grace-july-august-2007

THE GRACE DEBATE ❘ MEANS OF GRACE ❘ SOLA GRATIA

MODERN REFORMATION Grace: How Strange the Sound

VOLUME

1 6 , NUMBER 4 , J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 , $ 6 . 0 0

MODERN REFORMATION Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton Executive Editor Eric Landry

TABLE OF CONTENTS july/august

2007

|

volume

16

n u m be r

4

Grace: How Strange the Sound

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

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

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Grace is not only sweet, it is also strange. The author helps us to understand how and why grace is strange by appealing to God’s “strange” nature and our estrangement from God.

by Michael Horton

17 Where Grace is Found Where can we expect to find God’s grace? The author compares and contrasts the answers offered by evangelicalism and by the Reformed tradition.

by Jason Stellman

21 You Might Be A Pelagian If… 22 Chart: The Grace Debate 24 Grace for All Seasons To what extent do we need to rely on God’s grace? The author reminds us that grace is operative in all seasons of life, from justification to sanctification to glorification.

by Eric Landry

27 Do You Really Want to be Saved Sola Gratia?

While we love to sing about grace, American Christians are often confounded by the exclusive claims of grace. The author reminds us that being saved sola gratia extends even to our wills.

by John L. Thompson Plus: The Lutheran Doctrine of Predestination

34 A Lutheran Response to Arminianism Lutheran theology is sometimes misunderstood and misidentified with Arminian theology. The author presents the differences between Lutheran theology and Arminian theology, particularly in the interplay between grace and election.

by Rick Ritchie PHOTO BY STOCKBYTE/GETTYONE

ISSN-1076-7169

S UBSCRIPTION I NFORMATION US US Student Canada Europe Other

10 Grace: How Strange the Sound

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Keeping Time page 2 | Why We Believe page 4 | Common Grace page 6 Diaries page 8 | Interview page 38 | Required Reading page 42 Reviews page 43 | Family Matters page 52

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KEEPING TIME i n

t hi s

is su e

Apostles Creed

Grace: How Strange the Sound

325 A.D. NICENE CREED

T

Jesus Christ Victorious

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

CONFESSION Baptismal

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here is no sweeter word among Christians than “grace.” It is the foundation of our relationship to God; it is the source of our life in God; it is the basis of our hope for life to come with God. As all of those prepositions demonstrate, without grace there would be no such thing as Christianity, and certainly there would be no such thing as Christians, either. If this is true, you might be forgiven for wondering about this issue’s title. Are we coming across as a bunch of grumpy confessionalists? Are we creating controversy where there is none? Surely, grace is the one sola upon which we can all agree!

Tragically, that is no longer the case. As editor-in-chief and Reformed theologian Michael Horton demonstrates in his article, grace used to be the sine qua non of every theological dispute. Even where Catholics and Protestants differed sharply on the when and how of grace, the need for grace was never questioned (after all, Pelagianism was condemned by both). But, with the rise of revivalistic radicals within Evangelicalism and theological liberals within mainline Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, the specter of Pelagius looms large over our current ecclesiastical landscape. As grace is supplanted more and more with an emphasis upon duty, pragmatism, and ethics, the sound of grace is becoming less and less familiar, thus more and more threatening, in the American church.

What can we do to change this situation? By God’s grace, a rediscovery of the vast treasury of Christian refection and, more importantly, Scriptural teaching on grace will reawaken us to the beauty and necessity of grace in our life of faith.

Presbyterian church planter Jason Stellman shows us where grace is found— challenging some presuppositions about grace and the work of God in ways that should move us to reconsider our own beliefs and practices. Reformed theologian and president of Westminster Seminary California W. Robert Godfrey takes us on a quick tour of the grace debates throughout the history of the church— starting with Jesus and the Pharisees and ending with some reflections on modern-day Evangelicalism. My own article charts the grace-filled operation of the Spirit of God, applying the work of redemption to us in subsequent acts of justification, sanctification, and glorification. Presbyterian theologian John L. Thompson follows my article with a sustained look at all of the theological sideeffects of believing in sola gratia. Be sure, too, to rate your own experience of grace with our tongue-in-cheek theological quiz: “You Might Be A Pelagian If...”

Some critics of the Reformation have charged that Lutherans have a different view of grace (particularly in the realm of predestination) than their Reformed and Presbyterian siblings. We’re reprinting an article by Lutheran elder Scott Keith to address that misconception. We’re also asking Roger Olson—an Arminian theologian and professor at Truett Seminary at Baylor University— tough questions about Arminian theology and its conception of grace.

Once again, we’re presenting you with “one of those” issues that is bound to be dog-earned and much cited as you wrestle through questions about God, this world, and your life in it.

NEXT ISSUES: September/October 2007: The Art of Self-Justification (Sola Fide) Eric Landry November/December 2007: Executive Editor Using God (Soli Deo Gloria)

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WHY WE BELIEVE de f en d i ng

th e

faith

The Strange Sound of Grace in Christian Apologetics

S

ome of the most powerful apologetics in the nineteenth century came to us not

Though he greatly struggled with the idea of from professional theologians but from novelists. Dostoyevsky was arguably the absconding with these valuable objects from his most commanding. But a close second would be Victor Hugo, who was compassionate host, he went off. The next day, admired by the Russian master. His best known tale, Les three policemen arrived at the bishop’s house with the Misérables, is an allegory of harshness, poverty, sin, and thief and his goods in tow: grace. Hugo, himself no stranger to oppression and tragedy (he had to go into exile during the coup d’état, and As the brother and sister were rising from the saw four of his five children die), undertook a life-long table, there was a knock at the door. study of human nature, of the will and circumstances, and “Come in,” said the bishop. of the God of Christian faith. And he wrote about it in his The door opened. A strange, fierce group poetry and prose. The full story of Les Misérables, which I appeared on the threshold. Three men were holing a had to read as a youngster in my French school, is more fourth by the collar. The three men were gendarmes, than 1,200 pages long. What are the best-known portions the fourth Jean Valjean. come to us in films, like the stage production and movie, A brigadier of gendarmes, who appeared to head starring Richard Jordon and John Gielgud, and, of course, the group, was near the door. He advanced toward the popular musical, known affectionately as “Les Miz,” the bishop, giving a military salute. with music by Claude-Michel Schonberg.

“Monseigneur,” he said – The tale is strangely relevant in today’s At this word Jean Valjean, who was Some of the world of famine, immigration, and faithsullen and seemed entirely dejected, raised based charities. The hero, Jean Valjean, havhead with a stupefied air. most powerful his ing stolen a loaf of bread to provide for his “Monseigneur!” he murmured. “The it is family, is convicted and condemned to five curé!” apologetics in not the years in the brutal Toulon prison. Upon “Silence!” said a gendarme. “It is his release, with the number 24601 branded onto the bishop.” the nineteenth lordship, his left shoulder, he would never be able to In the meantime Monseigneur find a normal job nor be reinserted into socihad approached as quickly as his century came to Bienvenu ety. In each episode of the lengthy tale Jean great age permitted: “Ah, there you are!”

Valjean is subjected to cruelty. He is pursued he said, looking at Jean Valjean. “I’m glad us not from by forces of order who are perfunctory in to see you. But I gave you the candlesticks, their application of the law. So he asks, if too, which are silver like the rest and professional there is a God, how could there be such malwould bring two hundred francs. Why didice abroad in the world? you take them along with your cuttheologians but n’t In one of the most moving scenes of the lery?” novel, Jean arrives at the home of the kindly Jean Valjean opened his eyes and from novelists. looked bishop of Digne, Monseigneur Bienvenu at the bishop with an expression no (“welcome”). The bishop’s housekeeper, human tongue could describe.

Madame Magloire (“my glory”) had always enjoyed one of the few treasures in the house, some silver cutlery and two Astonishing words of grace. He went to give him the canlarge silver candlesticks inherited from his family. She was dlesticks and asked him pointedly why he had to come in absolutely suspicious of the runaway, who entered the through the garden and not the front door, and then house, admitted his sordid past, and asked for hospitality. reminded him of a promise, never really made, that he To her consternation the bishop offered him a meal and a would use this silver to become an honest man. Indeed, bed. Jean Valjean promptly stole the silver cutlery. throughout the rest of the story Jean Valjean is a changed

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The truth is that God has amazing grace for us. It is a strange sound, only because we are so used to intellectualist arguments.

We Confess Sola Gratia: The Erosion Of The Gospel

U

nwarranted confidence in human ability is a prod-

uct of fallen human nature. This false confidence

man, one who tries to help the destitute and oppose evil in the surrounding society, whatever the cost.

Bienvenu is a Christ figure in the story. Poor himself, yet he has great concern for the fate of the down and out.

What he has he gladly gives away. His approach to Christian apologetics is to demonstrate God’s unconditional love through deeds of kindness. His rich parishioners gave money to the church in order to build a gorgeous new alter. But the bishop took the money and gave it to the poor. This was not done for show. His private life matched his public life. Here is often a place where Christian apologetics fail, because it sets forth sound arguments but has little else to commend it. While to be sure, our defense of Christian hope must be verbal, actions also speak loud (1 Pet. 3:15–16). We live in an age of suspicious pundits who “talk the talk but don’t walk the walk.”

Behind the bishop’s generosity lies a God of unrestricted mercy. Behind the right kind of apologetics lies the gospel, the good news that the Lord God has not only spoken his words of promise, but has entered into human history, in the person of his Son, accepted the punishment for our treason, and triumphed over death, all as a gift to his people. The hidden fear in many, and in several of the world religions, is that at the end of the day, or at the end of history, God will show himself for the avenger he always was. He is somehow basically out to get us.

Instead, the truth is that God has amazing grace for us. It is a strange sound, only because we are so used to intellectualist arguments. We cannot imagine such munificence has any relevance in the Christian message. In fact, nothing else matters very much.

now fills the evangelical world; from the self-esteem gospel, to the health and wealth gospel, from those who have transformed the gospel into a product to be sold and sinners into consumers who want to buy, to others who treat Christian faith as being true simply because it works.

This silences the doctrine of justification regardless of the official commitments of our churches.

God's grace in Christ is not merely necessary but is the sole efficient cause of salvation. We confess that human beings are born spiritually dead and are incapable even of cooperating with regenerating grace.

We reaffirm that in salvation we are rescued from God's wrath by his grace alone. It is the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit that brings us to Christ by releasing us from our bondage to sin and raising us from spiritual

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

death to spiritual life.

We deny that salvation is in any sense a human work.

Human methods, techniques or strategies by themselves cannot accomplish this transformation. Faith is not produced by our unregenerated human nature.

(Taken from The Cambridge Declaration, 1996)

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COMMON GRACE G o d’s

tr u t h

in

a rt

and

culture

Finding Grace in Fiction

L

ike bits of mica captured in granite slabs, the created world glitters with slivers of

appearance I attended, Hosseini remarked that he its creator. Scattered and distorted by the fall, the truths of God’s existence and was compelled to write this story from a Christian the human condition yet find expression in the natural world and human culture. worldview because redemption is not a conSince Adam first described his life in Eden to his children, cept found in Islam, yet he finds it an undeniable truth, human culture has revolved around storytelling. Thus ficone without which this story simply could not be told. tion is among the richest sources to mine for eternal truths The characters created by Orthodox Rabbi Chaim movingly expressed by the one creature among all others Potok practice Judaism to varying degrees of devotion. made in the image of its supremely expressive creator.

But the most significant imagery of his masterful My Name When I tell people I am writing a novel, they often is Asher Lev, for example, is Christian. Asher Lev is a giftassume I have an evangelistic goal, that my purpose is to ed artist struggling to find his place in a fundamentalist “use” fiction as a vehicle for converting the lost. But ficJewish culture that denies the legitimacy of visual exprestion writing is not an intellectual bait-and-switch tactic by sion. Tormented by his dual desires to please his parents which we lure unsuspecting pagans to the cross with the and fulfill his calling as an artist, he embraces the quintespromise of adventure, mystery, or romance. Nor does the sential image of suffering: crucifixion. His exhibition of a fiction genre need to be redeemed, as though a remarkable series of crucifixions cements the rift with his now pubstory well told does not justify its own existence. Good ficlicly scandalized parents; as it did 2,000 years ago, a tion is fiction that artfully reflects truth, whether that truth Jewish boy’s association with crucifixion permanently is the devastation of human depravity and our utter need ostracizes him from his people. Potok, like Hosseini, borfor God or the sweetness of grace and the hope of redemprows from Christian theology to tell a story most authention. Since it is not the revealed Word of God, it can no tic to human experience. more proclaim the whole of the gospel message than can Jesus said that when we are weak then we are made the complexities of the human eye or the beauty of a landstrong, that the faith of a mustard seed can move mounscape. But insofar as fiction accurately—and with skill— tains. This is movingly illustrated in Peter Hobbs’ The Short portrays aspects of the human condition, it is a worthy Day Dying. In the mining country of 1860s Cornwall, pursuit.

Methodist lay preacher and blacksmith Charles Wenmoth And it is a rewarding place to look for God’s gift of comdespairs at the poverty and death beating down his faith. mon grace. Believers and unbelievers alike demonstrate But in the forge of his heart, the coals of faith are fanned breathtaking powers of perception and communication. into a flame by the weakest member of his community, a Consider the following examples. dying blind girl. Hobbs writes in the style of a nineteenth Alan Paton’s Too Late the Phalarope and Khaled century journal, with scant punctuation and imperfect Hosseini’s The Kite Runner both depict the heartbreaking grammar, and yet the language and imagery he employs consequences of racism, of denying the imago dei in our felspeaks truth in a way no exegetical commentary or syslow human beings. In Too Late the Phalarope, the setting is tematic theology can. We see the bleak physical landscape apartheid. A pillar of the white community is caught in an paralleling the spiritual. As he trudges between the strip affair with a young black mother; it is the color of his mismines posting gospel tracts on poles and giving his own tress rather than his promiscuity that destroys his family. last coins to bitter widows and wheezing miners—nearly In The Kite Runner, the brother-like bond of two Afghan drowning in the river on one excursion—we understand boys, one a respectable Pashtun and the other a despised why the conflicted minister identifies faith as a stone with Hazara, is torn apart by the violent, fearful, and jealous qualities both positive (“faith is a hard stone I think quite acts of others and themselves. But the protagonists of both a small thing but powerful and not easily crushed” [12]) novels repent and seek redemption, and those they have and negative (“faith is a stone I could forget were there wronged demonstrate the human capacity for forgiveness and live with always and not know what the oppressive modeled by Christ. Paton was a Methodist who convertweight in me were” [179]). And yet, how many times ed to Anglicanism, so theological themes in his works are have we frail believers reminded ourselves that “they are perhaps easily explained. But it may be more surprising to passing things feelings we should not rely on them for find them used by Hosseini, who is Muslim. In a public truth…even doubt will not endure the Light of God”

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with him while he was losing his grip on reality or the more believable one he tells exegetical commentary or systematic theology can. the sailors later. “Since it makes no factual difference (177). By means of bold and sensitive storytelling we parto you and you can’t prove the question either way, which ticipate in Charles’ struggle with the eschatological story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story “already/not yet” of a life bookended by mortality and with animals or the story without animals?...And so it goes hope. with God,” Pi declares (317). Martel’s narrative suggests And sometimes the value of fiction is what it reveals that the content of faith is not important to God, just the about the vacuousness of life without God, a conclusion act of seeking. And yet the reader, closing the book, susthat may be at odds with the author’s intentions. Richard pects that the act of reading would indeed be more satisfyPowers’ The Echo Maker, a novel about a young man who ing if it allowed for the discovery of Pi’s true story. suffers a traumatic brain injury that causes him to believe Thus “Christian” truths are not limited to “Christian fichis sister is an imposter, delves into the rapidly-growing tion,” and some of the most eternally compelling protagofield of neurotheology, the search for the “God gene.” The nists are not the ones who mouth the sinner’s prayer on point of view rotates between the man, his sister, a doctor, the final page. The Pulitzer Prize and National Book and even the Sandhill Cranes crucial to the marsh setting, Award winners and the New York Times fiction bestseller asking the reader to consider how and why human anceslists are surprisingly deep reserves of theological truths tors evolved to the point of believing in God. What if we expressed by writers who may not always recognize the could go back and reset our brains to some primal instinct source of their illumination. But in reading these books, I before we invented God? the novelist wants us to wonder. learn more about myself, my creator, and my place in a But the regenerated reader is vividly struck by how man fallen world, fulfilling my purpose—in the words of the without God desperately wants to understand his purpose Westminster Shorter Catechism—“to glorify God and to enjoy in the world—and how he cannot come to that truth on him forever.” (I also discover natural opportunities to dishis own. cuss these books with my neighbors, a by-product of readSimilarly—though in a much more fantastical setting— ing great literature that is an evangelistic task.) the rejection of specific divine revelation in favor of reliFiction is, therefore, far more than a dispensable leisure gious pluralism is presented by Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, in activity. It is an undeserved gift of language, a vital which a boy is shipwrecked in a life raft for 227 days with engagement in the cooperative human reflection of the a tiger. In India before the shipwreck, Pi declares himself divine image. a religious believer:

The imagery Hobbs employs speaks truth in a way no

It is not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation. (28) Pi makes you want to believe in God. But which God? Even as he rejects “immobility as a means of transportation,” he refuses to choose between available transportation methods, simultaneously practicing Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam to the consternation of his various religious leaders. Then the ship transporting his zoo sinks, leaving him only a life raft for transportation. As he and his man-eating companion drift across the open sea unable to direct their course, Pi is spiritually afloat with no doctrine to guide him to safety. When he finally reaches land, his skeptical rescuers demand a more probable account of his journey, and Pi obliges. The reader is left wondering which version is accurate, the one the reader experienced

Mindy Withrow is co-author of the History Lives series of church history books for ages 9-14 (volume four is scheduled for release in November).

She runs a literary review blog at www.mindywithrow.com and is currently working on her first novel.

WORKS CITED 1 Alan Paton, Too Late the Phalarope (New York: Scribner, 1953).

2 Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner (New York: Riverhead, 2003).

3 Chaim Potok, My Name is Asher Lev (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972).

4 Peter Hobbs, The Short Day Dying (Orlando: Harcourt, 2005).

5 Richard Powers, The Echo Maker (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006).

6 Yann Martel, Life of Pi (New York: Harcourt, 2001).

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DIARIES OF A POSTMODERN CHRISTIAN t he

c a n d i d

c h r istian

life

Notes from the Reformation Classroom

by Steve Zrimec

I was not reared in formal faith. But in seventh grade my younger brother and I were yanked from our Sunday morning cartoons, forced to wear monogrammed sweaters, and trucked across town to the well-established, mainline Methodist church.

I remember asking Dad, “Why are we going to church?” I readily admit that my question was grounded more in adolescent annoyance than in an honest quest for truth. His answer: “To learn how to be better people.”

My father’s answer squared well with pragmatic American cult and culture. So it seemed to make sense, at least at the moment. In America, true religion should “make bad people good and good people better,” much like after-school specials on television. One was to brush his teeth, do his homework, avoid sex and drugs, be a good friend to others and a responsible citizen who contributes positively to society. The message was almost always about morality.

The problem was, I didn’t need church or any kind of formal religion to tell me what I already knew I should do. That’s all a program born intuitively of law. We had always been law-abiding citizens, quite upstanding and functional people. My father himself was a pillar of our little community, a good man in the public sphere and an even better man in the private sphere.

Furthermore, we were such with no help from any church, thank you very much. What could we learn from church that we didn’t already know? Don’t plenty of other religions, organizations, therapies, programs, and philosophies already “make bad people good and good people better”?

And isn’t the claim that Christianity can do a better job than any of these sort of arrogant? If my father’s answer was true, wouldn’t Christendom have bagged a better game by now? If the world is not getting any better or worse with time (Eccles. 1:9-14), does going to church really make any individual or society better than anyone else?

The answer seemed to be no. When I came home one day during my sophomore year in college and announced to my parents that I had “converted” and become a Christian, I think they were confused, since I was already a nice, white, law-abiding, open-minded, good, and upstanding American person. They might have been a bit angry, too, if my conversion implied that they had not raised me to be nice and civil.

I spent almost five years in Evangelicalism, long enough to learn what it meant to be a Christian from Evangelicalism’s point of view: Christianity was largely about law and culture. It championed particular moral and political causes (that I never really bought). It measured my personal piety by using lists, steps, and programs of spirituality. It offered a separatist-feeling, suffocating Christian subculture—even though I enjoyed the culture that existed outside of the church, which seemed perfectly legitimate. When I just couldn’t write any more personal prescriptions for law, couldn’t sit among legions of fellow note takers, and couldn’t stomach any more “challenges” or “biblical principles” intended to make me feel like I was growing spiritually (I knew full well that I wasn’t), I faced the facts: Here was the “Christian life,” and I couldn’t bear one bit of it.

But like the proverbial smoldering wick, I was graciously not snuffed out. One day, with a learned sense of gutter-low expectations, I was at the local Christian bookstore absentmindedly

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turning the racks yet again. But this time, I found Michael Horton’s and I couldn’t bear one bit of it.

Beyond Culture Wars.

After years of calling myself a “Christian,” as defined by one American-made system or another, I finally heard the gospel clearly. And I believed it. Apparently the gospel had been buried beneath a claptrap of law.

I faced the facts: Here was the “Christian life,”

The other day when I was walking my eight-year-old daughter to class, we passed a teacher grilling a young boy in the hallway about why he had lied about his homework. When I passed by again after dropping my daughter off, they were still standing in the hallway. The teacher shot questions at the boy like a machine gun: “Why did you lie about this? Why? I asked you a question. Why won’t you tell me why you lied about this?” All the poor kid could muster was a humiliated look on his face. I thought to myself, “The same reason you and I lie! To get away with what we’ve done!” I wished the teacher would quit embarrassing the kid, and just dole out his punishment and be done with it. In a similar way, American Evangelicalism pulled me out of class into the hall and berated me for being what I am: a sinner. But the Reformation version of Christianity preaches the Law to me without any fanfare. It just pronounces my just sentence of punishment. It doesn’t wag its boney finger in my face and ask obvious questions. There is no long, awkward pause for me to plead my own pathetic case. I know I am guilty as charged.

Reformation Christianity does not require me to fix myself while God watches, doling out cosmic pats on my head or tsk-tsking my failures. In short, it doesn’t plead with me but announces to me what is true: I am saved by grace. Reformation Christianity simply, graciously placards Christ up in front of me, as when Moses raised his rod before the Israelites.

American Evangelicalism has played a legitimate and worthwhile role in my life. It has shown me the importance of getting something wrong in order to appreciate what is right. But instead of staying in the hallway with a well-intentioned but misguided teacher, I’ve decided that I would rather go back into the classroom with the Reformation, who has proven a well-intentioned and corrective teacher.

Steve Zrimec is a deacon at Calvin Christian Reformed Church in Grandville, Michigan, where he resides with his wife and two daughters.

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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GRACE: HOW STRANGE THE SOUND

Grace:

How Strange the Sound

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G R A C E :

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s recounted in the recent film, the author of “Amazing Grace,” John Newton, not only knew about grace, but every line of the famous hymn was part of his experience. Born in 1725 to a Protestant mother and a mariner father who had been educated by Spanish Jesuits, John Newton was taught by his mother to read and to memorize the Westminster Shorter Catechism by the age of four. With his mother’s death and a distant and stern father, Newton became rudderless and eventually captained his own slave ship. After reading Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ, he committed his life to Christ, but had no trouble continuing his involvement in the slave trade. Newton recalls, “I was not truly a believer in Christ” during that period. Continuing to read, especially the Bible, he taught himself Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac, and was profoundly affected by George Whitefield, through whose preaching he came to understand the gospel clearly. Through the aid of Lord Dartmouth, he was ordained in the Church of England and served parishes in Olney and London. As the movie shows, William Wilberforce was among those who were significantly influenced by Newton’s ministry. In fact, it was through Newton that Wilberforce was converted and persuaded to serve in politics rather than to enter the ministry. As a leading Member of Parliament, Wilberforce is credited with bringing the British slave trade to an end.

In Newton we discern the integration of faith and practice (creeds giving rise to deeds). Downplaying or denying sound doctrine in favor of “practical living,” the moralistic preachers of the day largely ignored the plight of the slaves as well as the poor and mangled victims of the industrial revolution in their own country. At 82, Newton could say, “My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things, that I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Savior.” Far from dampening his enthusiasm for loving and serving his neighbor, the gospel of God’s free grace was his engine.

Like Whitefield, Newton was on the Calvinist side of the Evangelical Awakening. In one of his sermons he explains, The divine sovereignty is the best thought we can retreat to for composing and strengthening our minds under the difficulties, discouragements and disappointments which attend the publication of the gospel…. How many schemes derogatory to the free grace of God, tending to darken the glory of the gospel and to depreciate the righteousness of the Redeemer, have taken their rise from vain and unnecessary attempts to vindicate the ways of God— or rather to limit the actings of infinite wisdom to the bounds of our narrow understanding, to sound the depths of the divine counsels with our feeble plummets, and to say to Omnipotence, Hitherto shalt thou go, and no further. But upon the ground of the divine sovereignty we may rest satisfied and stable.

For if God appoints and overrules all according to the

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purpose of his own will, we have sufficient security both for the present and the future (p. 296).1 Preaching on Psalm 51:15—“O LORD, open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth thy praise,” Newton says, But yet through a sense of past guilt, a sight of present corruptions, the prevalence of unbelief, the workings of a legal spirit, the want of a clear apprehension of the Lord’s way of justifying the ungodly, and from the force of Satan’s temptations (who is exceedingly busy to press all these things upon the heart), the mouths of these are likewise stopped. They cannot believe, and therefore they cannot speak.

Only when God grants them a glimpse of his grace in the gospel does he open their lips so that they may praise him.

Newton says, We need not dig in the earth nor climb in the skies nor cross the seas: our remedy is near (Rom. 10:6–8)….

Come, gaze no longer upon your empty bottle but look to the fountain, the river, the ocean of all grace….

When Christ is out of sight we are deaf to all the calls, invitations and promises of the Scripture.

Only when we fix our eyes on his saving person and office are we free at last to praise him in our worship and daily life.

We discern in these statements the underlying message of Newton’s “How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds In A Believer’s Ear!”—especially the sixth verse: Weak is the effort of my heart And cold my warmest thought; But when I see Thee as Thou art, I’ll praise Thee as I ought.

In the latter part of his ministry (1784–85), in the heart of London, Newton preached a series on the biblical passages that form the substance of Handel’s Messiah, just then enjoying a rerun at Westminster Abbey.

In the introductory text (Isa. 40:1–2: “Comfort yet, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned …”), Newton says, the Mosaic covenant, though pointing to Christ, was itself a “legal” covenant, described in the New Testament as “weak,” “a yoke,” and “a burden,” as well as “temporary.” Newton explains, “There is a considerable analogy to this difference between the law and the gospel, as contradistinct from each other, in the previous distress of the sinner when he is made aware of his guilt and

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man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips, and because my eyes are—and only have seen the King, the LORD of Hosts.” Nevertheless, one of the seraphim brought a glowing coal to the prophet and, touching it to his lips, said, “Now that this has touched your lips, your wickedness is removed, and your sin is atoned for” (Isa. 6:3–7). Peter, hardly known for a reverent temperament, responded to the amazing catch of fish at Jesus’ command, fell on his knees and said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man” (Luke 5:8).

To confess that God is holy is to say that he is not only quantitatively but qualitatively different from us. In other words, he isn’t simply better than we are, nicer, friendlier, more knowledgeable, more powerful, more loving. He is incomprehensible, unfathomable, unsearchable. We can only have access to him because he has willed to be our God, revealing himself by speaking “baby talk”— accommodating to our frail capacities. Grace is God’s willingness not only to condescend to our creaturely finitude even to the point of assuming our flesh, but to give his life for us “while we were still enemies” (Rom. 5:10).

God is intolerant of sin, but just as infinite in his love and long-suffering. God is just and righteous, unable to let bygones be bygones, and yet he is free to have mercy on whom he will have mercy. To have mercy on the wicked, however, God cannot suspend his justice. God’s justice did not require the salvation of anyone, so his grace is totally free. When God is gracious toward sinners, it is not because his justice is sacrificed to his love, but because he has freely found a way to be “just and the justifier of the ungodly” (Rom. 3:26). At the cross, not only God’s love but his strangeness—his utter difference from us—is most clearly displayed.

Only when we actually encounter God as he truly is do we finally know ourselves as we truly then can grace be truly grace. danger as a transgressor of the law of God, and the subsequent peace which he obtains by believing the gospel.” The sight of God in his holiness brings us to despair but for the following clause: “Her iniquity is pardoned.” The problem today, says Newton, is that few sense their guilt before God: “A free pardon is a comfort to a malefactor, but it implies guilt.” Newton concludes, “So it is feared that for want of knowing themselves and their real estate in the sight of Him with whom we have to do, many persons who have received pleasure from the music of the Messiah have neither found, nor expected, nor desired to find any comfort from the words.”

Hannah More, an evangelical cohort of Newton’s and Wilberforce’s in the abolition of the slave trade, writes that everyone speaks of “duties” rather than “doctrines,” yet promotes the nefarious institution. Therefore, she says, “it is of importance to point out the mutual dependence of one doctrine upon another, and the influence which these doctrines have upon the heart and life, so that the duties of Christianity may be seen to grow out of its doctrines” (emphasis in original).

Why Grace Is Strange his small circle of influential evangelicals made a remarkable impact on the world in their vocations precisely because they were overwhelmed by God’s amazing—and strange—grace that disrupts the ordinary flow of history. They did not treat the doctrine as a distraction from practice, but as its source. Of course, there are a lot of reasons why grace is strange, but we will consider briefly a few of the major ones here.

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God is Strange e work very hard to make God user-friendly.

That’s why the Israelites at the foot of Mount Sinai, terrified by God’s voice, decided to make a golden calf that they could manage more safely. Instead of trembling in God’s presence, they “sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play” (Exod. 32:6). We hear people talk today about their personal relationship with God as if he were a locker-room pal or even a romantic interest.

However, when people were actually confronted with God’s presence, they always came apart at the seams.

Even Moses trembled with fear (Exod. 19–20; Heb. 12:18–29). Isaiah was all set to go on his mission to announce the woes (curses) on everybody else until he received a vision of God in his sanctuary, with seraphim and cherubim calling to each other, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Hosts; His glory fills the whole earth.” Isaiah could only respond, “Woe is me, for I am ruined, because I am a

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We Are Estranged ut none of this matters if we are not the wicked, the ungodly, the unrighteous, the enemies of God and countless other terms that Scripture uses to describe our condition. Created in God’s image, to be analogies of his character, we were “wired” for righteousness.

Obedience to God’s commands came naturally.

Inexplicably and absurdly, Adam chose to go his own way, be his own boss, and determine his own destiny. Of course, this did not lead to enthronement but to estrangement. Running from God, Adam and Eve covered their nakedness with fig leaves and we have been doing this every since. Religion and morality (with the help of pop psychology) are the primary suppliers of fig leaves.

Instead of speaking in biblical terms of our being “dead in sins,” “strangers and aliens,” “enemies,” “children of wrath,” “haters of God,” and so forth, we typically talk now about humanity as basically decent folks needing direction. Grace, in this scenario, becomes a PowerBar to

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help us continue our autonomous journey of self-salvation and mastery of life. Grace can be a lot of things: a substance infused into us to dispose us toward cooperating with God (the Roman Catholic position and, I would argue, the working assumption of popular Evangelicalism). It can be “released,” “injected,” or “appropriated,” by following certain secret principles (laws).

But in Scripture, grace is not an impersonal substance; it’s the personal attitude and action of God in Jesus Christ toward those who deserve the very opposite. Without the phrase “who deserve the very opposite,” grace is nothing more than God’s warm wishes that make us feel better as we suppress the truth about ourselves. Because we always put a certain “spin” on our lives that, to our minds at least, gets us off the hook in court, we cannot tell ourselves who we are. The major reason that I dislike going to the doctor for my checkup is that the nurse weighs me and every time the result is less flattering than my own weighing-in at home. Our judgments about ourselves, not to mention about God and our neighbors, are made with a scale that has been tampered with, purposely jerry-rigged to tell us what we want to hear. Only when we actually encounter God as he truly is do we finally know ourselves as we truly are—and only then can grace be truly grace. Grace is not self-esteem, moral uplift, or therapeutic recovery. It is nothing less than God’s favor on account of Christ: a new Word (justification) that generates a new creation (sanctification and glorification).

God’s Method of Redemption Is Strange eople want to save themselves. “For to those who are perishing the message of the cross is foolishness, but to us who are being saved, it is God’s power” (1 Cor. 1:18). Jews look for signs and Greeks look for wisdom (v. 22). If Jesus is interpreted as an itinerant sage who provides us with the right ideas, worldview, techniques, and rules for living well, we could expect success, but it would be short-lived. Eventually, when “converts” actually began reading the Bible, they would realize that its basic message is not “What Would Jesus Do?” Salvation (i.e., “your best life now”) as following the example of a wise man made perfect sense to Greeks; salvation by dying and rising with him drew blank stares.

Nevertheless, we work very hard today to make grace normal rather than utterly disorienting. We bend over backwards to show how Christianity is “practical,” how it conforms to our common sense and moral intuitions.

“Practical Christianity” (deeds, not creeds) is touted, although the actual practice of Christians is, according to the statistics, indistinguishable from that of nonChristians. The “righteousness that is by works” looks for somewhere to go and something to do, while “the righteousness of faith” receives Christ as he comes to us in the gospel (Rom. 10:1–13).

For Rome—and for many evangelicals today— however, grace is almost entirely something that happens

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inside of us, that wells up within us through our own efforts. The late Stanley Grenz, who had a tremendous impact on younger evangelicals, wanted to push the movement further away from the Reformation in the direction of inner spirituality and moral imperatives.

Evangelicalism, he says, is more a “spirituality” than a “theology.”2 A call to rethink Evangelicalism’s attachment to the Reformation’s solas goes hand in hand with an emphasis on inner experience as the source not only of piety but of the Word itself. “Because spirituality is generated from within the individual, inner motivation is crucial”—more important, Grenz says, than “grand theological statements.” “The spiritual life is above all the imitation of Christ…. In general we eschew religious ritual. Not slavish adherence to rites, but doing what Jesus would do is our concept of true discipleship.” It would seem that the question, “What would Jesus do?” takes precedence over what Jesus has done and how he delivers that to us here and now.

“Get on with the task; get your life in order by practicing the aids to growth and see if you do not mature spiritually,” we exhort. In fact, if a believer comes to the point where he or she senses that stagnation has set in, evangelical counsel is to redouble one’s efforts in the task of exercising the disciplines. “Check up on yourself,” the evangelical spiritual counselor admonishes.

Grenz pioneered the theology that Brian McLaren and some of the other “emergent” leaders are now taking to wild extremes. So let’s have more emphasis on the activity of believers rather than of God? More imperatives without indicatives? More fire for the burned-over districts? One of the points that Grenz makes so clearly in his book, Revisioning Evangelical Theology, is that the “revisioning” in view is not radically different from the pietistic emphases of Evangelicalism. Until we return to the gospel of God’s free and sovereign grace, there will be ever-new waves of burned-out Christians. Movements that center on the activity of sinners—including Christians—will never expose the world to the radical grace that is genuinely transformative.

Sharing a common heritage in the revivalism of Charles Finney, mainline and evangelical Protestants have trouble being recipients of grace. The church becomes an army of activists—social engineers, moral reformers, event planners, life coaches—rather than a theater of grace where God has the lead role. As a result, the focus is not on how God gets to us (the logic of grace) but on “inducements sufficient to convert sinners with,” as Finney put it, following his basically Pelagian view of the moral ability of fallen people. Finney’s Systematic Theology explicitly denies original sin and insists that the power of regeneration lies in the sinner’s own hands; rejects any substitutionary notion of Christ’s atonement in favor of the moral influence and moral government theories, and J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 1 3

own “Ten Steps” to harnessing God’s power. In this context, grace is less including Christians—will never expose the world to the God’s favor shown to sinners on account of Christ than the radical grace that is genuinely transformative. opportunity God has provided for greater spiritual and moral power if we regards the doctrine of justification by an alien cooperate properly, using our free will. Newton the slave righteousness as “impossible and absurd,” an offense to trader may indeed have been a “wretch,” but surely not I. our sense of morality.3 Nevertheless, Finney is celebrated Ever since the fall, we have insisted on judging and as America’s greatest revivalist by Jerry Falwell on the justifying ourselves. However, when it comes to the gospel right and Jim Wallis on the left. of grace, we are only receivers, not doers. We follow the Concerning the complex doctrines that he associated commands, but we believe the good news. with Calvinism (including original sin, vicarious Once faith is seen as arising immediately out of the self, atonement, justification and the supernatural character of rather than created by the gospel, not only creation but the new birth), Finney concluded, “No doctrine is more redemption can be conceived in autonomous terms. God, dangerous than this to the prosperity of the Church, and the gospel, Christ, grace, and Scripture become tools for nothing more absurd.” In fact, “There is nothing in self-mastery rather than rival claimants to sovereignty. religion beyond the ordinary powers of nature. It consists Grace is no longer disruptive and disorienting, but the sort in the right exercise of the powers of nature. It is just that, of thing that anybody on the street can sing about without and nothing else…. It is a purely philosophical result of offense. Not surprisingly, a spate of recent sociological the right use of the constituted means—as much so as any studies has indicated that the operating theology even of other effect produced by the application of means.”4 Find those reared in evangelical youth groups and churches can the most useful methods, “excitements sufficient to induce be described, in Christian Smith’s formulation, as conversion,” and there will be conversion. “God Has “moralistic, therapeutic deism.”8 As long as the church Established No Particular Measures” is the subheading of keeps muting the strange sound of grace, as if salvation one of his chapters in his Systematic Theology. “A revival were the result of human decision rather than God’s will decline and cease,” he warned, “unless Christians are electing grace before time began, our imitation of Christ frequently re-converted.”5 rather than Christ’s unique and vicarious death for sinners, Toward the end of his ministry, as he considered the as if we are good people who could be better rather than condition of many who had experienced his revivals, the damned who need to be redeemed, the sort of genuine Finney wondered if this endless craving for ever-greater Christian experience that John Newton proclaimed in experiences of “grace” might lead to spiritual exhaustion.6 “Amazing Grace” will be increasingly rare.

In fact, his worries were justified. The area where Finney’s Grace is not something that God offers, but the character revivals were especially dominant is now referred to by of his saving action toward sinners: “while we were dead” and “while we were enemies.” The kind of “grace” that historians as the “burned-over district,” a seedbed of both many people talk about today does not require conversion disillusionment and the proliferation of various cults.7 in order to believe it, but assimilation and cooperation.

It does not seem wide of the mark to regard Finney’s There is no need for reconciliation, since God is already theological assumptions as Pelagian. If, as Bonhoeffer everyone’s buddy. There is no need for repentance, since indicates, American religion has been decisively shaped by everyone is already trying to be good. There is no need for “Protestantism without the Reformation,” then Finney is justification, since that presupposes guilt—and we know its clearest spokesperson. Evangelicalism’s penchant for that guilt is simply a feeling that results from dysfunctional creating movement upon movement, each whipping patterns. There is no need for peace with God, because we millions up into a frenzy only to leave many disillusioned, have never really been at war. Grace cannot be strange has helped to create the very secularism that it spends so when the antitheses between God’s holiness and our much time, energy, and money attacking in the wider sinfulness, Christ’s saving obedience and our disobedience, culture. the Holy Spirit’s sovereign call and the bondage of our will When one visits a Christian gift store, listens to much of become muted.

Christian radio, nearly anything of Christian television, We have to recover our recognition that the gospel itself and a great deal of Christian preaching today, the implicit is the main problem of communication: we think people Pelagianism of salvation (and church growth) by principles can accept it without conversion.9 Grace then becomes and techniques is evident on all sides. Combining Pelagianism and pragmatism, American Evangelicalism moral uplift, encouragement, divine assistance for seems at least in its most popular forms today to be a whatever projects of self-salvation we are currently version of spiritual technology—almost magic, with every engaged in. new movement and best-selling author offering his or her Methodist bishop William Willimon perceives that

Movements that center on the activity of sinners—

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much of contemporary preaching, whether mainline or evangelical, assumes that conversion is something that we generate through our own words and sacraments. “In this respect we are heirs of Charles G. Finney,” who thought that conversion was not a miracle but a “‘purely philosophical [i.e., scientific] result of the right us of the constituted means.’”

[W]e have forgotten that there was once a time when evangelists were forced to defend their ‘new measures’ for revivals, that there was once a time when preachers had to defend their preoccupation with listener response to their Calvinist detractors who thought that the gospel was more important than its listeners. I am here arguing that revivals are miraculous, that the gospel is so odd, so against the grain of our natural inclinations and the infatuations of our culture, that nothing less than a miracle is required in order for there to be true hearing. My position is therefore closer to that of the Calvinist Jonathan Edwards than to the position of Finney.10 Nevertheless, “The homiletical future, alas, lay with Finney rather than Edwards,” leading to the evangelical church marketing guru, George Barna, who writes, Jesus Christ was a communications specialist. He communicated His message in diverse ways, and with results that would be a credit to modern advertising and marketing agencies … He promoted His product in the most efficient way possible: by communicating with the “hot prospects.” … He understood His product thoroughly, developed an unparalleled distribution system, advanced a method of promotion that has penetrated every continent, and offered His product at a price that is within the grasp of every consumer (without making the product so accessible that it lost its value).11 We never really get to the gospel if we ask the world—or even Christians—what they find most relevant apart from it. Instead, the gospel itself will become a form of law— perhaps subtler and more user-friendly (“Do this and you’ll feel better!” or “Do this and you’ll live better!” rather than “Do or die!”), but an agenda of things to do rather than an announcement of things that God has done.

Willimon also reminds us that preaching presupposes that it will “work” not because of its audience analysis but because of its confidence in the Spirit. If our preaching does not require a miracle in order to believe it, then it is not gospel preaching.12 The gospel is an intrusion among us, not something arising out of us. Easter is the ultimate intrusion of God. The gap between our alliance with death and the God of life as revealed on Easter is the ultimate gap with which gospel preaching must contend.

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“Let Us Love and Sing and Wonder”

by John Newton Let us love and sing and wonder, Let us praise the Saviour’s name!

He has hushed the law’s loud thunder, He has quenched Mount Sinai’s flame.

He has washed us with His blood, He has brought us nigh to God. Let us love the Lord who bought us, Pitied us when enemies, Called us by His grace and taught us, Gave us ears and gave us eyes: He has washed us with His blood, He presents our souls to God. Let us sing, though fierce temptation Threaten hard to bear us down!

For the Lord, our strong salvation, Holds in view the conqueror’s crown: He who washed us with His blood Soon will bring us home to God. Let us wonder: grace and justice Join and point to mercy’s store; When through grace in Christ our trust is, Justice smiles and asks no more: He who washed us with His blood Has secured our way to God. Let us praise, and join the chorus Of the saints enthroned on high; Here they trusted Him before us, Now their praises fill the sky: ‘Thou hast washed us with Your blood; Thou art worthy, Lamb of God!’ Hark! The name of Jesus, sounded Loud, from golden harps above!

Lord, we blush, and are confounded, Faint our praises, cold our love!

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Easter is an embarrassment the church can’t get around. Yet this embarrassment is the engine that drives our preaching…If God did not triumph over Caesar and all the legions of death on Easter, then God will never triumph on Sunday in my church over The Wall Street Journal and Leo Buscaglia.13 We do not bring Christ down by our clever efforts at translation and relevance; Christ comes down to us and creates his own atmosphere: confrontative as well as comforting. “Alas,” adds Willimon, “most ‘evangelistic’ preaching I know about is an effort to drag people even deeper into their subjectivity rather than an attempt to rescue them from it.”14 “Our intellectual problem with the gospel is not one of meaning but really is about power.

Not the limitedly intellectual problem of ‘How can I believe this?’ but rather ‘In what power configurations am I presently enslaved?’”15 This is why we need “an external word.”

Willimon recognizes the close connection observed above between the method (an external Word) and the message (salvation by grace alone in Christ alone through faith alone). “So in a sense, we don’t discover the gospel, it discovers us. ‘You did not choose me but I chose you’ (John 15:16).”16 “Self-salvation is the goal of much of our preaching,” Willimon surmises.17 By contrast, Scripture repeatedly underscores the point that the gospel is new news, not merely a new awareness. “To be a Christian is to be part of the community, the countercultural community, formed by thinking with a peculiar story. The story is euangelion, good news, because it is about grace. Yet it is also news because it is not common knowledge, not what nine out of ten average Americans already know.

Gospel doesn’t come naturally. It comes as Jesus.”18 Grace can only be recognized in the face of Christ, for there the strangeness of God, of ourselves, and God’s method of redemption converge. Counter-intuitive, disruptive, and unsettling, the grace defined by Golgotha requires an entirely new set of presuppositions about God, ourselves, and how the relationship works. Yet the measure of the sheer gratuity of God’s grace is that it even gives us those new presuppositions in the very act of being given. Grace is God’s refusal to allow us to define ourselves or to have the last word. Rather, it is the surprising announcement that salvation is “not the result of human decision or effort, but of God who shows mercy” (Rom. 9:16). ■

WORKS CITED 1 All citations from John Newton in this article have been drawn from David Lyle Jeffrey, ed., English Spirituality in the Age of Wesley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987).

2 Stanley Grenz, Revisioning Evangelical Theology: A Fresh Agenda for the 21st Century (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1993), especially pp.

17, 31, 48–52.

3 Charles G. Finney, Systematic Theology (Minneapolis: Bethany, 1976).

4 Charles G. Finney, Revivals of Religion (Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, n.d.), pp. 4–5.

5 Finney, Revivals of Religion, p. 321.

6 See Keith J. Hardman, Charles Grandison Finney: Revivalist and Reformer (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990), pp. 380–394.

7 See, for example, Whitney R. Cross, The Burned-Over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800–1850 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982).

8 Christian Smith, Soul Searching (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

9 William Willimon, The Intrusive Word: Preaching to the Unbaptized (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), pp. 18–19.

10 Willimon, p. 20.

11 Willimon, p. 21, citing George Barna, Marketing the Church: What They Never Taught You about Church Growth (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1988), p. 50.

12 Willimon, p. 22.

13 Willimon, p. 25.

14 Willimon, p. 38.

15 Willimon, p. 42.

16 Willimon, p. 43.

17 Willimon, p. 53.

18 Willimon, p. 52.

Speaking Of…

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here can be no doubt that the Remonstrants (Arminians) were, in fact, the

last exponents of an understanding of the Reformation which Erasmus had once represented against Luther and later Castellio against Calvin; an understanding which can and should be interpreted in the light of the

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

persistence of medieval semi-Pelagianism no less than in that of the Renaissance.

— Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 2/2.67

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GRACE: HOW STRANGE THE SOUND

Where Grace Is Found

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he Beatles are more popular than Jesus.” Such was John Lennon’s evaluation of the phenomenon of Beatlemania in the mid-1960s.

What is even more interesting than Lennon’s observation, however, is the response that Americans gave to such a bold claim: We rose up, and with our righteous indignation reaching peak levels, we piled our Beatles’ albums in the streets and burned them (steamrollers were also involved).

It was as if we were responding collectively as a culture, by exclaiming, “How dare you tell us that Jesus isn’t popular!”

As Americans, we are obsessed with popularity, with fame, and with movements of mass appeal. For this reason, the American church has great difficulty getting excited about any program for spiritual growth that does not appear attractive, appealing, and, dare I say: sexy. Yet in speaking of Jesus’ appearance, Isaiah writes, “He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, no beauty that we should desire him” (53:2). C. H. Spurgeon remarked that Paul “determined only to know Jesus Christ, and him crucified, and to set him forth in his own natural beauties unadorned.” “Alas for that wisdom,” Spurgeon lamented, “which conceals the wisdom of God! It is the most guilty form of folly.”1 Yet it seems that the constant demand on the part of many believers today for a new and exciting spiritual diet plan is a symptom of just such folly. How else can we interpret the fact that the primary goal of many churches today is to not appear weak, irrelevant, and foolish in the eyes of the world (you know, the way Jesus looked)?

Borrowed Liability hat is remarkable about Paul’s determination to “know nothing” among the Corinthians “except Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2) is that the apostle not only insisted upon preaching the cross exclusively, he insisted on being consistent when he did so.

“But how,” we may ask, “can a cross-focused, Christcentered ministry be inconsistent with itself?” According to 1 Corinthians 1:17, when the “foolish” and “weak” message of the gospel is presented in the impressive garb of earthly strength and worldly wisdom, “the cross is emptied of its power.” In other words, the cross is eclipsed not only when when the wrong message is preached, but when the right one is preached in the wrong manner, adorned by whatever powerful signs or worldly wisdom the Jews and Greeks respectively demand.

It is not that “power” or “wisdom” are necessarily wrong, of course. But when we refuse to allow the cross to define these things for us (which it inevitably does in a way that is antithetical to the world’s notion of them), then whatever the result may be, it is not Christanity. Our definition of power or wisdom, therefore, must not be borrowed directly from the lexicon of this age, for when we allow the culture to determine what is impressive or relevant, we subtly undermine with our methods what we proclaim in our message. So while unbelievers may enjoy plenty of what

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Cornelius Van Til dubbed “borrowed capital” from the Christian faith, it is the borrowed liability that we saints receive on loan from the world that concerned Paul.

A Tale of Two Pieties n his book lamenting the so-called “new measures” employed by nineteenth-century revivalists such as Charles Finney (which were characterized by an early version of the altar call in which, after the sermon, people could come forward to the “anxious bench” to receive instruction concerning conversion), John Williamson Nevin wrote:

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The old Presbyterian faith, into which I was born, was based throughout on the idea of covenant family religion, church membership by God’s holy act in baptism, and following this a regular catechetical training of the young, with direct reference to their coming to the Lord’s table. In one word, all proceeded on the theory of sacramental, educational religion.2 According to Nevin, there are two systems of religion at work in Protestantism: the “system of the bench,” characterized by novel and subjective approaches to piety and godliness, and “the system of the catechism,” which relied upon the objective means that Christ ordained for his people’s growth in the faith.

[These two systems] involve at the bottom two different theories of religion. The spirit of the Anxious Bench is at war with the spirit of the Catechism….

They cannot flourish and be in vigorous force together … The Bench is against the Catechism, and the Catechism is against the Bench. (emphasis added) It is hard to believe that there was a time when religion in this country was characterized by the ordinary ministry of the local church, with her worship, liturgy, preaching, and sacraments. What we need to recover today is just such a view of the local church’s role in the life of the believing family. Rather than the slick, program-driven, and desperate attempts at “relevance” (which the world gets to define), we need a ministry that will simply open the Scriptures and preach from them Christ crucified and risen, and then give the bread and the cup to the hungry and thirsty pilgrims for whom he was sacrificed and raised.

Anything less than a bold refusal to pander to the whims of the worldly is to sell our noble birthright, like “that profane man Esau,” for a bowl of beans.

What Hath Saddleback to Do with Geneva? hen we compare the contemporary evangelical approach to living the Christian life with that of Reformed theology by posing such questions as: (1) How do we “get religion”? (2) What does it look like once it is acquired? (3) How is religion cultivated? (4) How is it passed on?, the two systems, like Nevin’s “Bench” and

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“Catechism,” still appear to be quite distinct and even antithetical.

In answering the first question, for example, the evangelical response to how religion is acquired (assuming that such terminology would be granted) would center around the extracurricular evangelistic activities of Christians, while the Reformed believer would focus more on the local church’s official mandate to preach the gospel and administer the sacraments. In tackling the second question (What does the Christian faith look like once it is acquired?), again, not surprisingly, the answers differ.

While the evangelical may dismiss “sacramental faith” (whether in its Reformed, Lutheran, Anglican, or Roman Catholic versions) as too institutional, “churchy,” or sacerdotal, the fact is that his faith relies on sacraments aplenty, just not necessarily the ones Jesus himself instituted.

For example, practices such as daily quiet times, altar calls, listening to Contemporary Christian Music, and attending Christian retreats are all considered important— yea vital—to growing in the Lord. In fact, even ministers themselves have become quasi-sacraments in some megachurch contexts, with the authority and effectiveness of the the pastor’s ministry often resting upon his witty personality and dynamic speaking style (which, ironically, are the very things that Paul deliberately did not employ, much to the disappointment of his Corinthian audience).

In stark contrast to this stands Christian living as understood by confessional Reformed theology. To those of this persuasion, the Christian life follows a regular, Sabbatical pattern that centers upon the corporate worship of God by his gathered people on the first day of the week.

Like their evangelical brothers and sisters they too place great emphasis upon sacraments, but only upon those instituted by the Lord himself. Baptism, then, initiates us into the household of faith, and that faith is nurtured and strengthened by means of the bread and cup of Communion. In fact, the nature of confessional Reformed Christian living, particularly its dependance upon the ordinary ministry of the local church, when contrasted with the high-octane, subjective quest for spiritual experience so characteristic of evangelical pietism, is such that the former respresents what Luther called a “theology of the cross,” while the latter betrays a “theology of glory.”

The next question in our comparison of evangelical and Reformed spirituality addresses the issue of the faith’s communication from one generation, or one person, to another. In the thinking of most of our evangelical brothers and sisters, the passing on of religion is almost invariably spectacular rather than ordinary. Now, I’m not suggesting that the miraculous element is absent from or deemphasized in Reformed circles, but what I am saying is that, in the evangelical mindset, the threshhold through which a sinnerturned-saint passes is conversion, and this conversion is usually a cataclysmic and powerful experience.

To believers coming from the Reformation tradition, on the other hand, this is not necessarily the case. While adults coming out of pagan backgrounds may indeed experience

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such a seismic shift in loyalties, this is often the exception rather than the rule. The Christian faith, normally speaking, is passed on from parent(s) to child by means of the baptism of infants. When the child is thus initiated into the covenant community, she is then nurtured in the faith by parents and pastors who, believing God’s promise to be “a God to us and to our children,” treat the child as a believer unless given a reason to do otherwise.

Given the apparent differences between broad evangelical and Reformed thought on such basic and fundamental questions as these, it is not overstating the issue to conclude that, as in Nevin’s day, “the catechism is against the bench, and the bench is against the catechism.”

Observant Protestantism and “True Christianity” he emphasis upon the indispensible nature of the church’s ministry in creating and nurturing faith in the hearts of God’s people gives rise to an interesting linguistic phenomenon to which D. G. Hart alludes in his book Recovering Mother Kirk: Why is it that Jews and Roman Catholics are usually described as observant or nonobservant while Protestants are classified either as true, genuine Christians or formal, dead ones?

This type of nomenclature betrays the latent pietism of much of evangelical Protestantism, for rites and practices such as baptism, church membership, corporate worship, and communion are all dismissed as incidental, if not inimical, to “true Christianity.” “The fact that American Protestants do not use the nomenclature of observance,” writes Hart, “demonstrates just how complete the triumph of evangelicalism has been.”3 But if being Reformed is more than just a state of mind and actually involves participating in certain corporate, religious ceremonies, then perhaps formal, observant, churchly Christianity is not the bane of Protestantism after all. In fact, the insistence on the part of proponents of confessional, Reformed Christianity that our faith not be divorced from its ritualistic practice means that the sharp division between creed and deed made by church leaders like Rick Warren is unthinkable for us.

The divorce of “true Christianity” from its corporate practice is dangerous and unwarranted, particularly when the so-called “essence” of the faith is so mystical, personal, and romantic that it defies definition. To be sure, “I Wanna Know What Love Is” may still be the heart’s cry of many, but the love that Jesus demonstrated for his people, and the love they return to him, is more concrete than what is evoked by much of the “Jesus Is My Boyfriend” sentiment that is equated with genuine Christianity in the contemporary American church.

My point, then, is that the faith-once-delivered is also the faith-corporately-practiced. Ironically, the evangelical penchant for identifying the locus of “real Christianity” in some internal experience or “religious affection,” or in the practice of an extra-canonical sacrament such as quiet times or afterglows, is to fall prey to the Jesus of History/Christ of Faith dilemma so characteristic of early

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twentieth-century liberalism. After all, removing true Christianity from its objective, liturgical context leaves us with nowhere else to put it but into a realm that we can only hope to understand by playing God (and he hates it when his creatures do that…).

Like their evangelical brethren, confessional Reformed believers desire to see the Christian faith demonstrated in the lives of those who profess it. But rather than the litmus test being one’s devotional life, voting record, or collection of Left Behind novels, it should be sought in the fact that those who confess Christ gather together each Lord’s Day around Word and sacrament, confessing their sins, singing his praises, and hearing, eating, and drinking the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Your Own Personal . . . Satan? n his Corinthian correspondence Paul described the barring of an unrepentant brother from fellowship in the church as “handing him over to Satan” (1 Cor. 5:4–5). Apparently for the apostle, the church and its ordained ministry of Word and sacrament are more important—and their absence more tragic—than is usually admitted in contemporary evangelical circles.

Moreover, the insistence that God’s “speech” through his ordained servant in corporate worship (particularly the gracious summons into his presence, assurance of forgiveness, and benediction) can somehow be replaced by one’s personal relationship with Jesus is quite presumptuous, and even dangerous. If the churches that Paul labored to plant and the “gift” of ordained ministers that Jesus rose from the dead to provide for them (Eph. 4:8–12) can be so easily circumvented, then creaturely wisdom is not only being exalted above divine foolishness, but “deliverance over to Satan” is made to look like a pretty attractive alternative to waking up early every Sunday. And in the light of Paul’s appraisal of life outside the church, when a professing Christian opts for the clutches of the devil over the communion of saints, one may sincerely wonder with whom, exactly, this “personal relationship” is being cultivated.

A simple inference from this passage would be that if expulsion from the means of grace is so precarious, then participation in the means of grace should be considered equally beneficial. Or to put the matter differently, belonging to the church ought to be thought of as being every bit a blessing as being thrown out of it is a curse.

While evangelical pietism may balk at the simplicity of this type of assurance and the ease with which such churchly forms of devotion can be faked, the Reformed believer can simply point out that it is no easier to recite the catechism by rote than it is to go through the motions of closing one’s eyes and swaying romantically to “Lord I Want to Love You” (and in fact, it’s way harder).

Therefore, if being expelled from the visible church is to fall prey to the wiles of the devil, what is membership in it but the enjoyment of the protection and love of God? But when the church’s objective means of grace are traded in

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for newer, sexier methods of demonstrating the genuineness of our faith, then the Cyprianic formula of extra ecclesiam nulla salus est (“outside the church there is no salvation”) becomes meaningless. Once assurance of salvation becomes so rare a jewel that it can scarcely be found within the church’s walls let alone without them, then what’s the point of attending?

How Do the Means of Grace Work? hough all believers “are bound to read [the Word of God] apart by themselves” for their personal edification (Westminster Larger Catechism, Q/A 156), something unique happens when that Word is preached by a duly ordained minister (WLC, Q/A 158-160). In fact, Paul insists that when the saints hear Christ preached, they are actually hearing Christ himself preaching (Rom. 10:14 [NASB]; Eph. 2:17). Personal “quiet time,” therefore, can never replace the regular hearing of the gospel preached in the context of the local church, for it is here that God addresses his people in a special and powerful way.

Through the sacraments of baptism and communion, God initiates us into his holy family and feeds us with Jesus’ body and blood. Though we cannot hope to fully grasp exactly how common elements like water, bread, and wine can nurture spiritual qualities like faith, hope, and love, we believe that the Holy Spirit mysteriously—yet really—accomplishes just this. As John Calvin remarked concerning the Lord’s Supper, “I would rather experience this than understand it.”

What is perhaps the biggest stumbling block for American Christianity is the fact that God blesses these simple means of grace to the building up of his church not because of the winsome or witty personality of the man who administers them, but simply because he has promised to do so. Not even the pastor’s own godliness can ensure divine blessing, nor can the lack thereof preclude it. In a culture obsessed with “success” (which is usually determined by counting nickels and noses), the ministry of a faithful pastor to his little flock often appears weak and paltry when compared with the glossy professionalism of the megachurch down the street.

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Holy Embarrassment aul had an odd way of motivating people, especially his young protégé, Timothy. Only a handful of verses into his second letter to him, the apostle urged his student not to be “ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner” (2 Tim. 1:8) Although a leader’s begging his followers not to cringe at his apparent weakness is hardly an inspiring method of “turning the world upside-down,” yet this was but an echo of Jesus’ own words, which so often focused on dissuading his disciples from denying that they knew him (Matt. 10:3233; 26:34; Mark 8:38). Apparently, there was something so embarrasing about being a Christian in those days that such explicit and pointed warnings were warranted.

The fact that many professing Christians in our own day

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lack this timidity may not be due to their simply being bolder in their witness and devotion to Christ than his original followers were, but rather, our contemporary unfamiliarity with the temptation to deny Christ may stem from our unfamiliarity with the cross that he carried. If the church’s stated aim is to present herself as being so attractive and beneficial to the City of Man that unbelievers simply cannot help but jump on the holy bandwagon, then not only should we remove the “I” from Calvinism’s well-known acrostic (and the “T” for that matter), but we also, no less than the original disciples, should be tempted to be ashamed of the meager ministry and methods of the church. After all, what good are water, Word, and wine for attaining such lofty goals as cultural transformation or the wooing of the young and attractive?

But the apostle’s own antidote to the temptation to be ashamed of his ministry was no this-worldly promise of glory or earthly influence. Rather, he writes in verse 12, “I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am convinced that he is able to keep what I have committed to him until that Day.” In other words, both the church and its members must not seek the world’s approval by providing programs that pander to people’s need to feel popular and appreciated. The “more relevant than thou” approach to ministry may fill churches, but often at the expense of the cross and all its glorious foolishness and shame.

Conclusion es, John Lennon may have been right, maybe the Beatles are more popular than Jesus. And indeed, the earthly vindication of Lennon’s boast was seen in the fact that, just after his shooting, his vigil gathered a lot more mourners than a measly 120 (Acts 1:15). But the triumphalistic need to deliver a smug “I told you so” to our detractors can never provide the church with a rationale for an “ordinary means of grace” ministry. For that, we must remember that, humanly speaking, the One whom we follow was killed precisely because he refused to provide for the church the earthly glory, power, and transformation that his people demanded.

If the weakness of the cross was sufficient for Christ in this age, and if “the servant is not greater than his Master,” then is not our stumbling at its foolishness simply a subtle claim that the cross was fine for Jesus to die on, but not us? ■

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Jason Stellman is pastor of Exile Presbyterian Church (Woodinville, Washington).

WORKS CITED 1 C.H. Spurgeon, “The Man of One Subject” in The Treasure of the New Testament, Vol. 2 (London: Marshall, Morgan, and Scott, 1962), pp. 150-156.

2 John Williamson Nevin, The Anxious Bench (London: Taylor & Francis, 1987).

3 D.G. Hart, Recovering Mother Kirk (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003).

You might be a Pelagian if....

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When thinking of salvation you draw on the old Smith Barney commercial (i.e., “We get to heaven the old fashioned way....

We earn it!”)

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You think “Amazing Grace” refers to someone’s girlfriend.

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You think the whole fuss about original sin is just sinfully wrong-headed.

Simply hearing the name Augustine makes you break out in a rash.

You think “propitiation” is something that happens to your heart when you over-exert yourself.

The Beatles song which goes, “one two three four five six seven, all good children go to heaven” is in a continuous loop inside your head.

Your last name happens to be Pelagius.

You think the lines from Invictus “I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul” are found in the book of Proverbs.

You think “self esteem” is the most crucial component of sanctification.

To the question, “What is your only comfort in life and death,” you answer by saying, “That I am my own, and have been taught to be nice.”

By Shane Rosenthal

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The Grace Debate

By W. Robert Godfrey

Introduction “That is why it [the promise to Abraham] depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his offspring” (Rom. 4:16).

Romans 4:16 is one of the grand summaries of the gospel given to us by the Apostle Paul. In this one verse he connects promise, faith, grace, and assurance. The promise that God’s redeemed people will inherit the world through Christ is received by faith, rests on grace, and is guaranteed to believers. Paul teaches here that to understand grace correctly we must see grace in its true relationship to faith and vice versa. Although, as we will see, the Bible in general and Paul in particular are very clear about grace and faith, many in the history of the church have missed these plain truths and wandered off into very serious errors about these central matters of the Gospel. We want to look very briefly at six episodes in the history of the church where the truth about faith and grace has collided with error.

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Jesus and the Pharisees “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Luke 10:22).

A Pharisaical lawyer tries to tempt Jesus into some criticism or violation of the law of God in asking, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 10:25). The very form of the question shows that the lawyer has fundamentally misunderstood the message of the Bible about salvation, persuaded that eternal life must come to him by his own doing, not God’s doing. Jesus, knowing the question is not a sincere inquiry about the way to life, but rather an expression of the lawyer’s self-satisfaction and self-centeredness, leaves him to his own doing. Jesus tells him to go ahead and work his way to eternal life by his own doing by loving God completely and loving his neighbor with the great compassion of the Samaritan in the story Jesus has told. Of course, the lawyer cannot actually do this because he hates Jesus who is both his God and his neighbor.

Jesus in the context of this confrontation shows that we receive eternal life, not by our doing, but by our listening to and relying on Jesus and his doing. He teaches clearly in Luke 10:22 and 24 that he is the only savior. Then he illustrates that point for us in the story of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38–42). Martha is the good Samaritan, welcoming Jesus and his disciples into her home to feed them. Mary seems lacking in compassion ignoring Jesus’ and the disciples’ need for food and Martha’s need for help. Yet Jesus commends Mary for embracing the one “necessary” thing (v. 42), namely listening to Jesus (v. 39).

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Paul and the Judaizers “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Rom. 3:28).

Paul, in his letter to the Romans, confronts those in the church called Judaizers, who were teaching that Christians must keep the law in order to be saved and suggested that Paul was indifferent to holiness. Paul rejects their charges against him (Rom. 3:8) and then proceeds to show the difference between faith and works of the law in justification. The situation that Paul is facing is almost identical to the one Jesus faced. When Paul rejects “works of the law” as the way to justification, he is not rejecting some ceremonial laws that no longer apply to Christians. No, he is rejecting all our doing and all our best works—namely those done in accord with God’s holy will expressed for us in his law—as the way to justification. Justification rather is by faith, that is by looking away from ourselves to the saving work of Jesus, which we trust by the working of God’s grace (Rom. 3:24, 25). Here indeed Paul is teaching Christ alone, grace alone, and faith alone against the Judaizers of his day who taught Christ and the law, grace and human cooperation, and faith and works.

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Augustine and Pelagius 5th century

“But God . . . even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved” (Eph. 2:4, 5).

In the early fifth century a critical debate on grace occurred between Augustine, the great bishop from North Africa, and Pelagius, a British monk. Augustine had articulated in his writings a clear teaching that we are saved by grace alone. Pelagius, afraid that such theology would undermine efforts to live holy lives, responded in a treatise entitled “On Nature” that all humans naturally had the ability to live for God and find salvation in that way. Grace was in the first place the gift of free will given in creation and maintained in every generation.

Augustine answered Pelagius in several works, most famously in “On Nature and Grace.” He showed that the Bible taught that we are saved by grace alone according to God’s predestinating purpose. Augustine so effectively won this debate that no theologian has claimed to be a Pelagian ever since.

The Reformation and Rome 16th century

“You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace” (Gal. 5:4).

Although Augustine defeated Pelagius, in the medieval Roman church a form of semi-Pelagianism arose that corrupted both grace and faith. Many theologians believed that while grace did most of the saving, human free will had to cooperate with grace to make it effective. This semi-Pelagian view of grace is very similar to later Arminianism.

Even more medieval theologians corrupted a biblical view of faith arguing that faith is simply a knowledge of the truth and becomes saving only when enlivened by love. They often quoted Galatians 5:6 to try to prove this point.

The Reformation, however, returned to the understanding of grace and faith found in the Bible. The reformers showed that when Paul commends “faith working through love,” he is not speaking of the way to justification, but of the fruit of faith in the life of the Christian: “do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another” (Gal. 5:13). The faith that justifies is the faith that trusts Christ’s work alone.

The Reformation and Finney 19th century

“Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you” (Eph. 5:14).

Charles Finney, the prominent nineteenth-century evangelist, offered a theology that was Pelagius redivivus. He insisted that the work of the preacher was to awaken dormant moral powers in every person.

The means for this awakening was excitement. His theology was a moral philosophy that had little need for grace except to forgive sins already committed. Faith, repentance, sanctification, and perfection were all actions for which humans had the inherent power and virtue to achieve. This Pelagianism rejected Reformation theology—Finney called the Westminster Confession of Faith a paper pope—and infected American Evangelicalism with a commitment to manipulative excitement as the way to faith.

The Reformation and Contemporary Evangelicals 21st century

“If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit” (Gal. 5:25).

Many American evangelicals today seem very muddled theologically or, worse, insist on slouching toward heresy. What the confusion and heresy have in common is a determined man-centeredness in religion very reminiscent of the late medieval church. Many are teaching that by the power of the Spirit or innate strength we can be healthy, wealthy, wise, and above all happy. Some Pentecostals embrace a “little gods” theology that make humans divine. Some evangelicals have developed an open theism that makes God less than divine.

Some reject the conviction that Christ kept the law for us and in our place, diminishing both the work of Christ and a true understanding of grace. Others have replaced the Reformation understanding of faith with the faithfulness of covenantal nomism. The theological options within Evangelicalism in the early twenty-first century have become wider and more serious than in the early twentieth century. Against this muddle and heresy we need the theology of the Bible, faithfully taught in the Reformation, more than ever.

Conclusion No doubt the long struggle on grace and faith will continue in ever new forms until Jesus comes again. That fact will sadden us, but should not discourage us. God’s Word is clear, and God in every generation will raise up faithful preachers of these truths.

W. Robert Godfrey is president and professor of church history at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California).

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GRACE: HOW STRANGE THE SOUND

Grace for All Seasons

by Eric Landry

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rank was pathetic, with all the uncomfortable connotations of that overused word. He was twice our age, with ten times our worldly experience, legally blind, formerly a member of an L.A. street gang, without any formal education, and crying as if no one else was in the room. The teacher had just explained how to gain victory over sin, and this man—who had never known personal victory in any arena of life—couldn’t stomach it anymore: “It’s not working! What am I supposed to do?”

We all sat there in stunned silence, scandalized by his question, even more so than by his honesty. No one had the nerve to say out loud what we were all thinking: “You’ve obviously not tried hard enough” or “Well, Frank, considering your background, what do you expect?” It’s easy for twenty-something suburban religious white kids to sit in judgment of a man who looks like a sinner.

Fifteen years later, after having come face to face with the reality of remaining sin in my life, and knowing that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get Christianity to work for me, I wish I knew where Frank was so that I could

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share with him the message that saved me from religious suicide: the same grace that justifies you in God’s sight will sanctify you in this life so that you can stand glorified before his throne on the last day. God’s grace does not just pay the entrance fee into the Kingdom of God; it is the sustaining and transforming power that considers us citizens, empowers us in our duties for the king, and transforms us into joint heirs with the Crown Prince.

How does grace work? U2’s Bono sings that “grace is the name of a girl and a thought that changed the world …

Grace finds goodness in everything.” Thankfully, Bono’s music is better than his theologizing; grace does not find goodness in everything. Grace is not a “searching” function of God, but a “telling” function of God: it is how God relates to those who are not good in and of themselves, nor have any power to work up goodness from their own meager resources. To these—the “down-and-outers” according to the Law—grace becomes God’s voice of favor and goodwill (Exod. 33:12, Luke 1:30). And what it proclaims it creates in the lives of those who hear God’s voice (1 Cor. 15:10).

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This is the beauty of justifying grace. God speaks into the void of human sin, the emptiness and chaos of human rebellion, and actively communicates his blessing through the working of the Holy Spirit in the sinner’s life (Rom. 5:1–5).1 The result is that the sinner is no longer known by God as “sinner.” He is known by God as “son” (Rev. 21:7), “joint heir with Christ” (Rom. 8:17), and “friend” (John 15:15). The sinner stands united with Christ and clothed with Christ’s righteousness—sharing in his incarnation of God’s gracious character (1 Cor. 1:30; Eph. 4:24). As a recipient of God’s grace, the believing sinner has the same relationship to the Father as Jesus has—as if he had accomplished all that Jesus had to accomplish under the Law; and the Father loves this sinner as he loves his only Son (John 16:27).

Many Christians give due credence to the activity of grace in our justification but are apt to turn from grace when the first lap of their Christian life is completed. They view the Christian life as a sort of transaction: God has provided the down payment, now I must make up the balance of the layaway plan. And that’s a problem. Part of the problem, certainly, is our own natural inclination to “do” for others.

The Law is hardwired into our hearts. Since we are born under the covenant of works, we naturally relate to God out of servile fear. And that history—as long as human history itself—of relating to God as unfaithful servants is difficult to overcome when the reality of grace comes home. But perhaps part of the problem has been how Christians talk of grace subsequent to justification: the wonder of free grace is traded in for the more practical news of “helpful” grace.

Having been justified, many Protestant Christians think and act contrary to Scripture by believing that the rest of one’s pilgrim life is lived by cooperating with God’s grace so that they can experience sanctification.

Speaking of sanctifying grace with the same sort of monergistic language that we use when speaking of justification is considered entirely too passive in some especially eager branches of the Church Militant. After all, didn’t Paul say that we were to work out our salvation (Phil.

2:12)? And didn’t Peter remind us that we were in a war against our flesh (1 Pet. 2:11)? Nor can we ever forget Paul’s “spiritual workout,” which consisted of his disciplining his own body so he wouldn’t be disqualified (1 Cor. 9:27).

Sanctification, some would argue, is a work in which we participate. But does the Bible support such thinking?

Although very few American (even Reformational) Christians think this way, sanctification, just like justification, is also by grace alone. In our eagerness to redress this misunderstanding of the relationship of grace to sanctification, however, we must be careful not to so conflate justification and sanctification that they come to mean the same thing (to which some forms of antinomianism lead) or that their relationship is reversed so that justification becomes dependent on sanctification (a common complaint against the Federal Visionists).

Justification and sanctification are different, but the way God relates to the sinner in both respects is the same: it is all by grace (1 Cor. 1:3, 1 Thess. 5:23).

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The framers of the Westminster Shorter Catechism made a careful distinction between sanctification as a “work” and justification as an “act” of God. All the Reformed confessions and catechisms go to great lengths to emphasize that God alone must do the work of sanctification: Belgic Confession (1561), Article 24: Justifying faith, “wrought in man by the hearing of the Word of God and the operation of the Holy Ghost, doth regenerate and make him a new man, causing him to live a new life, and freeing him from the bondage of sin.”

Heidelberg Catechism (1563), Question and Answer 43: “What further benefit do we receive from the sacrifice and death of Christ on the cross? That by virtue thereof our old man is crucified, dead, and buried with Him; that so the corrupt inclinations of the flesh may no more reign in us, but that we may offer ourselves unto Him a sacrifice of thanksgiving.”

Canons of Dordt (1619), Head I, Article 13: “The sense and certainty of this election afford unto the children of God additional matter for daily humiliation before Him, for adoring the depth of His mercies, for cleansing themselves, and rendering grateful returns of ardent love to Him, who first manifested so great a love towards them.”

Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), Chapter 13, Of Sanctification: “They who are once effectually called, and regenerated, having a new heart, and a new spirit created in them, are further sanctified, really and personally, through the virtue of Christ’s death and resurrection, by His Word and Spirit dwelling in them….”

Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647), Question and Answer 35: “What is sanctification? Sanctification is the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.”

Westminster Larger Catechism (1648), Question and Answer 75: “What is sanctification? Sanctification is a work of God’s grace, whereby they whom God hath, before the foundation of the world, chosen to be holy, are in time, through the powerful operation of His Spirit applying the death and resurrection of Christ unto them, renewed in their who man after the image of God; having the seeds of repentance unto life and all other saving graces put into their hearts and those grace so stirred up, increased, and strengthened, as that they more and more die unto sin and rise unto newness of life.”

In every case, sanctification is God’s work (2 Thess. 2:13).

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The effects of sanctification are felt in real time and in real ways as we live out of the work that God has done. It is only after God does his sanctifying work that we are enabled to do good works, to die to self, and return to God worship and service born of gratitude and love.

Remember, grace is a telling function of God: it tells the sinner that he is righteous by God’s act of justification whereby he imputes the righteousness of Christ to us (Rom. 5:17–19); it tells the sinner that he is righteous by God’s work of sanctification whereby he infuses grace in us (Rom. 6:5–14); and it tells the sinner that he is confirmed in righteousness by God’s work of glorification whereby their souls are made perfect in holiness (Heb. 12:23) and await the day when their bodies will be raised bearing the image of the man of heaven (1 Cor. 15:49).

It is to that third aspect of working grace that we now turn. In all the talk about justification and sanctification, it is sometimes easy to miss the reality of glorifying grace.

Grace is the active agent in our glorification as well.

Contrary to some contemporary Wesleyan proposals that are reintroducing a form of purgatory into Protestantism, glorification does not hinge on our ability to purify ourselves. That work belongs to God alone: the dead will be raised by the same power that raised Jesus from the grave and the perishable will put on imperishable; the mortal will put on immortality (1 Cor. 15:51–53). Without a robust view of God’s grace in every season of our lives, however, it is easy to see why we might think that a little more time spent “doing” will finish what God has begun. But such logic cannot withstand real life, real failure, and the real need for God to do a work that we cannot even begin to accomplish. Heaven is not a reward for our efforts; it is the inheritance graciously given to all who are perfect in Christ.

Why is this important? The Christian who shortcircuits God’s work of grace by applying it to only one or two aspects of his salvation will invariably find himself where Frank was: at the end of a very short rope, no longer able to make sense of the failure and frustration of his “new life” in Christ. Recognizing that God glorifies us by grace offers a longer view, or eternal perspective, of temporal failures and frustrations. But even those who do not have the same sort of tender conscience as Frank did can find comfort in the primacy of grace.

First, we can find some stability in our understanding of God and our relationship to God if we keep grace in view.

God does not relate to us in different ways depending on the season of our life. He is not only gracious to us in justification, then turning and acting as a sort of quality control specialist when it comes to our sanctification and glorification. Because God is always gracious toward us in Christ, the Christian is freed to serve God out of the righteousness that has been given to him from Christ, never fearing that he must somehow work up a righteousness to commend himself in God’s sight.

Many Christians judge themselves and their walk with Christ based on their own effort at spiritual “activism.”

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warfare to which all Christians are called. But the degeneration is based on the fact that the Christian has lost sight of the once for all victory of Christ.2 Losing sight of this victory necessarily propels the conscientious Christian into a frantic effort at moral self-improvement which invariably fails, driving the Christian to despair—not just despair of making any progress in his Christian walk but despair even of his right standing before God. So, the second comfort that the primacy of grace can give such Christians is that though sanctification is ever incomplete in this life, God’s work of sanctification is just as certain as his work of justification and glorification: it is all by grace alone and it flows from Christ’s victory over sin and death.

The third comfort that is derived from the primacy of grace usually comes in the winter season of every Christian’s pilgrim life, when at the end of life’s journey their mood is reflective. In what will we glory at the end of our lives? Will it be in our obedience, in our success, in our abilities? Or will we glory in the Redeemer whose work will soon be completed in the transformation of our body and soul into immortality and perfection? The comfort that we can give our elder brothers and sisters in the Lord is that God has been faithful to keep and sustain us by grace through our lives, and in the final act of grace, God will transform us so that what he has said was true of us in Christ will be true of us in our persons, as well.

The last thing I heard of Frank was that he found his way to prison, and though you and I might find that a sad conclusion to a sad story, it probably made sense to him: losers finish last. The wonder of the gospel, however, is that losers finish first, not because they are empowered to cross the finish line on bionic legs, but because they are carried across. Every step in the race is attributed to someone else. The work which God began by grace is not passed on to us like some baton in a relay race, with the crowd watching in hushed silence to see if we’ll drop the handoff. The finish is just as certain as the starting: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8–9).

Grace doesn’t make sense; it is not reasonable; it begs all sorts of questions about fairness and causality and consequences. But it was a reasonable question (“has God said”) and a path that made sense (“good for food, a delight to the eye, desired to make one wise”) that brought about the need for grace in the first place. Would that we all were confounded by grace so that our hope might be in God alone in every season of our pilgrim life. ■

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

WORKS CITED 1 Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), p. 427.

2 G. C. Berkouwer, Faith and Sanctification (Grand Rapids:

Eerdmans, 1952), p. 63.

GRACE: HOW STRANGE THE SOUND

DO YOU REALLY WANT TO BE SAVED SOLA GRATIA?

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t’s hard to imagine anyone complaining about grace.

We like grace: it’s a wonderful thing to be saved by grace, and we can’t get enough of it—at least in our songs. I wonder, however, just how many of our parishioners appreciate the language of John Newton’s hymn, “Amazing Grace.” Do we really have pews full of self-proclaimed wretches, or do people look on this language as just one more quaint expression, like the ebenezer that we used to raise when we sang “Come Thou Fount”? I can’t look inside people’s heads, but my suspicion is that not many Christians really think of themselves as wretches.

Grace is great, grace is wonderful—but you know, we’re all not so bad ourselves!

Don’t get me wrong—I don’t think the way to cultivate an appreciation for the sola gratia by which we are saved is to try to persuade people that they really are wretches. We may have to let that particular word go! But I do think we need to be concerned for the dilution of the doctrine of grace—the tendency to extol God’s grace and sovereignty and mercy, only to turn around and act as if the Christian life were really a matter of what we do, not what God does.

This tendency can be characterized as the problem of semi-Pelagianism. Semi-Pelagianism is a position first associated with John Cassian, who popularized a doctrine of grace along the lines of Augustine—but with one crucial addendum. It is true that we cannot be saved except by the grace of God, but Cassian sometimes added that we must make the first step towards God. Actually, Cassian’s teachings on free will and grace are more subtle than sometimes credited, but there were later writers—

especially on the eve of the Reformation—who were not so subtle. One of these was Gabriel Biel, against whom Martin Luther would react strongly. Biel taught that the one true thing you could know about God is that God will surely give grace to those who do their very best. Biel’s line of thinking here is exactly along the lines of Benjamin Franklin: “God helps those who help themselves.”

In response to Cassian, Biel, and Franklin, I would assert that this is not the gospel—at least not the gospel as understood by Lutheran or Reformed theology. I’d also venture that semi-Pelagianism is alive and well in Christian churches today, and it manifests itself in the way we have shifted the accent away from what God has done for us, to what we must do—for God or for ourselves.

I hope to persuade you otherwise, by making a case that grace is a force in God’s universe that is stronger than the human will and should be celebrated in our practice and preaching more than the efficacy of the human will. And I want to do this by arguing that there is an unbreakable connection between the Reformation doctrine of “grace alone” and the doctrine of predestination.

Predestination could be called Presbyterianism’s bestkept secret. I know why. The answer is the same as what Luther would have said. You see, Luther and Calvin are actually very close in their understanding of the bondage of the will and their doctrine of election. But only Calvin acquired a reputation for teaching about this doctrine.

Why? Because although Luther believed in the doctrine, he

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moment the will is still free enough to resist sin.

For Augustine, the please ourselves any way we want. But from a question of free will is more complicated. Augustine was theological standpoint, there’s a problem: we can quite willing to say that our are free. That is to say, wills choose anything we want. But we only want to sin! we all constantly have the experience of making choices did not teach about it. And why? Because every time you that seem unforced, free, even spontaneous. We can make mention predestination, every Christian who is the least all kinds of choices, and we are free to please ourselves any bit anxious comes out of the woodwork to worry that even way we want. But from a theological standpoint, there’s a though they thought God loved them, maybe they aren’t problem: we can choose anything we want. But we only predestined after all, and how can they know? Luther want to sin! preferred to let sleeping dogs lie.

Augustine has a sophisticated understanding of the Not so Calvin! And, traditionally, not so Presbyterians. way the will works. The will is influenced by the heart’s I have come to agree with Calvin, that there are benefits to desire. You can choose anything you desire. Indeed, you knowing about election, and that such knowledge can really can’t choose anything you do not desire! The have a beneficial effect on the preaching and hearing of problem, for Augustine, is that human desires are all the gospel. messed up. If we truly knew what we were made for, Let’s start with an overview of the doctrine, particularly we’d desire God above all else. “The heart is restless until where we got it and why Calvin thought it was important. we find our rest in thee,” Augustine prayed in his famous After that, I want to share some thoughts on why this Confessions. But no sinner actually does desire God, apart doctrine is important for the integrity of the gospel. from grace. Instead, we try to satisfy our restlessness by We don’t have space to rehearse all the biblical evidence loving lesser things: we love things, we love pleasure, we for or against a doctrine of election. I simply want to use others to make ourselves feel good. We are addicted to remind you that important precedents for the doctrine are self-love, Augustine would say, yet no matter how much found throughout the Bible. Many of these are Old we love ourselves or the world of things, we remain Testament texts, such as the election of Jacob over Esau unsatisfied. Our wills have a kind of freedom, but it’s the and the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. These texts are freedom of an addict: an illusion that we cling to. Who can especially important to St. Paul, who also draws from the do this repair work? Who can free us from our consuming prophets. His use of the potter-and-clay image from self-absorption? For Augustine, sola gratia: only God. And Jeremiah is well known. Indeed, there is probably no Calvin stands in this tradition. passage better known than Romans 8 to 11, in which Paul Calvin also owed a great deal to Martin Luther. I’ve struggles to explain how so many of his fellow Jews could already said that Luther holds a high doctrine of reject their Messiah, and he lays the problem squarely in predestination, but another important ingredient that the lap of God. But you also find language of God’s Calvin may have gleaned from the writings of Luther electing, choosing, foreknowing, and so forth in Acts, pertains to the nature of faith. When my students read Ephesians, 1 Thessalonians, and 1 Peter—even as Mark Luther, sometimes they wonder if he doesn’t end up reports Jesus as speaking of the “elect” in the so-called making faith itself into a work. In fact, he doesn’t. Luther “little apocalypse” of chapter 13. repudiates the notion that faith is an idea we conjure up Naturally, you’d want to do some word studies on all and then force ourselves to believe it. No. Faith has much these passages, as well as some reflection on what the more in common with confessing what we cannot do, and larger arguments are. My point, however, is that the bulk even what we cannot believe on our own, than with of Calvin’s doctrine cannot be claimed as speculation on pretending we believe something that exists only as an idea his part. He wants to be a biblical theologian, not a for us. For Luther, faith is a gift, not a work: it comes as philosopher! At the same time, Calvin also benefited from God’s gift to us, it unites us with Christ, and it brings to us having read earlier writers, including Augustine and the Holy Spirit.

Luther.

All of these themes recur in Calvin. What needs to be Calvin was deeply indebted to the theology of noted, however, is just why Calvin feels constrained to Augustine.

Indeed, the Reformation could be make predestination part of his preaching and teaching. characterized as an Augustinian revival. Augustine wrote Sometimes Calvin is accused of being obsessed with this at length on predestination and free will, mostly in his doctrine, but he never set out to be so regarded. What controversies with Pelagius and his followers. For happened was that he included a section on predestination Pelagius, you may recall, there is no such thing as a “state” in his 1539 Institutes, and thereafter was repeatedly of sin. True, there is the power of habit to contend with, attacked for his supposed “heresy”—even though his was and there are bad examples that surround us, but at every mostly the traditional Augustinian view that had been

We can make all kinds of choices, and we are free to

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restated by many medieval theologians.

Moreover, there’s nothing controversial about why Calvin wanted to discuss the doctrine. It comes down to his doctrine of Scripture and revelation. In a word, if something is revealed to us in Holy Scripture, it’s there because God wanted it known. In other words, if the Bible reveals a doctrine, there must be some benefit in it for us.

Calvin takes this approach to the entirety of the Bible and the whole sweep of Christian doctrine. Doctrine is useful!

God works through the Bible to change us and restore us into his people. What benefit could be greater than that?

Consequently, in the opening section of Calvin’s long treatment of predestination in the Institutes, he tells us that this doctrine carries three benefits for us.

First, for me to know that my salvation derives not from my loveliness, or my merit, or even from my own great faith teaches me to be humble: I am not the author of my salvation. There is nothing about me that I can presume to have endeared me to God — again, not only not my own faith, but also not even my once-upon-a-time decision for Christ.

Second, in light of the fact that we have been saved only by God’s free mercy, we also ought to learn gratitude to God for God’s generosity.

Third, and perhaps best of all, to know that our salvation ultimately rests in God and not in our own powers or resolve — to know that is to be freed from fear in the midst of many dangers, toils, and snares. Here, Calvin quotes John 10: “My sheep … shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand.”

These benefits constitute the whole purpose of knowing about predestination. This is what the doctrine is good for: to keep Christians humble and make them thankful, and to comfort them, especially in times of trial and persecution.

Read Calvin with care: he does not suggest anything else you can do with this doctrine! Predestination does not invite us to fatalism or determinism; it does not tell us we can just stay in bed until the Holy Spirit drags us to the breakfast table; it does not imply that we can quit preaching or praying.

Of course, as the bulk of Calvin’s discussion also makes clear, it’s inevitable that the doctrine of predestination will raise many thorny questions. Let me follow Calvin here by suggesting that while there are some things we can know, because Scripture has revealed them to us, there are other things we cannot know. That means that there will often be times when people throw objections to predestination in our face, and our best answer will have to be, “I don’t know.” I think that’s a good response: it’s biblical, and especially appropriate for mortals.

One of the things we cannot pretend to know is everything about the mystery of God—God’s mysterious will, mysterious plan, mysterious workings. This is actually a principle dear to classical Reformed theology, that the finite cannot comprehend the infinite. In other words, God is the measure of human beings and not vice

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versa. There is much that we learn about God in the Bible, but we don’t learn everything! One thing we learn from the Bible is that God is the Judge of the universe, and as such, God is just. “Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?” (Gen. 18:25). The answer is yes—but we often do not see the details worked out.

If you read Calvin’s four long chapters on predestination in the Institutes, you will find that one of his most frequent assertions is that God is just. But if you watch closely, you’ll also discover that the modifier that often stands in front of justice is “inscrutable”: Calvin believes God is just, because God says God is just. But Calvin doesn’t presume to measure God’s justice by a visible or human standard.

We’d do well to ponder our doctrine of revelation at this point. Is the point of the Bible to tell us what we already know, as some Enlightenment figures asserted, or to tell us things we don’t know? Ask yourself: Can the Bible tell you anything that isn’t immediately apparent to you? Can the Bible tell you anything you don’t want to know?

Why did God elect only some? To this imponderable question, Calvin does a good job of piecing an answer together from Scripture—an answer that’s basically an extrapolation from what he knows of human sin, divine justice, and sola gratia—but I think he’s surer of his answer to another, smaller question: Why did God reveal election at all?

Calvin thinks he speaks for God when he argues we are better off knowing of God’s sovereignty than not knowing of it. But that doesn’t mean we can fully comprehend or understand God’s sovereignty—or God’s justice. And it doesn’t mean we are invited to sit in judgment on whether this was a good idea on God’s part! The doctrine, Calvin thinks, was revealed to bless us—to offer the benefits we’ve spoken of—but not to tickle our ears!

Let me move on to something else we cannot fully understand, but which we often think we know everything about: our will. When I teach Calvin’s doctrine to seminary students, I don’t just teach Presbyterians. I also teach Methodists, Baptists, Mennonites, charismatics and Pentecostals, Episcopalians, the occasional Roman Catholic, and often a Lutheran or two.

Here’s what I tell them all. On the one hand, I don’t care if you’re not converted to believe in the doctrine of predestination. The doctrine of election does not stand or fall by whether we believe it: if it’s true, it’s true whether we know it or not, or believe it or not. On the other hand, I’ll be very disappointed if you hang on to an understanding of the human will that is inflated and idolatrous.

The Second Helvetic Confession is quite helpful on this point, especially chapter 9, which states concisely that although we were created with free will, our wills were damaged at the fall and are consequently enslaved by sin.

They remain enslaved until grace intervenes. Our new life in Christ begins to restore our wills, but in this life our wills remain weak. All along, we really do have a will, but we shouldn’t exaggerate what it can do!

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do our wills so often unmake their own decisions and commitments?

Augustine reminds us that our wills may be but in belonging to God—indeed, in being free to make choices, but they remain enslaved. The Second Helvetic Confession reminds God’s obedient creature. us that our wills are weak but recovering.

Modern psychology reminds us that our wills are affected by an ocean of unseen factors. In This strikes me as immensely realistic, and immensely all of this, we can see that our wills need the grace of God. encouraging. It explains a lot of the struggle in my own There’s a second point from Augustine worth life—why bad habits are so hard to break; why good habits amplifying. Nothing is more American than doggedly are so hard to make; why I retrace my character flaws over asserting the right to choose—candidates, brand and over again. But the Second Helvetic Confession is also preferences, cars, homes, spouses. It was a cornerstone of encouraging. We may still sin, but we are also in recovery!

Pelagius’ theology that without freedom and free choice, Reformed and Augustinian theology ought to be there is no humanity left in us. I’m sure you can hear credited above all for having a sober view of the self—in similar views expressed in any congregation. many ways, a truly modern or contemporary Does choice make us human? Augustine didn’t think understanding of the complex self. We can use insights so. Is God free? Absolutely! But does God choose, does from our Reformed heritage to make a case in our God deliberate? No: God’s wisdom and power enable God preaching that sola gratia is not just some sentimental always to know and do what is the highest good. So, do thought, but a doctrine that truly confronts the modern you want to have free choice, or do you want to be like and postmodern self in all its brokenness. Consider these God? Augustine wanted to be like God: not to have to sort insights: First, Augustine is correct about the complexity of out good choices from powerful temptations, not to have the will. It’s almost as if he’d read the Bible, like where to deliberate, but to have one’s character confirmed and Jeremiah says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and stabilized for all eternity in the unchanging goodness that is desperately corrupt; who can understand it?” (17:9). This God. What do you hope for in heaven? A menu with lesson ought to be no surprise, since psychologists and infinite choices? Or the constancy of the vision of God? psychiatrists have been telling us of the role of our Let’s try a thought experiment. Is love free? Probably subconsciousness for over a century now! you’d say it is, maybe even that it’s the pinnacle of human Do you know yourself? Do you really understand what freedom. Well, I want you to think of someone you love you do and why you do it? Most of the time, I don’t! very much. Close your eyes. For the next five seconds, Perhaps you never sin or act in selfish ways, but probably use your free will and stop loving that person. 1. 2. 3. 4. you do: so why do we do what we know is wrong— 5. Okay, how’d you do? Did you stop? Why not? Isn’t whether it involves self-indulgence, anger, deceit, or love free? Let’s go deeper: How did you come to fall in selfishness? Why are our wills so unstable? Lots of people love with this person? Do you know? Were you in will claim that they have free will, but wouldn’t we also control? In the same way, isn’t the problem of divine want to notice the ways their “free” choices are affected by election really the problem of how people fall in love with nature and nurture, by environment, circumstances, God? Can you make someone fall in love with you? With personality and mood swings?

God? How does it happen? Is it a free act? Or is that really If we’re going to talk at all about “free will,” we ought not the question? to do so with sophistication. So you might ask yourself (By the way, if free choice makes us human, what whether you’ve even used your free will today! What happens to those who lose this faculty, or who never had would that look like? When the alarm goes off, do you it? If your humanity depends on your ability to exercise deliberate afresh whether to get up? Do you analyze which free will, what shall we say when Alzheimer’s takes over? shirt to wear, or do you grab whatever’s close to hand?

If we belong to God in life and death, surely we belong to How many of your “decisions” are not decisions at all, but God also in our competence and our incompetence. Here, habits? And what has formed your habits? too, the grace of God trumps our volition.)

Indeed, what has shaped your taste buds? When you Although defenders of free will have sometimes go to one of those restaurants with a hundred entrees, do suggested that it is a violation of our freedom or autonomy you really make a rational choice about what to order, or do if God works within us to influence our will, the Reformed you flip back and forth between the two entrees that “you tradition holds otherwise. Think about your own just can’t resist”? It’s lovely to find a menu that has so experience with God. Think of a time when you felt led much power over us: ah, Death by Chocolate! But at what by the Holy Spirit, a time when God’s guiding presence level are you really using your will? Maybe you’re on a diet, was so close, and you found yourself in unlikely and you may think your will is resisting temptation. But circumstances doing unlikely things. Was that a violation why not use your will once and for all to just decide that of your personhood? Or was it rather the height of you won’t find this or that thing tempting anymore? Why freedom, to live within God’s will without distraction? I’d

Our highest freedom is not in autonomy,

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vote for the latter, and it strikes me that this is a vision that needs to be communicated to Christians today: our highest freedom is not in autonomy, but in belonging to God— indeed, in being God’s obedient creature.

Note, too, that neither side is somehow in a better position with respect to the commands of Scripture. I’m thinking in particular of the claim that predestination makes prayer superfluous. If a person is predestined, they say, that person will be saved with or without my prayers.

Only if there really is such a thing as free choice does it make sense to pray for someone.

That’s an inadequate analysis. If my salvation depends on my own free choice, doesn’t it compromise my freedom if you were to pray for me? What could you pray for? You certainly couldn’t pray that God would manipulate my free choosing or willing, could you? So if the free will is impervious to external influences, as Pelagius asserted, how do we come to faith?

I don’t think we are invited to take either extreme. The God who is sovereign over all life has commanded us to pray for others. However God works in the lives of men and women, God will act in a way that establishes and deepens the integrity of their personhood rather than negating or destroying it.

To conclude: I have been trying to argue not only that the doctrine of salvation by grace alone is a wonderful doctrine, but also that faithful adherence to this Reformation insight ought to recognize the continuity between sola gratia and the doctrine of election.

To that end, I have suggested that predestination is indeed a biblical doctrine as well as a respected (if often misunderstood) teaching within Christian tradition. In my opinion, the most common objection to the doctrine is that free will and human responsibility are thereby destroyed.

Hence, I’ve tried to argue not that we don’t really have free will, but that our wills and persons are more complex than often granted, and that the objection that freedom is destroyed if God is sovereign over our wills is not really true to Christian experience.

Let me leave you with a thought that you can find expressed both by Calvin and by the Second Helvetic Confession (Institutes 3.24.5, SHC 10)—a word of advice that I pass on to you and that I’d have you pass on to every Christian: Let Christ be the mirror of your election.

What does that mean? Among other things, it means that we are not saved because we believe in a doctrine of election. Rather, we are saved by Christ! As I said earlier, you don’t need to believe in election to be elect! In this passage, Calvin urges his hearers to draw near to Jesus Christ above all. You should not go to the mirror and stare at your own image, as if you could somehow discern in yourself some sign of election.

If you want to know if you are elect, there’s only one sort of question needed, and one focus for our proclamation: Do you believe in Christ? Do you know the fellowship of Jesus Christ? Do you know the love of God that has been poured out through the Holy Spirit? Does

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the Spirit within your heart cry out “Abba, Father”? If so, then you know the grace of God, to which alone you may credit your salvation and redemption. And, if so, it might interest you to know that none of this surprised God, and, as it happens, you are also among the elect.

Thanks be to God: may this knowledge keep you humble, and truly free you from fear. ■

John L. Thompson is professor of historical theology and Gaylen and Susan Byker Professor of Reformed Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary (Pasadena, California). This article was abridged from a paper originally given at the 2004 PFR National Presbyterian Seminarians’ Conference.

Speaking Of… WHETHER WE ARE ELECTED We therefore find fault with those who outside of Christ ask whether they are elected. And what has God decreed concerning them before all eternity? For the preaching of the gospel is to be heard, and it is to be believed; and it is to be held as beyond doubt that if you believe and are in Christ, you are elected. For the Father has revealed unto us in Christ the eternal purpose of his predestination, as I have just now shown from the apostle in II Tim. 1:9-10. This is therefore above all to be taught and considered, what great love of the Father toward us is revealed to us in Christ. We must hear what the Lord himself daily preaches to us in the gospel, how he calls and says: "Come to me all who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11:28). "God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16). Also, "It is not the will of my Father that one of these little ones should perish" (Matt. 18:14).

Let Christ, therefore be the looking glass, in whom we may contemplate our predestination. We shall have a sufficiently clear and sure testimony that we are inscribed in the Book of Life if we have fellowship with Christ, and he is ours and we are his in true faith.

— (Taken from The Second Helvetic Confession, Chapter 10, Of the Predestination of God and the Election of Saints)

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The Lutheran Doctrine of Predestination: A Melanchthonian Perspective

by Scott L. Keith

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n the earliest editions of his Loci Communes Theologici in order to bless all nations on the earth, that is, to redeem (“Common Topics of Theology”), Luther’s friend and them from sin and death, to justify and to save them.” 4 colleague Philip Melanchthon did not address in great Here one sees the many similarities between Luther and detail the doctrine of predestination. In the Loci of 1521, Melanchthon. for instance, he discussed it only briefly in the section Yet Luther places more importance on the fact that dealing with the freedom of the human will. Following election is all part of God’s immutable sovereignty. In the teaching of Luther he stated: “If you relate human will Melanchthon, we can see Luther’s affirmation of the to predestination, there is freedom in neither external nor sovereign will of God effectuated through the universal internal acts, but all things take place according to call of the gospel. Always affirming that it is the power of determination.”1 Other than this statement, he avoided the Holy Spirit that allows us to believe, Melanchthon the discussion of predestination, stating that man should explains that we must, therefore, assent to the promise of be very cautious about delving into the mysteries of God, the gospel. Luther teaches that we are unable to ascend to but rather look to Christ and his redemption.

God and reiterates the absolute necessity for God to Later in his career (c. 1535), however, while never descend to us. “They are elect,” Peter says. How? “Not of claiming to drift from the doctrine as taught by Luther, he themselves but according to God’s purpose; for we are not began to focus not on the sovereignty of God and his able to raise ourselves to heaven or create faith within power to elect, but rather on God’s gift of election as a ourselves. God will not admit all men into heaven. He comfort to the Christian believer. “First, he has will very carefully count those who belong to him.”5 The demonstrated with manifest miracles that there certainly is difference is thus subtle, but real. For both men, the faith a definite gathering of people which he loves, cares for, that results from the election of God on account of Christ and will adorn with blessings…. And in order that we is a gift of God through the Word. Yet, for Melanchthon, may continue to possess this it is necessary to act on this gift, comfort, it is useful to say while Luther allows this gift of In his formulation of the doctrine something about the doctrine God to stand alone through of predestination.”2 Thus, grace. In other words, Luther’s of election, Melanchthon believers are to cling to the doctrine of election is summed words of Christ in John 10:27, up by the Reformation continually placed great stress on “My sheep hear my voice, and hallmarks, sola gratia soli Deo Gloria (by grace alone and to I know them and they follow God’s electing people on account God alone goes all the glory). me, and I give them life On the other hand, for eternal, and they shall never of Christ through faith.

Melanchthon, election can be perish, and no one will snatch explicated by the phrase, them out of my hands.” propter Christum per fidem (on account of Christ through Therefore, says Melanchthon, a Church of the elect will faith). always remain.

In his formulation of the doctrine of election, The Formula of Concord, which is the Lutheran Melanchthon continually placed great stress on God’s confession written seventeen years after Melanchthon’s electing people on account of Christ through faith. death, in many ways reads as though it had been written Furthermore, election is never to be viewed apart from the by him. It affirms all the hallmarks of a Melanchthonian view of election: gospel message. In many ways, the same could be said of Luther. In fact, on this point the two men were not as 1. Election as Propter Christum: “We should accordingly different as some have thought. Says Luther: “If men consider God’s eternal election in Christ, and not believe the gospel, they shall be saved. Indeed all the outside of it.”6 saints have had confidence and comfort with their election and with eternal life, not because of a special revelation of 2. The universal call to repentance and belief: “If we want their predestination, but rather by faith in Christ.”3 When to consider our election to salvation profitably, we must asked where to look for assurance of election, Luther by all means cling rigidly and firmly to the fact that as responds, “Rather, hold to the promise of the gospel. This the proclamation of repentance extends over all men will teach that Christ, God’s only son, came into the world (Luke 24:47), so also does the promise of the gospel.”7

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3. The elect are brought into salvation per fidem: “God has ordained in his counsel that the Holy Spirit would call, enlighten, and convert the elect through the Word and that he would justify and save all who accept Christ through faith.”8 4. Finally, that the only cause of reprobation is man’s stubborn will in rejecting the call through the Word: “The reason for such contempt of the Word is not God’s foreknowledge but man’s perverse will.”9 The Formula of Concord, though, goes further in delineating the difference between God’s eternal foreknowledge and God’s eternal decree of election. The Formula states that God’s eternal foreknowledge extends to all while his eternal election extends only to the children of God.10 In doing so, the Formula clarifies an area that Melanchthon (with his stress on faith) leaves unclear. It affirms a sort of “middle road” between Luther and Melanchthon. God’s decree of election remains sovereign and his call universal.

“Our election to eternal life does not rest on our piety or virtue but solely on the merit of Christ and the gracious will of the Father, who cannot deny himself because he is changeless in his will and essence.”11 Later Lutheranism, as represented by the seventeenth-century dogmaticians, did not always follow this careful formulation. Some of the dogmaticians lost this paradoxical image of God as having a will that is both partly hidden and partly revealed, sovereign and merciful, the freedom of his divine will and the bondage of ours, the careful distinction between God’s Law and his life-giving Gospel. In many of the dogmaticians, these concepts were philosophically formalized, thus losing their life and vitality. The careful molding of Luther’s concept of God’s sovereign will with Melanchthon’s teaching of God’s saving will was lost. Rather, many of the great dogmaticians followed Melanchthon’s emphasis on God’s universal saving will alone. This led many (for example, the great Johann Gerhard) to teach the synergistic doctrine of intuitu fidei (God elects in view of foreseen faith). The efficacy of God’s eternal decree became dependent on the faith of each individual. God wills all to be saved, but God’s will does not come to pass unless we make the decision to believe. This led many to look to themselves for assurance rather than to Christ. Faith became a human work which had the ability to manipulate the decree of God. The result is a theology that focuses on man rather than God, a theology of glory rather than the theology of the Cross.

scriptural teaching that the gospel must be believed. That we must trust in Christ alone as our only hope for salvation is the whole of the good news of Christ. This Melanchthon not only affirmed but taught until his death.

Yet, to take this doctrine and lose sight of God’s sovereignty to save those whom he elects is to go against the Scriptures themselves. This Melanchthon did not do.

Nevertheless, it must be admitted that Melanchthon’s followers took his emphasis on faith and the universality of the call beyond his own position, and thereby fell into great error. Our faith must not be seen as the cause of our election. Rather, faith is the product of election through the Word, by which we are brought into the benefits of Christ. As Melanchthon himself has said: “God’s mercy is the cause of election, but it is necessary that this be revealed in the Word and that the Word be accepted. Thus he definitely offers this universally, and this is repeated in other chapters: ‘All who believe in the Son shall not be confounded (Rom. 9:33; 10:11).’”12 This article originally appeared in Modern Reformation, November/December 1998. It has been shortened in this reprint.

Scott L. Keith serves as an elder and catechism instructor at Bethlehem Lutheran Church (Carson City, Nevada), where he is currently teaching a twelve-week series on the Augsburg Confession.

WORKS CITED Philip Melanchthon, Loci Communes Theologici (1521), trans. Lowell J. Satre, ed. Whilhelm Pauk (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969), p. 30.

2 Philip Melanchthon, Loci Communes (1543), trans. J. A. O. Preus (St. Louis: Concordia, 1992), p. 172.

3 Luther’s Werke, Weimar edition (1883), 21: 514.

4 Luther’s Works, St. Louis edition (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1963), 9: 1115.

5 Luther’s Werke, Weimar edition (ProQuest, 1883), 12: 262.

6 The Book of Concord, ed. Theodore J. Tappert (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1959), Solid Declaration, XI, p. 65.

7 Tappert, Solid Declaration, XI, p. 28.

8 Tappert, Solid Declaration, XI, p. 40.

9 Tappert, Solid Declaration, XI, p. 41.

10 Tappert, Solid Declaration, XI, pp. 4, 5.

11 Tappert, Solid Declaration, XI, p. 75.

12 Loci Praecipui Theologici (1559), Corpus Reformatorum 21, 919 (trans. Scott L. Keith, 1998).

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Conclusion Much can be learned from Melanchthon’s teaching concerning election. It is certainly profitable and biblical to view election not on the basis of Law but on the basis of the Gospel. Surely, it is proper to teach that the entire number of those who are to be saved is chosen (electus) for the sake of Christ (propter Christum), and we should seek no other cause. Great benefit is also found in affirming the J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 3 3

GRACE: HOW STRANGE THE SOUND

A Lutheran Response to Arminianism

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ince the seventeenth century, Calvinism has been identified with its five-point reply to the Arminian party at the Synod of Dort. Calvinists often complain that this summary of their theology, though accurate in expressing the Calvinists’ disagreement with their Arminian opponents, presents a truncated view of what Calvinism really is. Where in the five points do we hear of the covenant or of union with Christ? To properly understand a theology, we must not only know what it says to its opponents, but we need to know how it is to be presented on its own terms.

If a five-point summary is an awkward way to present Calvinism, it is downright foreign to Lutheranism. This is not because Lutheranism lacks a defined doctrine of election. (It certainly has one.) God’s gracious election of certain individuals to salvation was affirmed in Article X of the Formula of Concord, the last of the Lutheran confessions.

The darker side of predestination has also been considered.

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RICK RITCHIE

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As the great Lutheran theologian Hermann Sasse wrote, Lutheran theology knows about the God of Predestination: This God who makes us responsible for demands which we cannot fulfill, who asks us questions which we cannot answer, who created us for good and yet leaves us no other choice than to do evil—this is the Deus absconditus. This is the God of absolute Predestination. This is the God who hardened Pharaoh’s heart, who hated Esau even before he was born, the Potter who fashions pots and before whom one shrinks—and who, nevertheless, thunders in pitiless sovereignty at these unhappy creatures, ‘Tua culpa!’ Thine is the guilt!1 The reason Lutheranism has never been presented according to a five-point scheme is not because it lacks the doctrines that would allow that, but because the Arminians never issued to the Lutherans a five-point refutation of their supposed errors. Lutheran pastors and theologians had enough to keep them busy in teaching

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their doctrine rightly and refuting those who directly attacked them. Little would have been gained by refuting the errors of somebody else’s opponents.

Today the story is different. While presenting its doctrine according to a five-point system is not the most natural way to present the Lutheran doctrines of grace, it is almost necessitated by the fact that American evangelicals have come of age in an environment where the theological categories have been defined by others, and most of those others have been Arminians.

Unless our doctrines are presented in a way such that the contrasts with Arminianism are easily seen, even an otherwise clear presentation of the Lutheran doctrines will produce confusion. For one thing, superficial similarities between the two systems could easily be mistaken for areas of agreement. In addition, there are doctrines that have a fit within the whole structure of Lutheranism, but will at first glance appear disastrous on account of the logical implications that would result from their adoption into an Arminian system. Ribbed vaulting and massive gargoyles might crush a building with glass walls, but it will fit splendidly onto the top of a cathedral whose stone columns and flying buttresses are designed to support their weight.

Arminian Principles Rejected he best way to compare two theological positions is to compare their underlying principles. According to J. I. Packer, the theological position of the Remonstrants (Arminians) came from two philosophical principles:

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After the fall, God gives everyone sufficient grace to cooperate with him for salvation.

God predestined those whom he foresaw would come to faith to final salvation.

Christ took upon himself the sins of the whole world and made it possible for individuals to decide whether to be saved.

God’s grace can be resisted by man’s free choice. The elect are those whom God foresees will use their own free choice to accept and not resist his offer.

Any Christian may use his or her free choice to fall away from the faith.

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[F]irst, that divine sovereignty is not compatible with human freedom, nor therefore with human responsibility; second, that ability limits obligation.

(The charge of semi-Pelagianism was thus fully justified.) From these principles, the Arminians drew two deductions: first, that since the Bible regards faith as a free and responsible human act, it cannot be caused by God, but is exercised independently of Him; second, that since the Bible regards faith as obligatory on the part of all who hear the gospel, ability to believe must be universal.2 Lutheranism lines up behind Packer and finds these principles to be abhorrent. While Lutheranism never had the occasion to come up against the five points of Arminianism, it had several opportunities to fight against the underlying Arminian principles.

At first glance, Lutheranism might appear to be an amalgamation of Calvinism and Arminianism because, with regard to the five points, it seems to agree with Calvinism on some points and Arminianism on others. We must be careful, however, to look at the underlying principles that motivated the positions. When we do this, we will find that Lutheranism is not in fundamental agreement with the Remonstrants on any of the five points. To demonstrate this, I have put the positions side-by-side (see comparative chart on Arminian and Lutheran positions below).

The two positions of Lutheranism and Arminianism are clearly different at each point, even where there are some similarities. The guiding motif in Arminianism is the free

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After the fall, man is by nature hostile to God. By his own power, he is only able to reject God.

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God’s grace is resistible when he works through means. Nevertheless, his eternal choice to save his chosen will not be thwarted; the elect will not succeed in resisting to the end.

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While some true Christians believe for a time and later fall away, the elect will be brought to faith and kept in faith until God brings them to glory.

God predestined those whom he loved from all eternity to come to faith and salvation.

Christ took upon himself the sins of the whole world and provided a perfect redemption. God himself provides the faith that grasps the redemption offered.

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election was in conflict with the doctrine of justification by faith alone. The Missouriflip side of the ability to decide for Christ, for we do not Synod theologians claimed that the opposite was true. hold that man has that ability.

Election and justification by faith alone together will of man, but in Lutheranism this is rejected. God is the guarantee that salvation is all of grace. Both tell us that main actor in Lutheranism. While the accompanying salvation does not come to us on the basis of merit. Just as chart ought to be sufficient to show that Lutheranism and receiving salvation by means of faith guarantees that we do Arminianism are incompatible, there are two points which not contribute to salvation, as faith is a gift from God and it will be especially profitable to look into more deeply: merely receptive, so also, knowing that God predestined us apostasy and unconditional election. to salvation before we had done anything good or evil guarantees the same thing—unless we say that God chose The Problem of Apostasy us because he saw that we would come to faith. oth the Arminians and the Lutherans believe that Some of the theologians who claimed that election took a true Christian can fall from the faith. When two place in view of foreseen faith wanted to make election groups of Christians hold to the same doctrine, we into a form of justification that took place in eternity. Just usually are inclined to guess that they hold their position as God reckoned a person righteous in time when a person for the same reasons, that a common principle leads them trusted him, these theologians said that God would make to a common conclusion. In the case of apostasy, both the this declaration in eternity when he looked into the future Arminians and the Lutherans would cite some of the same and saw this faith. The Missouri-Synod theologians said biblical passages in support of their position (e.g., Heb. that they did not so much object to the content of this view 6:4ff, 2 Pet. 2:1), but the Lutheran would reject the as much as the language. Perhaps this was the case, they philosophical baggage concerning the glories of free will, concluded, but this was not what the Scriptures meant which would be the stronger element in the Arminian case when they talked about election. for apostasy.

What was more insidious was that some theologians For the Arminian, the ability to fall away from grace is saw faith to be a human contribution to salvation. It was merely the flip side of the individual’s ability to decide for not a work of God the Holy Spirit who brought a person to Christ. If we can decide to accept him, it stands to reason faith through the message of the gospel, but a work of that we must also have the power to reject him. man—man’s small contribution to his salvation. This For the Lutheran, the ability to fall from grace is not the resembled the Arminian argument that God had lowered flip side of the ability to decide for Christ, for we do not the cost of salvation to bargain-basement prices; instead of hold that man has that ability. The use of the term ability keeping the law, now God just required faith. This type of is even somewhat misleading in this context. We might as faith was no faith at all. It was a hindrance to faith! well speak of the ability of an unconscious man to drown This matter had come up in the Lutheran church more in water. The ability to drown is not a special branch of than once before. Philip Melanchthon, Luther’s coswimming, and neither is apostasy a special branch of reformer and one of the authors of the Lutheran spiritual ability. confessions, said later in his career that there were three causes of election, man’s nonresistance to grace being one The Unconditional Election of Grace of these causes. Later theologians sometimes fell into round the turn of the century, the matter of speaking of conversion as the result of “new powers predestination became the subject of furious debate imparted by grace,” or “right conduct over against grace.” within the American Lutheran church. If you have This always turned out to be the grossest form of heard that predestination is not a Lutheran issue, you have moralism. The “faith” that is required bears an uncanny heard wrong. The controversy erupted over the question of resemblance to works. In each case the sinner is thrown whether election was a cause of faith, or faith a cause of back onto himself for deliverance. election. Hundreds of articles on the nature of election A person’s stand on unconditional election is indicative of appeared in the theological journals of the Lutheran church his true adherence to salvation by grace alone through faith bodies involved in the dispute. People were even barred alone. If nonresistance or right conduct become the grounds from communion over it. In short, the debate was over the of election, you can bet that the “faith alone” that is being doctrine that the Calvinists refer to as unconditional election. talked about is not faith at all, but a work of man. Credit may The Missouri-Synod theologians claimed that the cause be given to God after the fact for giving us this power, but of God’s election was his graciousness toward individuals, who could see in this type of faith the empty hand of which not any faith, goodness, or receptiveness—not even lack of the reformers spoke? A new power from God may sound resistance—that he saw in them. The theologians of the like a gracious gift, but beware! If the new power is the other Lutheran church bodies said that this view of ability to save oneself by following the right principles, it is

For the Lutheran, the ability to fall from grace is not the

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best left unwrapped. The Missouri-Synod theologians were very careful to ensure that gifts remained gifts and good news remained good news. If we wish to do the same, we had better guard our doctrine of unconditional election.

Concluding Advice or those who have grown up under the prevailing teaching in American churches (I mean Arminianism), Reformation theology often comes across as unusual. Even when it does not, it is often passed off as a peripheral issue. “I don’t care how I was saved, I just care that I was saved,” is a common response from those who assume that they can know that they were saved when they don’t know how. This is no side issue, however. Wrong principles on this issue will always lead to disaster, in this life if by grace not in the next.

If you want to discover just how pervasive Arminian principles are, just check to see how many clear biblical passages you have been systematically taught to misinterpret. How many times has the verse “Behold I stand at the door and knock” (Rev. 3:20) been taken to mean Christ standing at the door of our hearts asking us if we will let him save us, when it is Christ standing at the door to the church in Laodicea? How often have we heard that “God has voted for us, Satan has voted against us, and we cast the deciding vote” when Romans 8:31 teaches that if God is for us who can be against us? We are told to make a decision for Christ, but we say that we do not want to be bothered with hearing about what he has decided about us.

If the introduction to Reformation theology is causing some grief, do not be surprised. That is normal. To find out that God has no interest in allowing our destiny to remain in our hands is a scary thought only when we trust ourselves more than God. It might cause sleepless nights.

It might inspire heated arguments. We might wish to avoid these for the sake of love—but love of what?

Certainly not God. God is the primary one to whom we relate, and he will not have one of his creatures loved above himself. To avoid dealing with central questions concerning salvation out of love is not spiritual; it is carnal.

Any time spent on these issues will be worthily spent.

Read about these things. Do not assume that since these arguments have been going on for centuries, there must be no solution. You might be surprised to find that at least at the level of basic principles, the Bible is quite clear. The fact that the debate has run on for centuries does not mean that equally clear-minded Christians could not come to agreement, but that there are spiritual factors that prevent Reformation principles from being accepted.

The old Adamic nature loves itself above God and wants to be captain of its own destiny. This, and not God’s lack of clarity on vital issues, is why the conflict continues. If you wish to become convinced of this, take and read. ■

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For Further Reading Conversion and Election: A Plea for a United Lutheranism in America by Franz Pieper. This book was written by Lutheranism’s greatest American dogmatician. This book gives one of the best overviews available of the Lutheran position on election.

Lutheran Confessional Theology in America, 18401880 edited by Theodore G. Tappert. Several of the chapters are articles written by theologians during Lutheranism’s predestinarian controversy. The articles

by C.F.W. Walther, the founder of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, are especially good.

Here We Stand: The Nature and Character of Lutheranism by Hermann Sasse. This book, among other things, puts the doctrine of predestination into its Lutheran context. Read it to discover what Luther had to say about God hidden and revealed.

Let God Be God! by Phillip Watson. This is another work that gives an overview of Lutheran theology.

This one, however, deals more specifically with Luther than the Lutheran church.

author to Christ the Lord: The Reformation and Lordship Salvation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992).

This article originally appeared in Modern Reformation, May/June 1992.

WORKS CITED 1 Hermann Sasse, Here We Stand: Nature and Character of the Lutheran Faith, trans. by Theodore G. Tappert (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1938), pp.

138–139. Sasse is here speaking of the hidden God. This is God in his unfathomable majesty. When we are looking at the hidden God, predestination is double. But Sasse is also committed to the single predestination of the Lutheran confessions. Single predestination is a doctrine in light of God as he has revealed himself in Christ.

Sasse says that what we have here are two sides of God which cannot be harmonized without doing violence to Scripture. I suggest that my readers read this chapter in Sasse before charging him or me with departing from the Lutheran confessions on this point.

2 J. I. Packer, Introductory Essay to John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1983), pp. 3–4.

Rick Ritchie is a graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (South Hamilton, Massachusetts) and contributing J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 3 7

INTERVIEW f o r

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An Interview with Roger Olson

Arminian Theology In February 2007, editor-in-chief Michael Horton interviewed Roger Olson, a professor at Truett Seminary at Baylor University (Waco, Texas) and author of several books, including The Mosaic of Christian Beliefs: Twenty Centuries of Unity and Diversity (InterVarsity Press, 2002) and The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition and Reform (InterVarsity, 1999). His most recent book is Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (InterVarsity Press, 2006).

First of all, what provoked you to write a book titled Arminian Theology?

Well, the subtitle is important, too, and that is “Myths and Realities.”

The idea for the book goes back a long way. I grew up Pentacostal and we were always Arminian, of course. I first encountered the term in college from one of my teachers.

When I went to a Baptist Evangelical seminary, a couple of my professors spoke to me about Arminianism in fairly disparaging ways. And yet they didn’t seem to be Calvinists, really, and so I was kind of confused. One of them said to me, “Arminianism always leads to liberal theology,” and that provoked some thoughts in my mind because I knew that we Pentecostals weren’t liberal, and I knew Nazarenes and other Holiness people who were Arminians that weren’t liberal theologically, so I began the journey of trying to understand what would cause someone to say that. Years later I picked up an issue of Modern Reformation and read it, and it was the issue on Arminianism. And I read right through it, all the way, and said to myself, “No, this isn’t Arminianism as I know it,” so the book began to formulate in my mind right then. I don’t know if it’s ironic or serendipitous or providential, probably, that I’m being interviewed by this magazine.

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Geneva and probably never did fully agree with some of the Calvinist tenets that he learned there and that he knew from growing up in the Netherlands. And so when he began teaching theology at the University of Leiden, he began to [laughter] Well, first of all, Roger, object to some of the more stringent if you could give us a historical (he thought), beliefs of Calvinism sketch of Arminius. Who was the there and argued for a view of peoArminius behind Arminianism? ple having free will given to them In the late 1500’s, Jacob Arminius

by God through prevenient grace grew up in Holland. He was away at and so forth. Arminianism then school when his whole became launched and family was slaughtered he died in the middle of by the Spanish who the heat of the discusA couple of my were occupying Holland sion over it and his folprofessors spoke lowers called the at that time, or what was called United Remonstrants picked up to me about Provinces, Holland from when he died and being one of them.

Arminianism in fairly continued it. Often the When Spain was occutwo terms are equated, disparaging ways. Arminianism and the pying the United Provinces, there was a Remonstrants. great deal of fear of Roman Catholicism there. Jacob came back Is it true, Roger, that one of the to the Netherlands and pastored for things that began to draw controa while and soon received an versial fire was Arminius’ interpreappointment as professor of theolotation of Romans 7 as not refergy at the University of Leiden, and ring to the life of a believer? there he was a colleague of Right. One of his earliest writings, a Franciscus Gomarus, who was a commentary of Romans 7, argued Calvinist of a particular sort, I would that this is the testimony of somesay, not just a garden variety one who is not yet saved, and that Calvinist, but a supra-lapsarian, and when Paul is talking about the they came into conflict with each struggle between the flesh and the other. The story is that Arminius Spirit and so forth in Romans 7, he was asked to refute the teachings of means before he became a another theologian—I think his Christian. Most people in that time, name was Dirck Coornhert, who and many people today, interpret it had rejected some of the major otherwise, that it describes the tenets of Calvinism, and in that Christian condition of the typical process, Arminius came to believe believer, the struggle between flesh that Calvinism was incorrect. and Spirit, the “always righteous Actually, that’s probably a myth. He and sinner at the same time.” In studied under Theodore Beza at that essay, and I’ve read it very

carefully, Arminius argues what John Wesley later argued. In fact, if I could just insert here that I have been unable to find any significant disagreements between Arminius and Wesley theologically. Arminius was a Wesleyan before Wesley—he believed in Christian perfection; he did believe it was possible by the grace of God, not by our own effort, to live a sinlessly perfect life in the sense of not sinning presumptuously. He didn’t claim that for himself, he didn’t name anyone he knew who did that, he just thought it was a possibility. Yes, that provoked a lot of controversy.

Arminianism—as you point out, a lot of debate swirls around what Arminius himself taught, but don’t things get even more dicey when you talk about Arminian-ism, since there seem to be so many descriptions not only by non-Arminians, but so many different versions of Arminianism professed by people who call themselves Arminians?

Exactly. And that does create a problem, and it’s complex trying to describe Arminianism. You have to wade through a lot of that, but I don’t see it as any different, really, from Reformed theology which has many branches to it and many interpretations of it from outside and from inside. And so what I do in the book is just go back to Arminius in every chapter and ask, “What did Arminius say about this?” and then go to the Remonstrants—the leading ones, like Simon Episcopius, who was Arminius’ successor and founded the Remonstrant Seminary in Holland, and then go to Philipp van Limborch, who was a little more left-wing I would say. My main distinction throughout the history of Arminianism is borrowed from Alan P. R. Sell who was the theological secretary of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches for years and is still an active theologian. He distinguishes between “Arminianism of the head,” which I trace back to Philipp van Limborch, a

Arminianism has always stressed and emphasized the initiative of God by prevenient grace.

Remonstrant in the 1600’s, and “Arminianism of the heart,” which was typified by both Arminius and Wesley. I call Arminianism of the heart “evangelical Arminianism.”

Yes, one of the things you point out that I thought was interesting was that the kind of Arminianism that leads to liberalism pretty easily is the “Arminianism of the head” rather than the “Arminianism of the heart.” Could you explain that a little?

Yes. Well I think the story there begins with Philipp van Limborch, although I’ve read some Reformed critics who want to trace it back to Simon Episcopius, but I’ve been unable to find this “Arminianism of the head” in him. I believe Philipp Limborch taught at the Remonstrant Seminary and with him we see the beginnings of something new in the stream of Arminian thought, and that is what I would consider a semi-Pelagian tendency, a more optimistic view with regard to human nature, minimizing the necessity of grace, elevation of reason as the main thing people need in order to become converted and live a Christian life.

And it isn’t a total shift, but you see the beginning of a shift leftward that did, I think, lead to deism, perhaps Unitarianism, but strangely enough to Finney. And when I read Limborch and Finney, who lived a couple hundred years apart, they were saying the same thing.

I thought that was fascinating in your book. It’s always nice to be able to quote an Arminian pointing out how heterodox Charles Finney was. He was definitely not your garden-variety Arminian, was he?

I don’t call him an Arminian at all.

In fact, in the book I quote Finney

himself about Jonathan Edwards. Of Jonathan Edwards Finney said, “The man I adore, his mistakes I deplore.” And I say that of Finney: “The man as an evangelist I adore, but his theological mistakes I deplore.” And I do not consider him an Arminian.

You point out in your book that you think most of American evangelicalism tends toward Finney’s brand of semi-Pelagianism more than Arminianism.

Right. In fact in the book, near the beginning I say, with my Reformed friends, that garden variety evangelicalism in the pews—and too often in the pulpits—is semi-Pelagian, not Arminian. And yet it gets called Arminian by many people. The whole point of my book is to distinguish between those, between semiPelagianism and Arminianism, and I agree with critics who say that American evangelical Christianity is by and large semi-Pelagian—in the sense that they believe we take the initiative. I call it the theology of “Touched by an Angel.” In that TV show, many times the angels would say to people, “All you have to do is reach out toward God, and then he’ll come down and reach out to you.” And there are songs, of course, that say much the same thing. And that’s not Arminianism.

Arminianism has always stressed and emphasized the initiative of God by prevenient grace.

You’ve nicely spelled out the difference between Arminianism and semi-Pelagianism. As we get to the differences between Reformation Christianity and Arminianism, would you say that the most basic difference is monergism versus synergism—in other words, God alone saving versus our cooperating, enabled by

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When Calvinists look at us, they say, “Well, if we were going to be Arminians, we’d have to believe that the human person has a meritorious role in salvation.” But we don’t believe that. grace, even willing, by God’s grace?

In other words, enabling our cooperation with his grace by his grace.

Right.

You and I have had these talks before, of course, and I don’t know that we’ll ever totally agree on what Reformation theology was. Luther was a monergist—I certainly agree with that—Calvin was, of course…

But if you look at Melanchthon, Luther’s right hand man and real successor theologically, after Luther died, Melanchthon came out very publicly as a synergist and creates a controversy and Lutherans divided over that and have ever since.

But it was rejected in the Book of Concord.

Right. I agree with you.

One of the things that I thought was very interesting, Roger—and this will come as no surprise to you—was, first of all, how eager you were in the book to make the case that Arminianism is in the mainstream of evangelical Reformation Christianity. And I guess it depends again on what our definitions are of “evangelical” here. If we’re talking about the broad evangelical movement, then certainly we would all agree that Arminianism has had a very long lineage in the evangelical movement. But if it’s defined in terms of its relation to the Reformation, justification is clearly at the heart of that. And one of the points you make, the last chapter of the book, is that you think there is a myth that Arminians don’t believe in justifi4 0 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

cation. Can you explain that?

Yes, it’s the ninth chapter. The tenth chapter is about the atonement, and so it’s the penultimate chapter. There I say that Arminian theology does not deny justification by grace through faith alone.

The chapter subtitle is “Classical Arminian theology is a Reformation theology.” It embraces divine imputation of righteousness by God’s grace through faith alone and preserves the distinction between justification and sanctification. And I give quote after quote after quote from Arminian theologians—the main voices of Arminianism have all said as much. Now, it’s possible for someone to argue that they’re inconsistent in that, and that they’re not logically allowed to say the things they say, but of course we Arminians feel the same way about Reformed theology, that there are inconsistencies there. So what I’m arguing in the chapter is not so much that they were entirely logically consistent in everything, but that they did at least affirm that salvation is totally by God’s grace through faith alone.

Okay, I have to tell you, Roger, the thing that really threw me off in that chapter, which I read with great interest, was that the main point in the chapter was to say: Arminians believe in justification, we may dot the I’s differently and cross the T’s differently, but no one can say that Arminians hold a view of justification that is different in its main points from the view that was held by the reformers in the Reformation.

Wesley himself said that.

Right. But what I found so striking was that every Wesleyan and Arminian theologian you mentioned of the nineteenth-century, you yourself quoted sections of them where they denied the imputation of Christ’s active and passive obedience. And so I scratched my head and I thought, how could we say that Arminians hold exactly the same doctrine of justification as the Reformation when the very thing the whole Reformation was over, justification as the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, was the very thing that was denied by the people you mentioned?

We’re getting into very fine points here, and it would take a long time to parse things out, but my argument in the chapter is that all of them—Richard Watson, all those nineteenth-century Methodist theologians—did affirm the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. What they didn’t necessarily affirm, and sometimes quibbled among themselves, was whether Christ’s active righteousness was imputed to us, or whether it was his passive righteousness in the atonement and suffering on the cross that was imputed to us.

But didn’t you say in some of those instances that it was a question of whether any righteousness of Christ was imputed?

No, I think that is a misreading of the chapter. If I wasn’t clear, I apologize. My intention in the chapter was to argue, based on quotations from them, that they did believe that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us, though they sometimes falter in the way they said it. And that’s a crucial thing because a lot of critics have said that the imputation of faith, of righteousness for faith, is actually making faith a work. But if you read them carefully, they deny that. The language is unfortunate—I admit that—but when you look at it carefully, what they’re really saying is it’s Christ’s righteousness that is imputed to us on account of our

faith. And that’s what I believe, and I’m an Arminian.

Okay, but then it can be construed that their formulation of justification would be that faith itself is the ground of justification.

But they all deny that in the sense of… they all argue that faith is the instrumental cause, but not the effectual cause of justification.

Okay, how about the atonement?

That was your last chapter and you point out that there is an emphasis on other theories of the atonement, but substitution is certainly there.

Yes. I can’t find the governmental theory—even a hint of it—in Arminius. He clearly affirmed the satisfaction theory. When you move on from him to the Remonstrants, Simon Episcopius, you see the beginnings of the governmental theory influenced by Hugo Grotius, who was a statesman and theologian of the time, who influenced Arminianism. So Grotius, as I argued, really developed the governmental theory, but it was never picked up by all Arminians. Wesley didn’t believe in the governmental theory, and in the nineteenth-century, two of the four leading Methodist theologians that I discussed rejected the governmental theory in favor of the substitution theory.

But for some, at least, the governmental theory was—and certainly for Finney—the preferred view of the atonement.

Yes, and it remains so for some Arminians. My only argument is it’s not the Arminian doctrine of the atonement because many Arminians have rejected it, and are quite critical of it, in fact—some of those nineteenth-century Methodist theologians are extremely critical of the governmental theory.

Roger, when push comes to shove on our respective interpretations of God’s saving work, would you

say that monergism is the real obstacle between Calvinists and Arminians?

That’s a difficult question to answer…At first blush I guess I would say so, but then as I argue in the book, there is a monergistic impulse in classical Arminianism that’s often missed by readers of Arminius. In other words, one cannot resist the initial coming of grace to a person’s life. It comes. There’s nothing you can do about it. It comes through the hearing of the Word, for example, according to Arminius. And this is another difference among Arminians—just as Calvinist, Reformed people disagree—Arminians disagree about just exactly how prevenient grace comes. I find in Arminius an emphasis on the hearing and the preaching of the Word, so when the Word is proclaimed or read, prevenient grace begins to change a person by liberating them from the bondage of the will and sin and enabling them to make a free choice to accept that grace unto salvation— or to remain in their sins, rejecting it. There’s a monergistic element in that.

everyone because salvation is always unconditional, makes God look arbitrary and, perhaps, capricious, and perhaps even that he has an evil side. So we know that Calvinists don’t say any of that, but our thought is that if we were to become Calvinists, that’s what we’d have to believe, and we can’t believe that. And then when Calvinists look at us, they say, “Well, if we were going to be Arminians, we’d have to believe that the human person has a meritorious role in salvation.” But we don’t believe that.

Roger, we really appreciate you taking the time to give us a thumbnail sketch of your book, and even though I don’t necessarily agree with all of the characterizations of Calvinist interpretations of Arminianism that you point out, and we have our remaining differences over the material content of God’s work in Jesus Christ, I am very thankful that you took the time to be with us and to help explain Arminianism in the light of some of the misrepresentations.

Yes, well thank you for giving me that opportunity. I appreciate it.

However, at the end of the day, why is it that some people are saved and others are not?

That’s an unanswerable question, just like Reformed theology can’t answer why some people are elect and others are not.

We can answer that as Reformed Christians by saying, “Because we have only ourselves to blame if we don’t. We have only God to thank if we do.” It’s not just because I resisted less than this person over here, but because God granted me the life.

Yeah, of course perspectives intrude here. You and other Reformed people are looking at Arminianism through Calvinist eyes; Arminians looking at Calvinism are looking at it through Arminian eyes. To us, the whole idea that God passes over some people when he could save J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 4 1

REQUIRED READING FOR 21ST CENTURY CHRISTIANS mo der n

r e f o r m ation

must-reads

Readings on Sola Gratia What would Modern Reformation choose for you to read for further understanding of Sola Gratia? “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.

Chosen By God

by R. C. Sproul (Tyndale House, 1986) Often one of the first books a proto-Calvinist reads or shares with a friend on a similar journey, R.C. Sproul’s Chosen by God is a jaw-dropping exercise in logic and biblical exegesis.

This small book, along with The Holiness of God, established Sproul as the main popularizer of Calvinism in twentieth-century America, and certainly a leading cause of the Calvinist renewal among American Evangelicalism.

If you are a Calvinist pastor, you have R.C. Sproul and this book to thank for the people sitting in your church.

Redemption Accomplished and Applied

by John Murray (Eerdmans, 1984) John Murray, the late professor of systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), trained hundreds of men who went on to fill the pulpits of conservative Presbyterian and Reformed churches. This book, while not as academic as some of his other works, is a good summary of what made Murray such an able teacher. Sunday school groups and home Bible study leaders should be especially eager to use this material in their lessons and class discussions.

The Pearl of Christian Comfort

by Petrus Dethanus (Reformation Heritage Books, 2005) Originally written as a letter to a woman in his church who was going through spiritual crisis, Dethanus’s classic work celebrates grace in a way that only a gospel-soaked pastor can. Modern Christians have turned to this small treatise to find their way out of the spiritual labyrinth of despair and guilt induced by moralism and spiritual legalism.

Putting Amazing Back into Grace

by Michael Horton (Baker, 2002) Readers who want a quick and readable overview of Reformed soteriology have been turning to this, an enduringly popular Horton title, for more than a decade. Now in a new edition, Putting Amazing Back Into Grace is as entertaining as it is sobering: Evangelicalism’s gospel is a far cry from the biblical story of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation.

With good facilitation, this book would provide excellent content for group studies—especially for those new to Reformed churches.

See also: Living by Grace by Gerhard Forde On Christian Freedom by Martin Luther The Doctrines of Grace by James Boice and Phil Ryken

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REVIEWS what’s

b e in g

rea d

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

M

arva Dawn’s Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down is just as valu-

service and start our Sunday school curriculum for the training able now as it was when published in 1995. Her book encour- and nurturing of a new generation of covenant children. ages church leaders and members to think about worship in a Dawn’s work is an encouragement to think through church fresh way — to avoid issues in a way to reach our church family without giving both a stale approach in to the latest trend. It also exhorts us to reach out, drawto tradition and liturgy ing others into our fellowship, offering them participation and a capitulation to a in worship that is substantive and meets them in their culture of church as deep need. entertainment.

While some may disagree with her Diana S. Frazier is the Book Review editor for Modern empahsis on traditionReformation and serves on the Philadelphia Presbytery (PCA) al hymns, the issue as Church Health Committee. she lays it out is not about taste, but rather, whether or not the lyrics and music last over time. Worship is about God. If the George Washington’s Sacred Fire church seeks to imitate

by Peter A. Lillback popular culture to Providence Forum Press, 2006 attract people, it does 1206 pages (hardback), $24.95 Reaching Out Without not ultimately achieve Dumbing Down its purpose. That is not Washington’s God:

by Marva Dawn to say that new hymns Religion, Liberty, and the Father of Our Country Eerdmans, 1995 cannot or should not

by Michael Novak and Jana Novak 327 pages (paperback), $19.00 be introduced. But Basic Books, 2007 intentionally singing the hymns that link us, generation to 282 pages (hardback), $26.00 generation, has a value the helps build community – something often lacking in our society at large.

Odd things happen when you mix religion and politics.

My own observation of a church I was a part of for over Just think of Constantine and 25 years was that the heavy emphasis on Scripture memthe authority that the emperor ory and the catechism was a great blessing to the children had in calling synods and of the church – many of whose parents had never benefitcouncils of the church, not to ted from a thoughtful curriculm themselves. The rigorous mention persecuting heretics educational program did not scare people away as some with the threat of the sword. might think; in fact, families with young children continOr consider the oddity of a ue to join the church and the Sunday school classes are bishop of the church (in this overflowing. case, the one in Rome) having Now that I am part of a church plant, I see anew the police to patrol his own politireason to carefully consider how we develop the worship

Faith of Our Founding Father

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cal territory, the Papal States. Of course, the idiosyncracies do not all come from the Old World. America has made its own notable contributions to the curious amalgam of religion and politics. From Protestants requiring Mormons to abandon polygamy for Utah to be admitted to the Union, to fears of Roman Catholic reproductive powers that led Protestants to promote contraception and family planning, America has not needed a state-church to experience the inconsistencies of faith-based politics.

The two books under review are further evidence of the kinds of contortions required when trying to serve two masters and make them cohere. Their subject is the faith and religious devotion of George Washington, the first president of the United States whose stature in the pantheon of American politics is rivaled only by Abraham Lincoln. Their authors come from fairly distinct religious backgrounds. Peter Lillback is a Presbyterian minister, historical theologian, and president of Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). The other is Michael Novak (who wrote this book with his daughter, Jana), a Roman Catholic layman and public intellectual. And yet, despite the confessional differences of the authors, each book’s treatment of Washington is remarkably similar. These books are guilty of failing to answer the simplest and most important of questions: so what? What difference does it make that George Washington was a Christian?

The reason for the question is that Washington’s religious life was as conventional as his military and political life were remarkable. He was reared in an Anglican home in colonial Virginia and never suggested the least bit of discomfort with the Episcopal Church. He was a devoted husband and responsible father. While a soldier and general, Washington sought the religious well-being of those under his command and discouraged blasphemy and profanity among the troops. During his two terms in the presidency Washington continued with outward religious duties, attending church weekly. At different points in his life, he also served on the vestry of his local parish.

Privately, he read the Bible, prayed frequently, and endeavored to rear his children in the faith.

Washington’s conventional Anglicanism is the main reason for Lillback and the Novaks’ joint conclusion that our first president was not a deist. Indeed, if by deism one means a belief in a deity who created the universe and endowed it with a certain order that would continue without direct involvement or divine sustenance, then Washington was arguably not a deist. (At the same time, since deists did not have an official organization with articles of faith and laws governing membership, defining deism is more the activity of historians and philosophers than a concrete subject simply needing of description.) As general and president, Washington appealed too many times to the interventions of a supreme power or governor of the universe who controlled the affairs of men for his God to be the remote clock-maker of deism.

Even so, proving that Washington was no deist is a dif4 4 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

ferent feat from concluding that he was an orthodox Trinitarian Christian. The Anglican church of colonial Virginia was not known for enforcing doctrinal conformity, so the rigors of Presbyterian subscription, for instance, never hounded Washington’s conventional practice. At the same time, the president’s public remarks about God and Christianity do not refer to Christ or redemption.

Washington’s faith was a moral and utilitarian one. He believed religion was necessary for the good of society and political stability because it provided the moral codes and threatened with eternal punishments that were best suited to promote public virtue. Washington’s farewell address in this regard was typical of his attitude toward Christianity: Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness—these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.

Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

From the vantage of political history, Washington’s remarks may be valuable for considering America’s current predicaments about religion in public life, but from the perspective of religious history, the significance of his faith runs directly counter to prevailing assumptions about American Protestantism. The first president’s devotion was actually an expression of the dead orthodoxy that revivalists (at the time of the Great Awakening and later in revolutionary Virginia) said was responsible for the spiritual malaise that afflicted the established Protestant churches. Revivalists like George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards led a pack of itinerant evangelists who tried to instill zeal and godliness among the saints through various means that Washington’s priests would have disparaged as enthusiasm.

Put simply, Washington’s brand of Christianity did not appear to the revivalists to be heartfelt because his faith was formal and reserved; instead what has counted for genuine faith among American Protestants since the revivals of the eighteenth century is a form of devotion marked by a conversion experience and an earnest life dedicated to witnessing and holiness. By

these standards, George Washington was a spiritual failure.

Defending the first president as a model of Christian devotion, consequently, involves some negotiation with the high standard set by revivalists for genuine faith. Of the two authors, Lillback appears to be least troubled by this predicament. He is content to render Washington as an orthodox Anglican and let that conclusion confound the historians who treat the Virginian as a deist or worse.

According to Lillback, “What enflamed Washington’s passion and stirred his heart was that which was sacred to his soul—his utter dependence on the hand of Divine Providence.” The Novaks, however, acknowledge the transformation of religion in Washington’s lifetime and suggest that the new standard for Protestant piety may have prompted subsequent generations to be more critical of the president than they should have been. The Novaks put well the difference between Anglicanism and revivalism: The two sensibilities often clashed. Not simply theology was at stake, but also a whole way of feeling and seeing. The intimacy with which evangelicals spoke of Jesus embarrassed those who had been brought up to be much more restrained and taciturn, and who accepted religious matters as part of a cherished but quiet tradition.

In other words, to evangelicals “who identified religion with vivid, immediate, intimate experience of the person of the Savior,” Washington seemed to be “simply plodding along by rote, without ever having come to experience real religion.”

The effort to recover the orthodox Christian Washington has a remarkable unintended consequence.

Beyond the relatively simple matter of trying to set the historical record straight—that is, showing that Washington was not a deist—each of these books set out to use the first president’s Christianity for contemporary political ends.

For Lillback, Washington’s Christianity shows the importance of orthodox Protestantism for the founding of the United States. To remember America’s Christian origins is to “empower, enable, and defend the presence of a strong Judeo-Christian worldview in the ongoing development of our state and national governments and courts.” The Novaks are generally reticent to make an explicit application of Washington’s faith for contemporary American politics. But in building a case for his exceptional character and integrity, they do mention that “it would be a happy event if all presidents conducted themselves, to at least the extent that Washington did, as good Christians … in private and in public.”

But in recovering a place for orthodox Anglicanism in the formation of the United States, these authors have also unwittingly undermined the heart religion promoted during the revivals of the eighteenth century that continue to set the pace for American Protestantism.

For if Washington’s faith was sufficient to pass the litmus tests of

SHORT NOTICES Praying at Burger King

by Richard J. Mouw Eerdmans, 2007 134 pages (paperback), $10.00 A number of years ago I was at a chain restaurant with my pastor and fellow elders. Our special guest for the evening was the pastor’s uncle, who had been a lifelong Southern Baptist evangelist. After we placed our orders the uncle asked us if we minded if he gave thanks for the food. Of course we were delighted to have this venerable preacher of the sawdust trail pray for us and insisted that he take the privilege. To our shock—and I’ll confess on my part, at least, horror—he stood up and in a loud voice asked the entire restaurant to join him in “saying grace.”

Moments like that tend to make one think about Jesus’ warning that he will be ashamed of those ashamed of him.

Is being embarrassed when a country preacher calls a prayer meeting at Applebee’s being ashamed of Jesus, or is it just being ashamed of rudeness in his name? Richard Mouw (author of Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport) thinks a lot about the public face of Christians. His latest book, Praying at Burger King, is a collection of short essays centered on the theme of how we live our lives before an unbelieving world. Mouw’s concern is with discipleship in the everyday little things: choosing to bow one’s head to pray (silently!) at Burger King, making eye contact with teenage store clerks, or assessing the proper level of dignity one owes a roasting chicken. He is working in the biblical category of wisdom, seeking to apply biblical teaching in areas where there is no law to fall back on.

Sometimes humorous, sometimes serious, Mouw provides excellent examples of how we might attempt to think God’s thoughts after him in the everyday things. You will probably not agree with all of his conclusions, but then who is to say that every one of us will work out wisdom in the same way? At the very least, most of his essays will get you thinking about what you would do in the situation, and in the process you find that you too are “doing wisdom.”

—Mark Traphagen

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orthodoxy and sincerity, then the extra credit demanded by revivalists that believers not simply believe but demonstrate faith visibly in their daily lives was unneccesary. In other words, if Founding Father’s faith was truly Christian, then revivalism’s criteria for true holiness was excessive.

Proponents of the Religious Right have rarely seen that to have a Christian George Washington is to ignore an enthusiastic Jonathan Edwards, or that to retain born-again Christianity is to abandon the religion of the founding generation of American statesmen. This is the unintended benefit of these books, an outcome that shows again the curiosities that result from mixing politics and religion.

D. G. Hart is Director of Partnered Projects at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (Wilmington, Delaware).

Doubting: Growing Through the Uncertainties of Faith

by Alister McGrath InterVarsity Press, 2006 156 pages (paperback), $13.00 It’s a rare thing to find a theologian altogether thorough, brief, and satisfying.

Irish author, theologian, and former atheist Alister McGrath offers a manageable first-read on addressing a new believer’s doubts. Parents of teens and ministry workers who forage for short, relevant material may find a good starting point with this book, like kindling that eventually calls for weightier fuel for a brighter fire.

McGrath, who now heads a research project on natural theology at Oxford, created this book out of a series of talks given to Oxford students at what he calls a “house party” in 1988 (quite a different gathering than what is typically thought of—lots of alcohol and shenanigans among coeds). He revamped the talks to address postmodern culture and put them in book form. Doubting is meant to be concise and practical, and his second to last chapter offers general strategies for spiritual discipline and growth, including tips on what to pray, reading God’s Word regularly, and getting together with other Christians for Bible study, encouragement, and support.

The book starts with a helpful definition of doubt by explaining both what it is and what it is not. In the end, McGrath says, “Faith and doubt aren’t mutually exclusive—but faith and unbelief are” (14). Sinfulness, frailty, 4 6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

and being finite all contribute to the lack of what we can know, and these realities feed our doubts. He then points to a variety of biblical images of doubt: Peter’s hesitation on the water with Jesus (Matt. 28:17); indecision or arguing out of a sense of distrust (Rom. 4:20); being doubleminded and unable to come to a conclusion or action (James 4:8); and doubt as a state of mind or negative questioning that is recurring (John 20:27). He next breaks down our experience of doubt into four categories: doubts about the gospel, ourselves, Jesus, and God. In looking at the universality of doubt, whether Jewish, Muslim, or atheist, McGrath says all worldviews are “ultimately not capable of being proved in every respect,” and people cling to their beliefs “as a matter of faith. And once you see this, we’re all in the same boat” (42).

Unfortunately, in his attempt to comfort readers with the commonality of faith and doubt, he does so at the expense of what God uniquely offers the Christian—sufficient revelation and certainty of himself in nature, humanity, and the Bible (Rom. 1; Col. 2:2–3; 1 John 5:13).

In the second chapter, “Doubt and the Vain Search for Certainty,” McGrath tries to display the inadequacies of rational proofs for any system of belief, including Christianity, and speaks instead of the Trinity’s work to persuade us to trust: “God the father makes those promises; God the son confirms them in his words and deeds; and the Holy Spirit reassures us of their reliability and seals those promises within our hearts” (25). While this is certainly true and helpful, I fear McGrath tends to leave “certainty” in the realm of the scientific only and speaks of faith as a “leap,” which is the human “resolve to live our lives on the assumption that certain things are true and trustworthy, in the confident assurance that they are true and trustworthy, and that one day we will know with absolute certainty that they are true and trustworthy…”

(27).

In chapter 8, McGrath addresses arguments about the historical reliability of Christ’s resurrection in the gospels as well as the relevance of Jesus to someone who lives 2,000 years later. Though McGrath highlights the person of Christ as God in man and his atonement at the cross and new life, he speaks of Christ’s work as something that makes a new relationship to God “possible,” instead of fully accomplished at the cross and undoubtedly applied to every believer. He starts to say this, but then mixes the message with Christ making salvation merely possible for everyone: “Our faith, our hope, all that matters to us— these are all the consequences of what God achieved for us through Jesus. The fact that this new life is a present possibility for others rests on the solid foundation of Jesus Christ” (102).

To combat doubt, McGrath does urge new Christians to beef up their understanding of historic Christian doctrine, but he mentions very few by name. Early in the book, he says Christians will continue to struggle with sin and doubt as part of God’s ongoing sanctifying process, thus mentioning justification and sanctification, but when he tells of

God’s promises and his faithfulness to them, he does not speak of the covenant. McGrath also names the universal human dilemma of “the need to be loved, the need to have hope in the face of death, and the need to break free from sin” (64) but doesn’t correlate those with the doctrines of adoption, depravity, and more. Another doctrine, perseverance, is omitted creating a sad but loud silence within a book written particularly for new believers wrestling with doubt about their personal salvation and outcome.

A last critique of the book has less to do with established Reformed doctrine and more to do with views on emotion and reason. “Feelings are subjective; God’s promises are objective.” The reader is urged to “rely on the promises of God that lay outside of us, independent of our feelings and anxieties” (72). Emotions are repeatedly said to distract and mislead us into further doubt. While they can be misleading, adherence to a rational system of belief can lead to just as unfaithful an end. Contemporary neuroscience as well as theologians like John Frame reveal how reason depends upon emotion for sound judgment. Rationally deciding whether to cross a street or stay at the curb requires a healthy sense of fear of the on-coming truck.

When it comes to theological reasoning and emotion, both need to be redeemed, and the former doesn’t necessarily trump the latter. If fearing the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, what are we to say to the notion that reason or thinking is the engine that runs the train of Christian certainty while emotions and fear is the fated caboose? To spurn emotion and separate it from reason and faith is not only dated but also inaccurate.

In McGrath’s final chapter, he encourages doubters to embrace the biblical narratives and see Israel’s story as our story. That way, disappointment and doubt are an expected and necessary part of faith’s journey, just as it was for those in the desert, those in exile, and those on Good Friday before resurrection Sunday. It’s a worthy endnote for a short treatment on a subject that so often plagues us.

Shannon Geiger is a counselor and serves as part of a church planting team in the Latino community of Dallas, Texas.

Short Notices (continued from page 45)

The Gospel According to the Beatles

by Steve Turner Presbyterian Publishing, 2007 254 pages (hardback), $19.95 In this book, Steve Turner, Christian and rock journalist, takes the reader down the long and winding road of the spiritual wanderings of the Beatles from Lennon’s controversial comment about Jesus Christ through their flirtations with LSD, the great Bob Dylan, and the Maharishi through to their postBeatles solo careers. Turner, who interviewed the Fab Four in 1969 and has written on the group before, tells a fascinating story, highlighting how they changed from a straightforward rock ‘n’ roll band into the group that produced such cultural landmarks as Revolver and Sgt Pepper. Ultimately a sad tale of unfulfilled promise and disastrous spiritual nearhits—Lennon’s post-Beatles interest in Christianity is particularly poignant—this is rock journalism at its best; and a great example of Christian interaction with popular culture. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the Beatles or the history of popular music.

—Carl R. Trueman

Understanding Four Views on Baptism

by Paul E. Engle, John D. Castelein, Robert A. Kolb, Thomas J. Nettles, and Richard L. Pratt, Jr. Zondervan, 2007 221 pages (paperback), $14.99 There have been many good books published from all points of view on Christian baptism, but this may be the best “one-stop” resource yet for those who want to become familiar with the central issues. The participants seem well-chosen and generally present their positions well.

Richard Pratt stands out particularly in his presentation of Reformed infant baptism and his counterpoints to the other views. As a Reformed credobaptist, however, I was left less than satisfied by Thomas Nettles’s case for believer’s baptism. He restricts his arguments to a case for immersion as the meaning of baptizo (interesting, but hard(continued on page 49) J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 4 7

POINT OF CONTACT: BOOKS YOUR NEIGHBORS ARE READING The God Delusion

By Richard Dawkins Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006 374 pages (hardback), $27.00 The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, is one of several recent books that attack religion in general and Christianity in particular. It has been on the New York Times best-seller list longer than other books and may be the most important one for a Christian to read because it considers the intellectual foundation of religion rather than social or political tendencies of the Religious Right that are annoying people these days.

You may discover your neighbor has pinned his hopes for a God-free world on Richard Dawkins’ tract.

A tract it is. Dawkins makes clear that his goal is to persuade theists to give up their faith decisively—not falling short with a timid agnosticism, but boldly going all the way to confessing atheism. The book is both positive and negative in its thrust. Dawkins wants to gain converts, not just unsettle believers. He constantly balances arguments against religious faith with arguments in favor of atheism.

Perhaps in an unwitting way, Dawkins has made a case that atheism is not a natural state of mind. The shaking of religious faith will not necessarily produce an atheist.

Rather, atheism is itself a conviction gained through a kind of conversion process and maintained by the right teaching and the support of community (see the Appendix that lists support organizations for atheists). Seen in this light, The God Delusion provides a kind of atheistic doctrine of conversion, a “treatise concerning nonreligious affections.”

You hear the voice of the preacher more clearly in this book than the voice of the scholar.

How does Dawkins hope to gain a convert? Although the book is divided into ten chapters, three distinct arguments emerge throughout. His appeal is not addressed to the intellect alone, as we shall see. If someone is persuaded to become an atheist, as Dawkins hopes, it will take a movement of the whole person.

In no particular order, the first argument is the repellent behavior of religious people. Dawkins uses an extensive 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

store of anecdotes to give the reader a visceral experience.

One source is communication from religious people in response to his writing: “I receive a large number of letters from readers of my books, most of them enthusiastically friendly, some of them helpfully critical, a few nasty or even vicious. And the nastiest of all, I am sorry to report, are almost invariably motivated by religion” (211).

He then copies several such letters that are laced with ignorance and bigotry, such as this: “I’ll get comfort knowing that the punishment GOD will bring to you will be 1,000 times worse than anything I can inflict. The best part is that you WILL suffer for eternity for these sins that you’re completely ignorant about” (212).

Another example is Pat Robertson and his infamous statement to the citizens of Dover, Pennsylvania, who in 2005 voted against the teaching of intelligent design in the public schools. Robertson warned those citizens that because they had voted God out of their town, they’d better not turn around and plead to God for help if some disaster strikes them. Dawkins comments that “Pat Robertson would be harmless comedy, were he less typical of those who today hold power and influence in the United States” (239).

Dawkins’ conclusion from the nasty mail, Pat Robertson’s outrages, and a host of other stories is that repulsive behavior is not exceptional but typical of the religious. The reader can’t help but respond with aversion.

That aversion is a key element in the creation of an atheist. Dawkins does offer positive examples of atheism, such as Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein, but only as a secondary theme to the many more repelling examples of the religious.

The second argument Dawkins makes for becoming an atheist is the content of religious faith when viewed objectively: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

It is unfair to attack such an easy target. The God Hypothesis should not stand or fall with its most unlovely instantiation, Yahweh, nor his insipidly opposite Christian face, ‘Gentle Jesus meek and mild’” (31).

Dawkins shocks the Christian reader by telling him at the outset his particular brand of religion is the most ludicrous of all. The Christian doesn’t see it because over time custom has dulled the mental senses. Dawkins pulls off the blinders when he says, “It is unfair to attack such an easy target.” Possibly for the first time, a Christian is hearing the content of his faith presented “objectively.”

The reader should not object that Dawkins provides no evidence for his disposal of the Bible early in the book. He later discusses numerous passages in some detail and sums up the heart of New Testament theology in these words: “I have described atonement, the central doctrine of Christianity, as vicious, sado-masochistic and repellent.

We should also dismiss it as barking mad, but for its ubiquitous familiarity which has dulled our objectivity. If God wanted to forgive our sins, why not just forgive them, without having himself tortured and executed in payment – thereby, incidentally, condemning remote future generations of Jews to pogroms and persecution as ‘Christkillers’” (253)?

Dawkins’ third argument for becoming an atheist is that Darwinism provides a fully satisfying worldview. This is the heart of Dawkins’ intellectual argument. He is an elegant writer and his skill is especially evident in his expression of wonder for natural evolution in its ability to explain everything that religion explains, and more.

Dawkins argues that creationists have misunderstood natural evolution by comparing its improbability to a hurricane blowing through a junkyard and leaving behind a Boeing 747. The point of the comparison is that it is impossible for the complexity of life on earth to have evolved by chance. What the creationists don’t understand is that evolution proceeds by tiny increments, with each step forward taken with perfectly reasonable probability. Rather than scaling a great cliff at a single, impossible bound, evolution posits a ramp leading up the cliff at a tiny angle of incline.

Darwinism can even explain why religion is so persistent. It’s the result of what Dawkins calls the misfiring of an otherwise useful adaptation. For example, when a moth flies into a candle, it acts on the misfiring of an adaptation to direct its flight by the light of the moon or stars.

That practice evolved when there were few candles around to be confused with the lights in the sky. To us it looks like the moth is doing something that evolution, if true, should have eliminated. In the same way, the religious instinct may be explained as the misfiring of the need to implicitly obey authority. That adaptation is necessary for a child to do what a parent says to avoid the threat of danger. “Don’t play with the saber-toothed tiger,” for example.

Should a fair-minded person become an atheist after reading The God Delusion? Critical questions for Dawkins rise from his methods: Can’t you find any examples of noble religious people who may have something more serious to contribute to the debate? Shouldn’t you evaluate the most effective arguments for religion, as stated by the most able advocates, instead of what amounts to a distortion in your own terms? As to the more purely intellectual presentation of Darwinism as a worldview, similar questions of the author’s fairness are inevitable. Are creationists really surprised at the notion of the gradual incline to the top of the summit of evolution? Don’t they actually base the argument for the improbability of evolution at the molecular or cellular level? There may not be enough credibility left in The God Delusion by the time one reaches the incredible comparison of the religious instinct to a misfiring natural adaptation.

Christians may find agreement with Dawkins, however, as to how people are converted. Whether it is to athe-

Short Notices (continued from page 47) ly essential) and faith as primarily the act of the believer (scripturally weak, in my opinion). As a proponent of believer’s baptism from a Reformed perspective, I would want to build a case more on issues of the amount of continuity and discontinuity between the old and new covenants, as Paul King Jewett does in his Infant Baptism & the Covenant of Grace, probably the best Reformed Baptist book currently in print.

That criticism aside, much is to be learned in this volume.

Of particular educative value for many will be the fact that there are at least four distinct views of baptism among Protestants, not just the two (infant versus believers’) that most easily come to mind. As with the entire Counterpoints series, some of the most valuable material appears in the brief responses each of the other contributors get to make after each other’s presentations. In this volume, I would also say that John Armstrong’s powerful introductory essay on how we can hold differing views on baptism and yet esteem one another as fellow Christians is worth the price of this book alone.

—Mark Traphagen

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ism or to Christ, faith is never the final step at the end of a logical argument. We should point out to our neighbor who may be impressed by The God Delusion that much of its persuasive power is not addressed to what is best in us.

The words of the New Testament on how to defend the faith ring with nobility and wisdom in contrast with what goes on in The God Delusion: “Do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.”

Steven J. Carter is a ruling elder at Tenth Presbyterian Church (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) and serves as a consultant with Towers Perrin.

For an excellent model of interacting with friends and neighbors about the current controversy generated by Richard Dawkins’ book, MR recommends The Dawkins Letters: Challenging Atheist Myths by David Robertson (Christian Focus Publications, 2007, 125 pages [pocket paperback], $9.99).

Modern Reformation and the White Horse Inn radio program are beginning a nationwide search for a Vice President to provide leadership, cast strategic vision, and increase development for the two products. Interested candidates should visit www.modernreformation.org/jobs for more information.

O Modern Reformation is beginning a nationwide search for a full time Managing Editor who will assist the Editor-in-Chief and Executive Editor by overseeing the planning, editing, production, and marketing of the magazine. Interested candidates should visit www.modernreformation.org/jobs or more information.

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

The Rhetoric Stage

about their commitment to Christ and well taught hen we look at people in our churches who are in their mid- to late-teen in their younger years, are ready for such minyears, ideally, we would see people who have been in the church from istry and should be encouraged to participate a young age. We would see people who, as children, had their absorbent in it. Although the teen is teaching, this is still a little brains filled full of Bible stories, Bible verses, and learning experience for him. A more mature adult must catechism answers. We would see people who had been stay involved with him, guiding him through the steps of educated in the church during their pre-teen and early preparing and effectively delivering his presentation. teen years, when they would have been trained to reaAll older adolescent students can profit from a class in son about, think about, and understand all those apologetics, a logical part of the Rhetoric phase of learning answers they had memorized earlier. Now, following to present truth persuasively. Students who have grasped the Grammar and Dialectic stages, teenagers should be basic biblical and doctrinal truth in their earlier years and ready for the Rhetoric stage of the classical education who have learned to think clearly about it in their middle model, the stage at which they use what they know to school years will be in an excellent position to think create artful presentations designed to persuade others. through and articulate answers to anti-Christian arguThat would be the ideal. Of course, we live in a fallments. In an apologetics class, they can apply, use, and en world, so by the time we get to the Poetic (or selfpresent what they know. Students with less background expressive) phase of our children’s lives and try to use will listen to the discussion, picking up bits and pieces of the Rhetoric stage to take them one level higher in their truth they need but have not yet been taught. Those teens Christian thinking, we must keep in mind a couple of who have the knowledge of the truth but whose hearts are caveats. For one thing, not all the older teens in our not yet engaged by it can also profit from a course in churches have been in the church all their lives. Or they apologetics. As teacher and parents pray specifically for have been in and out, because of their family’s erratic such students, God may be pleased to show them the foolattendance patterns. So some older high school students ishness of positions that refuse to acknowledge God and will not be ready to prepare and give presentations of the wisdom of walking in God’s ways. biblical truth. They still have much to learn themselves.

The use of the classical Christian model at this age in Others of our older teens have been in the church all the lives of our church’s children is a little trickier than at their lives and have learned the “grammar” and the earlier ages. It will require discernment and maybe even “logic” of Bible truth and Christian doctrine; God’s timmore diligence than earlier ages needed. Still, the model ing is such, however, that it is clear that some of these can provide us with useful methodologies to take these students have not made these truths their own, and so oldest of our children on to greater maturity in their thinkare in no position to seek to persuade others about ing and in their faith. them.

Some students, however, at this stage in their lives, Starr Meade is author of Training Hearts, Teaching Minds: should be encouraged, guided, and mentored through Family Devotions Based on the Shorter Catechism (P&R, the preparation and presentation of biblical truth to oth2000). ers. These students could prepare a certain portion of a specific Sunday school lesson for other teens, could lead a small group devotional, or speak in a nursing home ministry. They could also help to teach a Sunday school class for younger children. Older teenagers, serious

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