).

When the gospel—that is, Christ as Savior—is taken for granted, we are no longer being constantly converted from our hypocrisy and self-trust to faith and love. Like the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable, we thank God that we are not like others, but we are really trusting in our own “discipleship.” The Pharisees were disciples too, and they had their disciples. But only in Christ is discipleship the consequence of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, rather than its own contribution to human redemption.

Jesus himself said, “The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28). When he was rebuked by his disciples for raining on their parade by talking about the cross, Jesus said, “It is for this reason that I have come to this hour” (John 12:27). When Philip asked Jesus to show them the way to the Father, Jesus said that he is the Way (John 14:8–14). Similarly, Paul told the Corinthians that he was not only single-mindedly determined to preach Christ alone, but “Christ crucified,” although it is “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks,” since it is the only good news capable of saving either (1 Cor. 1:18, 22–30; 2:1–2). In other words, Paul knew (the super-apostles were always providing concrete evidence) that preachers could use the name of Jesus, but as something or someone other than the vicarious sacrifice for sinners.

The Greeks love wisdom, so show them a Jesus who is smarter at solving the conundrums of daily living and the church will throng with supporters. Jews love signs and wonders, so tell people that Jesus can help them have their best life now, or bring in the kingdom of glory, or drive out the Romans and prove their integrity before the pagans, and Jesus will be laureled with praise. But proclaim Christ as the Suffering Servant who laid down his life and took it back up again, and everybody wonders who changed the subject.

The church exists in order to change the subject from us and our deeds to God and his deeds of salvation, from our various “missions” to save the world to Christ’s mission that has already accomplished redemption. If the message that the church proclaims makes sense without conversion; if it does not offend even lifelong believers from time to time, so that they too need to die more to themselves and live more to Christ, then it is not the gospel. When Christ is talked about, a lot of things can happen, none of which necessarily has anything to do with his doing, dying, rising, reigning, and return. When Christ is proclaimed in his saving office, the church becomes a theater of death and resurrection, leading to 1 4 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

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(ecclesiastical faith) is made secondary? Christ himself becomes a mere example to help people become better non-Christians. In fact, McLaren writes, “I must add, though, that I don’t believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion. It may be advisable in many (not all!) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu, or Jewish contexts.” “I don’t hope all Jews or Hindus will become members of the Christian religion. But I do hope all who feel so called will become Jewish or Hindu followers of Jesus.” It is no wonder, then, that McLaren can say concerning liberal Protestants, “I applaud their desire to live out the meaning of the miracle stores even when they don’t believe the stories really happened as written.” After all, it’s deeds, not creeds that matter. McLaren seems to suggest that following Jesus (pure religion) can exist with or without explicit faith in Christ (ecclesiastical faith).

There is nothing especially postmodern about any of this, of course. It is simply the legacy of the Enlightenment and its moralistic antecedents. If following Jesus’ example of love (never mind his exclusive claims, divisive rhetoric, and warning of judgment) is the gospel, then, of course there will be many Buddhists and liberals who are better “Christians” than many of us who profess faith in Christ. As Mark Oestriecher, another Emergent church writer, relates, “My Buddhist cousin, except for her unfortunate inability to embrace Jesus, is a better ‘Christian’ (based on Jesus’ description of what a Christian does) than almost every Christian I know. If we were using Matthew 26 as a guide, she’d be a sheep; and almost every Christian I know personally would be a goat.”

Yet at the end of the day, “radical disciples” will burn out, too, and realize that they, like the rest of us, are hypocrites who fall short of God’s glory and need someone outside of them not only to show the way but to be the way of redemption. Although McLaren himself does not deny the Christ confessed in the creeds, he believes that what is most important about Jesus Christ is his call to discipleship, which allows us to participate in his redeeming work, rather than his unique, unrepeatable, completed work for sinners two thousand years ago.

In his book, The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations, Dan Kimball, pastor of Santa Cruz Bible Church, announces the goal of the emerging church movement: “Going back to a raw form of vintage Christianity, which unapologetically focuses on kingdom living by disciples of Jesus.” If we are allowed to pick and choose whatever we like from the New Testament (again, hardly a uniquely postmodern trend—Thomas Jefferson had his own edited version, the moral Jesus of love minus the Christ of “ecclesiastical faith”), we will always gravitate toward ourselves and our own inner experience or morality, away from God: the external authority of his law and redemption announced in his gospel. Emergent Christians recognize the hypocrisy of evangelical consumerism with remarkable insight, and properly recoil at the images of Christians one finds in The Simpsons’ character Ned Flanders.

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However, they forget that before Emergent there was the “Jesus Movement” that turned into the megachurch movement that they recognize as deficient.

For all of their reactions, the “post-evangelical” emerging folks seem to follow the well-worn path of their revivalist forebears in seeing the church primarily as a society of moral transformers who preach themselves rather than Christ.

Like many emerging church leaders (in continuity with my evangelical pastors growing up), Kimball invokes Francis of Assisi’s famous line: “Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.” “Our lives will preach better than anything we can say.” But doesn’t this mean to preach ourselves rather than Christ? The gospel that we preach is good news because it is not the story of our discipleship, but of Christ’s obedience, death, and resurrection in our place.

The good news is not, “Look at my life” or “look at our community”; it is the announcement that in Christ God justifies the wicked. Yes, there is hypocrisy, and because Christians will always be simultaneously saint and sinner, there will always be hypocrisy in every Christian and in every church. The good news is that Christ saves us from hypocrisy, too. But hypocrisy is especially generated when the church points to itself and to our own “changed lives” in its promotional materials. The more we talk about ourselves, the more occasion the world will have to charge us with hypocrisy. The more we confess our sins and receive forgiveness, and pass this good news on to others, the more our lives will be authentically changed in the bargain. With all due respect to St. Francis, the gospel is only something that can be told (i.e., words), a story that can be declared. When our lives are told within that larger story, rather than vice versa, there is genuine salvation for sinners and mission to the world.

Kimball writes that the “ultimate goal of discipleship … should be measured by what Jesus taught in Matthew 22:37–40: ‘Love the Lord with all your heart, mind, and soul.’ Are we loving him more? Love others as yourself.

Are we loving people more?” This is not a revolutionary, new message; it is the imperative preaching that many of us have always heard growing up in Evangelicalism.

For all of its incisive critiques of the megachurch movement, how different is the Emergent message from Rick Warren’s call to “Deeds, Not Creeds”? These voices are right to remind us of what the law requires, and how Jesus in both his teaching and example exhibited the deepest demands that love places upon us. But if this is the good news, then we are all in trouble. As I grow in my holiness—realized in greater love for God and neighbor— I am actually more aware of how far I fall short. Therefore, on good days, I might answer Kimball’s question with cautious optimism, on other days it might lead me to despair. But the gospel is the good news that I need on any day, leading me away from myself to Christ “who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).

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described as “Protestantism without the Reformation.” In a recent issue of TIME on Pope Benedict’s critical relationship with Islam, conservative Catholic scholar Michael Novak was quoted as saying concerning the pontiff, “His role is to represent Western civilization.”

There are a lot of evangelical leaders who seem to think that this is their job, too. The mission of the church is to drive out the Romans (i.e., Democrats) and make the world safe for democracy. The Emergent movement’s politics are different: they lean left rather than right. For many reared on the “Christian America” hype of the religious right, this may seem like a major shift, but it’s just a change in parties rather than a deeper shift from moralism to evangelical mission. The Emergent sociology is different, too: Starbucks and acoustic guitars in dark rooms with candles rather than Wal-Mart and praise bands in bright-lighted theaters. Yet in either case, moralism continues to push “Christ crucified” to the margins.

We are totally distracted, on the right, left, and in the middle. Children growing up in evangelical churches know as little as unchurched youth about the basics of the Christian faith. They increasingly inhabit a church world that is less and less shaped by the gospel through Christcentered catechesis, preaching and sacrament (the means that Jesus instituted for making disciples). The songs they sing are mostly emotive, rather than serving to make “the Word of Christ dwell in [them] richly” (Col. 3:16), and their private devotions are less shaped by the practices of corporate prayer and Scripture reading than in past generations. Nothing has to change on paper: they can still be “conservative evangelicals,” but it just doesn’t matter because doctrine doesn’t matter—which means faith doesn’t matter. It’s works that counts now, so get busy!

So now people are called to be the “good news,” to make Christ’s mission successful by living “relationally” and “authentically.” Where the New Testament announces a gospel that changes lives, now the “gospel” is our changed life. “We preach not ourselves but Christ” (2 Cor. 4:5) has been exchanged for a constant appeal to our personal and collective holiness as the main attraction. Church marketing guru George Barna encourages us to reach out to the unchurched on the basis of our character: “What they are looking for is a better life. Can you lead them to a place or to a group of people that will deliver the building blocks of a better life? Do not propose Christianity as a system of rules but as a relationship with the One who leads by way of example. Then seek proven ways to achieve meaning and success.” I am not at all implying that we shouldn’t follow Christ’s example or that the church shouldn’t have models and mentors. What I am suggesting is that discipleship is teaching others, and teaching them so well that even when we falter as role models, the maturity of their own discipleship will not fail because it is grounded in Christ and not in us.

No matter what we say we believe about Christ’s person and work, if we aren’t constantly bathed in it, the end result will lead to H. Richard Niebuhr’s description of 1 6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

Protestant liberalism: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through a Christ without a cross.” According to University of North Carolina sociologist Christian Smith, the working religion of America’s teens—whether evangelical or liberal, churched or unchurched—is “moralistic, therapeutic deism.” And the answer to that, according to many megachurches and emerging churches is “do more; be more authentic; live more transparently.” This is the good news that will change the world?

Christless Christianity can be promoted in contexts where either the sermon is a lecture on timeless doctrine and ethics or Christ gets lost in all the word studies and applications. Christ gets lost in churches where activity, self-expression, the hype of “worship experiences” and programs replace the ordinary ministry of hearing and receiving Christ as he is given to us in the means of grace.

Christ gets lost when he is promoted as the answer to everything but our condemnation, death, and the tyranny of sin, or as the means to the end of more excitement, amusement, better living, or a better world—as if we already knew what these would look like before God addressed us in his law and gospel.

Back to Barnhouse’s illustration. Of course, Satan loves war, violence, injustice, poverty, disease, oppression, immorality, and other displays of human sinfulness. And of course he is displeased whenever a cup of cold water is offered to a thirsty man in Christ’s name. However, what he spends most of his time plotting is the displacement of Christ from the focal awareness, ministry, and mission of the church. Keeping unbelievers blind and believers distracted is his main strategy. Genuine renewal only comes when we realize that the church is always drawn to distractions and must always be redirected to Christ, always one generation away from becoming something other than the place in the world—the only place, in fact—where the finger points away from us to Christ, “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). ■

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

The quotations from Brian McLaren are taken from his work, A Generous Orthodoxy (Zondervan, 2004) pp. 61, 206, 214, 260, 264. The quotation from Mark Oestreicher is found in Dan Kimball’s The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for a New Generation (Zondervan, 2003), p. 53.

The direct quotation from Kimball is from the same book, p.

26. The quotation from Francis of Assisi is taken from pp.

185 and 194 of Kimball’s work. The TIME magazine article on Pope Benedict is from the November 27, 2006, issue, p.

46. George Barna’s quotation is from his book Grow Your Church from the Outside In (Ventura: Regal, 2002), p. 161.

CHRISTLESS CHRISTIANITY

Solo Christo BY

“J

ROBERT NORRIS

esus Christ is Lord” has been and continues to be the conviction of the Christian. It is this conviction that has enabled men and women of every century, including our own, to face persecution and death rather than renounce the faith of Jesus Christ. This earliest and simplest of Christian confessions focuses attention upon the central and unique place that Jesus Christ holds within the Christian faith as being the sum and substance of its faith and message.

The hope of salvation is rooted in the provision of God, whose character is holy and righteous, and is mirrored in his Law. That Law demands that “the soul that sins shall die.” At the same time, God’s nature is love, and his purpose is to show mercy. While he cannot ignore people who are guilty of violating his Law (to do so would make him unjust), yet neither can he bear to see us perish. The astounding truth of the gospel is that God in his sovereign and free love fulfills his own law and provides a “just” forgiveness, by himself becoming our substitute in the person of Jesus Christ, who is the incarnate God! It was and remains the conviction of Christians that the only way to know God is to be found in his self-disclosure and that there can be no real or lasting peace, joy, or sense of purpose or fulfillment apart from the God whom we were made to know; and there is no knowing God apart from Jesus Christ. This truth was enshrined in the formula “Solo Christo.” Its proclamation calls the world away from

its counterfeits, whether religious or secular, to Jesus Christ alone as the one who alone can remove guilt, who alone can provide a reconciliation to God and remove the painful experience of alienation from God. It not only captures the central message of the Scripture, but also explains and validates any true encounter with God. Solo Christo expresses the uniqueness of the authority of Jesus Christ by revealing his identity. It is the unambiguous testimony of the Scripture that Jesus taught as one with authority unlike other religious leaders (Mark 1:27; Luke 4.36). This authority was derived from his identity as “Son of God.” So close is the identification of Jesus with God, that his Jewish critics sought to kill him precisely because they understood his claim to be equal with God. Such claims are found in the language with which he described himself, adopting a very form of divine self-disclosure, “I am,” and applying it to himself as “the bread of life,” “the true vine,” and “the good Shepherd.”

Indeed, his disciples accorded to him the worship that was reserved only for God when, following the resurrection, they declared, “My Lord and my God.” Jesus has unique authority because of who he is.

When the church confessed “Jesus is Lord,” it was affirming its conviction that God was uniquely present in Jesus. In using the title of “Lord” for Jesus, the church was expressing its conviction that Jesus was God, because the title of “Lord” was reserved to describe God only. This is M AY / J U N E 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 1 7

the Judge were fulfilled in Christ.

It is by Christ’s Christ, alone, justifies. Christ, alone, adopts us into the substitution for us, and especially in his death, that family of God. Christ, alone, sanctifies. we see the love of God made clear as Christ secures our subsequently the experience and testimony of the early salvation and the law of God upheld in that his death pays church where the Apostle Paul, writing to the Church at for the sins. His sacrifice, because it was the sacrifice of the Colossae, calls Jesus “the image of the invisible God.” It is Son of God and because it was substitutionary and penal, the confession of every Christian that “Jesus Christ is Lord” is final, sufficient, and complete. and so it is the confession that he is God. Solo Christo announces the effectiveness of the Solo Christo expresses the uniqueness of the work of Christ for it answers the question of how accomplishment of Jesus Christ by asserting that the life and death of Christ can substitute for me. It Jesus is our substitute in life and in death. His life does this by affirming the reality of imputation whereby was sinless. From its beginning to its end, he fulfilled our sins are imputed to him and his righteousness is everything that was required by God from men and imputed to us. The Apostle Paul expresses this when, women. In bringing this perfect obedience, Jesus did so in writing to the Corinthians, he says, “God made him sin our place. His identification with us is displayed at his who knew no sin, that we might become the baptism, where in the face of the hesitancy of John the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. 5:21). Though he Baptist Jesus explained that, “It was necessary for us to fulfill was innocent of all sin, God treated Jesus as if he were a all righteousness” (Matt. 3:15). He had no personal need to sinner. He was legally declared sinful and held liable for be baptized, yet in this act he identified himself with those the record of sinners, and received the punishment of whom he had come to save. Jesus did all that was death. At the same time, God treats sinners as if we were necessary for men and women to be acceptable to God, righteous. Indeed, we are legally declared righteous and which is why the Apostle Paul could say, “By one man’s treated as perfect. Thus it may be said of Christians that obedience many shall be made righteous” (Rom. 5:19). they are at the same time sinful and yet righteous, and as Jesus was also our substitute in death. He died the Paul announced, “Now there is no condemnation for death we should have died and did so in our place. In this those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). sense we see that the death of Christ was a sacrifice. The This brings to the Christian a present freedom from the just judgment of God against the sin of sinners was death. condemnation of the law, and a hope for the future, for Jesus himself understood that he had come to be the the Christ who was crucified was also “raised for our substitute for chosen sinners. He described his own life as justification.” Raised from the dead, Jesus ascended to the being given as “a ransom for many” (Mark10:45). The Father; Christ is our advocate, applying now the benefits gospel writer Matthew understands this to be so. When he of his death to our account. His death has accomplished records Jesus miraculously healing people at the house of our salvation, and his resurrection has ensured the Peter’s mother-in-law (Matt. 8:17), he understands that effective application of that sacrifice. His continual this was a direct fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah: intercession ensures that all for whom he died will, by the “Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows. agency of the Holy Spirit, and through the means of the Yet we considered him stricken smitten by God and gift of faith, come to trust in Christ. afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He These blessings are secured because Jesus, having was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that accomplished his work, stands before the Father as our brought us peace was upon him and by his wounds we are representative and mediator.

The law that once healed. We all like sheep have gone astray and the Lord condemned us now is our ally in that it announces that has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:4-6). As our full and final satisfaction has been made for sin. Indeed, so representative, he stood in our place, and the punishment intimate is the nature of the Christian’s relationship, to due to us was meted out to him.

Christ that it is described as being that of an adopted child.

The death of Christ was not only an experience of Solo Christo enshrines the understanding of the intense physical agony, though it was certainly that, but it uniqueness of the Christian life, for it expresses was also a deep spiritual pain, for it was the experience of the continuing need of the Christian for the punishment for sins that were “laid on him.” He transformation and renewal of life. Solo Christo is experienced the rejection of God as sin bearer. That death not only doctrine, it is also the means by which we live was a sacrifice. In dying he absorbed the full wrath of God our life in this world. Some Christians believe that “the against sin and sinners. In the Epistle to the Romans, Paul gospel” is only for nonbelievers, and that once an explains it as “a propitiation”; Christ carrying our identities individual has become a Christian then the means of on the cross was a sacrifice for our sins. He bore the legal growing as a Christian are to be found in following penalty of our guilt. The demands of the just law of God commands of the law.

This leads only to

“Christ alone” mediates the blessings of redemption.

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discouragement and legalism. Christ is alive as is his gospel (Rom. 1:16) and continues its work in us. It makes us always humble, because our debt to Christ can never be repaid. It makes us grateful because it can never be deserved, and it makes us dependent, because the righteousness with which we are able to stand before God is always “an alien righteousness” belonging to Christ and imputed to us. Our repentance is both from our sin and our righteousness, because any righteousness we have in ourselves falls short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23).

Solo Christo captures the uniqueness of the challenge of Jesus Christ, for it leaves no room for the possibility that one might be saved apart from Jesus Christ. It does not allow for the existence of other saviors. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me’ (John 14:6). Peter preached that “there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). “Christ alone” mediates the blessings of redemption. Christ, alone, justifies. Christ, alone, adopts us into the family of God. Christ, alone, sanctifies.

This challenges us when we are tempted to trust in techniques of success that blur the uniqueness of Christ.

Deeply committed Christians often appear to want to coerce or manipulate “decisions for Christ” in a desire to build the kingdom or “save” people they love. A current debate amongst some mission agencies born out of their frustration with scant fruit for much effort involves asking how far we go in identifying with cultures in order to “win” them for Christ. Some are suggesting that endangered converts may privately be followers of Christ, and yet remain “Muslim.” Some press the debate further and suggest that Christian missionaries should become Muslim in order to further the cause of Christ. The debate is framed in terms of a number of letters representing gradations of integration with their culture. “C1” is used to describe traditional church, which is foreign to the Islamic community, both in culture and language, until you reach “C6,” which describes secret Christian believers who may be active in the religious life of the Muslim community. The debate is real and involves complex issues and deeply committed Christians who look for “kingdom” results. One denominational mission’s agency is reported to “require” their missionaries to become C6 Christians!

We, too, are challenged when we seek to speak the gospel to the postmodern world in which we live.

Whatever “postmodern” means, and there is no lack of literature seeking to define the term, it manifests itself in an intense antiauthoritarianism. It rejects all external norms and standards for the definition of moral values or the direction of life. Instead postmodern people replace the meta-narrative with a set of “micro-narratives” to live by, ultimately making self the sole arbiter of truth. Allied with this is the relativism that refuses any claim to absolute truth,

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asserting that we alone give value and provide meaning.

Indeed, our generation regards as intolerant those who claim access to an absolute truth, believing that there can be no criteria to tell another that they are wrong. To do so is seen to be the ultimate in prejudice. In this way, belief and truth have been disassociated, and all beliefs are regarded as equally valid because the conviction the individual determines has become the criteria for determining the value of belief. Our postmodern world is also seen to be characterized by the reality of a pluralism that demands the acceptance that all religions and none, and all beliefs must be equally dealt with as having equal validity.

Christianity was birthed facing such challenges. The Roman Empire was probably more pluralistic than modern America, comprising a large number of conquered nations with their various religions. Yet it was in such a setting that the Christian faith grew and spread. So while the modern world with its insistence upon diversity and pluralism may come as a surprise and sometimes a shock to many Christians, it offers no new challenge to the Christian faith.

Human nature has not changed. It was always the case that “self” has sought to be enthroned as the final arbiter of truth and value. Even in our post-Christian world, which does a great deal to suppress the consciousness of God and his law, modern people are all too well aware of societal disorder and personal “dis-peace,” and these continue to nag and annoy even the most committed secularist. The result is that often either nonreligious means of atonement are sought, or escapist means are attempted. Neither of these options disguise the fact that peace, joy, and a sense of purpose are elusive apart from God, and there is a significant problem in knowing God. In fact, he cannot be known savingly apart from his own self-revelation in Jesus Christ. The answer now as always is to announce the gospel, and accept no substitutes for it.

All religion is ultimately the attempt of godless and unrighteous people to justify themselves. As Barth has so eloquently reminded us, “all religion was sacrificed on Golgotha and the religious gods died on Good Friday.” The Christian must first of all know the gospel and be convinced of its truth and efficacy as we face the world.

The gospel is infinitely deep and not easily comprehended, and it does its renewing work in us as we understand it in truth. The gospel confronts prejudice, brings life to our worship, forgiveness to tortured souls, and eternal life where death and despair were regnant. It makes our Christian fellowship real and evangelism effective and authentic. The gospel itself is enshrined and encapsulated in Solo Christo. ■

Robert M. Norris is pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church (Bethesda, Maryland).

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Preaching Christ from All the Scriptures

by Dennis E. Johnson The Bible’s variety is mind-boggling. It contains sixty-six documents, composed over one and a half millennia in three languages. Some biblical books are addressed to an oppressed Ancient Near Eastern clan, recently rescued from slavery; others, to agrarian communities of farmers and craftsmen; still others, to multiethnic urban cells around the Mediterranean Sea, groups that reflected the whole economic spectrum from rich to poor. The Bible is historical narratives, fictional parables, legal regulations, architectural designs, simple and ornate poems, tightly argued epistles, stirring sermons, bizarre visions, pragmatic maxims, thunderous warnings of coming disaster, and sweet previews of future paradise.

Is it a fool’s errand to seek a unifying theme in such a dizzying display of diversity? Many today think so, but the Bible itself claims otherwise. It speaks as the voice of the majestic, all-wise, all-powerful, all-merciful Creator of the universe and Redeemer of his people. It reveals his “purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph. 1:9–10). It records the post-Easter Bible studies in which Jesus the risen Lord led astonished disciples to discover himself as the theme that unifies all the Scripture: “Everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled,” including his suffering, resurrection, and gift of repentance and forgiveness to all nations through the Spirit-empowered witness of the apostles (Luke 24:44–49).

But how can we discover Christ in all the Scriptures? The New Testament’s witness to Jesus is obvious. All four Gospels obviously concern his person and work in his earthly ministry, suffering and death, and glorious resurrection. Acts abounds with sermons that focus on Jesus the Messiah, rejected by his own people but raised from the dead by God and vindicated as the Lord of life. The epistles of Paul, Peter, and others expound Christ’s good news and explore its implications for believers’ identity and life together as Christ’s body, and in society at large. The Book of Revelation itself is “the revelation of Jesus Christ” (Rev. 1:1), given not to predict military movements in today’s Middle East, but to display his already accomplished triumph as the slain Lamb.

The Old Testament seems, at first glance, to be another matter. For one thing, its latest books were written four centuries before Jesus’ birth. It does speak of a Joshua (the Hebrew way to say “Jesus”), but his military career seems quite different from Jesus of Nazareth’s ministry of teaching and healing and suffering. Of course, the Old Testament contains prophecies that would be fulfilled in Jesus: his birth in Bethlehem (Mic. 5:2), his humble entry into Jerusalem (Zech. 9:9), his repudiation by his own people and execution (Isa. 53), his resurrection (Ps. 16), and his gift of the Holy Spirit (Joel 2:28–32). Moreover, the New Testament discloses that events and institutions in ancient Israel’s history provided divinely designed previews of the Messiah and his mission as the last Adam, the sacrificial Passover 2 0 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

lamb, the trailblazer in a new exodus out of slavery, the living temple. But where is Jesus in the sordid history of Israel’s judges, or in the pragmatic principles of Proverbs?

The key that unlocks the whole Bible as the treasury of God’s witness to Jesus, his beloved Son and our brotherredeemer, is Scripture’s covenantal character. Every time we speak of Old Testament or New Testament we implicitly acknowledge that covenant structures Scripture, for these terms (derived from Latin) reflect the subdivision of redemptive history in Jeremiah 31:31–34, which contrasts the broken covenant of Sinai to a “new covenant” to come, bringing unprecedented blessings of forgiveness, heartfelt obedience, and unimpeded access to God. It is this new covenant that Jesus inaugurated by his sacrifice (Luke 22:20; 2 Cor. 3:4–18; Heb. 8:6–13).

Covenants in the Bible bind the Lord as king to his subject (but often rebellious) people, the Lord as husband to his beloved (but often unfaithful) bride, the Lord as Father to his cherished (but often wayward) children. In covenant commitment the Lord promises his people rescue and protection, and he demands from them wholesouled allegiance and affection. When both parties fulfill their commitments, the result is blessedness for the servant and delight and glory for the Lord.

But here is the rub: whereas the Lord “remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself” (2 Tim. 2:13), sin-stained humans invariably prove faithless, resulting in guilt, curse, and death. So every historical narrative in Israel’s ancient Scriptures attests to the need not only for the Lord’s gracious intervention on behalf of the undeserving but also for the arrival in history of a flawless human Servant to fulfill our part of the bargain. Jesus is the gracious Lord who is also the wellpleasing obedient Servant. This discovery opens to us the connection of every event recounted in the Bible to Jesus the mediator of the new and better covenant (Heb. 7:22; 12:24).

To live in covenant with God is to seek his wisdom to interpret our experience and guide our decisions. This discovery opens to us the connection of the Wisdom Literature’s every proverb and puzzle to Christ, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3).

Jesus is both the Law-giving Lord and the Law-keeping Servant, uniquely authorized to inherit every covenant blessing as the one—the only one—who has loved the Lord his God with all his heart, soul, strength, and mind, and his neighbor as himself (Matt. 22:37–39). This discovery opens to us the connection of every command in Scripture to the Christ who kept it for us and who now conforms our hearts to it by his quiet, relentless life-giving Holy Spirit.

Seeing every text in the Bible in its covenant context will compel us to read, teach, and preach its witness to Jesus, the God-man who binds God and humanity together in his own person and his covenant-keeping achievement for us.

Dennis E. Johnson is academic dean and professor of practical theology at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California).

CHRISTLESS CHRISTIANITY

Christ’s Impossible Prayer in Gethsemane

BY

BRENT MCGUIRE

They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” He took Peter, James and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled.

Mark 14:32–33 M AY / J U N E 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 2 1

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he conventional account—at least the one this writer encounters most often—is that in Gethsemane Jesus demonstrates his humanity, by shrinking (as any of us would) from the painful death ahead of him. Jesus is deeply distressed by the prospect not only of dying but of being killed in a cruel and violent manner. He knows what is about to happen and he is afraid.

What leads people to think this way of Gethsemane?

Perhaps graphic Good Friday sermons and dramatizations such as The Passion of the Christ are to blame—visual and rhetorical portrayals of the brutal scourging, the pounding of the nails, and the thrusting in of the spear. Though true and faithful to the biblical record and to what we know of ancient Roman crucifixion, such an emphasis on the physicality of the cross often serves to obscure the full significance of Jesus’ suffering and death. After all, what is true physically about Jesus’ crucifixion may also be said of the crucifixions that occurred left and right of him. And while we do not know what anguish of soul the two malefactors experienced beforehand, we know of many martyrs—Christian and otherwise—who faced their violent end with little or no spiritual torment.

Eleazar, a Jewish scribe martyred in the second century B.C., “welcomed death with honor” and “went to the rack of his own accord” (2 Macc. 6:19). The Roman philosopher Seneca, in the moments leading up to his suicide, was unmoved, showing no signs of fear or sadness (Tacitus, Annals XV.61–2). St. Peter was so bold as to insist he be crucified upside down. The early Christian bishop Polycarp received his death sentence with a courage and joy that amazed his executioner (Eusebius, Church History IV.25). To say Jesus’ soul is “overwhelmed to the point of death” because he fears being crucified is to regard him as of weaker stuff than these others.

No, Jesus’ agony is over something other than the prospect of physical suffering and death. We learn what that is from the words he prays. His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, in fact, gives us the full meaning of what he is about to do. And the Father’s answer, in turn, reveals that the world could be saved in no other way.

The Cup

“M

y Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matt. 26:39). And again he prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done” (Matt. 26:42). What does Jesus mean by “this cup”?

In Psalm 75 we read, In the hand of the LORD is a cup full of foaming wine mixed with spices; he pours it out, and all the wicked of the earth drink it down to its very dregs. (Ps. 75:8) Isaiah, too, speaks of this “cup of the Lord’s wrath” (Isa. 2 2 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

51:17) and Jeremiah of the “cup filled with the wine of My wrath” (Jer. 25:15). The cup that Christ asks be taken from him is the cup of God’s judgment against sinners.

Here is why the Son of God began to be sorrowful and troubled. Here is what caused Christ’s sweat to fall like drops of blood to the ground. It is not at pain and death that Christ flinches. In Gethsemane Christ shudders before the cup of God’s wrath upon sin.

There are many today who refuse to believe that God actually gets angry with sinners. They think that God is never wroth with his creatures.

Some there are who tell Of one who threatens he will toss to hell The luckless pots he marr’d in making—Pish!

He’s a Good Fellow, and ’twill all be well — Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam God made us, warts and all, and there is no way a God who is just would ever punish sinners for being exactly how he made them. Or so the prevailing view would have it.

Holy Scripture tells a different story. God is certainly just, but we are not as God made us. Our sinful nature, inherited from our first parents, is a perversion of God’s good creation, an offense for which we are held no less accountable for having been born with it: “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation” (Exod. 20:4).

Since God is holy and righteous by nature, he can have no communion with sinners. “I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy” (Lev. 11:44). “Men of perverse heart shall be far from me; I will have nothing to do with evil” (Ps. 101:3). Those who do not live in perfect obedience to the standard he establishes for his creation are subject to his just sentence: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law” (Gal. 3:10).

Furthermore, the curse is eternal: “It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where ‘their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched’” (Mark 9:47–8). In short, “there is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy” (James 4:12).

How often it is asked, “How could a loving God send anyone to hell?” Yet our inborn sense of justice betrays us when we understand and sympathize with the father who says, “I will not, I cannot forgive the man who murdered my daughter.” We do not say, “How unloving!” He loves his daughter; he hates her killer. God loves his creation; therefore he justly hates those who by sin have destroyed it.

All the human reasons for which we might urge the father to forgive his daughter’s killer nonetheless—the father’s own sinful fallibility, the psychological cost of pent-up anger, and more—none of these has any claim upon God. The fact is, despite all our attempts at denying the justice of God’s wrath on sin, the conscience is rarely, if ever, so

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completely suppressed that it does not have its doubts.

When people reflect on their actions, when they see the sorrow and unhappiness their sins bring into their own and other lives, when in a great emergency they come to face death, then all the complacent ideas of sin and guilt melt away. They feel pangs of conscience which no sop like “God hates the sin but loves the sinner” can ease. Even a mind unenlightened by the Spirit entertains the thought that God not only hates the sinner but is right to do so.

If It Is Possible n the Gospel of Mark, we hear Jesus saying, “Abba, Father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will” (Mark 14:36). Everything is possible for God. Contrary to the medieval theologian Anselm—and contrary to many of Anselm’s critics, who would reduce the cross to a mere demonstration of God’s love—there was no necessity on God’s part for him to deliver humanity from sin. God did not have to save us. He would not have contradicted his nature had he chosen not to send his Son and left sinners to their just reward. Everything is possible for God. Our sin made the cross necessary. If we were to be saved, if sinners were to be spared the just penalty for their sins, God himself would have to will it. “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done” (Matt. 26:42). It proved not possible for the cup to be taken away from Christ, because God did in fact will humans to be saved. God willed before the foundation of the world to remove the cup of his wrath upon sin by sending his Son to drink it in the place of sinners (1 Pet. 1:20).

And so the Lord laid on Christ the “iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6). “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:25–6).

God’s wrath is real. But it was also really borne by Jesus Christ. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). Jesus was judged. Jesus was damned. For us.

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Back to the Garden he church has long recognized Psalm 69 as a description of Christ’s suffering. We know the Psalm is about Christ, because Christ himself and his apostles say so. The fourth verse of the Psalm, Jesus tells his disciples, is fulfilled by the world’s rejection of him: “They hate me without reason” (John 15:25). When Christ cleared the temple, he was fulfilling the first half of Psalm 69:9, which reads, “Zeal for your house consumes me” (John 2:17). The Apostle Paul applied the second half of the verse to Christ as well: “For even Christ did not please himself but, as it is written: ‘The insults of those

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who insult you have fallen on me’” (Rom. 15:3).

We easily identify Christ’s suffering and death in the other verses of the Psalm. “I endure shame for your sake, and shame covers my face” (v. 7). “I am a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my own mother’s sons” (v. 8, Mark 3:21). “They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst” (v. 21; Matt. 27:34, 48; Mark 15:23, 36; Luke 23:36; John 19:28). The curse on the psalmist’s enemies—“May their place be deserted; let there be no one to dwell in their tents”—Jesus pronounces on unbelieving Jerusalem: “Look, your house is left to you desolate” (Luke 13:35).

But toward the beginning of the Psalm is an anomaly, a verse we hesitate to interpret as coming from the mouth of Christ: “You know my folly, O God; my guilt is not hidden from you” (v. 5). Yet there it is as part of a Psalm otherwise so clearly about Jesus Christ and him alone.

How can the innocent Christ say this about himself? How can the innocent Christ say that he knows his own folly (the Hebrew word connotes moral deficiency, wickedness) and that his guilt is not hidden from God? Christ of himself is sinless, “without blemish and without spot” (1 Pet. 1:19). But Christ stands before the Father representing in his person the whole of sinful humanity.

And as he bears the world’s sin, he experiences in his soul the consciousness of sin’s guilt. He feels in his inmost being God’s verdict of condemnation, as if he has personally committed all of these sins. In the words of Martin Chemnitz, How miserably the saints often complain about the pangs of death and the sorrows of hell, although each drinks only his own cup into which God has not yet poured all His wrath! But upon Christ the Father laid the sins and penalties which were brought about by the sins of the whole world, and He poured out all His wrath upon Him. (Two Natures in Christ, p. 62) Here then is the deep distress that causes Christ to pray, “If it is possible, may this cup be taken from me” and “If it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”

Christ’s Suffering for Sinners, the Object of Faith e could not effect a reconciliation with the just and holy God, so Christ accomplished it for us.

Christ became the one great universal sinner and was dealt with accordingly by God. And so our guilt, no mere figment or social creation but the felt weight of divine justice and holiness, has been removed. The cup has been taken away, because Christ drank it for us. What cause for praise! What unspeakable joy this brings to the troubled conscience!

But such faith in Christ, such knowledge of one’s salvation the devil conspires to obstruct. The devil uses the various human objections to Christ’s vicarious suffering to prevent men from finding refuge from their sins in Christ alone. We should be on our guard. Any theory that seeks

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to supplant the doctrine that Christ suffered God’s righteous wrath against sinners in sinners’ places robs Christ of his glory as the redeemer of the world and deprives sinners of the assurance of their salvation. All such theories can make no sense of what happens at Gethsemane.

A thread that runs through so many of these alternative accounts, from Abelard’s moral influence view to Gerhard Forde’s crucifixion-as-car-wreck, is the reduction of the cross to a revelation of divine attributes. In Abelard’s case, God is love. In Albrecht Ritschl’s case, God is loving Father. In Forde’s case, God is merciful. These and other theologians claim to have succeeded where their predecessors failed in fully presenting the good news of salvation. But the gospel is not simply a revelation of God’s being. The gospel is about what God does and what God wills. As Luther puts it, it is about God’s fatherly heart rather than about the divine essence. All the talk in the world of God being love will not overcome the sinner’s consciousness of guilt for failing to love as God does.

Gerhard Forde’s view reveals in particular the shortcomings of seeing the cross mainly if not exclusively in terms of its physicality. The Luther Seminary professor contends that, rather than bearing God’s wrath upon sin, Jesus seeks to persuade people that God’s wrath doesn’t really exist. Jesus sits there and takes it as “the world that will not have a God that forgives” beats up on him. Forde’s Jesus tries to disprove God’s wrath by subjecting himself to the wrath of man.

But the problem is the one with which we began: Jesus doesn’t really undergo more brutality from other human beings than many other unfortunate human beings have undergone. Forde’s is a woefully inadequate explanation for the kind of travail of soul that Christ suffers in Gethsemane. Like many others who refuse to see Christ as bearing the wrath of God, Forde ends up directing people back to a god of Greek philosophy, God as God is in his essence. The attribute Forde would emphasize, of course, is God’s mercy, but we are still left with guilt for not being as merciful as God is.

Perhaps it should not surprise us that several of the theologians who opposed the vicarious atonement in their teaching reversed themselves on their deathbeds. The Dutch jurist and Arminian theologian Hugo Grotius (d.

1645) promoted the view that Christ suffered on the Cross not to bear God’s wrath in sinners’ stead but to prove to men how much God hates sin and to fill men with a hatred thereof. The repentance to which people are then moved becomes the basis for God’s forgiveness of their sin.

Although Grotius speaks of God’s justice and hatred for sin, the cross for him is, like the other moral influence theories of the atonement, truly and only demonstrative, a demonstration of God’s justice. By the Grotian theory, Christ’s death is not a substitute. It is an example.

Grotius, however, did not take this belief into death. As Grotius lay dying, he bid a Lutheran minister visit him.

When the minister commended Grotius to Christ, “besides 2 4 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

whom there is no salvation,” Grotius responded, “All my hope is placed in Christ alone.” The minister then prayed the following hymn, Lord Jesus Christ, true Man and God, You who suffered torture, anguish, and shame, At the end also died for me on the Cross And won for me Your Father’s favor.

I ask, through Your bitter suffering: Be merciful to me, a sinner.

The minister asked if Grotius had understood him. Grotius said that he had understood well and a little afterwards gave up the ghost.

The Baptist theologian Augustus Hopkins Strong, in his Systematic Theology (1907), shares similar accounts of Horace Bushnell, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Albrecht Ritschl.

Each of them in his own way denied Christ’s vicarious satisfaction of sins and taught in its place a kind of moral influence theory—that Christ’s suffering is the most convincing proof of God’s love and serves to awaken in man a love for God, which, in turn, reconciles us to God. But each of these theologians reverted in his last hours to the view he had rejected throughout his career.

Conclusion or the convicted sinner, no greater comfort can be found than in the joyous exchange of the cross— “For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God” (1 Pet. 3:18). In the end God the Father denied his Son’s request that the cup be taken from him. It was the Father’s will for Christ to receive on sinners’ behalf death, hell, rejection by God. But the cup that at Gethsemane he shuddered to drink he willingly drank on the cross.

Jesus’ humble prayer in Gethsemane is part of Jesus’ suffering for us. Christ is praying for himself, that he might be strengthened for the hours ahead. But the event’s record in Scripture is for us. We are given to know not only the intense agony Jesus felt in the moments immediately before his arrest, trial, and crucifixion, but also why he felt it. A cruel and violent death impends, and more than that, the cup of the Lord’s wrath upon sin. The Holy Spirit wants us to know this so that we may use Christ’s suffering and death against our own. There was no sin not died for at Calvary. No sin which Jesus’ shed blood did not cover. And because Jesus drained the cup of the Father’s wrath, he gives us to drink with joy the cup of salvation in his blood. ■

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Brent McGuire is associate pastor of Our Redeemer Lutheran Church (Dallas, Texas), and a Ph.D. candidate in systematic theology at Concordia Seminary (St. Louis, Missouri).

CHRISTLESS CHRISTIANITY

The Historical Jesus

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he question of who Jesus was in world history and what he was really like can be unnerving for Christians. What if the view we have of him, as allcompassionate, universally and inclusively loving, embracing of every single sort of sufferer, the epitome of kindness and gentleness, were not a true one? What if the real Jesus, the ”historical Jesus”—to use the common phrase—were different from the Christ of Tiny Tim and Mary Magdalene and “Away in a Manger,” that essentially Christian picture of magnitude in meekness and power in weakness? What if the Jesus who really lived were different from the Christ-Child we love and revere? Even Saddam Hussein invoked Christ’s all-compassionate character the day after he was condemned to death in Baghdad. And the president of Iran has called on President Bush to get in touch with the nonviolent and gentle Jesus of the New Testament. This is the Jesus “whom the world has gone after” (John 12:19), whose perfect mercy is the core of Christianity.

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No wonder the famous “quests” for the historical Jesus have felt threatening, at least to believing Christians. No wonder faith has felt vulnerable to skeptical inquiries concerning the real Jesus as he lived and taught in history’s time and place. Factual investigation, especially if undertaken by skeptical atheists and critics of religion, could dig up, from the hidden strata of the past, bad news!

It could turn out, for example, that Jesus did not actually rise from the dead. So much for Easter, and our personal hope of death’s being not the end of life! Or it could turn out that Jesus’ miracles did not take place, that they were wishful thinking on behalf of his later followers and can be explained away.

It might also turn out that Jesus was not born in Bethlehem, under touching and familiar circumstances. Or it could be that Jesus was a failed prophet, a man who thought God was with him, but God wasn’t. It could even turn out that he taught different things than what the Bible (continued on page 28) M AY / J U N E 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 2 5

The Threefold Work of Jesus Christ

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The Historical Jesus continued from page 25 says he taught—for example, that he was a prophet of gloom and doom, a purveyor and abettor of God’s judgment, rather than its lessener and softener. It could be, in other words, that Jesus was not who Christians believe he was, that he did not do what Christians believe he did, and that he did not teach what Christians believe he taught.

traditional Christians think they are. A committed Christian can get a lot from them and their attractive hero, provided you’re not worried about the loaves and the fishes or his blood-atonement, and the wounds in his side.

The Jesus of David Strauss, George Eliot, Ernest Renan, and Thomas Jefferson was the object of the so-called First Quest for the Historical Jesus. The church historian Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930) basically agreed with the portrait of Jesus found in It might not be possible to say as much about Jesus these books. It is basically the Jesus of Warner Sallman, as most Christians would like to be saying, the American painter, who created the most famous and but it was still possible to say something. beloved of all pictures of Jesus. Sallman’s Head of All these things are possible in relation to skeptically Christ (1940) is a knockout of compelling and accessible conceived investigations of the historical facts of the matter. goodness, humility, and active loving.

This is why the quests for the historical Jesus have been Those men and that woman never actually called what threatening, at least to believing Christians. We are afraid they were doing by the name scholars now use, the sothey might bring bad and disillusioning news. The called First Quest, but this is what it became in the purpose of this essay is to deal with the fear. The author is hindsight of history. That is because it broke up on the one who believes that the historical Jesus is close to the rocks of three other men’s work. These were Wilhelm Christ of Christians, to the Christ of Charles Dickens and Wrede (1859–1906), Johannes Weiss (1863–1914), and Phillips Brooks. The historical Jesus inspires me even as a Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965). What these writers did Tuebingen-trained doctor of theology. I wish to present was reemphasize, or rather, rediscover, the so-called that Jesus, the historical one even, who resembles eschatological dimension in the teachings of Jesus within concretely the Christ of our suffering and longings. the New Testament. By “eschatological” I mean the prophetic warnings that occur throughout Matthew, The First Quest for the Historical Jesus Mark, and Luke, in which the Lord asserts the imminent kepticism oddly produced a beautiful Jesus, even a final judgment of God upon the world, in connection with quite Christian and compassionate Jesus, during the his martyrdom and death. first half of the nineteenth century. Under the The protagonists of the earlier First Quest had been so influence of the anticlerical French Enlightenment, reflexively (and perhaps unconsciously) hostile to the European rationalism became skeptical of the miracles eschatological Jesus of the apocalyptic discourses in recorded in the New Testament. Yet the figure of Christ Matthew 24 and 25 and Mark 13, that they had skipped himself—the Christian or compassionate Jesus—still had a over them in their readings of Jesus’ life. It was an strong hold on European people. Two writers, both of important omission, and says as much about Strauss, Eliot, whom were theologians but both of whom were also Renan, and the rationalist culture of their time, as it does gifted writers, almost poets, composed books on the life of about the sacred subject of their investigations.

Jesus that had tremendous effect, though not so much in It is definitely true that Jesus’ prophetic and apocalyptic America. These writers were David Friedrich Strauss side comes through loud and clear in the Gospels. The (1808–1874) and Ernest Renan (1923–1892). Strauss’ The fiery side of Jesus was left out by the First Quest, or rather, Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1835) was translated into neglected to the point of being expunged, just as the English by the formerly evangelical, agnostic novelist miracles and Easter were dropped. What Weiss and Wrede George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans, 1819–1880); and and Schweitzer did was underline passages that were Renan’s Life of Jesus (1863), somewhat less scholarly and embedded in the New Testament but had been previously also more accessible, followed. “invisible”. No one could figure out how the Jesus who These two important books did what Thomas Jefferson prophesied the coming of the Son of Man with his holy had tried to do in his earlier abridgement of the New angels (Matt. 26:64) could coexist with the Jesus whose Testament (1820): write out the “subrational” miracles, principal identity was constituted by forgiveness and his and implicitly the resurrection, too, in admiring favor of unconditional welcome to sinners. the ethical Jesus, our teacher and humble carpenter. The For this reason, the “First Quest for the Historical Jesus” Jesus who emerged in these books is actually not so bad! became discredited. It was soon regarded as a sort of He loves people, especially sufferers, and has a lot to say in sentimental prism through which nineteenth-century the category of universal and sublime wisdom. If you read middle-class Christians had domesticated the fiery Son of them, these books of the “First Quest” are not as bad as Man. No alternative to this breakup was offered. Until 1953.

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The Second Quest for the Historical Jesus he “Second Quest for the Historical Jesus” was inaugurated by the Tuebingen New Testament scholar Ernst Kaesemann in a lecture for alumni of Marburg University given on October 20, 1953. The background to Kaesemann’s lecture was 25 years of extreme skepticism in Europe concerning the historical Jesus, which had reached a climax in 1926 with the publication of Rudolf Bultmann’s Jesus. Ever since that book, which would issue five years later in an even more radical 1931 lecture entitled “The New Testament and Mythology,” it had been almost taken for granted, and increasingly so among American scholars, as well, that contemporary people could know almost nothing about Jesus as he actually was and lived and taught.

The extreme skepticism of Bultmannian New Testament studies, which was accepted quite uncritically by the majority of American Protestant scholars during the 1950s and 1960s, was challenged by Bultmann’s own former pupil, Ernst Kaesemann, in the 1953 lecture, entitled “The Problem of the Historical Jesus.” It took years for Kaesemann’s ideas to be seen for what they were: a repudiation of Bultmann’s skepticism yet dressed in European contemporaneity (i.e., not pious). Kaesemann’s ideas were picked up by Norman Perrin, and, from a different cultural context, by C. H. Dodd.

What did this Second Quest for the Historical Jesus teach about the Lord? The Second Quest taught that Jesus upset almost all the norms of first-century Judaism by reinterpreting the Law. Jesus, in Kaesemann’s view, reinterpreted the Law of Moses on two fronts: First, Jesus regarded himself as a new Moses, with messianic authority to reinterpret the old Moses. This is most clearly seen in the “antitheses” of Matthew (5:21–22, 27–28, 43–45).

Second, Jesus welcomed sinners to his meals and to his student family. He forgave sinners and sought them out in order to forgive them. Jesus’ ministry was the triumph of grace over law. Later on, within the early Christian movement, St. Paul taught theologically what Jesus had done in his life. Christianity’s famous majoring on grace and compassion for sinners came naturally out of Jesus’ closely observed and remembered way of living and welcoming. Thus, Kaesemann placed the historical Jesus in the framework of discontinuity with Judaism. Christianity was not Judaism. That fact was rooted in Jesus himself.

The Second Quest, which appeared at the time of its inception as a fairly minor course correction to Bultmannian skepticism (most people thought Kaesemann was just a milder Bultmann, but they were wrong) was, in retrospect, a conservative reassertion of biography and definition in relation to the historical Jesus. It might not be possible to say as much about Jesus as most Christians would like to be saying, but it was still possible to say something. It was possible to say something faith-affirming and also faith-confirming about the Jesus of history.

Unfortunately for most traditional Christians, Kaesemann’s Second Quest did not carry much weight. It

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was overshadowed by the cultural skepticism into which Bultmann’s ideas had tapped. Incidentally, Bultmann himself grew less radical about Jesus after the end of World War II. He softened, and had you actually put him and Kaesemann in the same room, the two men would have agreed about much that Kaesemann was contending for.

This is partly because Bultmann was a convinced Lutheran in theology, whose faith had sustained him personally, and heroically in my opinion, when he spoke out against the persecution of the Jews from within for the confessing church. Not everyone realizes that Rudolf Bultmann actually attended church in Marburg, and served most Sundays as an usher—like C. S. Lewis in Oxford, though Lewis would not have believed it of him.

The Second Quest for the Historical Jesus was a failure internationally. But it still happened and is still worth knowing about. For myself, as an evangelical Christian, I can agree with almost everything Kaesemann (my doctoral supervisor) was attempting to say.

The Third Quest for the Historical Jesus he three quests for the historical Jesus are only retrospective titles. When the quests were actually being undertaken, they were not self-conscious movements: Only afterward did they get the name. The First Quest was a natural tendency, under the influence of the French Enlightenment, to apply the rules of historical investigation to that most important subject of Western culture: the events of the sacred story of Jesus Christ. The Second Quest was an attempt to modify Bultmann’s excessive and ideological skepticism in relation to the Gospels’ and traditional Christianity’s portrait of the founder. What is now viewed as a “Third Quest for the Historical Jesus” is a conglomerate of tendencies, mostly rooted in that most high-profile of all twentieth-century catastrophes, the Holocaust.

People sometimes want to consider the so-called Jesus Seminar, an eclectic group of North American co-belligerent skeptics, as being the core of the Third Quest. That is not right. The Jesus Seminar was a flash in the pan, a sort of Fox News gathering of talking heads, all of whom were united by a desire to throw stones at traditional evangelical and Roman Catholic understandings of Jesus. One member of the seminar might throw a stone by insisting that Jesus was an agrarian reformer, pure and only, while another member would see him as a traveling Cynic iconoclast; and another, a kind of magus or seer, like Apollonius of Tyana. Each stone was thrown in order to shatter the “old” Jesus, humble and meek. None of them really worked, because each was coming from a different direction. No, the Jesus Seminar is not the center of the Third Quest.

The Third Quest for the Historical Jesus is actually an attempt to substitute his discontinuity with the Judaism in which he was born by his continuity with it. Because of the Holocaust and because of its influence on Western culture as a whole, there is a strong desire within the Christian community, and especially the scholarly or theological

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Jewish monotheism but with lower requirements. In other words, Christianity is a form of then we should Judaism-“lite” for Gentiles, Gentiles who do not care to be circumcised, abide by kosher restrictions on diet, or keep a mighty sabbatarian Sabbath.

I myself resist the Third Quest for the Historical Jesus on theological grounds. For me, Christianity is still about Christus solus (Christ alone) and is not just a form of Judaism with the entrance requirements adjusted down.

Theologically speaking, Jesus was a Christian and not a Jew. He came from something, but he also founded something. What he founded was different from what he came from. Vive la difference.

If the Jesus of history were found to be essentially different from this Christ of our faith, stop being Christians. community, to reverse and even atone for what is perceived as Christianity’s tendency towards antisemitism. The current New Testament fraternity has, since the early 1970s, when Holocaust awareness began to be big in cultural life, sought to stress Jesus’ continuity with Judaism, his links to and anchors in the religious world of first-century Judaism. This tendency is especially marked in the writings of N. T. Wright.

A tendency to minimize the rough edges of Jesus’ words and ministry in relation to Judaism, and magnify the lines of continuity, is almost universal now in New Testament studies. You can see it in the evangelical community and the Biblical Theology movement within that community, as the attempt is made to portray Jesus as the sum and fulfillment, in precise terms, of Old Testament prophecy and “types.” This is not to mention the overwhelming support among evangelical Christians for political Israel today, as well as the recent enthusiasm for integrating into the Christian year Jewish festivals such as Tabernacles.

You can also see the trend—it has become a tidal wave— in Roman Catholicism, with the fundamental statements from the Vatican repudiating evangelism to or among the Jewish people. Pope John Paul II believed that the Jewish way to God is as valid for Israel, theologically speaking, as the Christian way, the Jesus Christ way, is for non-Jews.

Liberal Christians, for their part, continue to be enthusiasts for Passover Seders, inter-faith Holocaust Remembrance Day services, and required readings of Elie Wiesel’s Night.

The “Jewish Jesus” of the Third Quest is winning raves!

Evangelicals love him, Roman Catholics love him, liberals have always loved him. In the world of television, he made his biggest splash with the 1999 movie Jesus with Jeremy Sisto. In that film, it was the Romans who did it; that is, who crucified Christ, and nobody else. The Jewish crowd walked out on the audience with Pontius Pilate, and the Roman executioner, faced with Christ’s word from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” replied, right to the camera, “We know exactly what we are doing.”

For the present, anyone who resists the Jesus of the Third Quest becomes open to the suspicion that he or she is antisemitic. Jesus studies in university departments of religion have become politicized. If you wish to consider Jesus from the ancient perspective that he broke with Judaism or established something new, then you will probably be labeled “supercessionist,” which is to accuse you of the idea that Christianity and Christians “replaced” Judaism and Jews in the eternal covenant of God. Being called “supercessionist” today is a charge that sticks. It also reflects an atmosphere in which it is assumed that Jesus was a Jewish teacher first and foremost, and that Christianity is, in its essence, a variant of 3 0 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

What Did the Historical Jesus Teach? esus taught three new ideas or novums, and specifically embodied a fourth. Each of these created opposition from almost all schools of thought within the Judaism of his time. Together, they led to his trial and death.

Jesus’ first new idea was that he was a new Moses, having the authority to interpret the old Moses in a new way. This idea is expressed in the “antitheses” of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:21ff), as in “Moses taught …. but I say unto you…”

Jesus’ second new idea was that keeping the Sabbath, and by extension all the works of the Law, were not ends in themselves but rather means to another end: human fulfillment and joy. Thus he said, memorably, “Man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was made for man” (Mark 2:27). We are not objects, in other words, but subjects; and God desires it thus. It was a breakthrough of revolutionary consequence.

The third new idea of Jesus concerned purity and the sources of a person’s righteousness, or holiness. Purity, or holiness, does not come from outside—no amount of outside tinkering or tweaking (to use the contemporary word) can make a person holy or good. There must be a radical change at the core of one’s existence: new birth.

The problem of ethics must be engaged through the inward facts of existence and personality, and not the outward. This third new idea of the Lord’s is found in Matthew 15:17–20 and Mark 7:14–23.

These three novums distinguished Jesus’ teachings from the “official line” of all schools of thought within Judaism.

They made it possible for Christianity to look to Christ as the new interpreter of the Law; to refashion the ideal of Law as related to human good rather than to obedience as an end in itself; and to take the spotlight off the context or environment of ethical existence and place it rather on the heart of individuals. Jesus was therefore discontinuous and not continuous with his cultural context.

The idea of God engaging sinners as opposed to righteous persons is a fundamental fourth fact of Christ’s ministry. He said in three places that he came “not to call the righteous but sinners” (Matt. 9:10–13; Mark 2:15–17; Luke 5:29–32),

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and stressed this fact in several encounters along the way.

This was a core difference with Judaism, which offered several ways for unrighteous sinners to get back into a relationship to God, but did not regard the unrighteous as the main object of God’s connection with the world. Thus Jesus’ approach to sinners was new. It won him no friends from any of the leading schools of thought within SecondTemple Judaism (as scholars have now named it).

The crucifixion of Christ was caused by his being regarded as a teacher of ethical heresy and by the seemingly blasphemous statements that his view of himself as the “new Moses” produced. For example, he believed his views concerning inwardness and puritycontrol opposed the splendor of the great Temple (Matt.

24:1–2; Mark 13:1–2; Luke 19:41–46). This belief of Christ’s was later stated by one of his earliest disciples, St. Stephen, who enunciated it boldly in Acts (7:48–53), thereby causing him to become the first Christian martyr.

From the very start of the movement, Jesus’ novums and his direct engagement with sinners qua sinners aroused opposition. Whatever we wish to say, and whatever St. Paul said, concerning Christ’s atonement on the cross, his being nailed there derived directly from his new teachings and his new approach. This is the “historical Jesus.”

The Historical Jesus and the Christ of Faith n essay by the New Testament theologian Martin Kaehler appeared in 1892 and was entitled “The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic, Biblical Christ.” It was actually a conservative contribution intending to break the deadlock between the liberal protagonists of the First Quest for the Historical Jesus and their more liberal opponents. The essay itself, which mainly concerned preaching, is over-cited today, but its title did provide the terminology for the ongoing Jesus debate.

What had happened, and has continued to happen, was a split developed, an increasing split, between what Christian scholars thought they could say about Jesus as he really was, and the things most Christians believe concerning the Divine Person they worship on Sundays.

This split was threatening, extremely so, to the everyday Christian. What if he or she were wrong about the One in whom their hopes were wholly placed in relation to life after death, not to mention in relation to their absolution from being bad in life? The so-called historical Jesus could end up wrecking the Christian religion.

The Kaehler essay, with its paradigmatic title, proved to be less important than Bultmann’s 1926 book, Jesus. That book was a dirty bomb! It left little intact of the Jesus whom Christians adore. Bultmann was speaking from a spirited and very youthful place there—in an aggressive, even a condescending tone with which he would cease to speak in later years.

I hope I have presented the brief outline of an “historical Jesus,” a Jesus of major novums within a cruciform life, who is more in line, say, with A Charlie Brown Christmas than with Bultmann’s Jesus. My comparison is not to trivialize

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the scholarship. It is rather to offer a “theology of the cross” vouchsafed to Charlie Brown, a little boy in touch with his point of need, who requires that his Christ of faith line up with the Jesus of history. This, in fact, is possible to do, especially if we see that the heart of Christianity lies in its discontinuity with its surround-sound cultures, both Greco-Roman and Jewish. The object of Jesus studies needs to be the difference and not the similarity.

Otherwise, why be a Christian? Why not, rather, convert to Reformed Judaism? It is an entirely live option for Christians who stress the side of continuity. Why be a Christian at all if the Third Quest is right?

“Night of the Meek” (1960) od Serling had a lot of respect for Jesus. Before the rise of Holocaust awareness in the 1970s, Serling was one of several Jewish writers in Hollywood who gave assimilation a good try. Serling himself attended a Unitarian church and his wife came from a Protestant background. Nevertheless, he was one of scores of Hollywood directors and writers from Jewish backgrounds who tried to give a little to Christianity in their productions.

The memorable Christmas episode Serling wrote for Art Carney during the second season of “The Twilight Zone” was called “Night of the Meek.” In it Serling caught the essence of the Christian message about grace, in his portrayal of a drunken department store Santa Claus who on Christmas Eve receives an unmerited gift and proceeds to give and give, and give again. Serling caught the essence, within his inspired script, of the compassion and the mercy that is Christ himself.

The heart of Christianity, which Rod Serling understood instinctively, is found in the portrait of Jesus the merciful offered in the Gospels. If this portrait is not essentially true—if the Jesus of history were found to be essentially different from this Christ of our faith—then we should stop being Christians. We should either become ethical monotheists, Jewish believers in the One God but without the inconveniences related to circumcision and diet; or, in the direction in which I would be tempted personally, become epicurean nihilists looking forward, at our end, to some form of painless assisted suicide. The Jesus of the Third Quest takes away “our” Jesus, the Jesus not only of Rembrandt’s Prodigal Son and Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion,” but the Jesus of Johnny Cash and Rod Serling.

This doesn’t need to happen. Jesus as he really lived was a wonderful guy, kindness itself, the kind of mensch whom Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks praise so warmly in The 2000Year-Old Man in the Year 2000 (1997). He was God’s Son in the form of a man, who showed in human form the “theology of the cross,” which makes human advancement possible yet uniquely from the standpoint of suffering and sorrow.

The Jesus of History was the Christ of Christians. ■

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Paul Zahl is dean and president of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry (Ambridge, Pennsylvania).

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CHRISTLESS CHRISTIANITY

A More Perfect Union?

Justification and Union with Christ BY

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arriage is the union between a man and a woman where the two individuals become one flesh, as the Apostle Paul tells us in the fifth chapter of Ephesians. The marital union, however, is a relationship that points to the greater relationship between Christ and the church. Typically, Reformed theologians have described the relationship between Christ and the church in terms of the believer’s mystical union with Christ.

Louis Berkhof gives us a typical definition of union with Christ: “That intimate, vital, and spiritual union between Christ and his people, in virtue of which he is the source of their life and strength, of their blessedness and salvation.”

Union with Christ is also called mystical because, as A. A. Hodge explains, “It so far transcends all the analogies of earthly relationships, in the intimacy of its communion, in the transforming power of its influence, and in the excellence of its consequences.” While there is an exception to every rule, the doctrine of the believer’s union with Christ is universally accepted in the Reformed community. Where disagreement lies, however, is the nature of the relationship between the doctrines of union with Christ and justification by faith alone. What is the doctrine of justification? We find a good concise definition in the Westminster Shorter Catechism: “Justification is an act of God’s free grace, wherein he pardons all our sins, and accepts us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone” (Q/A 33).

Dispensing with the inerrancy and unity of the Bible’s teaching, nineteenth-century Protestant liberalism was fond of not only pitting Jesus against Paul but also pitting Paul against himself. There was a legal-forensic Paul who gave us the doctrine of justification and the mystical-relational Paul who emphasized union with Christ. At the end of the day, the “relational” Paul won out. Now, such conclusions are only natural for one with liberal assumptions about the Bible. However, it might surprise some that we can find similar patterns in conservative Reformed circles. I first want to survey some of the recent claims concerning the supposed incompatibility of the so-called legal and relational, or justification and union with Christ. Then we will offer a positive formulation of the proper relationship between the two doctrines.

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Disharmony between Justification and Union with Christ ishop and Pauline scholar N. T. Wright is wellknown for his rejection of the doctrine of the imputed righteousness of Christ. He argues that everything that one would receive through imputation, one receives through union with Christ. Union with Christ makes imputation a redundancy. While Wright does not specifically state it in these terms, his rejection of imputation seems to rely upon the older tendency pointed out above, to subsume the order of salvation (ordo salutis) to union with Christ. Wright, for example, argues that the Reformed understanding of the order of salvation, while perhaps reflective of the Reformed tradition, is not necessarily reflective of Paul’s theology. Rich Lusk, a former Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and current Confederation of

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Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC) pastor, has a similar understanding of the relationship between justification and union with Christ.

Lusk also sees a conflicting tension between the legal and relational categories in traditional Reformed theology: “The covenant of works construction strikes at the filial nature of covenant sonship. Adam was God’s son, not his employee.” Given the supposed incompatibility of the legal and relational, it should be no surprise that Lusk allows the believer’s union with Christ to swallow legal aspects of the believer’s justification: This justification requires no transfer or imputation of anything.

It does not force us to reify “righteousness” into something that can be shuffled around in heavenly accounting books. Rather because I am in the Righteous One and the Vindicated One, I am righteous and vindicated. My in-Christ-ness makes imputation redundant. I do not need the moral content of his life of righteousness transferred to me; what I need is a share in the forensic verdict passed over him at the resurrection. Union with Christ is therefore key.

Here Lusk argues that union with Christ makes legal elements of the believer’s justification redundant and unnecessary, specifically that of the imputed active obedience of Christ.

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Recall, in the historic Reformed understanding of justification, the believer receives the forgiveness of sins on account of Christ’s suffering not only on the cross but throughout his life, which theologians have called his passive obedience. The term passive obedience comes from the Latin word, passio, which means suffering. At the same time, the believer also receives the imputation, the accrediting, of Christ’s active obedience, Christ’s fulfillment of the law on behalf of the believer. Christ’s active obedience is also called his righteousness; hence theologians will talk of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness or his active obedience. It is this legal element of justification that Lusk argues is redundant and unnecessary. These conclusions seem to be based upon his understanding that a believer is a son, a relational concept, and that our redemption is more comprehensively understood in terms of our union with Christ rather than the doctrine of imputation, a supposed legal category. In this regard, it appears as though Lusk has tried to suggest a better way to understand the doctrine of justification and in so doing offers what he and others believe is a more perfect understanding of our union with Christ.

There are multiple problems with such an understanding of the relationship between the doctrines of justification and union with Christ. We can address these problems and, more positively, set forth the historic Reformed understanding of the relationship between justification and union with Christ.

Positive Formulation The Biblical Data e find a host of New Testament references primarily in Paul’s letters that refer to the believer being “in Christ.” There are some twenty-five occurrences of this phrase in Paul’s epistles alone. One of the most explicit passages of Scripture where we find the doctrine of union with Christ comes in Ephesians 5. Paul writes that the husband and the wife, when viewed through the lens of marriage, are one single entity, one body, and likens marriage to Christ’s relationship to the church.

There are other images in the Scriptures that relate to the believer’s union with Christ: the vine and the branches (John 15:5); the foundation of the temple (1 Pet. 2:4–5), and as head and body (Eph. 4:4–6). Looking at some of the other biblical data, we also find that union with Christ undergirds multiple aspects of our redemption, such as our predestination (Eph. 1:4), justification (Rom. 8:1), sanctification (1 Cor. 1:30), and glorification (1 Cor. 15:22). How do we interpret and relate these references?

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think that the so-called legal relational are and incompatible.

Yet, we must that union with Christ is not merely one aspect of understand that there are such things as legal the order of salvation but is the hub from which relationships. Or, in terms of our redemption, there are the spokes are drawn. legal aspects of our relationship with God. For Union with Christ and the Order of Salvation example, Paul tells us that we have received “the Spirit of istorically, Reformed theologians have adoption as sons” (Rom. 8:15; cf. Gal. 4:5; Eph. 1:5). Here recognized that union with Christ is not merely is a clear instance where we see the wedding of the soone aspect of the order of salvation but is the called legal and relational categories—adoption is a legal hub from which the spokes are drawn. One can find term but is also bound with it is the idea of sonship, a such conclusions in the theology of Reformed relational term. However, rather than see adoption as luminaries such as John Owen, Herman Witsius, and legal and sonship as relational, we should understand that Thomas Boston, to name a few. That union undergirds the legal and filial are both relational. the whole of the order of salvation is evident from Paul’s One finds the same concepts inseparably bound in the book-end statements that we were chosen in Christ person and work of Christ. Jesus was at the same time before the foundation of the world and that only those God’s Son and born under the law (Gal. 4:4). Christ was who are in Christ will be raised from the dead and obedient, not to an abstract arbitrary law, but to the clothed in immortality. In fact, we may say that there personal and relational will, the law in its legal demands, are three phases of our union with Christ, the of his heavenly Father (Phil. 2:5–11). We must not predestinarian “in Christ,” the redemptive-historical “in uncritically adopt the nineteenth-century liberalism’s Christ,” the union involved in the once-for-all opposition between the legal and the relational. That accomplishment of salvation, and the applicatory “in opposition in itself rested on liberalism’s rejection of Christ,” which is the union in the actual possession or original sin, divine wrath, and a propitiatory sacrifice of application of salvation. These three phases refer not to Christ. Not only are the legal and relational found together different unions but rather to different aspects of the in the Bible, as we have seen, but even from common same union. experience we know the two are compatible. Every day Given these conclusions, it is no wonder that the people enter the covenant of marriage and do so Westminster Larger Catechism states that justification, recognizing that the legal bond is one that is also relational. adoption, sanctification, and whatever other benefits flow A husband, for example, can fulfill the legal requirements from Christ to the believer manifest the believer’s union of marriage and do so out of love. In the same way, Christ with him (Q/A 69). When we see that our being found “in fulfilled the legal-relational aspects of our redemption in Christ” underlies the whole order of salvation, including love for us, his bride. the legal portions, such as justification and adoption, hopefully we begin to see how the Reformed Justification Is a Legal Aspect of Our Union understanding of the relationship between justification f we recognize the two points that we have established and union are not in any way at odds or redundant. From thus far, namely that union with Christ undergirds the here, we can identify three concepts that we must whole order of salvation, and that the legal aspects of understand to have a proper understanding of the our redemption are relational, then we must realize that relationship between union with Christ and justification: justification is a legal aspect of our union with Christ. We (1) that the legal aspects of our redemption are relational; say that justification is a legal aspect of our union because (2) justification is the legal aspect of our union with Christ; we should also note that there are legal overtones to and (3) that justification is the ground of our sanctification. adoption as we have already observed. Nevertheless, if we recognize that justification is the legal aspect of our union Justification and Union with Christ with Christ, then to eliminate aspects of the doctrine of The Legal Is Relational justification, such as the imputation of Christ’s active e should make two important observations obedience, something both Wright and Lusk do, is to concerning the relationship between undercut the legal aspect of our union. It seems that both justification and union with Christ. First, there Wright and Lusk reject the imputation of Christ’s active is the unchecked assumption that just because justification obedience as being unnecessary, superfluous. What lies is legal in character therefore means that it is not behind such conclusions, however, is the idea that the relational. For some unknown reason, whether in the Reformed tradition has invented whole-cloth the doctrine theology of nineteenth-century liberalism or of the imputed righteousness of Christ and created a contemporary expressions from Lusk, for example, both redundant structure, one that can be discarded in favor of

Historically, Reformed theologians have recognized

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a more “biblical” construction. Such an opinion, however, fails to recognize that it is Paul who is able to hold together both the imputed righteousness of Christ and union with Christ without problem, hesitation, or embarrassment.

The Reformed tradition bases the doctrine of the imputed righteousness of Christ, even his active obedience, on such passages as Romans 5:12–21 (WCF 6.3, 11.1; cf. Heidelberg Catechism, Q/A 60). Why, for example, does Paul contrast the disobedience of Adam with the obedience of Christ? Paul writes, “For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Rom. 5:19). As John Murray explains, “The parallel to the imputation of Adam’s sin is the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. Or to use Paul’s own terms, being ‘constituted sinners’ through the disobedience of Adam is parallel to being ‘constituted righteous’ through the obedience of Christ.” Clearly, Romans 5:19 restates what Paul has stated in the previous verse: “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all” (Rom. 5:18).

There is no mistaking the parallel between Christ’s obedience, which is righteousness, and the imputation of this righteousness to the believer. Commenting on the abiding significance of Genesis 15:6 and the imputation of righteousness, Paul writes: “That is why his faith was ‘counted to him as righteousness.’ But the words ‘it was counted to him’ were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 4:22–24). Note here the English Standard Version translates the Greek word logizomai as “counted,” which the King James Version translates as “imputed.” Here Paul taps into the ancient stream of the special revelation of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, to argue for the imputed righteousness of Christ, and arguably also has other passages such as Isaiah 53 in mind when writing these things: “Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities” (Isa. 53:11; cf. 2 Cor. 5:19–21).

We should also note, however, that in all of Paul’s argumentation for his doctrine of justification and especially the imputed active obedience of Christ, he can write everything that we have surveyed, and at the same time also write without qualification or wincing: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). If condemnation is the antonym for justification, then we can also reword Romans 8:1 to say, “There is therefore now justification for those who are in Christ Jesus” (emphasis added). In other words, a robust doctrine of justification that includes the imputed active and passive obedience of Christ is not antithetical to our union with Christ, nor is it superfluous. Rather, it is the legal aspect of our union

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with Christ. As A. A. Hodge explains, our union with Christ has a federal and representative character. Once again, what God has joined together, let man not separate. This brings us to one last element to consider, namely that justification is the ground of our sanctification.

Justification Is the Ground of Our Sanctification hy does Paul insist upon the imputed active obedience of Christ in our justification? Why is this necessary aside from the fact that the Scriptures teach its necessity? The answer lies in the nature of our justification. We must recognize that the ground of our justification is not our sanctification, or the transformative aspect of our union with Christ. To base our justification in our sanctification is to change the judicial ground from the work of Christ to the work of the believer. The good works of the believer, even those that are the result of the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit, are at the end of the day imperfect. In this regard the Westminster Confession of Faith concisely explains why our good works, or more broadly our sanctification, cannot be the ground of our justification:

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We cannot, by our best works, merit pardon of sin, or eternal life, at the hand of God, by reason of the great disproportion that is between them and the glory to come, and the infinite distance that is between us and God, whom by them, we can neither profit nor satisfy for the debt of our former sins; but when we have done all we can, we have done but our duty, and are unprofitable servants; and because, as they are good, they proceed from His Spirit; and as they are wrought by us, they are defiled, and mixed with so much weakness and imperfection, that they cannot endure the severity of God’s judgment. (WCF 16.5) It is only the obedience of Christ, therefore, that can be the ground of our justification, not only the obedience that he offered in his vicarious suffering throughout his entire earthly ministry, his passive obedience, but also his perfect law-keeping that he offered on our behalf to his Father, his active obedience.

In terms of union with Christ and justification, Berkhof therefore explains that “justification is always a declaration of God, not on the basis of an existing condition, but on that of a gracious imputation—a declaration which is not in harmony with the existing condition of the sinner. The judicial ground for all the special grace which we receive lies in the fact that the righteousness of Christ is freely imputed to us.” What we must realize, then, is that the ground of our redemption is the work of Christ; correlatively, we should also recognize that the ground of our sanctification is our justification. In other words, apart from the legal-forensic work of Christ, received by imputation through faith, there is no (continued on page 38) M AY / J U N E 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 3 5

Song of Redemption: One Truth in Many Atonement Theories

by Eric Landry At the heart of the Christian story is the life, death, and resurrection of the Son of God. How his followers understand that story is what separates us into the many different expressions of faith that can be found today. The significance of Christ’s atonement for sins (the very basis of his name and his mission) is what makes Christianity truly Christian: a religion with Christ at its redemptive center.

The way that evangelical Christians have spoken of the atonement has usually centered on Christ’s sacrifice for us, a substitution, to satisfy the demands of divine justice, thus making his death a penal substitution. Why have they spoken this way? The overwhelming testimony of Scripture—from the promise of a redeemer for Adam and Eve, through the Jewish sacrifices, the prophetic hopes of a Messiah, the birth narratives of Jesus, and the epistles to the earliest churches—have affirmed that through the death of Christ God’s people are put into right relationship with God, sin is forgiven, and new spiritual life is born.

It is becoming increasingly popular, however, for evangelical Christians to wonder if more should be said about the atonement than the traditional formulation of “penal substitution.” Are there other biblical motifs of the atonement that can be considered together to fill out the song of redemption? Are there notes missing from the language evangelicals have used in the past for articulating and understanding the Atonement?

Two things should be noted before discussion gets underway: First, the different atonement motifs in Scripture should not be set against each other—as if they represent conflicting accounts of the death of Christ and its effect. Rather, each biblical motif is part of the “surround sound” beauty of Christ’s work for us, both in his humiliation and his exaltation. Second, no integrated atonement picture is complete unless it includes Christ’s perfect life, horrible death, bodily resurrection, heavenly ascension, and high priestly session at the Father’s right hand. That is, of course, the problem with doing theology: one can’t say everything at the same time! But, Christ’s death doesn’t make sense, nor can it be said to be effective in any way, unless we consider the life he lived before the cross and the resurrection joy of Easter morning.

With these ideas firmly in mind, what are some of the atonement motifs Christians have held throughout the centuries?

Generally, Reformation-oriented churches are known for their emphasis on the penal substitutionary character of Christ’s death. This means that God’s justice requires eternal suffering for sin, but because of God’s love and compassion, the Son took humankind’s place, suffering in 3 6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

their stead, and secured eternal redemption of their sins.

According to this view, both the life and death of Christ have redemptive significance since the Son stands as humanity’s federal representative and must provide positive righteousness as well as atone for unrighteousness. The end result, then, of Christ’s life and death is not merely a right judicial standing before God, but also a relationship with God as adopted sons, partakers of the divine nature, and joint heirs with Christ. In light of his work of redemption, we are called to emulate Christ by taking up our own crosses, choosing to suffer for what is good, and participate in the work of reconciliation that God is accomplishing through Christ.

While the judicial character of Christ’s death may play a central role in our thinking, it isn’t the only motif worth considering. One of the earliest theories of the Atonement was the Christus Victor (or “Christ the Victor”) motif (early proponents of this theory include Irenaeus and Augustine, 3rd and 5th centuries, respectively). The dominant idea here is that the conflict which began when Satan rebelled against God, and which took on a human dimension in Satan’s tempting Adam and Eve, is finished on the cross.

God’s Son is killed, granting Satan and his minions an apparent victory, but the resurrection constituted a victory of God over Satan and the seed of the Serpent, securing God’s rule and reign. The Christus Victor motif has enjoyed a renewed popularity in recent years and for good reason.

It seems especially inherent to the redemptive historical narrative of Scripture and an amillennial eschatology.

Variations on this theory, however, are troubling.

Some people equate Christus Victor with the idea of a ransom being paid to Satan (an early proponent of this theory was Origin, early 3rd century). The ransom theory holds that with the Fall of Adam and Eve, the souls of humankind were bound over to Satan. Jesus’ death, then, is a sort of ransom payment that secures their release.

Although Scripture does speak of Christ’s death as a ransom (Rev. 5:9) and of redemption as something “bought” (1 Cor. 6:20), nowhere is Satan understood to demand payment from God. Satan’s reign through sin is overthrown, not compensated, by Christ’s death.

The Reformation leaned upon Anselm’s explanation of the death of Christ in his famous work Cur Deus Homo, “Why the God Man?” (late 11th century). Using Anselm’s insights, the theologians of both the Lutheran and Reformed branches of the Reformation developed the ideas which led to the way we speak about vicarious atonement today. But, their appeal to Anselm has led some to equate the Reformation’s doctrine of the

atonement with Anselm’s satisfaction theory. This idea states that sin robbed God of the honor that was due to him as Creator and King. This insult to God’s honor introduced disorder in the universe, affecting even the nonhuman creation, causing it to “groan” while eagerly awaiting the day of redemption (Rom. 8:19). Jesus’ death satisfies God’s honor and restores the created order.

Certainly, there are ideas here worth preserving: sin is an insult, humanity’s rebellion did introduce chaos into the world order, Jesus’ death and resurrection is the hinge upon which the “world to come” breaks in on the world that now is. But to agree with these aspects of the theory does not mean that we embrace the underlying idea that sin is chiefly a debt to God’s honor or that Jesus’ sacrifice merely placates God’s honor without reference to the guilt and pollution of sin or the wrath of God. At roughly the same time as Anselm was formulating his theory, his contemporary, Abelard (early 12th century), was thinking in a different direction. Abelard’s theory became known as the moral influence theory of the atonement. The theory has come to mean that the death of Christ on the cross is a demonstration of God’s great love for us and his hatred of sin. Giving Jesus to die does not actually accomplish redemption but is used by God to move humans to repentance.

Closely related to the moral influence theory is the example theory put forth by Socinius (late 16th century).

This theory maintains that Jesus’ death did not atone for sin but rather was an example of true obedience to God (which is the way of salvation) and now inspires his followers to lead a similar life.

In an attempt to provide a “third way” between the Reformation’s view of the atonement and Socinius’s example theory, a Dutch theologian named Grotius (early 17th century) advocated the governmental theory of the atonement. The governmental theory states that through the death of Christ, God revealed to his creatures the nature of his law and his wrath toward sin; Jesus served as an example of sin’s consequences. But advocates of this theory maintain that Jesus did not suffer the exact penalty for sin. God adjusted what his law required and accepted Jesus’ sacrifice as a token payment, thus ensuring that he maintained his moral rule over the universe.

Recently some evangelicals are looking east to find alternative theories of the atonement. Many of the theories which are influenced by Eastern Orthodox theology can be summed up under the general heading of an incarnational theory. The chief element that these theories seek to uphold is the idea that Jesus’ death is the culmination of a life lived in identity with the creature and the cross was his experiencing the alienation from God that sin introduced in human life. By faith, humans are united to Christ and participate in the full life of God (the Greek Orthodox idea of theosis). Again, there is much to commend this idea: Jesus did, indeed, live our life for us; he was the Last Adam, our federal head. And, as we are united to Christ, we do share in the divine nature (2 Pet.

1:4). But more than just an existential identification with us (sharing our pain and trouble), Jesus as the God-Man enters into our lives to redeem us from our sin and rebellion. We must not lose the idea of guilt incurred by our sin for we are not only victims, we are also victimizers.

So, where do we go from here? Should the penal substitution devotees challenge the Christus Victor devotees to a Bible Drill? Are the Christians who support an incarnational theory to be driven out of the camp? How do we weave all of these various motifs together? Better yet, should we? Mark Dever, frequent MR contributor and pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., reflected on this question in an essay for Christianity Today last year: While a victor may have moral influence on those for whom he conquered, may he not also be a substitute? While Christ’s example of self-giving love may also defeat our enemies, may he not, by the same act, propitiate God’s wrath? Each of the theories conveys biblical truth about the atoning work of Christ.

I don’t doubt that we have more to learn from Christ’s death than simply the fact that he died as a substitute for us, bearing our grief and carrying our sorrows (Isa. 53:4). Peter, for instance, teaches that we should follow Christ’s example of suffering for that which is good (1 Pet. 3). Any biblical understanding of the Atonement must take into account our having been united to Christ by faith, adopted and regenerated in him. As those who belong to him, as his temple and his body, we expect the fruit of his Spirit to be evident in us. Because of the Atonement, we expect a new quality to our lives (Rom. 6; 2 Cor. 5; Gal. 5; 2 Pet. 1). The Atonement is not merely moral influence, but it surely results in moral improvement.

Rather than pitting these theories against one another, couldn’t they be evaluated together? A Christ who wins victory over the powers of evil, whose death changes us, and whose death propitiates God is not only conceivable, he seems to be the Bible’s composite presentation.

Of course, Dever is right: each biblical atonement theory conveys part of Christ’s complex mission on earth.

Thus, a complete understanding of Christ’s redeeming work is represented more accurately by viewing the different theories as harmonizing parts of the same song, rather than as solo melodies.

Eric Landry is pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church (Murrieta, California) and executive editor of Modern Reformation.

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L. McCormack, ed., (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), pp.

255–56; Rich Lusk, “Private Communication 27 May 2003,” cited in James B. A robust doctrine of justification that includes the Jordan, “Merit vs. Maturity: What Did Jesus Do for Us?” imputed active and passive obedience of Christ is not in The Federal Vision, Steve Wilkins and Duane Garner, antithetical to our union with Christ, nor is it eds., (Monroe: Athanasius Press, 2004), p. 155; Rich superfluous.

Lusk, “A Response to ‘The Biblical Plan of Salvation,’” transformative work of the Holy Spirit. Or, using the title in The Auburn Avenue Theology: Pros & Cons. Debating the of John Murray’s famous book, apart from redemption Federal Vision, E. Calvin Beisner, ed. (Ft. Lauderdale: accomplished, there can be no redemption applied (see WCF Knox Theological Seminary, 2004), p. 142; see 11.3; Larger Catechism, Q/A 70). references in A. T. B. McGowan, “Justification and the Ordo Salutis,” in Justification in Perspective: Historical Conclusion Developments and Contemporary Challenges, Bruce ne cannot help but observe that much of the McCormack, ed., (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), pp. recent literature in the confessional Reformed 156–57; Richard B. Gaffin, “Union with Christ: Some community that pits imputation against union Biblical and Theological Reflections,” in Always with Christ unwittingly repeats a false antithesis from Reforming: Explorations in Systematic Theology, A. T. B. nineteenth-century liberalism. While those within the McGowan, ed., (Leicester: Apollos, 2006), p. 275; John confessional Reformed community undoubtedly hold to Murray, The Imputation of Adam’s Sin (Phillipsburg: P & R, a strong commitment to the inspired nature of the 1959), p. 76; Hodge, Outlines of Theology, p. 482; and Scriptures, this commitment is inconsistent with any Berkhof, Systematic Theology, p. 452. assumption that there are competing models of redemption in Paul, the legal and the relational. In seeking to create a more perfect understanding of union with Christ, some have torn apart what God has joined together. If Paul’s epistles are inspired by the Holy Spirit, then it seems important that we follow the apostle in the construction of our own theology of justification as it relates to union with Christ. Namely, it is imperative that we hold together imputation and union with Christ, the legal-forensic and the transformative, all of which are relational. Let us not separate what God has joined together. ■ (continued from page 35)

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J. V. Fesko is pastor of Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church (Woodstock, Georgia) and adjunct professor of theology at Reformed Theological Seminary (Atlanta, Georgia). His most recent book is Last Things First: Unlocking Genesis 1–3 with the Christ of Eschatology (Fearn: Mentor, 2007).

In his article, Dr. Fesko cites Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology: New Combined Edition (1932–38; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), p. 449; A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology (1879; Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1991), p.

483; see e.g., Albert Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (1931; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1998), p.

223; Albrecht Ritschl, The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation (1902; Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2004), p.

94; see Travis Tamerius, “Interview with N. T. Wright,” Reformation and Revival 11/1 (2002), p. 129; N. T. Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul,” in Justification in Perspective: Historical Developments and Contemporary Challenges, Bruce 3 8 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

INTERVIEW for

d ialogue

in

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out

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ou r

c ircles

An Interview with Mark Driscoll

Reaching Out Without Selling Out In February 2007, Michael Horton had the opportunity to interview Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church (Seattle, Washington) and author of The Radical Reformission: Reaching Out without Selling Out (Zondervan, 2004).

This interview was originally broadcast on March 11, 2007 on The White Horse Inn radio program. To hear the entire interview online, go to www.whitehoresinn.org, click “Previous Programs,” then click “Broadcast Archives”at the top of the page.

Can you give us some background on your congregation? It’s mostly a younger crowd, isn’t it?

Well, it started that way. I’m in Seattle, one of the least-churched cities in America. There are more dogs than evangelicals in our town.

I started here as a non-Christian, I became a Christian when I was 19, got married at 21, started a Bible study at age 25 that today is over 6,000 people. I think we’re the fifteenth fastest growing church in America right now. So, it started off really young, but the age has spread. It’s about half single, half married, about forty percent conversion growth as far as we can tell. So, it’s been pretty busy.

Wow, and you’re doing this with a good dose of Reformation theology, specifically Calvinism?

It’s going well so far. We’re enjoying it. I’m a Bible teacher, I have a high view of Scripture, we do Communion every week. So far God’s using it to reach a lot of mainly younger people who are a little weary of pluralism and postmodernism and looking for some truth and some Bible and ultimately really intrigued by Jesus. So, I’m really glad for what he’s done.

and they grew up in churches of their Boomer parents where teaching was pretty light and stage productions other than Communion were key. What’s different about this generation or at least these people in your church?

Christianity Today did a story in September that was interesting. It was about the resurgence of Reformed theology among younger evangelicals…it was the cover story. What we are seeing is, the two hot theologies right now among the younger evangelicals are sort of a “new Reformed theology,” which is basically just the older form rediscovered, and what is known as Emergent, or emerging theology, which is becoming the new left. So, we are seeing a return to Bible exposition…In our network, we’ve seen a hundred new churches planted in the U.S. just in the last few years, all led by basically expository Bible teachers who serve Communion every week and have a Reformed theology that includes male leadership in the church and are conservative evangelicals and it’s going very well. There’s a major upswing in that direction.

Now, wait a second. Teaching and Communion every week?

We’ve been told that this generation isn’t interested in teaching

Now, you were involved on the ground floor of the emerging movement, sometimes called the Emergent Movement. How did

that originate and what is your relationship to it now?

In the mid to late 90’s, my friends—whom I love very much—in this organization called Leadership Network brought together a bunch of young pastors just to share ideas and network and see what the next generation of ministry might look like. That led to what was called the Young Leaders Network. I became involved in the early days of that.

We did some speaking and traveling together, we talked about the future of where Christianity might be going in America.

And this is with Brian McLaren and others?

Brian McLaren was added about a year or two later to that team, and then it separated from Leadership Network and became, ultimately, the Emergent Village. And it was in that transition that I tried to part company on some theological issues. I still consider a lot of the leaders in that movement to be personal friends and people that I do love, but theologically I had to part ways, as it were, over some doctrinal issues.

What would you point out as the most critical areas of disagreement between the emphases of Reformation theology and Emergent theology?

The biggest issue is always the inerrancy and authority of Scripture, which for me are watershed issues that then lay the groundwork for the resolution of the other issues. Behind that comes penal substitution issues—

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The area of concern I see is a low view of Scripture and the result is, when you’re looking for firm foundations upon which to build and you don’t end up at Scripture, you’re going to find yourself in very serious trouble.

Jesus’ death on the cross in our place for our sins, such things as eternal torment in hell, things such as original sin—we are sinners both by nature and choice, things such as the exclusivity of Jesus—no salvation apart from the person and work of Jesus, and also gender roles, which includes male leadership in the church, male/female roles in the home, as well as sexual issues, like homosexuality, bisexuality, lesbianism— is there intentional creative design

by God that’s designated for gender? And those are kind of the big issues on the table. They’re not new issues, but they’ve got a new interest.

As we look at this generation, is there sort of a realization among pastors in your network that we have over-stereotyped generations and turned churches into niche demographics?

I think that one of the sad things that has happened is that there is an assumption that there is a sameness, or commonality, among generations, and at least in what we’re seeing in a world that is more pluralistic, that is more diverse, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-perspectival, you’re really dealing with a lot of different tribes of people. They may be the same age, but they may have a completely different view of God, of the world, of truth, of life and death and sexuality, and so I think it’s reductionistic to put millions of people in a bucket and say because they were born between certain years they’re all the same. The 4 0 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

result of that is you’re told how to market to them, how to program for them as if one size does fit all and a franchise mentality would work for a whole generation, which isn’t true.

So the real difference between, say, a Willow Creek and the Emergent Village is the difference between the mall and Starbucks.

In the seeker movement the ideology was to hold to evangelical theology but to take some of the rough edges off; some of the doctrines you do believe, like hell, you sort of tuck those away so that they’re not out in plain sight. It’s interesting among some young evangelicals who are more “emerging,” for them the theological issues are really important and they are pressing the theological issues but they’re coming to more liberal conclusions and they end up having much smaller congregations.

You’re looking at house churches, new monastic communities, alternative communities that are smaller and grass-roots in orientation, more theology-driven but more liberal in their orientation.

Remarkable. How much of this, Mark, is because they did grow up in churches that really downplayed the rough edges and didn’t really engage in in-depth instruction from the Scriptures and had kind of “worship lite”? How much of this longing for some substance and yet, sometimes without a rudder, is due to that upbringing in the mega-church?

Well, I don’t think it’s just megachurch, or size of church. There are men like Spurgeon who had large churches. But I think it’s more of an orientation of church where the people that you’re seeking to attract are consumers and you’re a producer of religious goods and services, so you pull your constituency and target your market. I think that led to a theological reduction, to a drive of pragmatism and best practices that walked away from a core theological conviction driving what it means to be the church. And I think a younger generation of evangelicals is wanting to get back to that theological core. One of my concerns is, they tend to be leaning into church history, they tend to be leaning into experience, and they tend not to have as high a view of Scripture as I would have hoped for. And I don’t say that broad brush for everyone, but the area of concern I see is a low view of Scripture and the result is, when you’re looking for firm foundations upon which to build and you don’t end up at Scripture, you’re going to find yourself in very serious trouble.

How much of this, too, is “channel surfing”? The younger generation, 40 years old and younger, are so used to surfing the Net and surfing the channels.

How much of this is, “Yeah, there’s a depth of interest in theology, but a kind of eclectic ‘make-it-up-as-you-go-along’?”

The word that’s used a lot is “mosaic,” you know, pieces from many traditions and perspectives and ideologies that come together to formulate a whole—That’s the language that is used. On the flip side, I think for those who weren’t raised in the church and aren’t the products of more soft-centered evangelicalism—those who are just not Christian—what we are seeing is that they have a strong interest in Bible and theology. Like I said, in our city, I can’t believe it,

Michael. We are going through the Book of Ruth and we grew by a thousand people this month—in one of the least churched cities in America. We’re growing by nonChristians coming for Bible teaching. We’re seeing that same thing throughout the country. I could point to most of the major cities across the country and show you young, Reformed-minded Bible teachers whose churches are growing very fast but it’s primarily Bible, doctrinal, theological instruction. They have unbelievers who are coming for theological instruction to learn about the God of the Bible, which I find wholeheartedly encouraging. I’m thrilled by that.

So unlike the church growth emphases of the previous generation, where you kind of move people out of the churches they already belong to into larger churches, you’re actually seeing (and a lot of your friends who are doing this faithful biblical exposition) non-Christians become Christians and the growth coming from actual evangelism?

Absolutely. But the evangelism is Jesus-centered Bible teaching where the text is open and Jesus is the hero of every page of Scripture, which is just classic, Reformed, biblical theology. So, yeah, that is in fact what we are seeing. The people have been marketed, they have been pitched, they have been sold, they have had their felt needs assuaged.

What they haven’t had is anyone get up and open the Bible, tell them who God is, what he has done and call them to repentance in a very clear, forthright way that respects their intelligence.

What does that look like in concrete terms on the ground?

That means that Christians need to be loving their neighbors as Jesus did, you know whether it’s like Jesus with the woman at the well

who was a social outcast and very sinful; there is a deep love for that person and a willingness to sit down and dialogue with them, not just preach at them… or whether it’s a man like Zaccheus; it’s actually having meals with such people and entering into a relationship with them so that the gospel can be explained and demonstrated and defended. I think the hard thing is that most people are for evangelism, but it is time-consuming. It does take energy and some people are very difficult and their understanding grows slowly and it’s a commitment to walking with people in relationship, in community, in conversation, practicing hospitality, loving your neighbor…and I think we see that in the incarnation of Jesus, that God himself would spend time with some of the people that he spent time with, and people like me who he’s still willing to spend time with is remarkable.

So your preaching, your Wordbased ministry, it’s not one thing over here and then you also have this outreach program over there, but your outreach is a ministry of the Word to your neighborhood.

We call it “air war” and “ground war.” The preaching of Scripture is air war. It deals with multitudes and wide audiences, but then our people really do the ground war.

They love their neighbor, they share the gospel with their friends, they open their home to family, friends, and coworkers…they’re really doing the work of the ground war, and generally speaking, that’s where most evangelism happens – on the ground war. The air war can help articulate the gospel, but then people are going to have questions, misunderstandings, misapplications, and somebody who loves God is going to need to help walk with them through those particulars.

A lot of us grew up in churches,

Mark, where we were told, “You are a member of this church now, which means that you have to find your gift—teach such and such a grade in Sunday school, be a greeter, show up for various church events… are you going to join the clean-up ministry or the tract ministry…”—and you end up spending all of your time in church-related activities so that you couldn’t actually spend time out in the world in your secular calling, investing in relationships with friends. You kind of scurry out there to make a buck, then scurry back into the church to be with your people. Do you think that that is a fundamental flaw in the way a lot of traditional churches approach the outside world?

Look at the way they look at their programming. Sometimes a church only considers formal ministry in the church, as opposed to informal ministry in their home. So, you know, we like to tell our people that informal ministry counts. If you’re having your lost neighbors over for dinner to love them, that counts. And so, I think it’s an understanding that church is not just a thing that people come to; it’s also living the lifestyle created by the gospel, knowing that wherever we’re at we’re witnesses, we are missionaries, we do bring the gospel with us, we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we are given opportunities. We should not overlook those in the name of formalized ministry but to see those informal opportunities as God’s providential hand giving us wonderful opportunities out in the marketplace… We don’t have any evangelism training, we don’t have an evangelism department, we don’t have altar calls, we don’t do any advertising, we don’t do any marketing. I tend to preach right through books of the Bible, occasionally I’ll do a series. I did a twelve-week series on the cross, on penal substitutionary atonement, so the times I do something

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The people have been marketed, they have been pitched…What they haven’t had is anyone get up and open the Bible, tell them who God is, what he has done and call them to repentance in a very clear, forthright way that respects their intelligence. topical is usually theologically clarifying for people. And what we find is that in previous generations it was a fight between “Is Sunday to disciple the believers or to reach the lost?” My articulation is, Sunday is for the worship and the adoration and the exaltation of Jesus, and if everything is about Jesus, then it works for Christians and non-Christians. Everyone needs Jesus, and the gospel is for Christians, too. It’s not just something you believe and then move on with the rest of your life.

The gospel of conviction of sin and repentance and trusting in the finished work of Christ is something that every Christian practices every moment of every day, and I think it’s a truncated view of the gospel if it’s a few laws, or a sales pitch we give to someone, they pray the prayer, and then we’ve concluded our evangelistic endeavor. I think it’s a very reductionistic view of the gospel.

The title of your book, Radical Reformission: Reaching Out Without Selling Out, is interesting. Why the title “Radical Reformission”? What’s “reformission”?

It’s a reforming of our understanding of missions. In previous generations, the idea has been that missionaries are people that we send overseas to bizaare foreign cultures and they are the highly trained professionals that go share the gospel. Well, what we’re looking at is God has brought the 4 2 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

nations, the United States of America, our cities and our areas are very tribal with different races, nations, groups, tribes, subcultures of people and that mission is something that happens across the street as well as across the world.

And I think that’s what Jesus was getting at when he said “Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, ends of the earth.” It’s fine to send a missionary to China, but the number of evangelicals in China is statistically the same as the city of Seattle. So if we’re going to send missionaries to China, I’m all for it, but we also need to send missionaries to Seattle, Philadelphia, New York City, to these major culture-making urban centers that create pop culture.

That’s where the television stations are, the record labels are, that’s where the media is centered, politics are centered, money is centered, and if we don’t have a faithful gospel witness there, then we’re essentially just handing over the making of culture for the next generation to people who have no idea of the gospel. And, to me, the understanding of mission is not just going across the world; sometimes we’re going across the street and that counts as well.

Mark, thank you so much for the time you’ve given us and for the insights you’ve passed on to us.

We all have a lot to learn and areas to improve as we think about reaching out without losing “the reached.”

REQUIRED READING FOR 21ST CENTURY CHRISTIANS modern

reformation

m u st- rea d s

Readings on Solo Christo What would Modern Reformation choose for you to read for further understanding of Solo Christo? “Required Reading” features books that we believe are worth your time. We hope you’ll consider adding these titles to the treasury of your mind.

Christ Alone

The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross

by Rod Rosenbladt (Crossway, 1999)

by Leon Morris (Eerdmans, 1984)

Rod Rosenbladt’s short booklet takes up the Reformation’s clarion call, “Christ Alone!” and applies it to the contemporary church scene. Whether in preaching, counseling, outreach, or service, Christ must be at the center of all we do and why we do it.

Leon Morris, an eminently reliable evangelical and Reformed exegete, offers the constructive case for the centrality of the cross (particularly, the vicarious atonement) in the New Testament.

The Cross of Christ

by John Stott (InterVarsity Press, 2006) John Stott has spent his whole ministry not simply defending but proclaiming Christ and him crucified.

This excellent book interacts a bit more with contemporary controversies than Leon Morris' work.

The Unfolding Mystery: Discovering Christ in the Old Testament

by Edmund P. Clowney (P&R, 1991) Ed Clowney’s masterful treatment of a Christ-centered reading of Scripture will be especially useful to pastors and teachers who want to steer clear of the pop moralism that infects so much Christian thinking.

See also:

Lord and Servant: A Covenant Christology

by Michael S. Horton (Westminster John Knox Press, 2005) This book explores the most current debates over the nature of Christ’s atonement.

Is Jesus the Only Way?

by Philip Ryken (Crossway, 1999)

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REVIEWS wh at ’s

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r ead

Globalizing Theology: Belief and Practice in an Era of World Christianity

I

s global warming a problem or not? Well, that depends on whose arguments

book’s weakness is also one of its strengths. The repetition of the one reads. However, after a significant amount of recent reading, I have thesis helped to drive home the point that “globalizing theology” become convinced that it is a major problem and that if I don’t do something, is both an indicative and an imperative. Here is just one staI will be violating my tistic, provided by Andrew Walls all the way back in 1989 responsibilities to the which sets the stage for the discussions in this book, “In Lord and to my grand1900, 83% of the world’s Christians lived in North children.

America and Europe. Today [in 1989], something Is globalization a cruapproaching 60% live in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and cial issue for the church the Pacific.” From 17 percent to 60 percent in less than a in this year of our Lord, century! And the shift continues. The implications of this 2007? I suggest that, staggering shift are what this book explores. after careful reading of In his “Introduction” to the volume, Harold Netland this significant book, summarizes a statement by Bong Rin Ro and Ruth thoughtful Christians Eshenaur to set the stage for what follows: will conclude that it is a crucial issue and that if Western theology is by and large rationalistic, moldwe, Christ’s people, do ed by Western philosophies, preoccupied with intelnot take very serious lectual concerns, especially those having to do with account of it, we will be faith and reason. All too often, it has reduced the violating our responsiChristian faith to abstract concepts which may have bilities to the Lord and answered the questions of the past, but which fail to to his church for genergrapple with the issues of today…. Having been Globalizing Theology: ations to come. wrought from within Christendom, it hardly Belief and Practice in an Era The book is a collecaddresses the questions of people living in situations of World Christianity tion of essays in honor characterized by religious pluralism, secularism, edited by Craig Ott and of Paul Hiebert, a distinresurgent Islam, or Marxist totalitarianism.

Harold A. Netland guished anthropologist Baker Academic, 2006 and missiologist, and is So what exactly might “globalizing theology” involve?

382 pages (paperback), $27.99 divided into three main Here is Netland’s very helpful answer: sections: “World Christianity and Theological Reflection,” “Methodological Issues for Globalizing Theology,” and Globalizing theology is theological reflection rooted in “Implications for Globalizing Theology.” As with any such God’s self-revelation in Scripture and informed by the volume, some essays are stronger than others, but all reward historical legacy of the Christian community through careful study, resulting in a helpful resource for the church as the ages, the current realities in the world, and the it seeks to understand the Kingdom opportunities facing it at diverse perspectives of Christian communities the beginning of the twenty-first century. throughout the world, with a view to greater holiness One of the weaknesses of the book is that every author in living and faithfulness in fulfilling God’s mission in makes the point that “globalizing theology” is both an all the world through the church … Although the indicative and an imperative. The reader can feel a bit perennial concerns of theology will remain, the specifoverwhelmed by the repetition of this thesis. Yet the ic issues addressed by theologians should, to some

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extent, be shaped by the new realities of globalization.

Of course, broad statements like the ones just quoted need to be concretized to be either convincing or helpful. And that’s what most of the essays in the book seek to do.

Here, for example, is Andrew Walls’ concretizing of the claim that Western theology is by and large rationalistic and that there may be other perspectives which would complement Western theology: Africa is already revealing the limitations of theology as generally taught in the West. The truth is that Western models of theology are too small for Africa. Most of them reflect the worldview of the Enlightenment, and that is a small-scale worldview, one cut and shaved to fit a small-scale universe. Since most Africans live in a larger, more populated universe, with entities that are outside the Enlightenment worldview, such models of theology cannot cope with some of the most urgent pastoral needs. They have no answers for some of the most desolating aspects of life — because they have no questions. They have nothing useful to say on issues involving such things as witchcraft or sorcery, since these do not exist in an Enlightenment universe. Nor can Western theology usefully discuss ancestors, since the West does not have family structures that raise the questions. Western theology has difficulty coping with principalities and powers, whether in relation to their grip on the universe or to Christ’s triumph over them on the cross. The reason is that it is hard for Western consciousness to treat them as other than abstractions.

So Western theology has difficulty in relating personal sin and guilt and structural and systemic evil and sometimes offers different gospels for dealing with each or quarrels as to which has priority. Perhaps Africa, which knows so much about systemic evil and where the principalities and powers are not a strange concept, may open the way to a more developed theology of evil, as the issues already appearing in African pastoral practice are threshed out.

Walls is very careful not to say that Western theology is wrong. It is simply limited, just as African theology is limited. His point is not that the Western church must abandon its traditional theologizing; to do so would weaken the church worldwide. But the Western church does need to recognize that its concerns are not the only legitimate twenty-first century Christian concerns and that Western ways of “doing theology” are not the only ways.

I have had first-hand experience of the kind of phenomena Walls describes and the kind of challenge he is issuing.

The World Reformed Fellowship requires that all members submit “ministry reports” annually, allowing all members to see the scope of the Lord’s work around the world and to learn from and to assist one another in the accomplishment of ministry. The authors are doing Kingdom work; their contexts call for different expressions of their

SHORT NOTICES When the Darkness Will Not Lift: Doing What We Can While We Wait for God—and Joy

by John Piper Crossway/Good News, 2007 79 pages (paperback), $7.99 There are many books that go into a great more detail than When the Darkness Will Not Lift about methods of dealing with depression, but few will equal the pastoral touch brought to this difficult subject by John Piper. This book will serve as an encouragement not only to those suffering their own loss of joy —and who among us has not at some time—but especially for those who try to care for such a one. As always, Piper does not settle for easy answers or quick formulas.

However, he is unflinching in pointing us always Godward, with God as revealed in Christ as the only satisfaction to our deepest longings and needs.

Because of the brevity of this work, those seriously engaging this topic will want to dig deeper. Books specifically recommended by Piper in When the Darkness Will Not Lift include: The Bruised Reed by Richard Sibbes, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures by Martin Lloyd-Jones, When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy by John Piper, Future Grace by John Piper, Blame It on the Brain: Distinguishing Chemical Imbalances, Brain Disorders, and Disobedience by Edward T. Welch, and Tell the Truth: The Whole Gospel to the Whole Person by Whole People by Will Metzger.

— Mark Traphagen

A Biblical Case for Natural Law

by David VanDrunen Acton Institute, 2006 75 pages (booklet), $6.00 The political Christian right in America depends heavily on appeals to the Bible for its vision for America. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are household names in America, but their use of Scripture is often shaky and open to question.

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Kingdom concerns. It is a way of allowing the strengths of a few to become the strengths of all. The gospel is the same everywhere; the challenges to the gospel are, however, quite different and the volume here under consideration calls us to see this and to act accordingly.

Further excellent concretization of the notion that the Western way of theologizing is not the only way of theologizing is provided by Steve Strauss (“Creeds, Confessions, and Global Theologizing: A Case Study in Comparative Christologies”) and by Robert Priest (“Experience-Near Theologizing in Diverse Human Contexts”).

Strauss examines Christology in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (EOTC) and explains why, in that context, use of Chalcedonian terminology in describing Jesus will, in fact, produce heresy rather than orthodoxy. He makes a strong point that EOTC concerns may provide a biblical corrective to some of the Nestorian tendencies of Chalcedonians, while at the same time, the emphases of Western Chalcedonians can help to safeguard the EOTC from Apollinarianism and Eutychianism.

Priest argues that use of the Western word “sin” will be totally ineffective among the Aguarana tribe of northern Peru and suggests ways in which the Aguarana describe what we Westerners mean by “sin” can help to complement (not to replace) the Western understanding of that which offends God and separates sinners from Him. Additional concrete examples of the limitations of purely Western theological models are provided throughout the book. But what about concrete positive examples of what “global theologizing” might look like? The best essay in the entire volume, Kevin Vanhoozer’s, “One Rule to Rule Them All?” provides just such an example.

Here are a couple of quotations from Vanhoozer. The first is his procedural premise with respect to what he sees his suggested model as fundamentally doing: “It affirms a canonic and hence christological principle, namely, that the Spirit speaking in Scripture about what God was/is doing in the history of Israel and climactically in Jesus Christ is the supreme rule for Christian faith, life, and understanding.”

Vanhoozer then continues, The main proposal concerns the nature of doctrine and the purpose of systematic theology. It departs from the stereotypical portrait of systematic theology as an abstract theoretical “science of God” that works primarily with concepts and seeks instead to reorient systematic theology toward sapientia (wisdom) or phronesis: practical reason, lived knowledge. The proposal therefore employs drama theory rather than philosophy as its handmaiden. To anticipate, it views the gospel as essentially dramatic, the Bible as a script, doctrine as theatrical direction, and the church as part of the ongoing performance of salvation. It also insists that “theo-dramatic” reason is as imaginative-intuitive as it is analytic-conceptual and that theology’s primary aim is to help disciples discern how best to “stage” the gospel of the kingdom of God in concrete situations.

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To understand the point Vanhoozer is making, it is crucial to note that he is not dismissing the “analytical-conceptual;” he is arguing that the analytical-conceptual be complemented by the “imaginative-intuitive.” Likewise, he is not saying—just as no other author in this volume is saying—that Western models of theologizing must be rejected and abandoned. Vanhoozer’s point, and that of the other contributors, is that what has been done so extremely well in the West must be supplemented by models that have been developed and that are being developed by faithful and wise and obedient Christians in other parts of the world, specifically in those parts of the world where Christ’s church is growing so dramatically.

Vanhoozer argues that the advantage of using a “theodramatic” model lies in the fact that drama seems to be a much more universal human experience than does the kind of abstract philosophical reasoning which tends to characterize Western theologizing. It thus potentially serves as a better universal handmaiden to theologizing than does abstract philosophizing. But one must read Vanhoozer’s essay in its entirety (and his 2005 book, The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology) to appreciate the full weight of his arguments.

And that is, of course, true of all the essays in this volume.

Reading them will not resolve all the issues related to doing theology in a global context. In fact, reading them is likely to raise questions where there were no questions before. But the reader and the church he/she serves will be significantly richer as those questions are addressed in community with other members of the Body of Christ worldwide.

Samuel T. Logan, Jr., is the executive secretary of The World Reformed Fellowship and president and professor emeritus of church history emeritus at Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).

Reasons for Faith: Philosophy in the Service of Theology

by K. Scott Oliphint P&R, November 2006 $24.99 (paperback), 392 pages Scott Oliphint’s Reasons for Faith is an attempt to address several of the problems in contemporary philosophy of religion and demonstrate that “Reformed thought, centrally set forth in [Cornelius] Van Til’s works... has already broached virtually every discussion now in play.” His perspective is broader, though, than simply Van Til (in fact, Van Til is not

explicitly mentioned very often). He argues that “the...consistency of a Reformed apologetic was applied and demonstrated in much, if not most, of the concerns and responses of the Reformed orthodox in the seventeenth century.” His aim, then, is to show that there is philosophical value in the entire Reformed tradition. As such, he hopes that “Christians who are philosophers...will be convinced that their endeavors philosophical can be conducted only on the basis of the principia of Reformed orthodoxy.”

The book divides into a discussion of metaphysics and epistemology followed by a discussion of free will and the problem of evil. The overarching concern of the first part of the book is “the delineation of the relationship of God to His creation.” The philosophical treatment of this problem, he says, has historically been “altogether turbid, murky, opaque, not to mention simply fallacious.” In support of this claim he surveys the history of this discussion from Plato up to the contemporary period. He notes that there is an impressive diversity of conclusions in this history and that each of them ends up with a God significantly unlike the biblical God. He suggests that the reason for this is an over-readiness to retool the doctrine of God to fit with the nature of creation.

At this point Oliphint attempts to lay out a Reformed framework for approaching this problem. That framework begins with the recognition of God’s aseity or utter independence. To begin this way means denying that any part of God’s being is imparted to him from anything outside of himself. This requires, of course, that everything else be in complete subordination to God, which itself means that there is a fundamentally different sort of existence for God than for other things. “Creatures think as creatures, know as creatures, exist as creatures, and so forth,” but God “has nothing essentially creaturely about Him. He exists as a non-creature, thinks as a non-creature, knows as a noncreature, and so on.” In Reformed orthodoxy, this was articulated by way of a distinction between God as archetype or Eimi and creation as ectype or eikon.

Given this distinction, it is questionable to give primary place to the creation when thinking about God; the only basis for knowledge of God is some sort of self-disclosure on his part. As Oliphint puts it, “Our understanding of God must come, first, from who he is as revealed, not first from what creation is like.” To disclose himself, however, God has to condescend; he has to reveal himself in ways that are intelligible to his creatures but which do not belie what he is as uncreated. This means describing himself as infinite and eternal by means of that which is finite and temporal in a way that is genuinely revelatory while avoiding dilution. As Oliphint puts it, the Eimi and the eikon must be brought together.

An obvious example of this sort of condescension is God’s use of human language, but the same dynamic is at work in God’s actions in human history. Oliphint offers the example of the burning bush: “what we see in Exodus 3...is the “I AM”, the “Eimi”, taking on an eikon, an image, in order to show His limited creatures just who he is and what He is like.” And the preeminent example of this, of course, is Christ himself, who is the apex of God’s revelation.

Short Notices (continued from page 45) lawyer and professor of systematic theology and ethics David VanDrunen argues that Reformed Christians must reconsider the role of natural law in their interaction with politics. In demonstrating that men and women, as imagebearers of God, have God’s law indelibly written upon their hearts, he cites Romans 2:14-15, “[W]hen Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law...they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts.”

VanDrunen points out that the primary purpose of Scripture is to guide the community of those who have been redeemed by grace; it is not written to unbelievers.

The crucial basis for Christians engaging with unbelievers in politics, therefore, is natural law. An excellent argument for God’s claims over every aspect of life despite the spiritual nature of the church, A Biblical Case for Natural Law is a must read for every Christian interested in politics.

— Matt Tuininga

The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name

by Sally Lloyd-Jones ZonderKidz, 2007 352 pages (hardcover), $16.99 All too often, children’s Bible storybooks isolate individual biblical stories from the message of the Scriptures.

Children then learn “Bible stories” much like they learn Aesop’s fables – entertaining stories about what people should and shouldn’t do. The “Jesus Storybook Bible” is a wonderful exception to this trend. Sally Lloyd-Jones tells the stories of the Bible in a way that seeks to be exegetically faithful to the text while directing children to what adults would call the “redemptive historical” meaning; the whole Bible tells the history of God’s purpose to redeem his people through the Savior. Bible stories learned this way do what God intended them to do – they lead people to know and believe the gospel of Jesus.

Perhaps the greatest value of this book is how it can train parents (and anyone in a position of teaching) to teach the Scriptures rightly to their children.

— Jim Weidenaar

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That said, it is important to note that Christ entered into human history in such a way that his humanity and divinity were both fully real but never conflated. This provides a framework, Oliphint suggests, for thinking about God’s relationship to his creation more generally. Whenever God relates to his creation, he does so by taking on certain properties without diluting or changing who he is eternally. Just how he can do that is a matter of profound mystery, but it is no more impossible than is the Incarnation itself. The form of the Incarnation, then, is the touchstone for all discussions of God’s relationship to creation. “It is in the Incarnation that we see supremely how God can relate to His creation without in any way changing His essential character or becoming less than God.” The closing chapters of the book bring these observations to bear on the question of free will and the problem of evil.

Free will is often used as a means of placing the blame for evil on humans rather than God. In most cases, however, the view of freedom involved is one that precludes God’s sovereignty over the future, so that, as mentioned above, one of God’s attributes is compromised to accommodate creation. As an alternative to this, Oliphint suggests something like an incarnational model of human freedom where God’s providence joins together the fully divine decree and the fully human (and thus free and responsible) choice in the same way that he joined together the divine and the human in Christ. While the mechanism behind this might be mysterious, we should be willing to accept that mystery if we are willing to accept the Incarnation.

Reasons For Faith is not written for a general audience— those without a background in philosophy and theology may find it difficult going. Those with such a background, however, may find some of the philosophical surveys and discussions too brief and therefore oversimplified. But even with these liabilities, Reasons For Faith makes a number of provocative suggestions about the manner of a Christian approach to philosophy. It is a worthwhile read for those interested in the intersection of theology and philosophy and serves as a valuable addition to the body of Reformed apologetic literature.

Michael Vendsel is an adjunct professor of philosophy at La Salle University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).

Truths We Confess: A Layman’s Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith, Volume 1: The Triune God

by R. C. Sproul P&R, 2006 279 pages (paperback), $22.00 In this first volume of his guide to the Westminster 4 8 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

Confession, R.C. Sproul provides an excellent introduction to the Reformed faith by leading us through the Confession, which remains unsurpassed “in eloquence, grandeur, and theological accuracy” (p. viii).

He explains the theology of its first eight chapters with a clarity and vigor that is not too academic and is accessible to the educated layman, narrating for us relevant passages of Scripture, and drawing on the history of theology, philosophy, and the church to illustrate the biblical truth of the Confession. The topics covered include Scripture, God and the Trinity, God’s decree, creation, providence, the fall, God’s covenant, and Christ the Mediator. Sproul elucidates the Confession’s meaning section-by-section, and often phrase-by-phrase. The two further volumes, yet to be published, will cover the rest of the chapters of the Confession.

If you are committed to the fundamentals of Reformed doctrine but have not studied the Westminster Confession, doing so will open up for you the greater biblical, doctrinal, and practical breadth of the Reformed faith. Other commentaries on the Confession—those by A.A. Hodge, Robert Shaw, and G.I. Williamson—focus more narrowly on the details of the text and its meaning, and with great benefit, but Sproul’s unique aim is for you to “come to a deeper understanding of and greater love for the doctrines of grace so ably set forth by the Westminster divines” (viii).

More than the Confession’s details, he gives you its heart.

Sproul leaves the reader with the conviction that if one is a Christian, these are the truths he should confess. As such this book is an introduction to the Confession, but more so, to the Reformed faith.

The most prominent feature in this book is the Triune God himself. You cannot read this book without being faced with the Almighty God. Sproul’s reverent exaltation of God in his absolute holiness, aseity, and power in the first third of this book is worth the price of admission. This is no cameo appearance; to the end Sproul maintains his concern that “the doctrine of God...controls all others” and “All doctrines of the faith must be understood in light of the nature and character of God” (149).

Whether intentional or not, even in polemical matters the book does not distract our attention from God. Sproul does not engage current debates in the Reformed community directly, but does so only tangentially. His positions are clear—against Norman Shepherd he affirms that Christ’s active obedience merited righteousness for us (260), he advocates “grammatico-historical exegesis” (29) and warns against the “nineteenth-century [and so by implication, theologically liberal]...redemptive-historical school” (33) but freely affirms an idea of “redemptive history” (47), affirms doctrines central to Van Til’s apologetics such as

God’s aseity (40) and incomprehensibility (42), the fallenness of human reason and its inadequacy to prove the truth of Scripture (15, 17), the Creator-creature distinction (35, 39, 118), and “think[ing] God’s thoughts after him” (144), he no longer considers the Framework creation view tenable and interprets the Confession to require a six 24-hour view (127-128), takes John Murray’s view that God established the covenant of works by gracious condescension (205, 217), affirms the covenant of grace is the same in substance from Old Covenant to New Covenant (228), and is troubled by a Christian hedonism that would worship God to “fulfill ourselves” rather than “because it’s a duty” (66).

More broadly, he affirms the doctrine of the Confession in detail, humbly and dutifully noting only one minor exception (134), yet his concern is not for its minor, but its major points—its system of doctrine. Nevertheless Sproul’s treatment of these debates remains tangential and his Reformed opponents remain unnamed because his purpose is not to engage in polemics against his Reformed brothers, but rather to convince and edify Christians swayed by antitheistic errors in the modern church, notably deism, materialism, Arminianism, dispensationalism, open theism, and the postmodern opposition to absolute truth. Sproul’s irenic attitude toward the Reformed is reminiscent of Calvin’s practice of graciously disagreeing with Luther’s statements without mentioning Luther’s name.

The weaknesses of this volume pale before its strengths.

The reader should be aware that though mitigated by his strong affirmations that human reason is fallen, nevertheless Sproul retains the classical apologetic method. He says, “There is nothing irrational about the idea of a selfexistent, eternal being who has the power of being within himself. In fact, such a concept is not only logically possible, but (as Thomas Aquinas demonstrated) logically necessary” (40). This trust in logical “demonstration” is incompatible with Sproul’s statement that “The fall is so deep, and its impact on the mind is so strong, that the best reasoning one human can offer for the Bible’s truth will not convince another, no matter how sound, valid, and compelling it may be” (15). Sproul may also subordinate God to what is speculatively ontologically or “philosophically” possible when he says “the universe has no room for more than one infinite being” (35). Is it God, or the universe, who decides how much room to give? Or worse, is it the “philosophy” of man?

Other weaknesses are of less importance. Sproul fails to describe the currently popular Framework view of creation distinctive to Meredith Kline, yet rejects it on the basis of his evaluation of the earlier and different Framework view of Nicholas Ridderbos. In light of Revelation 17:8, “whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world,” I’m surprised Sproul repeats without correction the Confession’s translation of Revelation 13:8, “the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world,” though the point the Confession makes using that passage should stand (267).

Sproul also makes two statements on page 57 that are best

described as unclear: “The punishment that the most wicked people receive from God is always less than what they ultimately deserve,” and speaking of forgiven sinners, “They are still guilty.”

Despite these limited concerns, Truths We Confess remains full to the brim with just that—biblical truth worthy to be professed by every believer. Sproul will lead you to understand and love the breadth of Reformed doctrine by grounding you more firmly in the doctrines of grace.

May this volume bring many to exalt God more highly throughout the whole scope of their doctrine and life.

Tim Black is a Licentiate with the OPC Presbytery of Northern California and Stated Supply for Trinity OPC (Novato, California).

Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation

by Graeme Goldsworthy InterVarsity Press, 2007 320 pages (paperback), $29.00 As the proverbial saying has it, “Well begun is half done.”

Graeme Goldsworthy seems to have followed that maxim when he set out to write his textbook on hermeneutics.

First off, he dedicated it to his mentor, Alan Cole, who, among other things, had an “irrepressible Irish humor.”

While I often ignore dedications and prefaces, I thought I would myself be applying a shallow hermeneutic if I did so with Goldsworthy’s book. I trust a book on reading an historical revelation more when an author sees the importance of his own personal history. Second, Goldsworthy, though he writes an academic book, acknowledges that Scripture achieves its purpose among many who never read such a book. This humility is lacking even in many a popular book on hermeneutics.

Third, Goldsworthy’s first long quotation from Scripture is from Romans 12, including the verse, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

Goldsworthy sees that Scripture sanctifies the mind. So many people miss this point, either thinking that their minds need no renewing, or that the renewal is instantaM AY / J U N E 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 4 9

neous leaving them with no need of instruction.

While all Goldsworthy’s hermeneutical eggs are put into a presuppositional basket, this basket is overflowing with good eggs. Whatever our disagreements on apologetics, I think his approach to Scripture is laudable. He knows that the act of interpretation is not something we should learn autonomously. God has not left us on our own here.

The section, “Towards a Biblical Theology of Interpretation” allows different parts of the Bible (e.g.

Creation and Fall, Torah, Prophets, Gospels) as lenses through which we see all of history. We are not only taught how to read the different genres contained in Scripture, but reminded what those genres say about us and the world. (When I took my class on New Testament Interpretation, I was almost given the impression that God inspired an inerrant message, but into the wrong genres, and it was our task to translate it all into flat prose.)

There is another section, “Challenges to Evangelical Hermeneutics,” that includes an historical survey of the different ways the gospel has been eclipsed by bad hermeneutics at different periods. Any professor should work to expand his or her knowledge of hermeneutics in these periods both for their strengths and weaknesses. The strengths of some of these earlier periods are often overlooked. His final section, “Reconstructing Evangelical Hermeneutics,” suggests how we can learn from secular findings on the topic even from those who do not share our basic convictions.

This book was written to be a textbook, and will make a good one. It almost shouts “I’m a ready-made syllabus!”

I would hope that any professor who uses it, however, would not put all the weight on this text alone. The bibliography would be a great help in finding other texts for use in such a class (texts listed included ones by Robert Alter, Oscar Cullman, Greg Beale, David Steinmetz, and Geerhardus Vos.) The book would make a great outline for framing a broader conversation. I think a good professor will want to devote some time, however, to actual application, perhaps offering students some examples of sermons that are flawed but recoverable, and apply Goldsworthy’s “principles of evangelical interpretation” to them, to show how they might be rescued. Or perhaps sharpening the “Antiochene” strengths of a particular sermon, using the insights Goldsworthy describes on pages 97-99. (The sections on the eclipses are not all negative.

This is not your father’s presuppostional textbook!) This is not a book to just dump on a student to read under the belief that its sound principles will easily find application later when the student sits down to write. At the very end of the book, Goldsworthy offers a few pages to hands-on interpretation. That section may provide some hints as to how to create in-class exercises that should accompany discussion at all points.

Much contemporary discussion from the academic world is ignored. (Such names as Gadamer and Habermas are conspicuously missing from the bibliography.)

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on perceived needs of actual students rather than a worry over academic prestige. This was not snootiness or ignorance, but mature mentoring.

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

POINT OF CONTACT: BOOKS YOUR NEIGHBORS ARE READING The Echo Maker

by Richard Powers Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006 451 pages (hardcover), $25.00 For six weeks every spring, masses of Grus canadensis, Sandhill Cranes—known to Native Americans as “echo makers” because their calls carry for miles—migrate to the Platte River in Nebraska.

Calling to their mates, they soar in on six-foot wingspans and settle like an endless carpet over the marsh. Against this ecological backdrop plays the drama of Richard Powers’ ninth novel, The Echo Maker, winner of the 2006 National Book Award for fiction.

Five months after 9/11, Karin Schluter returns to her hometown to care for her brother who has suffered brain injury after flipping his truck on a dark, endless stretch of road near the crane-covered flats. Mark doesn’t remember the accident or the witness who leaves a mysterious note in his hospital room. He does remember his sister— but he insists that the woman who claims to be Karin is an imposter. She looks like Karin, talks like Karin, has Karin’s memories, but she just doesn’t seem like Karin to him.

The doctors diagnose Mark with Capgrass, a rare misidentification syndrome in which a patient doubles those closest to him. Desperate for any therapy that will give her back her brother, Karin calls in Dr. Weber, an international expert in cognitive neurology.

As the cranes find their way back to the Platte every spring following “a crane map inside a crane’s head,” so Mark searches for the electrical landmarks in his brain to lead the way back to present reality. Karin, too, seeks a truer version of herself in light of her brother’s devastation.

Confused and angry, disoriented by her return from self-

imposed exile to her roots, she takes up with not one but two former lovers, starts smoking again, and changes careers. And the famous Dr. Weber confronts a crisis of his own as he studies the rare Nebraska case. After twelve years of fame granted by his bestselling patient case studies, his work becomes the target of younger scholars and journalists. Under their scrutiny, he begins to see himself as they label him, a sensationalist exploiting for profit the most unusual forms of human suffering.

Among other criteria, it is probably fair to say that the National Book Foundation selected this novel for both literary innovation and engagement with controversial issues such as the emerging field of neurotheology.

Powers’ literary technique is certainly distinctive. The sense of place is powerful; the Nebraska plains and the Platte River are essential personalities in the telling of this story. He employs meticulous research—about both cranes and brains—and the neurological jargon is thick but mostly accessible. He deserves praise for his artful capturing of Mark’s cognitive re-development, from the intense flashes of image and sensation immediately after the accident to his incomplete verbal and emotional recovery.

Like the startling reverberations of a crane honking in flight, Powers’ verbalization is striking: sometimes for its beauty (“the morning was glorious, one of those crystalline, dry, blue, fall days when the temperature hovers right at anticipation” [291]) and sometimes for its bizarreness (“in profile, his face framed by shoulder-length sandy hair, he looked even more like an elfin archer escaped from a marathon dice-dungeon crawl” [89]).

Powers doesn’t skip a nitty-gritty of characterization, be it the profanity-spouting meatpacker pimping out his Dodge Ram or the graying, muesli-eating yuppie who refuses to use caller ID but compulsively checks his Amazon sales statistics. It is an arduous 450 pages, especially heading into the intersection of these complex characters. But as the story gains momentum, the immersion pays off as we come to understand that the whole lives of these characters—their childhoods, towns, belief structures, relationships—are imposters, echoes of what they should be. They have lost their way; and this is where the existential themes enter the novel.

Karin becomes involved with a group of conservationists fighting to protect the wetlands from developers. As the shallow river is slowly drained away, the half million cranes that return every year are forced into a smaller and smaller stretch of water—making it a more fantastic spectacle for the “crane peepers” who fly into Nebraska with their field glasses, but also creating overcrowding conditions that result in a decreasing crane population.

Paralleling the severe changes in the crane habitat are the changes to the human habitat in the days after 9/11. The devastation at Ground Zero, anthrax in the mailbox, National Guard recruiters at the diner: America bracing for the war on terror. In the Midwestern rehab facility, Mark’s and Karin’s personal landscapes have changed just as suddenly and irreversibly.

The center of the novel is the conservation of dying species—cranes and humans, two streams of the same evolutionary tributary. Cranes are “souls that once were human and might be again,” according to the various mythologies Powers invokes. In his wild groping for explanations, Mark even wonders if the surgeons replaced part of his brain with that of a crane. It’s a fair question for Dr. Weber, whose life work is the exploration of that vast correlation between brain and mind, what he describes as “unsponsored, impossible, near-omnipotent, and infinitely fragile” (364). Who knows what existential knowledge lies tucked away in the as-yet inaccessible reaches of the mind? We might as well ask the crane to explain our shared origins and purpose.

“What would the race do, with full knowledge?” asks one of the characters. The implied answer is that they would stop killing themselves, killing each other, killing their mammalian and reptilian siblings. Powers vividly isolates the echo, but misidentifies the origin. The ruined race of humanity does seek the primeval reason for being.

Deep in the recesses of their souls sounds the ancient echo of their maker, the vestige of their first parents’ brief, intimate fellowship with the one who formed them from the elements of their habitat.

But the predominant worldview of the book is the irrelevance-if-existence of that being Dr. Weber refers to as “Tour Director.” In fact, our notion of God is just one more neurological element yet to be isolated: “a God part of the brain,” “religious visions from some kind of epilepsy storm,” a “God module…selected for its survival value” (417-18). Once medicine learns how to turn off the God gene, we will be closer to attaining true self-realization. We just have to survive ourselves long enough to get there.

Humans make frail deities. So why do they persist in such delusions? Powers asserts that misidentification occurs in brain injury patients because “a single, solid fiction always beats the truth of our scattering” (164). A patient struggling to reassemble the disparate compartments of his damaged memory might find it easier to conclude that his sister is an imposter rather than override his feelings and accept the DNA. A species struggling to reassemble the disparate compartments of an existence damaged by the fall might find it easier to conclude that they are the center of the universe rather than accept the divine revelation that they were created for a far more glorious purpose.

The Echo Maker is skillfully constructed but emotionally unsatisfying. It is solid fiction that recognizes the truth of our scattering but dismisses the only therapy that can heal the human condition: intimacy with the Creator.

Mindy L. Withrow is the co-author of a series of church history books for children and the host of a literary blog (mindywithrow.com). She resides in Birmingham, Alabama.

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

(Part 3 of 3)

The Dialectic Stage

S

omewhere around eleven or twelve years of age, children begin to think abstract-

recurring themes of Scripture: the character of ly. They learn to understand in terms of big pictures, seeing how smaller events God, the nature of God’s covenant with his people, and concepts fit together. They demand to know Why? What if? and What the redemption and the Redeemer God provides. about? Anyone who has ever lived or worked with a perBecause the junior high student is learning to think son between the ages of eleven and fifteen knows that about isolated facts in relation to other pieces of informathey tirelessly practice their developing skills of argument tion, this age is an ideal time to teach a beginning systemand their newfound abilities to imagine other ways of atic theology course. If grammar stage church educators doing things than those they have been taught. were diligent, students have memorized their catechisms The classical model of Christian education seizes upon at least once or twice and have had each of the answers this “default setting” of young students and matches it explained to them. A solid, substantive catechism (like the with the dialectic stage of education. If children have been Westminster or the Heidelberg) provides an excellent well taught in the earlier grammar stage of learning, they springboard for a basic class in doctrine. Young teens can now possess multitudes of facts and pieces of memorized be taught to notice the logical arrangement of the quesinformation. The dialectic stage teaches students to anations already inherent in these catechisms, and can see lyze what they know, think logically about it, and pinpoint how each concept necessitates and builds on prior ones. fallacies related to it. Thus it gives to students the learning Because students enjoy debate at this age, a teacher can tools of understanding and reason. engage them by offering a question related to doctrine— How might we use this classical model in the church to perhaps one actually debated at some point in church hishelp junior high students grow in their understanding of tory—with several possible answers. Students would the Christian faith? If children (and teachers!) have done choose a position and seek to defend it from Scripture. their homework in the grammar stage, the students will Students can even learn from having to defend a position have a wealth of Bible stories at their mental fingertips. they do not hold, as they familiarize themselves with the That makes this age the ideal time for teaching Old and arguments of “the other side.” Of course, activities of this New Testament survey classes. All main Bible characters kind require diligent oversight by a teacher who clearly and events being already known, teacher and students are knows the biblical position, with its supporting passages. A free to skim along without getting bogged down in details. thorough “debriefing,” making clear the biblical answer, is The focus can be on seeing where in Bible history specific also a must! people and events come, and why they are where they These are just a few of the more obvious ways that the are. What causes, earlier in the story, brought about the classical model of education could be profitably used to event currently under study, and what effect will that teach pre-adolescents and young teens in our churches. event itself have later on? This kind of thinking is essenFurther thought might yield others, but these provide a tial to understanding the Bible narrative as God’s revelagood place to start. tion of himself and his dealings with his people. To look at a specific Bible story only by itself, in isolation from rest of Starr Meade is the author of Training Hearts, Teaching the Bible, is to miss the story’s primary meaning. That Minds: Family Devotions Based on the Shorter Catechism meaning is clearly grasped only when the story is under(P&R Publishing, 2000). stood in its context as one piece of the grand epic of redemption. As the teacher takes the students through a survey of all the Bible, he should be teaching them to trace

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