sola-scriptura-november-december-2010

EVANGELICALS & EMERGENTS ❘ LUTHER AND THE SPIRIT ❘ A REFORMED/ROMAN CATHOLIC DIALOGUE

MODERN REFORMATION

SOLA SCRIPTURA VOLUME

19, NUMBER 6, NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2010, $6.50

MODERN REFORMATION

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Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton Executive Editor Ryan Glomsrud Managing Editor Patricia Anders Marketing Director Michele Tedrick Department Editors Ryan Glomsrud, Reviews Michael Horton, Final Thoughts Staff | Editors Lori A. Cook, Layout and Design Elizabeth Isaac, Copy Editor Ann Smith, Proofreader Contributing Scholars Michael Allen Peter D. Anders James Bachman J. Todd Billings John Bombaro Jerry Bridges John N. Day Adam S. Francisco David Gibson W. Robert Godfrey T. David Gordon Gillis Harp D. G. Hart Paul Helm John A. Huffman, Jr. Daniel R. Hyde Ken Jones Julius J. Kim Philip J. Lee Jonathan Leeman Richard Lints Korey Maas Keith Mathison R. Albert Mohler, Jr. John Warwick Montgomery Kenneth A. Myers Roger R. Nicole Robert Norris J. I. Packer Craig Parton Mark Pierson Lawrence R. Rast, Jr. Donald P. Richmond Kim Riddlebarger Rick Ritchie David Robertson Rod Rosenbladt Justin Taylor Kate Treick David VanDrunen Gene E. Veith David F. Wells Donald T. Williams William Willimon Todd Wilken Paul F. M. Zahl Modern Reformation © 2010 All rights reserved.

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Sola Scriptura 8

Sola Scriptura, Etc. New generations of Christians are asking the age-old question, “By what authority?”

If sola scriptura remains the answer, why do some seek to draw from other sources?

by Christian George

14 The “Magna Carta” of Christian Liberty When the Bible is put to the proper use of making God’s people “wise unto salvation,” then it is truly liberating for believers.

by John R. Muether

18 The Spirit, the Spirits, and the Letter For Luther, the Holy Spirit cannot be separated from the external Word in the form we know as the Holy Scriptures.

by Jonathan Mumme Plus: The Roaring of Christ through Lectio Continua Preaching

25 The Gospel and the Sufficiency of Scripture: Church of the Word or Word of the Church?

The sufficiency of Scripture recognizes that we have everything we need for salvation and life in the canonical Word— and the form in which this gospel comes to us here and now is Scripture.

by Michael Horton

33 The Formation of the Christian Bible An examination of the historical process and important issues reflected in the Scriptures.

by L. W. Hurtado

37 Responding to Objections to Sola Scriptura Answers to common objections explain how sola scriptura impacts Christian theology.

by Kenneth Richard Samples COVER ART: ANTON VON WERNER/LUTHER BEFORE THE REIGHSTAG IN WORMS/BILDARCHIV PREUSSISCHER KULTURBESITZ/ARTRESOURCE

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In This Issue page 2 | Letters page 3 | Ad Extra page 4 | Borrowed Capital page 7 A Dialogue page 42 | Reviews page 50 | Final Thoughts page 56

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IN THIS ISSUE

The Rallying Cry of Every Age

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The doctrine of sola scriptura was recovered for the church universal at the famous Leipzig Disputation in 1519. Against Johannes Eck, Luther returned every quotation from council or canon law with Scripture passages from memory. Biblical truth and the clarity of the gospel were then and are now the foundation of the church.

Every modern reformation must therefore begin and continue always with the recovery of the Word of God, for there we find the gospel of Jesus Christ for every age until his return. As with Luther in Leipzig, the topics in this issue revolve around the question of authority. To whom do we listen to find the truth? Ourselves, a word within, a “church” that places itself over the Word, or perhaps one of the other familiar “authorities” in the broad world of evangelical Christianity?

Christian George, a doctoral student at the University of St. Andrews, offers us a taxonomy of younger evangelicals that highlights the multiple and varied sources of authority at work among the teeming crowds of “relevants, reconstructionists, revisionists, and reformers”—the four groups he thinks comprise the wide evangelical spectrum. George sets us up for a provocative question: Do evangelicals really profess Scripture alone, or do these extra sources leave them with an oxymoronic “sola scriptura, etc.”?

Perhaps surprisingly, authority and freedom should come together when we discuss the doctrine of Scripture. Presbyterian historian John Muether expounds upon the spiritual liberty that flows from a recognition that “God alone is Lord of thy conscience.” No one, not even the church, has a right to impose upon us any spiritual “teaching, commandment, or ordinance that is contrary to or cannot be deduced from Scripture,” Muether explains. It is ultimately the Spirit who convicts the heart and conscience, the Spirit who always works through and with the Word. Jonathan Mumme elaborates on this point by letting Luther speak to us in his own words, showing how the great Reformer thinks differently, employs alternative categories and vocabulary, and in his way challenges our thinking with insights from the Word of God. But there are always lingering questions about the misuse of power and authority, especially where it concerns the formation of the Bible. New Testament scholar Lawrence Hurtado explains the surprising but ordinary way the Bible came to be. He contends against the notion that the process of canonization was about the exclusion of competing texts rather than the opposite, namely, the gradual recognition and inclusion of authors and multiple Gospel perspectives. The Bible is larger than what we would otherwise have had without the providential work of the Spirit to open our hearts and minds to recognize Scripture as Scripture.

Michael Horton then offers us a rich theological reflection on the relationship between sola gratia (grace alone) and sola scriptura (scripture alone). The timely importance of his comparison between Rome and Protestant enthusiasm becomes evident later in the issue when we offer an extensive dialogue with Bryan Cross, a former Presbyterian pastor who converted to Roman Catholicism. Thanks to Bryan’s gracious participation, you will see how a debate about sola scriptura plays out in real time. As the stakes are high when these Reformation basics are in view, we also called on apologist Ken Samples to lay out a number of objections and responses with which we should wrestle in order to better know what we believe and why.

The recovery of Scripture must be our rallying cry, as it is for church reformers of every age.

NEXT ISSUES January/February 2011 The Great Announcement March/April 2011 Ryan Glomsrud Post-American Missions Executive Editor & Evangelism

LETTERS y o u r

Regarding “Interpreting Scripture

by Scripture” (July/August 2010), if I understand this correctly, Michael Horton is arguing that it’s all good— box-top, pieces, top down, bottom up, forest and the trees—just do it all, it all fits together, chill. Well, this is certainly optimistic! It has as its main presupposition that, after all, God inspired the Bible so God must have a unifying message even if we can’t figure it out in all of its details and, at times, at seemingly tension-filled revelation (i.e., law and gospel). Of course, I would add to this the fact that unless one learns ancient Hebrew and Greek, one must tread even more lightly because one is at the mercy of those who have—and they, of course, have to rely on the scholarship available at any given time. Beyond that, one needs to make one’s way through the theological web Horton outlines in this article, which requires a certain skill and discipline on the part of the believer, which not every believer has.

Complexity, complexity, complexity.

Adolfo Mendez

Author Response In answer to Mr. Mendez, the author cites The Westminster Confession, 1.7: “All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.”

I have thoroughly enjoyed this past edition of Modern Reformation (“Rightly Dividing the Word,” September/ October 2010). It has challenged me anew in my need for gospel of Christ. It was once said that the law and gospel is like Velcro—you can examine it apart but it becomes useful when put together. In this issue you examine both, but more importantly you show how in Scripture they are used in the unfolding of God’s redemptive plan. Thank you for producing edifying content.

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heart and the mind, passions and intellect, interpretation and personal response. One need not always read with a pencil and lexicon in hand, to be sure, because we do believe in the plain sense or fundamental perspicuity (clarity) of Scripture; but this is not to say that contemplative devotional reading can be practiced without interpretation. Search out Christ by distinguishing law and gospel, whether you happen to thumb to a specific passage or are reading in a structured way.

Mark Van Drunen Hudson, Ohio

I’m really being blessed by your series on “Recovering Scripture.” For several years now, I’ve been doing a devotional exercise called Lectio Divina.

The main idea of the exercise is not to do an exegesis of the text, but to interact with it on a personal level. My question is this: Am I misreading or misusing the Scriptures by employing this method? I’ve been noticing how verses and passages of Scripture have been coming to my mind—passages I haven’t read or thought about in years. While I really enjoy this method of reading, I want to, as the verse says, “be a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”

Jonathan M. Young

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

Editorial Response Regular, prayerful reading of Scripture is important for the encouragement and instruction of every Christian believer, which is certainly one of the goals of our 2010 series on “Recovering Scripture.” Reformation readers, however, will want to be careful not to pit exegesis against “personal” reading. Profitable study of God’s Word should involve both the

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Trinity and Incarnation: Moving Shelf Doctrines to Daily Living

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or many evangelicals, the Trinity and the incarnation of the Word made flesh in

Christians were included in Smith’s study, mentions of the Jesus Christ are “shelf doctrines”: you are supposed to believe them but don’t com- Trinity, Jesus Christ, or the Holy Spirit were rare when plicate your life by thinking about them. They sit like dusty books on the shelf. We they were asked to describe their faith. Instead, God is the may dust off the Trinity book if questions arise in evangelism— creator who will send us to heaven after we live basically good lives drawing upon quick illustrations like liquid, mist, and ice and intervenes to make us happy when we are in a pinch. being three forms of one substance to defend our point. But In a recent youth Sunday service, several seniors headafter addressing the objection, we return the book to the shelf ing off to college gave short sermons. One homily was on to talk about the real Christian message. The Trinity and the God as a rock—that God is always there when we have incarnation are mysteries—so why bother thinking about problems, ready to help us feel better about ourselves again. them? In the way that we live our lives, many American evanAnother was based upon Romans 5:1–5, a text that tells of gelicals unknowingly side with Immanuel Kant, who states Jesus Christ as being our righteousness and God’s love that doctrines like the Trinity have no use for the practical life. poured into our hearts through the Spirit. The sermon made The contrast with ancient Christianity could hardly be no mention of Christ or the Spirit, but talked about how we should try to be good and how God comes to us in our hard more stark. Teachings on the Trinity and the incarnation were times to help us out. considered to be central to Christian identity. Various local These examples do not simply reflect poor sermon prepaversions of the Apostles’ Creed were developed to teach ration. They indicate the deistic lens through which Scripture ordinary believers the meaning of baptism in the name of the is being received. Practical deism is default mode for many Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Thousands of early Christians American Christians—causing them to see some things while were martyred for their convictions about Jesus Christ: that others slip to the periphery. If we assume that our lives are he alone was Lord, demanding their exclusive allegiance; he acceptable to a God who wants us to be happy and that reliwas not one among many gods or mediators, he was the etergion is about “doing good things,” then key teachings are nal God made flesh. In the fourth century, the Niceneshaken out of focus: there is no need for a mediator (Jesus Constantinople creed quickly became a part of regular Christ), for Christ’s atoning death, for God’s empowerment worship for many Christians, boldly declaring that the Son was not a lower level of deity than the Father but “Light of to live the Christian life (the Holy Spirit). I am certain the Light, very God of very God.” The Son and the Spirit are woryouth who preached would have affirmed belief in Christ thy of worship, together with the Father. and the Spirit if asked. But in their day-to-day life, these fall In these contexts, the Trinity and the incarnation were off the radar screen. If God is happy with my basically good not shelf doctrines—they were seen as central to the gospel. life, why do I need Jesus Christ and the Spirit?

These mysteries mattered. For many of us, these “mysteries” are seen as beyond our grasp, so we ignore them; for many A Life of Religious Tinkering to Meet My Needs ancient Christians, these were “mysteries” that informed the Another clue to why the Trinity and the incarnation very shape of their Christian life. But what happened? Why have become shelf doctrines comes from Robert Wuthnow, have modern evangelicals put the church’s teaching on the who recently described a trend of “religious tinkering” Trinity and the incarnation on the shelf? among young adults in America. He depicts this tinkering as entailing the “joining together of seemingly inconsistent, disA Life of Practical Deism parate components....What first seems like a straightforDeism is the belief that God created the world and watches over wardly orthodox belief, such as the view that the Bible is it from a distance, only intervening when there is a crisis or a parinerrant, turns out to be a jumble of orthodoxy and more ticular need. The sociological work of Christian Smith reveals relativistic assumptions about truth, salvation, and civility.” how a particular form of deism is the functional theology for many Who is the ultimate authority in tinkering? The individual, American teenagers (see “The ‘Creed’ of Moralistic Therapeutic who tinkers with religious beliefs until they fit their own Deism” box on facing page). Indeed, it is widespread among teens needs. Evangelicals often approach Scripture this way, as a because they absorb it from American adults. Even though many short browse through a Christian bookstore would show. We 4 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

use the Bible to endorse plans for weight loss, financial success, leadership, or a new public policy. In these cases, the Bible rarely shapes the questions that we ask. Instead, it is the “answer book” for fixing our problems.

This is where the Trinity and the incarnation slip from view: they are teachings that don’t seem to solve our immediate problems, but which actually call our own felt needs into question. In the teachings of the Trinity and the incarnation, our questions move beyond our immediate needs to an identity received from God: I am not my own but belong to Christ and his body, and I commune with the triune God through the Spirit. Our question becomes: How can I live in this communion as God’s gift and extend this fellowship to others?

As Christian believers, we are called to put our faith into practice. But there is a difference between putting faith into practice and being resourceful religious “tinkerers” in solving our problems. While God cares about our daily concerns, God’s action in our lives is not as a butler or problem solver.

It is much more expansive than that. Indeed, at times we are called to activities that seem useless to us yet enter into the larger work of God’s kingdom. Ironically, while many Christian leaders help to cultivate the culture of religious tinkering because it seems relevant and applicable, it is also a significant cause of nominal Christianity. Self-centered faith quickly becomes small and dull, easy to jettison when another device for problem solving comes along. If we want to expand the context for our Christian life beyond a narrow preoccupation with our own problems, then we need to allow our own questions to be reframed in light of the centrality of Jesus Christ and the triune God’s work in our lives. And in order to do this, we need to take the teachings of the incarnation and the Trinity off the dusty shelf.

The Trinity and the Christian Life What would it mean, then, to move beyond practical deism and religious tinkering, and enter more deeply into a trinitarian practice of the Christian life? Adding trinitarian references to a liturgy or songs could help. But by itself, adding this language does not go far enough. Others see the Sacraments as a way to deepen our trinitarian practice.

While I think this is correct, it should not lead us to think that only highly sacramental churches are trinitarian. In fact, there are other distinctively evangelical practices that have an inherently trinitarian dynamic. Recognizing this trinitarian dimension both illumines these practices and helps us distinguish between distorted and faithful instances of these practices.

Consider personal evangelism, for example. What is happening when I share the gospel message with a nonChristian friend? Is evangelism about repackaging a gospel that risks being irrelevant—so that “consumers” will want it—or is there something different going on?

I remember sharing my faith with an agnostic friend who felt that if God did exist, he must be a tyrant, a moral police officer. When I talked about Jesus Christ, a different portrait of God was held forth—God as a loving Father who pardons our sins and invites us into adoption as the children of God.

How do we know we are adopted? The Spirit comes and lives within us, uniting us in fellowship to others in the body of Christ. I may not have recognized it at the time, but the gospel that I shared with my friend had a trinitarian structure.

In addition, when learning about personal evangelism, I was instructed to love and pray for non-Christians, but not to manipulate them. If they move toward faith in Christ, we give thanks to God and help connect them to a community of believers for growth and nurture.

This advice also has trinitarian intuitions within it. The life of faith is not simply a deistic one about me and God, but life in the Spirit, in Christ. We don’t open people’s eyes, the Spirit does. Moreover, the same Spirit who works in faith also unites the believer with Christ and his body, a community pardoned by the Father, growing into Christ’s image.

By becoming aware of these trinitarian dynamics in personal evangelism, we can come to value and accent those dimensions to keep us from slipping into the pervading cultural deism. When we present the gospel like giving a useful product to consumers, we can make it into something that is “relevant” but small—not the eye-popping, expansive vision of the gospel that our trinitarian teaching opens up.

Moving from a Dualistic to an Incarnational Way of Life In addition to the Trinity, the incarnation is often considered to be a distant, dusty “shelf doctrine.” What does it mean for the Word to become flesh, or for the one Christ to have both divine and human natures? While evangelicals are eager to affirm the deity of Christ, many affirm a dualism between spiritual and material realities that grates against the teaching that the fullness of God and humanity are united in the incarnate Christ.

The dualism that contrasts with an incarnational theology can come in various forms. For some, God is not particularly involved in the world, leaving a gap between what

“The ‘Creed’ of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” In Soul Searching, Christian Smith compiles the following “creed” for what he calls “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism,” a widespread cultural form of belief held in common by American youth from a great variety of Christian and non-Christian religious affiliations: • A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.

• God wants people to be good, nice, fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.

• The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

• God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.

• Good people go to heaven when they die.

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God does and what I do; thus, I just try hard to “be a good Christian,” and everything will turn out okay. For other dualists, God is active in the world but only in a way that bypasses human faculties—God acts supernaturally, but not through “natural” means.

Both kinds of dualism deny a key reality of the incarnation— that true God and true humanity are united in Jesus Christ. As a result, these dualisms lead to a deficient understanding of the Spirit’s work within our human, bodily existence.

A biblical portrait of prayer has incarnational and trinitarian dynamics that subvert our dualistic tendencies. In early Christian worship, our kin in faith did not simply bring their wish list to a monarch God or speak in terms of “God” and “me” in prayer. Instead, they took their cues from New Testament passages such as Romans 8, exposited below, where prayer is described as a divinely enabled human activity, a threefold encounter with the triune God. In prayer, we come to see that God is a Father who graciously pardons us, for there is “no condemnation” for those “in Christ Jesus”—those who are “in the Spirit.” Yet the Spirit’s dwelling in those who belong to Christ is not an ethereal, otherworldly reality, but one occurring in our physical, material existence. For the God “who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit.” In Christ through the Spirit, the God who frees us from condemnation begins the renewing work in our bodies that will be brought to fruition in the resurrection.

Paul then speaks about our prayerful cries, in terms of the one work of the triune God. The Spirit bears witness to us when we call out “Abba! Father!” as children of God. Christian prayer enacts our identity as adopted children, being “joint heirs with Christ” who receive the privilege of approaching the Father with boldness and gratitude by the Spirit. We live into this trinitarian reality when we pray “in the name of Jesus.”

But is prayer just a human activity, dualistically separated from God’s work? No. For “we do not know how to pray as we ought,” and the “Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” We don’t just pray to God—in a mysterious way, the triune God prays in and through us! As we “groan inwardly,” awaiting “the redemption of our bodies,” the Spirit “helps us in our weakness.” It is through the Spirit that we call out to the Father, being conformed more and more to “the image of the Son.” The Christian experience of prayer is irreducibly triadic.

Prayer in passages such as Romans 8 also shows us how the Holy Spirit works in a non-dualistic way. If we pray rightly, do we deserve the credit? No, for God does not leave us to ourselves, but moves in and through us when we pray. On the one hand, prayer does involve our human capacities, our bodies, the groaning of “the whole creation.”

But the Spirit deserves the credit when we act in obedience—for the Spirit enlivens us to pray as children of the Father, co-heirs with Christ. God does not annihilate human agency—he restores and empowers us.

In prayer, God acts in and through our human faculties and our bodies, subverting our dualism of “spiritual” and “material.” The Spirit is not just a voice in our head (bypassing our 6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

thought processes) or a metaphor for human religious experience. The Spirit works in and through creation itself in a way that leads to gratitude rather than self-congratulation.

The Urgency for Recovering Shelf Doctrines in Daily Life As noted above, American Christians have a tendency toward a practical deism and “religious tinkering,” and evangelicals are not an exception to this trend. When it comes to Christian practice, many evangelicals combine a little trinitarianism with some deism, an alleged belief in the Word made flesh with a dualism that divides God and creation into hermetically sealed worlds. Why should this concern us and incite us to take teachings on the Trinity and the incarnation off the shelf?

First, practical deism and tinkering resist growing up in all ways “into him who is the head, into Christ” (Eph. 4:15). The Trinity and the incarnation are mysteries that conform us to the image of Christ, not mysteries we construct according to our preferences. I am not insisting that Christians should have airtight systems of theology without paradox. The Trinity and the incarnation are teachings full of paradox—the seeming contradiction of one God in three persons, of God and humanity being one in Jesus Christ. But these paradoxes do not join deism with trinitarianism or dualism with the incarnation.

Second, tinkering and deism corrode the inner core of Christian practices, ultimately leading people to abandon communities of faith. Tinkering approaches the claim to be “useful,” but frequently fails to sustain living faith communities. When prayer is reduced to the scope of “God and me” and evangelism to marketing, why unite together with a community of worship and witness? I become worried when friends stop attending church because they say “all of our life is worship.” Worship is not a dualistic act done in our heads. Worship is the crying out of physical creatures in the Spirit to the Father; worship is the proclamation of Jesus Christ into whose image a community is being formed by the nourishment of Word and Sacrament.

Finally, in our increasingly pluralistic culture, taking the doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation off the shelf is imperative if we are to live in our scriptural identity in Christ rather than be conformed to this world. Early Christians lived, debated, and were martyred for these teachings because they recognized there were other religious alternatives. They knew that understanding why we are baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit should not be an esoteric class of instruction such as Christianity 499, but Christianity 101. In order to make disciples who live into this baptismal identity, we need to muster up the courage to take the church’s teaching about the Trinity and the incarnation off the shelf.

J. Todd Billings (Th.D., Harvard University) is assistant professor of Reformed theology at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan.

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Witnessing to Christ in our Age: Does the Resurrection Matter?

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have been having conversations with a Thai Chinese fellow who is a real thinker. That’s

Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile hard to find around here. As a missionary in Thailand, most of the Thai Buddhists I meet and you are still in your sins. Then those also are content to believe what their parents believed and do what their parents did, simply who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. because that’s what has been handed down to them. Most If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people are happy to not think about (or at least not discuss) people most to be pitied. (1 Cor. 15:14–19 ESV) difficult or controversial issues. Thai culture places a high value on nonconfrontation, so it is tough to really engage If Christ did not rise from the dead, then I am a complete people in discussion about any issues of significance. But not fool for talking with Mr. Mon about Christianity. Buddhism Mr. Mon. already has a system of ethical teaching, and Christianity “So if God could have kept people from sinning, why didwithout the resurrection is nothing more than another ethn’t he? Sure, Adam had freedom and is responsible for sin, ical system. Thai Buddhists don’t need another ethical sysbut couldn’t God have just made it so there wouldn’t be sin? tem or another set of moral rules. They already have that.

Can’t he do that?” And with that we were off into a fasciWhat they need (and what we all need) is forgiveness of sin and reconciliation with the God who made us. And if Christ nating discussion. “Why did God kill everyone in the flood? rose from the dead, then that forgiveness and reconciliation That’s a lot of killing. And why’d he kill all the animals, too?” is assured for all who turn to him in faith. But the resurrecFor a couple hours, we talked about his Bible questions, tion matters only if you are interested in forgiveness of sins. the basis for belief, and the differences in Buddhism, As our discussion went on, Mr. Mon informed me that in Christianity, and Chinese traditional religion. We tackled the Buddhism there is no forgiveness of sins, but in Christianity origin of the world, but he objected that no one really knows there is Jesus who redeems sinners on the cross. The differhow everything started. “The Buddha didn’t teach about the ence between the two religions on this point was very clear creation of the world,” he said. “It all depends on what your in his mind. “So, are you interested in forgiveness of sins?” personal belief is.” We discussed Jesus, and I brought up the I asked him. “If you are, then Jesus should interest you resurrection. “If Jesus rose from the dead, then it proves the greatly. If you don’t need forgiveness of sins or if you have claims he made about life, death, and the origin of the world,” I asserted, proceeding to give some evidences for the your own system worked out to escape from sin, then never reasonability of believing that Jesus rose from the dead. But mind. Jesus doesn’t have anything for you.” Mr. Mon did again I got the same response, “It all depends on what your not have anything to say about this, and the discussion personal belief is.” Mr. Mon then explained that it didn’t went in another direction after a moment of silence. really matter if the Buddha existed as a historical person. “The I am not sure whether Mr. Mon’s questions are just out of Buddha doesn’t matter. Was he real or not? Who knows? It curiosity or whether he really wants to know. Is God slowly doesn’t make a difference. It is the body of teaching, the changing his thinking, or does he just enjoy a good discusDharma, which really matters.” This was his way of saying sion? He seems to be thinking and mulling thoughts over. I that whether or not Jesus rose from the dead, or even suspect, however, that getting satisfying answers to thorny existed, it was irrelevant to our discussion. intellectual questions isn’t the real obstacle to him seriously The validity of Christianity, however, stands or falls upon considering the gospel. If God opens his eyes to see the horthe resurrection of Christ. The apostle Paul said, rible burden of his own sin and the certainty of God’s judgment, then the other pieces will fall into place. And then all And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching of a sudden, the resurrection will matter a great deal. is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about Karl Dahlfred is a teaching elder in the PCA (South Coast PresbyGod that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it tery) and is currently serving as a missionary in Thailand. is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 0 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 7

SOLA SCRIPTURA

Sola Scriptura, Etc. Younger Evangelicals, Emergents,

and Additional Sources of Authority

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uo warranto: “By what authority?” Posed to Jesus in Mark 11:28, this question became the driving impetus of the Protestant Reformation. By what authority should theology, spirituality, and ministry be judged? For nearly half a millennium, Protestants have answered this question by declaring sola scriptura. From Puritan pulpits in Britain to “Big Tent” revivals in America, “by Scripture alone” became a banner cry for those rallying behind the Protestant and eventually evangelical movement.

Today, new generations of Christians are asking the same question—by what authority? Against the backdrop of a postmodern society where the gods of relativism and subjectivism seemingly dwarf objective, absolute truth, this question becomes especially significant. Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, says, “The inherent flaw of postmodernism is becoming a practical obstacle to unity because there is no source of authority to determine what constitutes orthodox or heretical doctrine.”1 To this end, some younger evangelicals can recite the Westminster Confession on Holy Scripture without crossing their fingers. Confident that the Bible is ultimately authoritative and “ought to be believed and obeyed,”2 ad fontes is their aim. Others are less capable, having located additional fountains from which to draw their authority. Given the everchanging environment, taxonomizing younger evangelicals becomes challenging. Nevertheless, Ed Stetzer, director of LifeWay Research, offers a helpful paradigm for understanding younger Christians. While his groupings of “relevants,” “reconstructionists,” “revisionists,” and “reformers” characterize the chief tenets held by each faction, they also each represent a wide spectrum of beliefs.3 Relevants

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elevants” are theological conservatives who embrace traditional evangelical principles in Scripture while seeking to make them relevant to those living in a postmodern culture. By “upgrading” styles of worship, methods of preaching, and uses of technology, relevants target younger generations of Christians through seeker-sensitive strategies.

For the Reformers, the primacy of the central pulpit symbolized the authority of the Holy Scriptures. When dissenting pilgrims crossed the Atlantic to found their New Jerusalem, they brought their biblio-centric architectural legacy with them and incorporated it into the designs of their meetinghouses.

At the center of most Protestant evangelical churches today is a pulpit, not an altar. Yet during the megachurch movement in the 1950s, an additional feature was added— the stage. Accommodating large crowds required performance platforms, wider auditoriums, and amphitheater seating. With state-of-the-art video screens, lighting, amplification systems, and orchestra pits, entertainment-based worship came into vogue. Many feared the church looked too much like the world in order to draw the world into the church. Yet it seemed to be working. In a consumerist society where the demands of the consumer dictate the

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supply of the producer, “supersized” churches experienced vast numeric explosions when tapping into the wants and needs of the market. As a result, pragmatism became a driving source of authority beyond the Scriptures alone.

In the early twentieth century, John Dewey, the father of American pragmatism, believed experimentation should take precedent over theoretical and predetermined abstract ideals. For him, no dichotomy existed between means and their ends. Success was the final arbiter of action. Dustin Guidry shows how this line of thinking has been widely embraced by younger evangelicals: “Pragmaticism has led churches to ask the question ‘Will it work?’ instead of asking the question ‘Is it true and biblical?’”4 Yet for churches employing innovative growth strategies while remaining relatively more committed to evangelical principles, a middle path has been blazed.

According to C. Peter Wagner, proponent of the Church Growth Movement, consecrated pragmaticism does not compromise on ethical or biblical absolutes, though it “ruthlessly examines traditional methodologies and programs....If some sort of ministry in the church is not reaching intended goals, consecrated pragmatism says there is something wrong which needs to be corrected.”5 For relevants, an effective tool for “correcting” antiquated or lagging ministries is the use of technology in the life of the church. Unlike previous generations, younger evangelicals (those born in and after 1975) were born into a society of visual stimuli. To appeal to this tech-savvy, visually coddled generation, PowerPoint presentations often work in tandem with sermons, dazzling scenic backgrounds splash behind floating worship lyrics, and in some cases—like the San Antonio congregation Imagine Fellowship—services are held in movie theaters. At Imagine Fellowship, tweeting during the sermon is not only allowed but strongly encouraged; and the thoughts, reflections, and questions of the congregation are visually displayed on the big screen throughout the service.6 In a day when Wikipedia and Theopedia have become final sources of authority for many teenagers, and 73 percent of college students use the Internet instead of the library for research,7 one becomes suspicious of the role of technology in younger evangelicalism. The popularity of Internet social networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook, not to mention “avatar”-capable applications such as Second Life, have given rise to a surprising offspring of postmodernism: “quasi-modernity.”

Defined “as if” or “resembling but not equaling something,” quasi speaks to the appearance of reality or virtual reality. Appropriately criticized as regurgitated Gnosticism (i.e., the separation of spirit from flesh), quasi-modernism allows for an online “second” life to parallel a “first” or “actual” life. Some churches appeal to Second Life when coupling their pragmatism with technology.

Indeed, much has changed since the days of Zwingli and the Reformers. Yet at the center of most online evan-

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CHRISTIAN GEORGE

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becoming flesh for the outcasts of society. Scott Bessenecker, director of global projects for mirror, a postmodern embrace of mystery is now InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, finds a movement of possible. No longer is a cold, scientific explana“youth taking up residence in slum communities in the same tion needed for belief in the supernatural. What spirit that I find in the start of the Franciscans and the early exists now is an emerging world in which Celtic orders.”11 In the same vein of early monastics, these new mystery gains firmer traction. monastics believe that the past gelical churches stands a pulpit, albeit pixelated and prone has something to offer the present, especially the extrato glitch. As the Scriptures continue to be translated into biblical practices against which the Reformation reacted. the pedestrian vernacular of the people, via printing press Shane Claiborne, author of The Irresistible Revolution and or online access, and as long as the pulpit occupies a founder of The Simple Way, has founded inner-city comprominent place in the life, worship, and theology of the munities committed to serving the community, rehabilichurch, be it real or cyber, some evangelicals at least are tating the sick, and living with the poor.12 Claiborne writes, convinced that the quasi-modern age of digita scriptura “The kingdom that Jesus speaks so much about is not just shares something in common with the great age of sola something we hope for after we die but is something we scriptura, some five hundred years ago. are to incarnate now.”13 As evidenced by the invention of hospitals, almshouses, Reconstructionists and asylums, many of which were extensions of the hile relevants struggle to make pietist principles monastery, for better or worse the church has struggled to on Scripture relevant to postmoderns, a second live in a “realized” eschatology. Following Jesus’ example category of younger evangelicals also exists: of injecting future kingdom principles into present day “Reconstructionists” are marked by dissatisfaction with the reality, in carnatio (literally “into flesh)” became a driving current condition of the American church. Reconstrucforce behind many of the monastic traditions. By the end tionists point to unChristian (Baker Books, 2007) and They of the Middle Ages, a galaxy of charitable organizations Like Jesus But Not the Church (Zondervan, 2007) as evidence blanketed Europe, giving rise to some of the most influof the need to “reconstruct” Christianity in the image of ential traditions in the history of Christianity. the early apostolic era. House churches, “organic” minTradition, therefore, has something to offer “new monastics.” At the Council of Trent in the sixteenth cenistries, incarnational theology, and urban monastic traditury, and more recently in the Second Vatican Council in tions are some of their solutions.

Renowned historian David Bebbington sums up the trathe twentieth century, the role of tradition gained formal dition of nineteenth-century evangelicalism in four words: equality with the status of Scripture. In reaction to this conversionism, Biblicism, crucicentrism, and activism.8 At equality, monastic traditions have been largely underexplored by Protestants in the last five hundred years. There different times and in different places, evangelicals have is, however, a growing interest among younger evangeliemphasized these four convictions in various ways. In the cals—especially reconstructionists—in recovering past traearly nineteenth century, British evangelicals both within ditions. In this way, earlier spiritualists such as St. Patrick and without the established church were deeply committed of Ireland, St. Columba of Scotland, and St. Francis of to social activism. This is seen clearly in the lives of promiAssisi have become teachers again. Through their writings, nent evangelical leaders: Anthony Ashley Cooper, who they speak to evangelicals about the upward, inward, and fought for the rights of factory workers in Britain; William outward tenets of the Christian faith, instructing evangelWilberforce, who aided in abolishing the British slave trade; icals in spiritual disciplines meant to heighten an awareness and William Booth, who founded the Salvation Army. of God, which then becomes manifest in social outreach.

Championing this activistic impulse of the evangelical Modern mystics such as Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, tradition, reconstructionists take seriously some explanaand Richard Foster also weigh in by drawing attention to tions of John 1:14. As Eugene Peterson renders it, “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighspiritual disciplines. Pilgrimage and labyrinth walking, once borhood.”9 In Celebration of Flesh, Arthur McGill writes, “In taboo to Protestants, combine the upward, inward, and the Kingdom of God, men are created with flesh, reconciled outward components of Christianity and are currently being through flesh, and glorified as flesh. To hide from the flesh reanimated by younger evangelicals. It is not surprising, for the sake of the Spirit is to miss the Christian life.”10 then, that many flock to monastic settlements like Taizé, In response to what is perceived as a decaying ecclesial Iona, and Compostela de Santiago for guidance. institutionalism that supposedly neglects the marginalAmong younger evangelicals, creedal Christianity is also ized, younger evangelicals are increasingly interested in on the rise. In confessional communities like House of Mercy

With modernism disappearing in the rear-view

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in St. Paul, Minnesota, the Nicene and Apostles’ creeds serve as “doctrinal boundaries” or guard rails that are not to be driven on but serve to protect from heretical veering.14 For reconstructionalists, orthodoxy cannot be distilled from a fleshly, hands-on orthopraxy. Online social communities, though convenient, cannot fully capture the significance of a Christ who came to earth as a person, not a pixel.

Insofar as credo translates “I believe,” younger evangelical are becoming a creedal people in the mystery of the incarnation. In radical juxtaposition to the quasi-modern dualism, ubiquitous in evangelicalism today, younger evangelicals are going “back to the future”—back to the textured life, to the touchable life, back to the nitty-gritty, face-to-face, community-centered templates of the great traditions of the past.

Revisionists hile reconstructionists are dissatisfied by elements of modern evangelicalism, “revisionists” are those interested in a significant revision of twenty-first century Christianity. Excited about new “forms” of Christianity emerging across America and Britain, revisionists value how a person lives over what a person believes. Old systematic approaches to theology and key evangelical teachings on Christ’s substitutionary atonement, divine judgment, and doctrines of afterlife are brought into question.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, an Age of Faith suddenly gave way to an Age of Reason. New Worlds were being discovered—both above and below. Through the lens of the telescope, scientists were able to analyze the celestial bodies that once dictated the destiny of medieval life. Illnesses previously untreatable were remedied with medicine instead of magic. By the time the Renaissance found full pronunciation in art, science, literature, and music, there seemed to be no end to what the power of human reason could accomplish.

When the crosshairs of human reason fell on Holy Scripture, a battle over the authority of the Bible was inevitable. In response to the higher critical movement some evangelicals sought to preserve the inspiration and inerrancy of the Scriptures, while others abandoned orthodox tenents of faith in light of a more “enlightened” scientific study of the Bible, resulting in a crisis of faith of sorts.15 A new crisis of faith has also emerged in evangelicalism today. Emerging author Phyllis Tickle argues, “We are seeing the start of a post-Protestant and post-denominational era. Just as Protestantism took the hegemony from Roman Catholicism and Roman Catholicism from the East at the Great Schism, so the emerging church is now taking hegemony from Protestantism.”16 In the mid-1990s, an ecclesial exodus of eighteen- to thirty-five-year olds revealed a grassroots movement of “emerging” Christians who jettisoned conventional forms of church. A “conversation” more than a hard-edged movement, the emerging church gained momentum by bringing into dialogue those of many denominations, geographies, and traditions.

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This movement, greatly advanced by the writings and ministries of Rob Bell, Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt, and Brian McLaren, encompasses a wide spectrum of fluctuating theological positions, making difficult any attempt to authoritatively categorize or define them. Examining the liberal left revisionists, many critique the movement as propagating “evanjellyfish” Christianity—a doctrinally “spineless” form of evangelicalism summed up by a new kind of TULIP: Tolerance, Conformity, Liberty, Inclusion, and Prosperity.17 But looking at the right, others embrace the title “evangelical” while appearing “emerging” only in their attempt to “do church” differently. A common denominator among most emerging Christians, however, may be found in the acronym coined by Leonard Sweet, EPIC: Experiential, Participatory, Image-based, and Communal.18 In an interview for this article, Brian McLaren, writer and spokesperson for the emerging/Emergent movement, explained, “A lot of us feel that the concepts of authority we inherited were naive—implying, for example, that Scripture can exercise authority without interpretation.

One of the biggest challenges in my life has been to distinguish between what Scripture says and what people say Scripture says. I’ve learned to have more confidence in Scripture itself, rather than in conventional interpretations of Scripture.”19 Tickle compares the authority of Scripture to a cathedral: a good teacher is likened to a docent who offers advice about what to see inside the building but “would never say how another must interpret the space or use the experience of the space.”20 Rob Bell, pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, buttresses Tickle’s position: “The Bible is still in the center for us,” he says, “but it’s a different kind of center. We want to embrace mystery rather than conquer it.”21 With modernism disappearing in the rear-view mirror, a postmodern embrace of mystery is now possible. No longer is a cold, scientific explanation needed for belief in the supernatural. What exists now is an emerging world in which mystery gains firmer traction. But just as with the pietism of modernity, for younger Christians, the temptation to elevate personal experience as an epistemological absolute intensifies.

Sprouting from the soil of postmodernism, the emerging church continues to take form. One wonders how a grassroots movement that resists institutionalization will keep from becoming an institution. Signs of decay have already been noted, with one critic even going so far as to write an obituary of the emerging church.22 The prophetic words of Isaiah serve as a warning for revisionists: “The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever” (Isa. 40:8, NIV).

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eformers” are younger evangelicals who seek to reclaim the Reformational teachings on Scripture and faith. Marked by tireless theocentric worship, reoccurring emphases on God’s soverN O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 0 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 11

eignty, and a ravenous appetite for Puritan literature, younger reformers looks to ministries like those of Mark Driscoll, John Piper, Tim Keller, Mark Dever, Joshua Harris, and C. J. Mahaney for leadership. In 2009, Time Magazine ranked “The New Calvinism” as third in the top ten ideas changing the world.23 A resurgence of theo-/missio-centric Calvinism is on the rise. According to Piper, preaching pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, “The criticism of Reformed theology is being silenced by the mission and justice and evangelism and worship and counseling— the whole range of pastoral life.”24 For two years, Collin Hanson, author of Young, Restless, and Reformed, traveled throughout North America on a quest to find out “what makes young evangelicals tick.”25 He interviewed pastors, visited colleges, and sat in the homes of leading evangelicals. At the end of his journey, he discovered a revival of Calvinistic Christians marked by an appetite for God’s Word, a passion for evangelism, and a zeal for holiness.26 Some believe this generation’s theo-centrism is a reaction against the widespread “me-centeredness” long since baked into its identity, as examined by Jean M. Twenge in Generation Me and by David Zimmerman in Deliver Us From ME-Ville. Zimmerman shows how new generations have mastered the deadly sin of superbia: “An inordinate sense of self regard.”27 It is not surprising, then, that the driving motto of the younger Calvinistic movement can be summed up by Louis Giglio, pastor of Passion City Church in Atlanta: “It’s not about me. It’s all about God.”28 Well supplied by publishing houses such as Banner of Truth and Pilgrim Press, young reformers want to identify with authors like Augustine, Luther, and Calvin. Tired of “miniskirt music”29—praise songs that barely cover the theological essentials—they have also added modern hymn writers like Keith and Kristyn Getty, Stuart Townend, Chris Tomlin, and David Crowder to their iPod playlists. Annual four-day Passion worship conferences—

“10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now” • Jobs are the New Assets • Recycling the Suburbs • The New Calvinism • Reinstating the Interstate • Amortality • Africa, Business Destination • The Rent-A-Country • Biobanks • Survival Stores • Ecological Intelligence Time Magazine (2009) 12 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

not entirely dissimilar to early twentieth-century “Big Tent” revivals—draw thousands of eighteen- to twentyfive-year olds who are “united for His renown.”30 Theologically conservative leaders such as Mark Driscoll, founder of the Acts 29 movement, are revered among young reformers. Though Driscoll’s style has been critiqued as abrasive and at times irreverent,31 his theology of Scripture would make any Puritan smile: “We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.”32 Similarly, on the other side of the continent, Timothy Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, is equally committed to the authority, integrity, and dependability of the Scripture: “Everybody’s got a foundation,” he says, “the Scripture is my foundation.”33 Martin Luther’s efforts to make the Scriptures accessible for even “the farm boy at his plow and the milkmaid at her pail”34 resulted in mass production of the Scriptures. Today, younger evangelicals continue to produce Bibles of every shape, edition, size, and translation. In this Bible-saturated society, the danger of solo scriptura (“Scripture alone”) in contrast to sola scriptura (“by Scripture alone”) is present. Though susceptible to a myopic exclusion of other Christian traditions and personalities, young reformers are in large part safeguarded from reading Scripture in total isolation of tradition because of their interest in the Reformation-inspired pastors. For them, tradition—small “t”—is subordinate to the Word of God, though it is still able to occupy an important place in its reception, history, and transmission.

One problem that Collin Hanson has discovered, however, is that despite elevating John Calvin to almost demigod status, most young “Calvinists” have never read the Institutes of the Christian Religion or even investigated Calvin’s positions on church and state, polity, and baptism.

Perhaps a far slier threat to young reformers, then, lies not in the elevation of Scripture or the Reformation but in the idolization of personalities who have the ability to make Jonathan Edwards a “homeboy,” and maybe even a primary source of authority. Of course, the exaltation of preachers is nothing new. Even the best of them, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, could not escape the “cult-like” aura or “Spurgeonism”35 that surrounded his ministry.

Conclusion s the spectrum of belief enlarges among relevants, reconstructionists, revisionists, and reformers, the additional sources of authority relied upon by each group have become more pronounced. Younger evangelicals differ on matters of theological substance, nuance, and idiom, yet each species gathers to drink, to some degree or another, from the same waterhole of Holy Scripture—the primary source of authority for Protestants.

Some younger evangelicals answer the age-old question, quo warranto? with dogmatic certainty. Others, like Jesus, answer the question with a question (see Mark 11:29). Yet as younger evangelicals grow into older evangelicals, and as new generations of Christians replace cur-

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rent ones, the words of Francis Schaeffer ring true: Jesus gives the world the right to judge whether we are Christians by our observable love for each other.36 To this end we believe in necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas.37 Or, to put a postmodern spin on it, “Essentials in Sharpie, nonessentials in pencil, and all things in charitable cursive.” ■

Christian T. George (M.Div., Beeson Divinity School) is currently completing a Ph.D. in theology at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. His research focuses on the theology of nineteenth-century Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon. Christian is the author of five books, including Sacred Travels, Sex, Sushi, & Salvation, and Godology, and his sermons, articles, and book excerpts have been featured in Preaching and Christianity Today. You can visit him online at www.restlesspilgrim.com.

Mark Driscoll, “Mark Driscoll: A Pastoral Perspective on the Emerging Church,”Criswell Theological Review n.s. 3/2 (Spring 2006), 91.

2“Of the Holy Scripture,” The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chapter 1, IV. 3Ed Stetzer, “Understanding the Emerging Church” (6 January 2006), www.sbcbaptistpress.org/bpnews.asp?ID=22406.

Though Stetzer includes reformers as a subcategory of relevants, for the purposes of this article I have allocated a separate category for it.

4Dustin Guidry, Turning the Ship: Exploring the Age-Integrated Church (Longwood, FL: Xulon Press, 2009), 35.

5C. Peter Wagner, Leading Your Church to Growth (Ventura, CA: Regal, 1984), 201.

6See Diane Mapes, “Holy Twitter: Tweeting from the Pews” (3 June 2009), www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30970139.

7Steve Jones, “The Internet Goes to College: How Students Are Living In the Future with Today’s Technology” in the Pew Internet and American Life Project (15 September 2002), 3.

8David Bebbington, quoted in Barry Hankins, American Evangelicals: A Contemporary History of Mainstream Religious Movement (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 1.

9Eugene Peterson, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress Publishing Group, 2002).

10Arthur C. McGill, The Celebration of Flesh: Poetry in Christian Life: An Enjoyment of the Poet’s Art, As Seen in the Words of T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens (New York: Association Press, 1964), 5.

11Scott Bessenecker, quoted in Rob Moll, “The New Monasticism,” Christianity Today, vol. 49, no. 9 (September 2005).

12For the “12 Marks of New Monasticism,” see www.thesimpleway.org/about/12-marks-of-new-monasticism.

13Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 117.

14Timothy George, “Faith as Trust, Knowledge, and Confession.” Sermon given at Hodges Chapel, Beeson Divinity School (1 January 2009).

15Owen Chadwick notes that W. H. Mill “devoted four solid 1

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years of Hulscan lectures to refuting Strauss.” Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church: An Ecclesiastical History of England, Part I (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), 532.

16Phyllis Tickle quoted in “The Future of the Emerging Church: Are We Experiencing the Next Reformation of Christianity?” (19 March 2007), www.outofur.com/archives/ 2007/03/ the_future_of_t.html.

17This acronym is adapted from Mike Scruggs, “The Five Points of Evanjellyfish Christianity: Restoring Our Biblical and Constitutional Foundations,” www.daveblackonline.com/five_ points_of_evanjellyfish_chr.htm.

18Leonard Sweet, quoted in “Interview: Brian McLaren,” Religion & Ethics Newsweekly (15 July 2005), episode 846.

19From an interview with Brian D. McLaren conducted by Christian George (22 June 2010). Available at http://restlesspilgrim.com/2010/07/interview-brian-mclaren/#more-2381.

20From an interview with Phyllis Tickle conducted by Christian George (13 June 2010).

21Andy Crouch, “The Emerging Mystique,” Christianity Today, vol. 48, no. 11 (1 November 2004), 2.

22C. Michael Patton, “Obituary: The Emerging Church (1994–2009),” www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2009/05/obituary-the-emerging-church-1994-2009.

23Time Magazine, “10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now,” www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29 569,1884779,00.html; accessed 1 June 2010.

24John Piper, quoted in Collin Hanson, “Young, Restless, Reformed: Calvinism Is Making a Comeback—And Shaking Up the Church,” Christianity Today, vol. 50, no. 9 (September 2006).

25Collin Hanson, Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008), 12.

26Hanson, 156.

27David A. Zimmerman, Deliver Us from ME-ville (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2008), 16.

28Louis Giglio quoted in Andree Farias, “A Passion for the Christ,” Christianity Today (April 2005), 2.

29Christian George, Sex, Sushi, & Salvation: Thoughts on Intimacy, Community, and Eternity (Moody Publishers, 2008), 107.

30See www.268generation.com/passion2010.

31See www.ebooknetworking.net/books_detail-158134975 0.html.

32See www.acts29network.org/about/doctrine.

33Timothy Keller: national2006_keller_interview14.mov; accessed 3 July 2010 from: www.stevekmccoy.com/reformissionary/2006/06/keller_on_scrip.html.

34Timothy George, “Why We Still Need Luther: Four Hundred Fifty Years After His Death, Martin Luther Can Still Inspire Us,” Christianity Today, vol. 40, no. 12 (28 October 1996).

35See “Spurgeonism” in Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Sword and Trowel, vol. 2 (1866), 138.

36Francis A. Schaeffer, The Mark of the Christian (reprint, 1970, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2007), 22.

37“In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” Quoted from National Education Association of the United States, Addresses and Proceedings—National Education Association of the United States, 1873 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 2007), 31.

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SOLA SCRIPTURA

The “Magna Carta” of Christian Liberty The Christian...finds in the Bible the very Word of God. Let it not be said that dependence upon a book is a dead or an artificial thing. The Reformation of the sixteenth century was founded upon the authority of the Bible, yet it set the world aflame.

Dependence upon a word of man would be slavish, but dependence upon God’s Word is life. Dark and gloomy would be the world, if we were left to our own devices, and had no blessed Word of God. The Bible to the Christian is not a burdensome law, but the very Magna Charta [sic] of Christian liberty.

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Gresham Machen wrote these words at the conclusion of his chapter on the Bible in his classic book Christianity and Liberalism (first published in 1923), composed in the thick of his battle with modernism in the Presbyterian Church.1 Historic Protestantism, he explained, was based on the conviction that God has spoken in his Word, that this Word was infallible and its authority final. Liberalism, on the other hand, submitted to a different master. For the modernist, “the only authority can be individual experience; truth can only be that which ‘helps’ the individual man.”2 Machen understood that when liberals in the church proceeded to do that which was right in their own eyes, the result was not liberty but tyranny and ultimately the death of a church. As he was later tried in the courts of the church for his refusal to demonstrate blind loyalty to the church bureaucracy, he explained that authority to which he was to submit was given from above and thus limited by Scripture.

The Word of God is our only rule of faith and practice. This is the doctrine of sola scriptura: we must not contradict Scripture, and we must not add to Scripture. When the church would bind the conscience, the Christian can appeal to the Word of God and find liberty. A church without this guarantee will be at the mercy of ambitious bureaucrats or repressive moralists, and it binds the conscience by the word of man.

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“Good and Necessary Consequence” he principle that Machen was honoring found its clearest expression in the Westminster Confession of Faith: “The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men” (1.6).

The Westminster Confession explains that there are two ways in which God reveals himself in Scripture: explicit truth (“which is expressly set down in Scripture”) and implicit truth (which “by good and necessary consequence can be deduced from Scripture”). Together these truths constitute the whole counsel of God, and both are equally obliging on the church. Herman Bavinck explains: “[T]hat which can be deduced from Scripture by legitimate inference is as binding as that which is expressly stated in it.”3 It is important to underscore that “good and necessary consequence” is not the voice of human wisdom. Because it is reason that submits to the rule of Christ, it is the voice of Scripture itself. As James Bannerman, the nineteenthcentury Scottish Presbyterian, explained, good consequences “must be truly contained in the inspired statements from which they profess to be taken.” Necessary consequences must be “unavoidably forced upon the mind, upon an honest and intelligent application of it to the Scripture page.”4 In a helpful essay, C. J. Williams points out that this phrase can be juxtaposed with the wording of the Westminster Larger Catechism (Q/A 105), which warns against “bold and curious searching into [God’s] secrets.”

Where there is not good and necessary consequence, there is exegetical recklessness. This is “presumptuous theological creativity.” The deductive reasoning that the confession commends is no license for “an uncharted world of interpretive possibilities,” writes Williams. “Good and necessary consequences will propound specific truths, not unveil mysterious layers of meaning in Scripture.”5 The confession goes on (in 1.6) to explain that the Holy Spirit guides the church in identifying these consequences: “the inward illumination of the Spirit of God [is] necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the Word.” Bavinck writes, “This is how the church acts every minute of the day in the ministry of the Word, in the practice of life, in the development of its doctrine. It never stops with the letter but under the guidance of the Holy Spirit deduces from the data of Scripture the inferences and applications that make possible and foster its life and development.”6 The “good and necessary” principle can be demonstrated by way of illustration. We do not have a positive command or historical example to administer the Lord’s Supper to women. But the practice of admitting women to the Table is a clear argument from inference that the church has never questioned. Similarly, there is no explicit

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statement in the New Testament that the Sabbath day has been changed from the last to the first day of the week.

But the New Testament practice of meeting on the first day and John’s reference to the Lord’s Day (Rev. 1:10) establish the warrant, by good and necessary consequence, of recognizing the Lord’s Day as the Christian Sabbath.

On the other hand, there may appear to be, in a very literal reading, an explicit command from Christ for his disciples to practice foot washing (John 13:14). However, this was a common practice in first-century Palestine, and Christ cites it in order to instruct Christians to perform humble service for one another, not to bind the church in a particular liturgical practice. As an ordinance for the church, foot washing fails to meet the burden of good and necessary consequence.

Good and necessary consequence, then, is a principle that safeguards the consistent application of the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura. The church has no right to impose on its members any teaching, commandment, or ordinance that is contrary to or cannot be deduced from Scripture.

The Battle for Christian Liberty he temptation to impose non-biblical demands derived from “bold and curious” reasoning is not limited to theological liberals. Some conservative churches have constructed a “catalog of sins,” highlighting particular “bar-room vices” that comprise a legalistic picture of the Christian life. As soon as Machen and his associates founded the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, a minority within the new church pressed for a declaration against the use of alcohol. The majority in the church, while opposed to intemperance, countered that loyalty to Christ forbade their adopting rules that went beyond the Word of God. Of course, none of the advocates of abstinence were consciously challenging the authority of the Bible as the church’s standard of conduct. But the effect of their crusade was to deny the sufficiency of Scripture and ultimately its authority as well. If it is denied that the Bible provides principles that serve as infallible guides to the Christian in all matters of conduct, then additional authorities must enter the picture. The addition of such manmade rules to the Scripture is as harmful as any subtraction from God’s Word.

The principle of Christian liberty is not a popular cause in many circles today. A refusal to condemn alcohol may leave the Christian vulnerable to the impression of being opposed to personal holiness and in favor of sinful license.

On a social level, consider the zeal of some churches to take a stand against a social evil by organizing boycotts or political campaigns for particular laws or candidates for office. The church that safeguards liberty of the Christian in this way is not likely to join such social bandwagons. It may be accused of being cowardly in the face of apparent grave threats to the moral fabric of the nation.

Speaking in the early years of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, shortly after some prominent fun-

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erty. Imagine a worship service that entails something without biblical warrant, such as a pernation of the law, but this liberty never descends sonal testimony or a dramatic skit. What recourse does a worinto license. Christians are enabled to live for shiper have who finds that By not particiobjectionable? that great end for which they were created: pating, one sins by violating the divine command to worship the glory of God. with God’s assembled people. By damentalists had left the church over this issue, R. B. joining in, one sins by violating one’s conscience. The Kuiper of Westminster Seminary conceded the unpopuonly way the church can worship God and protect liberty larity of the church’s stand: “The mere mention of of conscience is by observing the regulative principle of Christian liberty causes some of you to worry. You see worship. The freedom of the Christian is found in serving smoke and smell liquor, and you wonder whether I may one Lord and Master, Jesus Christ. not be about to utter some awful indiscretion. Forget it.

So what is at stake in the principle of Christian liberty Christian liberty is something big. It is truly broad.” is something far greater than a craving for single malt Kuiper’s point is that in the Orthodox Presbyterian scotch or the inclination to vote Democrat. It is liberating Church and other Reformed churches, there has been a the believer from arbitrary human rules and the church recognition of the rights and duties of Christians to follow from a false agenda that distracts it from its calling. Should the dictates of their own consciences in matters where the the minister contend that America is a Christian nation Bible has not pronounced judgment. that will receive the blessing from God in return for civic righteousness? Does he promise health and wealth to the Who Binds the Conscience? believer who follows the Bible’s formula for success? We he “something big” to which Kuiper referred comes may be quick to dismiss those claims when they come into view as the Westminster Confession goes on to from a crass televangelist, but they come in more subtle describe in 20.2: “God alone is Lord of the forms in churches that follow “brash and curious” princiConscience and hath left it free from the doctrines and ples rather than good and necessary consequence. commandments of men which are in anything contrary to His word, or beside it in matters of faith and worship.” This Relevance, Real and Imagined is often misunderstood by Christians who assume that till the objection is raised: If the church is silenced on because God is Lord of the conscience, the church cannot speaking to the “real world,” hasn’t it lost its relebind consciences. But the church has real God-given vance? The assumption that lurks behind that quesauthority, and the elders of the church, in the execution tion is that the world sets the standard for relevance. The of their rule, inevitably and unavoidably bind the congospel is not obliged to meet the world’s cravings; it is sciences of their members. The question, rather, becomes: designed to challenge them. The message of sin and salOn what basis is the conscience bound? Is it by the Word vation is irrelevant only to a church that has abandoned of God or by the word of man? its calling in pursuit of worldliness. The church must draw In Christ, Christians are free from all the condemnation a distinction between what the world considers relevant of the law, but this liberty never descends into license. and what is truly relevant. The Bible fulfills needs in Christians are enabled to live for that great end for which which the world is not interested. they were created: the glory of God. We pursue that aim All Scripture is profitable, but only when it is put to according to God’s own will revealed in the Bible. That profitable purposes. In a remarkable essay that anticipates standard, given by inspiration of God, is absolute and this modern obsession, Paul Woolley wrote on the final. It was designed so that “the man of God may be “Relevancy of Scripture” for a symposium by the faculty competent, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16). of Westminster Seminary in 1946. “It is of utmost imporIn this context, we see that Christian liberty is not an tance,” he wrote, “that when Scripture is read its purpose end to itself. Rather, Christian liberty serves the Lordship should be kept in mind and no attempt made to draw final of Christ, who alone is Lord of the conscience. Christian conclusions about which it does not speak.” liberty limits the church to ministering and declaring only Robert Letham writes, “There are vast fields of knowlthe Word of God and not human opinion. edge that the Scripture does not address. Scripture is comNowhere do we find greater violations of this principle plete and final only for the purpose for which it was given.”7 than with innovations to public worship. There are many The Bible will not tell us how to invest our money. It will not direct us to which political candidate we should lend Reformed Christians who regard the regulative principle our support. “In these matters,” Letham notes, “the ‘traas a narrow-minded rule that robs worshipers of the freeditions of men’ may have their place.” dom that God would have them express in worship. This When the church expresses itself on matters where argument completely misses the genius of Christian lib-

In Christ, Christians are free from all the condem-

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the Bible is silent, it listens to the voice of a stranger and it puts the Bible to unprofitable use. The Bible is commended more for its therapeutic value (ways to improve my marriage or find a better job) than its redemptive benefits (how I am convicted of my sin and misery and find the salvation offered through Christ). As David Wells has observed, many churches today profess the sufficiency of Scripture while their practice belies that profession. “For evangelicals,” he writes, “this has taken the form of using polling, marketing, and business know-how to adapt Christian faith to generational niches. It has also involved recasting Christian faith in therapeutic terms for those who have left a moral world and inhabit a psychological world.”8 In these ways we may think we have made the Bible “relevant,” but we have only denied its sufficiency.

In the desperate pursuit of the “the very latest thing,” the culture sets the agenda for the church and the principle of sola scriptura has morphed into sola cultura.

The illusion is that a healthy and powerful church emerges from these activities—one equipped with a panoply of attractive programs and services. The reality is an impotent church that has no comfort and hope to offer to a lost and dying world.

Conclusion achen understood that it was a great sin for the church to bind the consciences of its members by any doctrine or practice not certainly imposed by God and revealed in his Word. At the same time, it is a disloyalty to God to yield to any such imposition and to accept as a matter truly binding the conscience anything not authoritatively taught and imposed in the Scriptures.

As I am writing this, on the eve of the Fourth of July, fireworks are sounding throughout my neighborhood.

Political liberty, Americans rightly note, is a very precious thing. Christian liberty is even more precious. It is concerned about a far greater freedom: our liberation from the estate of sin and misery and being delivered into an estate of salvation, where fellowship with God through Christ is the ultimate source of life, liberty, and happiness.

It is a sad testimony to the misplaced priorities of the church today when celebrations of political freedom incite it to jettison Christian liberty. Whenever churches subject their church members to unbiblical political and social agendas, churches establish a rival authority to the Lordship of Christ. This rival authority leads to the very bondage that prompted Protestants to leave the Roman Catholic Church in the sixteenth century and to separate from modernists in the twentieth century.

“Don’t tread on me” was the rallying cry of American colonies in their fight against political tyranny. How much more ought that to be the cry of the church, equipped with the Word of God, in its warfare against spiritual oppression? When the Bible is put to the proper use of making God’s people “wise unto salvation,” then it truly becomes the “Magna Carta” of Christian liberty. ■

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John R. Muether is professor of church history at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida.

J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2009), 78–79.

2Machen, 78.

3Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. John Bolt; trans.

John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 4.526.

4James Bannerman, Inspiration: The Infallible Truth and Divine Authority of the Holy Scriptures (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1865), 587.

5C. J. Williams, “Good and Necessary Consequence in the Westminster Confession” in The Faith Once Delivered: Essays in Honor of Dr. Wayne R. Spear, ed. Anthony T. Selvaggio (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2007), 180, 185.

6Bavinck, 4.526.

7Robert Letham, The Westminster Assembly: Reading Its Theology in Historical Context (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2009), 138.

8David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 227.

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t is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery....You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love....You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

—Galatians 5:1, 4–6, 13–14 N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 0 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 17

SOLA SCRIPTURA

The Spirit, the Spirits, and the Letter Martin Luther on the Holy Spirit and the Holy Scriptures

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n the theology of Martin Luther, the Holy Spirit (contending for his position among other spirits) cannot be separated from the external Word in the fixed and stable form we know as the Holy Scriptures. These Holy Scriptures belong to a broader matrix of instruments through which the Holy Spirit deals with people mediately rather than immediately or by direct revelation to the individual, and thereby certainly in the church.

The Spirit and the Letter: Platonic Separation and Christological Cohesion cribes” was the epithet pinned on Luther and his colleagues by Thomas Müntzer and the left wing of the Reformation. Bound to the letter and educated (only) in what was written, Anabaptists such as Müntzer alleged that the Reformers lacked essential knowledge and experience of the Spirit. And although Luther did indeed counteract their cries of “Speeerit!

Speeerit!” with “Scripture! Scripture! Scripture!” he never did in a way that pitted Holy Scripture against the Holy Spirit. Instead, preaching on Romans 15:4 in 1531, Luther claimed the Scriptures as a “comfort” for Christians, thus aligning the Bible inseparably with “the Comforter,” as the Holy Spirit is called by Jesus in John 15:26. God himself is present in and with the Scriptures, after having inspired their authorship, even though their “written-ness” might

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seem to make them as significant as straw. “Let the Scriptures be ink, paper and letters,” Luther explained.

“Nevertheless there is one who is present with them; he says they are his own, and that is God.”1 The history of interpretations that separate the Spirit and Scripture is unfortunately all too long, beginning with a Platonist reading of 2 Corinthians 2:6 (“For the letter kills, but the Spirit makes alive”). Whether from reason in the Enlightenment, spiritualism among the mystics, or the inner religion of experience in Schleiermacher’s school, the demand that the Spirit should somehow be distanced from all physical, concrete, historical, and fleshly words on the page is ever present. There needs to be some space. Luther eventually broke with the understanding of language most prominent in classical antiquity (even in the Augustinian tradition) and ceased to conceive of language as a system of signs that could by their very nature only point to things external to themselves. His great hermeneutical discovery (won via private confession with the realization that the priest’s word of absolution really forgives sin) was that the lingual sign, the word, is the thing itself. “The [lingual] signs are twofold: In philosophy the [lingual] sign is the marker of an absent thing; in theology it is the marker of a present thing,” he

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explained. Therefore Luther did not allow for any space or gap between the Word and Spirit; or put more plainly, the Bible was not an empty set of words that merely symbolized a far-off heavenly reality. Luther not only affirmed the inspiration and divine authorship of the Holy Scriptures along with the church, but against the prevailing mode of interpretation in the Middle Ages he insisted that Scripture’s spiritual sense was precisely the literal sense.2 Simply stating that Luther had a high view of Scripture, though certainly true, actually stops far too short. His understanding of the preached Word and of Scripture is shaped by his understanding of Christ, his pneumatology (or doctrine of the Holy Spirit) by Christology (his doctrine of Christ). God “has brought the Savior low enough and placed him in the oral Word,” and what is more, his speaking “is written down with the quill and is God’s voice.” For Luther, the incarnation of the Son of God has a sanctifying effect on the bodily, the lowly, the earthly, the concrete. He rejected the opinion that “such external things” as the preached Word, the ink of the written letter, water, bread, and wine “cannot save, because they are common, bodily creatures.” An incarnate Creator does not shun the creaturely. God—not needing to be theologically shielded from human flesh, from ignominious death upon a cross—does not need to be shielded from human speech or human writing. The incarnation and the personal union of Christ’s two natures, which communicate their attributes to one another, hallow the human, the bodily, the physical. In light of this condescension into human flesh, the Holy Spirit’s condescension simply follows, for whom pen and ink with all of their historicity and contingency do not prove too ignominious. The Scriptures depict and deliver such an incarnate God: “These are miraculous things, that God bends down and sinks himself into the letters and says, ‘There man has me depicted. These letters shall give such strength that the Devil [is] defied and people [are] redeemed.’”3 When the holy Lord takes things into his use, they are hallowed words too, even the written ones. It is via such a Lord that one arrives at the fact that some of the many things that have been written are the Holy Scriptures.

The Spirit vs. the Spirits s Luther’s ecclesiology came to contrast the struggle between Christ and antichrist, and as he famously robbed Erasmus of the notion of neutral ground in matters theological, so also the landscape surrounding the Holy Spirit and the Holy Scriptures is a field fraught with strife. The Spirit and Scripture constantly vie for their place and their particular identity.4 With interpretation and exposition, much more than just various senses, various spirits are at play. In his “Assertio omnium articulorum” Luther depicts the struggle between one’s own spirit and the Spirit of the Scriptures themselves. Accused of wanton self-will in interpretation, he counters his opponents by claiming that the current exegetical method had devolved to amassing opinions of the fathers. The Spirit of the Scriptures was getting buried

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beneath the ever growing heap of the spirits of its interpreters. Affirming the Scriptures themselves as first principle (principium primum) he declares, “The Scriptures are not to be understood but by way of that Spirit, by whom they have been written. This Spirit can be found nowhere more present and vivifying than in his own Holy Scriptures, letters which he has written.” The Spirit of the Scriptures is the Holy Spirit who through the Scriptures drives out our spirit. This amounted to an exorcism for exegetes. At the font of the Scriptures we are taught that “first and alone one should labor in the words of God. The Spirit will come of his own accord and will drive out our spirit, so that we may be about the task of theology without hazard.”5 Harmful spirits need room to rabble-rouse and cause mischief, we might surmise from Matthew 12:43–45, and the fanatics or fanatical spirits (Schwärmgeister) before and after the Reformation created just such space for theirs by divorcing the Holy Spirit from the letter of Scripture.

Paraphrased, Luther’s reply to the Anabaptists was, “No letter? Then no Spirit, and no Christ.” Spirit without the external Word is still spirit, although neither good nor holy, but rather the devil.

Eventually the humanist Erasmus was drawn unwillingly into this great Reformation debate, and like the Anabaptists he too wished to create some space between God and the Scriptures. He offered Luther an olive branch by way of academic skepticism and biblical moralism. The Scriptures, Erasmus claimed, are often uncertain and obscure, so better to give theological assertions a rest and stick with the promotion of piety. But Luther flipped the tables and blamed all darkness and ambiguity on the human heart and will, insisting that though God himself is at times unintelligible, the Scriptures of God are not; they are clear, and moving from their center (Christ) outward they clarify all darkness and make sure assertion (that is confession, a sine qua non for Christianity) is possible.6 The moves of various spirits to disarm, domesticate, sidestep, or (as in the case of the late-medieval papacy) institutionally corral the Scriptures gets met by the living Spirit of God, who asserts himself and whose Scriptures create their own hearing. The interpreter is interpreted, the expositor exposited. Exorcising our spirit, the Holy Spirit moves in, killing our notions of free will and assertions of neutral space. The letter and Spirit together give vitality and come to hold the Christian together, encouraging him in prayer.

I don’t know how strong others are in the S/spirit, but I can’t get that holy. Even if I were so learned and full of the S/spirit as some think themselves to be, I still constantly experience the fact that when I am without the Word and not dealing with it, then Christ isn’t home, nor zest, nor S/spirit. However, as soon as I take up a Psalm or a word of Scripture, a light shines and a fire burns in my heart, so that I obtain a different attitude and mind.7 N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 0 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 19

The Holy Scriptures and the Larger Matrix of the Holy Spirit’s Mediate Work s noted above regarding the christological and incarnational foundation for Luther’s understanding of Holy Scripture and its relation to the Holy Spirit, the Scriptures share with Holy Baptism, the Holy Supper, and with preaching (we might say, the Holy Sermon) a scandalous concreteness and an externality. In Luther’s treatment of the Scriptures, they are not only analogous in externality but are in fact part of a larger matrix of means by which the Holy Spirit is speaking and dealing with his people in the church.8 Seldom does Luther deal with the Scriptures apart from preaching. They form for him parts or aspects of the overarching whole of the external Word of God, and so he can refer to both under this title. Even the meditatio, which along with oratio and tentatio forms the proper study of theology, is not simply the meditating of students hunched over the Bible but entails engaging a Word that God has commanded to be written, preached, read, heard, sung, and said. Though some argument can be made for a given primacy of the preached Word with Luther, rather than categorically place the Scriptures over preaching or preaching above the Scriptures, he tends to hold the two together against opponents who were inclined to separate them from one another. Rather than being substitutes for or rivals of one another, Scripture and preaching run together, the proper place for the Bible being the pulpit. As the receiving of preaching and Scripture go together, so does their rejection. The fanatical spirits insisted on direct or separate revelations of the Spirit over against the Scriptures, and were also quick to dismiss the Word

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or seeing how dangerous it would be to boast of the Spirit without the Word, He [Christ] declared that the Church is indeed governed by the Holy Spirit, but in order that that government might not be vague and unstable, He annexed it to the Word. For this reason Christ exclaims that those who are of God hear the Word of God—that His sheep are those which recognize His voice as that of their Shepherd, and any other voice as that of a stranger (John 10:27). For this reason the Spirit, by the mouth of Paul, declares (Eph. 2:20) that the Church is built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets.

Also, that the Church is made holy to the Lord, by the washing of water in the Word of life. The same thing is declared still more clearly by the mouth of Peter, when he teaches that people are generated to God by that incorruptible seed (1 Pet. 1:23). In short, why is the preaching of the gospel so often styled the kingdom of God, but because it is the scepter by which the heavenly King rules His people?”

—John Calvin, “Calvin’s Reply to Sadoleto,” A Reformation Debate: John Calvin and Jacopo Sadoleto 20 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

preached from the pulpit. Naturally they were not against preaching itself, of which they too did much, but against the ordered preaching of the Ministers of the Word that was bound to the letter of Scripture. Here Luther maintained that the solid ground for faith and teaching is that of the bodily or written Word, written down in letters, and preached orally by him and others in the Office of the Ministry. Only in the continuity of preaching with the Scriptures could Luther claim against Roman opponents that the Word proclaimed among the followers of the Wittenberg Reformation was God’s Word. Similarly on this front, the papacy set itself not only above the Scriptures but also over the Office of the Ministry and all preaching by arrogating the teaching office of the church to itself. As was often the case when his theological diagnostic was sharpest, Luther could lump the fanatics and the supporters of the papacy together, calling them all “Enthusiasts,” those who place the thoughts and musings of their own hearts above and before God’s Word.9 Luther’s answer to both the fanatics and the allies of the papacy is a steady reiteration of God’s mandated, instituted, and ordered Word, Sacraments, and Office.

Enthusiasm is to break with and sidestep what God has mandated and instituted, stipulating other (and one’s own) means for God’s dealing with us. This tendency has infected the children of Adam from the beginning. God has, however, bound himself to the preached and written Word, to Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and the Absolution, locating himself in the church as its Head, where the Holy Spirit works through these means to “call, gather, enlighten, and sanctify,” to create and sustain faith, to forgive sins. This is to encounter God where he has put himself, to find him where he wills to be found. Paralleling the difference between God himself and the Scriptures of God, the opposite of the hidden God (deus absconditus) in Luther’s “Bondage of the Will” is not simply some abstractly revealed God (a deus revelatus), but God as he is preached, held out, and encountered in the Divine Service (deus praedicatus, oblatus et cultus). Luther’s confession of the Holy Spirit, which as we have seen is bound up with his understanding of Holy Scripture, is incomplete without confession of the means by which the Holy Spirit delivers the benefits of Christ’s saving work, which places Scripture in a broader matrix of means and ties it indissolubly to the ordered preaching of the church.10 Wherein then does the sola of sola scriptura lie? Contrary to some prevalent Protestant mystique, sola scriptura is no doctrinal discovery of the Reformation. As with most Christian doctrine, the doctrine of Scripture did not come into decisive written formulation until it was challenged, but this does not mean that it was not understood and practiced beforehand. Prior to the Reformation the fathers of the church had been primarily exegetes; the Scriptures were the understood source of teaching and theology.

Numerous medieval theologians had formulations of sola scriptura in their writings. Only after three centuries of strife over the final authority in the church did the Council

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of Trent perpetrate a theological novum, declaring Scripture and Tradition to be of equal authority as sources of revelation. The Lutheran Reformation, along with its understanding of Scripture, did not manufacture the new but reasserted the old in the face of church abuses and theological and ecclesial ingenuity. Along with the great tradition of the church, Luther implicitly affirms what we might call a nominative case use of sola scriptura: as he is articulating theology—in the pulpit, at the podium, or in print—it is clear that the Scriptures are the final ground of authority for teaching and for establishing the theological content of divine revelation. However, the primary function of sola scriptura, as with sola gratia and sola fide, is in the ablative case (the Latin case expressing ideas of preposition without the prepositions). As the rule and norm of Christian doctrine, Scripture is that by which all teaching is judged and all practice measured. Scripture is not alone the Word of God to the exclusion of preaching; because of Scripture God also reveals himself through preaching, Baptism, the Supper, and the Absolution. But all teaching is judged and the life of the church and its Divine Service are normed by Scripture alone. It was precisely this ablative function of sola scriptura that called for assertion at the time of the Reformation, first over against a papacy, which having set itself above the other bishops and any council had also become resistant to being judged by Scripture, and then against rampant spiritualism, which would use the developing break with Rome to break with all institution and order, even God’s own instituted and ordered means of grace.11 First Things First and Given Things Delivered n affirming that the Holy Spirit works through such means, Luther in no way denied that he also works on and in the human heart:

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God…deals with us in a twofold way: on the one hand externally, and on the other hand internally.

Externally he deals with us through the oral Word of the Gospel and through bodily Signs such as Baptism and the Sacrament. Internally he deals with us through the Holy Spirit and faith along with other gifts.

Yet there is order to this twofold mode of operation: But that all in such a way and according to such an order, that the external bits shall and must go first.

The internal ones come after, through the external ones, as he has decided to give no one the internal bits except through the external bits, for he will give no one the Spirit or faith without the external Word and Sign, which he has instituted for this purpose.

These quotations from “Against the Heavenly Prophets” are paralleled by the internal and external clarity of Scripture addressed in “Bondage of the Will.” The internal

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clarity of Scripture, a matter of one’s heart and understanding, is not to be had without the Holy Spirit.

Regarding external clarity, the Scriptures are clear as they are declared to all in the Ministry of the Word that is faithful to the Scriptures. Any internal clarity is by way of the Holy Spirit working through these external means.

Working through the external means, the Holy Spirit overcomes the space between Christ and man, creating faith in man, enlightening the heart, delivering the gifts of Christ’s suffering and death, justifying and reconciling with the Father. Where there are these means, there the Holy Spirit, there Christ, there the Father, all certainly and concretely delivered as a gift.12 If things don’t go from out to in, they go from in to out, or perhaps just stay completely within. This was the case with the fanatics of Luther’s day and ours, who like medieval monastics sought God by a mystical sinking into the self or with a supposed direct relationship to the Spirit.

But by following this in to out pattern, biblical spirituality is overturned: what should be the inner gifts of the Spirit become instead mere inner spiritual gifts to be improved by particular exercises and a specific piety (and thus are not really gifts but habits that we develop for ourselves). Then the Sacraments become mere commands to be carried out by us, the Scriptures become a rulebook for making life godlier, and the duties of personal piety begin to pile up. Luther recognized this reversed directional pattern in his opponent Andreas Karlstadt, saying he “wants to teach you not how the Spirit comes to you, but how you are supposed to come to the Spirit.” Luther eventually went on to diagnose the attempt to move from inside ourselves to God as the confusing of law and gospel; it was even possible, he criticized the fanatics, to tie up the Spirit under the letter of the law.13 As the Lutheran theologian Hermann Sasse has noted, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and the doctrine of Scripture go together. As with all doctrines, these can be articulated as demands: “We must cling to Scripture alone! The Bible must have primacy in the church!” Or they can be delivered as gifts. Do we get to Scripture, or does it get to us?

By his example and by his own biography, Luther guides us to the latter, toward Scripture as the sole rule of faith and life delivered to us by the Holy Spirit along with and through Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, the Holy Supper, and the Holy Sermon. Though he may go on to further apologetic tasks, the Christian who consistently hears biblical teaching, whose pastor distinguishes the gospel from the law in scriptural preaching, who is privileged to live in a liturgy that steeps him in the Scriptures, who receives Christ so delivered, will need little convincing that the letters on the page are none other than those of the Spirit of the living God.14 ■

Jonathan Mumme (M.Div., Concordia Seminary, St. Louis), lives in Berlin and is working on a doctorate in systematic theology at the University of Tübingen.

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Martin Luther, “Scribes,” Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 60 vols. (Weimar: Böhlau, 1883), 34/II:487,2f. (hereafter WA); WA 50:646, 33ff.; see also the references in Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelischlutherischen Kirche, 11th ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992), 454 n. 2 (hereafter BSLK). Luther’s imitation of the southern German/Swiss drawl (“gaischt, gaischt”): WA 46:426, 28. “Scripture!…Scripture!”: WA 36:500, 31ff. The sermon: WA 34/II:483–490; quote: WA 34/II:489,13–15. All translations are the author’s unless otherwise indicated.

2The Spirit and the letter along with 2 Cor. 2:6: Johannes von Lüpke, “Geist und Buchstabe,” in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 4th ed. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998ff.), 3:578–82.

Luther vs. Schleiermacher: Hermann Sasse, “Luther and the Word of God,” in Accents in Luther’s Theology, ed. Heino O. Kadai (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1967), 47–97, 72.

Luther’s understanding of language and hermeneutical breakthrough: Oswald Bayer, Schöpfung als Anrede: Zu einer Hermeneutik der Schöpfung (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1986), 36–9; see also his Martin Luthers Theologie: Eine Vergegenwärtigung (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 62–83 (esp. 71–3). Luther quote: WA Tischrede 4:666, 8ff. (no. 5106). Authorship and inspiration of the Scriptures: WA 7:97,2ff.; WA 34/II:488, 4; Hermann Sasse, “The Rise of the Dogma of Holy Scripture in the Middle Ages” in The Reformed Theological Review 18 (1959): 45– 54. Spiritual and literal sense: WA 7:647–71; see also Martin Brecht, Martin Luther (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag), 1:360ff.

3Luther quotes in order: WA 46:527, 31–5; WA 50:646, 25– 31; WA 34/II:487, 12–15. The Christology as driving force for the whole: Luther’s preface to the New Testament: WA Deutsche Bibel 6:2, 23–4, 23 (hereafter WA DB); Johann Anslem Steiger, “Die Communicatio Idiomatum als Achse und Motor der Theologie Luthers: Der ‘Fröhliche Wechsel’ als hermeneutischer Schlüssel zu Abendmahlslehre, Anthropologie, Seelsorge, Naturtheologie, Rhetorik und Humor,” in Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 38 (1996): 1–28. See also Sasse, “Luther and the Word…,” 82: “The Lutheran Christian…believes in the Bible because he first believes in Christ.”

4The Holy Spirit, singular and unique, and one among other spirits: see the Larger Catechism 2, 35–6, BSLK 653, 36–654, 1/2.

5“Assertio...”: WA 7:94–151. Quotes: WA 7:97, 1–3 and 7:97, 34ff.

Here Luther also calls Scripture its own interpreter: WA 7:97, 23.

6Luther’s paraphrased answer: WA 28:76, 15–19 and 36:500, 21–501, 16. Luther and Erasmus: WA 18:603, 1–609, 14; in regard to the clarity of Scripture see also WA 50:548, 14ff.

7See Bayer, Martin Luthers Theologie, 62–5. Quote on prayer: WA 28:76, 15–21 (in view of Luther’s German, the English differentiation between spirit and Spirit is arbitrary). In regard to the whole of section 2: Regin Prenter, Spiritus Creator, trans. John M. Jensen (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1953).

8See WA 34/II:487, 6–10 in the wider context of this sermon.

9Meditatio, etc.: WA 50,658, 29–661, 8; see also Bayer, Martin Luthers Theologie, 28–34. Toward a given primacy of the preached Word: WA 7:721 ,9–15; WA DB 6:2, 23–4, 23; WA 10/I,1:625,12– 628, 8; for discussion see Von Lüpke, 579 and Bayer, Martin Luthers Theologie, 71–3. Continuity and the Bible in the pulpit: 1

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WA 34/II:487, 26ff. and 50:658, 27ff. in the context of 50:657, 2– 658, 28. Fanatics against the preached Word: WA 34/II, 488, 4– 7 and 36:500, 21–501, 16. Bible and oral proclamation interwoven: Jaroslav Pelikan, “The Theology of the Means of Grace,” in Accents in Luther’s Theology (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1967), 124–47, 130ff. On the Roman front: WA 50:628, 29ff. with 50:630, 14ff.; Schmalkaldische Artikel III, VIII, 4 (hereafter SA), BSLK 454, 7–12 with Tractatus 1, BSLK 471, 5–8.

10Word, Sacraments, and Office: WA 50:647, 6–13. Enthusiasm: SA III, VII, 3–13, BSLK 453, 16–456, 18. Mediately located and active in the church: see Kleiner Katechismus II, 6, BSLK 511, 39–512, 13 (quote: 512, 6) and Großer Katechismus II, 34–62, BSLK 653, 25–600, 13 (includes the offices, see II, 54, BSLK 658, 10–18) in relation to chief parts 4–6 (Baptism, Confession and Absolution, the Lord’s Supper). God preached and proffered in the liturgy vs. God hidden: WA 18, 685, 3–5; cultus from colo implies more than just worship; it entails the habitation of God. See also WA 26, 505, 29–506, 29.

11Following Sasse, “The Rise of the Dogma…” and “Luther and the Word….” What the Reformation was (not): see Charles Porterfield Krauth, The Conservative Reformation and its Theology, ed.

Lawrence Rast (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2007); Arthur Carl Piepkorn, “What the Reformation Was Not,” in The Sacred Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions: Selected Writings of Arthur Carl Piepkorn, vol. 2, ed. Philip J. Secker (Mansfield, CT: CEC Press, 2007), 72–7; Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, eds., The Catholicity of the Reformation (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 1996), esp. the articles by Yeago and Senn.

12Quotes: WA 18:136, 9–13 and then 13–18. Regarding “On the Bound Will”: WA 18:609, 4–14 and 18:653, 22–28; see also Jared Wicks, “Luther’s Ecclesiology (Seminarbericht),” in Lutherjahrbuch 62 (1995): 198–201, 199. The whole delivered as a gift: Kleiner Katechismus (n. 10 above) and WA 26:505, 38–506, 12; further Norman E. Nagel (NEN), “When the First Article Cannot Come First,” in Logia: A Journal of Lutheran Theology 2, no. 1 (1993): 57.

13Quote: WA 18:137, 15ff. See also Brecht II:165–69. Luther, Law and Gospel, spirit and letter: von Lüpke, 581.

14Hermann Sasse, “On the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit,” in We Confess the Church, trans. Norman Nagel (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1986), 17–39; see also Bayer, Martin Luthers Theologie, 65–67. Luther’s biography: Oswald Bayer, “Die reformatorische Wende in Luthers Theologie,” in Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 66 (1969): 115–50 comparing with WA 54:185,12–187, 7 via Notger Slenczka, “Das Evangelium und die Schrift,” in Der Tod Gottes und das Leben des Menschen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 39–64, 52ff. For Luther the inseparability of Holy Spirit and Holy Scripture never meant that he did not need to hear someone speaking the Word of God to him from the Scriptures but exactly the opposite: WA 40/III:543, 22–544, 14; when the plague struck Wittenberg the mighty Reformer could not do without his pastor in the house: Brecht II:207.

The Roaring of Christ through Lectio Continua Preaching

By Jon D. Payne

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homiletical strategy. Zwingli is also quoted by his succesne Lord’s Day as Robert Bruce (1554–1631) sor Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575) as saying that “no ascended the elevated pulpit at St. Giles Kirk in friend of evangelical truth could have any reason to comEdinburgh, King James VI was comfortably plain” about such a method.2 perched in his royal gallery overlooking the congregation from the rear. The relationship between Bruce and the Zwingli rightly believed that the quickest way to restore Stewart king, though once amicable, became strained due biblical Christianity to the churches of western Europe was to Bruce’s unwillingness to negotiate the truth in light of to preach the “whole counsel of God” verse by verse, James’s unscrupulous politics—especially as it concerned chapter by chapter, book by book, Lord’s Day after Lord’s the newly established Presbyterian Church of Scotland Day, year after year (Acts 20:26–27). Other Reformers (1560). On this particular Sunday, after Bruce commenced agreed and followed his pattern. Just ninety miles north his sermon, the king showed his contempt for Bruce by of Zurich, the city of Strasbourg enjoyed solid lectio continua carrying on a loud and impudent conversation with his preaching from men such as Martin Bucer (1491–1551), courtiers. Bruce paused for a moment, and the king quiWolfgang Capito (1478–1570), and Kaspar Hedio (1494– eted down. When Bruce began preaching again, how1552). Johannes Oecolampadius (1482–1531) boldly ever, the king continued his ill-mannered preached the lectio continua in Basel. And conversation. After this took place a third how could we ever forget John Calvin It is chiefly through the (1509–64)? Between 1549 and 1564 the time, the fiery Scottish preacher looked up to the royal gallery and declared: “It is Genevan Reformer preached sequentially said to have been an expression of the faithful preaching of the through twenty-five books of the Bible wisest of kings, When the lion roars, all (over two-thousand sermons).3 Scriptures that Christ the beasts of the field are [quiet]: the The example of these Reformers has Lion of the Tribe of Judah is now roaring been emulated by preachers throughout saves, sanctifies, and in the voice of his Gospel, and it becomes the centuries, from the post-Reformation all the petty kings of the earth to be age down to the present. But why? What comforts the beloved silent.”1 are the advantages to this ancient Robert Bruce’s courageous words homiletical method? Haven’t we acquired remind us that Jesus Christ is, indeed, church for which he died. better, more contemporary methods of roaring in the preaching of his gospel. preaching? Is the lectio continua method of And according to many, our Savior’s voice is never louder preaching relevant in the twenty-first century context? In or clearer than when his Word is faithfully preached verse a day when biblical preaching is being increasingly underby verse, chapter by chapter, through entire books of the mined and marginalized by media/story/therapy/personality-driven sermons, even among the self-avowed Bible. This proven method of gospel proclamation has Reformed, these are important questions to consider. been historically referred to as lectio continua preaching.

Shortly before the apostle Paul was martyred in Rome Lectio continua preaching finds its roots in the early

by Emperor Nero, he penned a second epistle to Timothy. church and patristic era. Its use, however, was revived and In what were some of his final words to his young discigreatly expanded during the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. When Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) ple, he wrote: “I charge you in the presence of God and of arrived at the Zurich Grossmunster in 1519, it was his Christ Jesus...preach the word; be ready in season and out desire to introduce lectio continua preaching to his congreof season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete gation by moving systematically through the Gospel of patience and teaching” (2 Tim. 4:1–2). This directive was Matthew. At first, some members of his chapter were susnot meant only for Timothy. No, it is the primary duty of picious of this innovation. They were not comfortable every Christian minister (and church) to carefully heed and obey these timeless words—for according to God’s replacing the standard lectionary with this seemingly new divine blueprint, it is chiefly through the faithful preachapproach. But Zwingli explained to them that the lectio coning of the Scriptures that Christ saves, sanctifies, and comtinua was not new at all. On the contrary, important figforts the beloved church for which he died.4 In other ures such as Augustine (354–430), Chrysostom (347–407), and Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) all employed this words, the preaching of the gospel—from all of Scripture— N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 0 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 23

is the divinely sanctioned and efficacious means by which Christ is communicated to the elect. For this reason alone the lectio continua method of preaching should be the predominant, regular practice of our churches, providing a steady diet of Christ from the entirety of God’s Word. But there are also several other reasons why we should employ the lectio continua as our chief method of biblical proclamation. Below are only three examples.

First, preaching sequentially through biblical books provides both minister and congregation with direction, protection, and confidence. From time to time, I ask my church-going family and friends on what their pastor is presently preaching. Usually their response is a blank stare and a sheepish smile. In large part, this is due to the fact that there is very little continuity in preaching. These days, pastors often quickly move from one unrelated topic/text to another. In this scenario, pastors are always furiously searching for their next sermon idea, and the folks in the pew are never quite sure what is coming next. Lectio continua preaching, however, gives clear direction to both pastor and congregation, leading them, from start to finish, through one biblical book at a time. This provides healthy continuity and direction, giving the shepherd and his flock the opportunity to carefully meditate upon those verses that have already been preached and to diligently prepare for forthcoming texts. In addition, important hermeneutical emphases are more easily identified when moving verse by verse through entire books (e.g., literary analysis, historical context, logical flow of argument, and so forth). It is good for churches to know where they have been and where they are going when it comes to the preaching of God’s Word.

Second, lectio continua preaching also furnishes protection. When done faithfully, preaching sequentially through books of the Bible protects the congregation from the pastor’s “soap box” issues. Congregations shouldn’t have to wonder week after week what new topic/idea their pastor is going to introduce. Rather, they should be able to come to the sermon confidently, knowing that their pastor’s aim is to faithfully exegete and proclaim the text that immediately follows last week’s text. There is also protection for the pastor. When preaching verse by verse through books of the Bible, in most cases a preacher cannot be rightly blamed for “cherry picking” particular passages for devious purposes. Also, with the lectio continua method, the pastor is protected from his own sinful inclinations to ignore difficult or controversial texts.

Congregations need to understand and embrace the truth that “all Scripture”—not some or most of it—“is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16).

Third, in addition to direction and protection, the lectio continua at its best instills confidence. Confidence is instilled in the preacher because he knows he is not preaching his own set of ideas but rather the inspired, inerrant, authoritative, all-sufficient, life-transforming Word of God. Preaching lectio continua replaces timidity 24 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

with confidence—not confidence in one’s own abilities but in God’s wonderful and emboldening promise to bless the faithful heralding of his gospel (e.g., Isa. 55:10–11). In addition, when systematic expository preaching is the standard fare, congregations attend worship with the joyful confidence of knowing they will hear the voice of their Savior and not someone else.

Robert Bruce fearlessly declared to his king that “the Lion of the Tribe of Judah is now roaring in the voice of his Gospel.” To be sure, there are other legitimate methods of preaching. However, the lectio continua is the homiletical method that best displays the efficacious, soulsaving, hell-conquering roar of the crucified, risen, and exalted Lord Jesus Christ.

Rev. Dr. Jon D. Payne is pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church in Douglasville, Georgia. He also teaches homiletics as a visiting lecturer of practical theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Atlanta.

This delightful story is part of an entire chapter dedicated to Robert Bruce’s life and ministry in Iain H. Murray’s A Scottish Christian Heritage (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2006), 46–47.

2Hughes Oliphant Old, The Patristic Roots of Reformed Worship (Black Mountain, NC: Worship Press, 2004), 195.

3T. H. L. Parker, Calvin’s Preaching (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1992), 159.

4See Rom. 10:14–17; 1 Cor. 1:18–21; 1 Pet. 1:22-25, 2:2–3; WSC Q#89.

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his seal have thou ever on thy mind; which now by way of summary has been touched on in its heads, and if the Lord grant, shall hereafter be set forth according to our power, with Scripture proofs. For concerning the divine and sacred Mysteries of the Faith, we ought not to deliver even the most casual remark without the Holy Scriptures: nor be drawn aside by mere probabilities and the artifices of argument. Do not then believe me because I tell thee these things, unless thou receive from the Holy Scriptures the proof of what is set forth: for this salvation, which is of our faith, is not by ingenious reasonings, but by proof from the Holy Scriptures.”

—Cyril of Jerusalem (ca. 313–86)

SOLA SCRIPTURA

The Gospel and the Sufficiency of Scripture Church of the Word or Word of the Church?

By Michael Horton

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ohn Calvin complained of being assailed by “two sects”—“the Pope and the Anabaptists.” Obviously quite different from each other, both nevertheless “boast extravagantly of the Spirit” and in so doing “bury the Word of God under their own falsehoods.”1 Both separate the Spirit from the Word by advocating the living voice of God with the inner speech of the church or of the pious individual. Of course, the Bible has its important place, but it is the “letter” that must be made relevant and effective in the world today by Spirit-led popes and prophets. Radical Anabaptist leader Thomas Müntzer taunted Martin Luther with his claim to superiority through a higher word than that which “merely beats the air.” The Reformers called this “enthusiasm” (literally, “God-within-ism”) because it made the external Word of Scripture subservient to the inner word supposedly spoken by the Spirit today within the individual or the church. In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul’s letter-Spirit contrast refers to the law apart from the gospel as a “ministry of death” and the gospel as the Spirit’s means of justifying and regenerating sinners. Gnostics, enthusiasts, and mystics throughout the ages, however, have interpreted the apostle’s terms as a contrast between the text of Scripture (“letter”) and inner spiritual knowledge (“spirit”).

If only it were that easy to identify the “two sects” in our day. Tragically, “enthusiasm” has become one of the dominant ways of undermining the sufficiency of Scripture, and it is evident across the spectrum. Rome has consistently

insisted that the letter of Scripture requires the living presence of the Spirit speaking through the Magisterium. Anabaptists and Pietists have emphasized a supposedly immediate, direct, and spontaneous work of the Spirit in our hearts apart from creaturely means. Enlightenment philosophers and liberal theologians—almost all of whom were reared in Pietism— resurrected the radical Anabaptist interpretation of “letter” versus “spirit.” “Letter” came to mean the Bible (or any external authority), while “spirit” was equivalent not to the Holy Spirit but to our own inner spirit, reason, or experience.

By the mid-twentieth century, the synods and general assemblies even of denominations historically tied to the Reformation began to speak of the Scriptures as an indispensable record of the pious experiences, reflections, rituals, beliefs, and lives of saints in the past, while what we really need in this hour is to “follow the Spirit” wherever he/she/it may lead us. And we now know where this spirit has led these erstwhile churches; but it is the spirit of the age, not the Spirit of Christ, that has taken them there.

William Placher finely described this broad tendency in modern faith and practice as the “domestication of transcendence.”2 In other words, it is not that revelation, inspiration, and authority are denied, but that the surprising, disorienting, and external voice of God is finally transformed into the “relevant,” uplifting, and empowering inner voice of our own reason, morality, and experience.

Such domestication of transcendence means that the self—or the “community” (whatever name it goes by)— N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 0 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 25

is protected from the surprising, disorienting, and judging speech of our Creator. Yet this also means that we cannot be saved, since faith comes by hearing God speak his Word of salvation in his Son (Rom. 10:17). This is not something that bubbles up within us, either as pious individuals or as the holy church, but as a Word that comes to us. It is not a familiar Word, but a strange and unsettling speech that strips us of our moral pretenses, overturns our most intuitive assumptions, disturbs our activistic programs. Basically, we are told to stop talking to ourselves as if we were hearing the voice of God. Through the lips of other sinful messengers, we are put on the receiving end of our identity. We do not discover our “higher selves” but are told who we really are: treasonous image-bearers of God; we do not find our bearings “in Adam” toward a fuller sense of inner peace and security but are driven out of ourselves to Christ, who clothes us in his righteousness.

“Enthusiasm”—the tendency to assimilate God’s external Word to the inner word—is inseparable from the Pelagian tendency to assimilate God’s saving gospel to our own efforts. Conversely, sola scriptura (the sufficiency of Scripture as the final authority for faith and practice) is inseparably bound to solo Christo, sola gratia, and sola fide (the gospel of Christ alone, by grace alone, received through faith alone).

In this article I want to focus on this integral connection between the sufficiency of Scripture and the sufficiency of the gospel. In doing so, I’m following a well-worn path from the apostles to the sixteenth-century Reformers and the testimony of the churches of the Reformation to the present day.

The Gospel and the Priority of God’s Grace here is a basically “fundamentalist” approach to sola scriptura that can be reduced to the bumper sticker, “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” In this expression, there is no sense that the content of what God said in any way constitutes its authority. A Muslim might say the same of the Qur’an or a Mormon of the Book of Mormon.

However, a genuinely evangelical approach maintains that Scripture is sufficient, not just because it alone is divinely inspired (though that is true) but because these sixty-six books that form our Christian canon provide everything God has deemed sufficient for revealing his law and his gospel. Speculation will not help us find God, but will only lead us to some idol we have created in our own image. We may feel more secure in our autonomy (selfrule) when we pretend that our own inner voice of reason, spirituality, or experience is the voice of the Spirit. We may be excited about a new program for transforming our nation, our families, and our own lives, but there is no power of God unto salvation in our own agendas and efforts. We can find all sorts of practical advice for our daily lives outside of the Bible. The evangelical view of sola scriptura does not mean that we do not need anything but the Bible for math, science, the arts, politics, or even daily principles for a host of decisions we make in our callings.

What an evangelical (i.e., Reformational as opposed to

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fundamentalist) view does mean by sola scriptura is that everything we need for salvation and true worship is found in the Scriptures. The church has authority only to pass on what it has heard; it is the servant, not the Lord, of the covenant of grace.

The sufficiency of Scripture recognizes that we have everything we need for salvation and life in the canonical Word. “Salvation is of the LORD” (Jon. 2:9). It does not come from within us but to us from heaven, as the rescue operation of the triune God. And the form in which this gospel comes normatively to us here and now is Scripture.

Even preaching is the Word of God only insofar as it proclaims the commands and promises issued by these sacred texts. The Bible is not the product of spiritual geniuses, sensitive gurus, and religious sages who can help us find God; it is the revelation from the God who seeks and saves the lost even while they are running from him.

If we tend to view our salvation as synergistic (i.e., cooperation between God and sinners), G. C. Berkouwer reminds us, we will likely “understand the God-breathed character as a sum of the divine and human, so that in fact we only have to deal partially with the divine voice in Scripture.”3 However, revelation and redemption are movements from God to us, not from us to God. Off the table then are any romantic theories of inspiration in which revelation is a product of a religious genius, superior intellect, or eminent piety. Besides this theological rationale, the prophets and apostles are represented often in Scripture as weak servants.

The biblical writers are not simply expressing their religious experience in verbal form. They do not call and send themselves, but they are called and sent by God. In fact, the false prophets are contrasted with the true prophets by the fact that they have never stood in the Lord’s council and therefore have not been sent with his words (Jer. 23:9–40). The same criterion holds for the canonicity of New Testament texts: they must be identifiable within the circle of eyewitnesses who were directly called to their office by Jesus Christ. At the same time, they are not inert, passive spectators of revelation but, like Mary, are taken up by the Spirit into his service along with the full range of their own characteristics. Sola scriptura is inextricably tied to the conviction that the gospel comes from God, not from the pious individual or community. It is because it is the Word of the Father concerning Christ, brought to its perfect completion by the Spirit, that Scripture conveys God’s own authority both as “the power of God for salvation” (Rom. 1:16) and the rule of God over all matters of faith and practice (2 Tim. 3:15–16). God not only saves us by his energetic Word so that he may rule us by his canonical Word, but he rules us in order to keep us in his continually saving and sanctifying care.

The Religion That Wells Up Within: The Moral Law n the best-selling Habits of the Heart, Robert Bellah and fellow sociologists surveyed religion in the United States. They concluded that it is best described as

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“Sheilaism,” named after one person they interviewed who said that she follows her own little voice. Every American is the founder of his or her own religion, following the dictates of his or her own heart. (For more on “Sheilaism,” see “Reflecting Upon Scripture” by Shane Rosenthal in the September/October 2010 issue of Modern Reformation.)

Centuries ago, Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant said that the most certain tenet he knew was “the moral law within.” External religions may have different ways of expressing it, each with its own sacred texts and miraculous claims to vindicate its authority, its own forms of worship, and creeds. The externals he called “ecclesiastical faiths,” contrasted with the “pure religion” of practical morality. The latter needed no external authority or confirmation. We look within ourselves, not only for the law inscribed on our conscience but for the power to save ourselves—and our world—from whatever evils that vie for our allegiance. Kant insisted in several places that we do not need an external gospel because we are not born in original sin, helpless to save ourselves. We do not need to hear the good news of God’s rescue operation because we already have everything we need within ourselves to handle the situation just fine.

There is a certain truth in Kant’s observation: As creatures made in God’s image for obedient fellowship, law is our native tongue. Yet Kant failed to appreciate the seriousness of the fall of humanity into sin. It’s true enough that God reveals his existence and moral will to everyone, as Paul relates in Romans 1–3. We turn this general revelation, however, into a mixture of superstition, mysticism, and idolatry. Although we suppress its truth in our own unrighteousness, we still know the law and the God who still requires this stipulated love of God and neighbor.

Christians and non-Christians can stand together in horror at the gas chambers of Auschwitz and can work together for greater peace, justice, and social betterment.

Yet the gospel is not something that wells up within us.

It is not a dictate of moral conscience or a universal doctrine of reason. As a surprising announcement that in Christ we have passed from death to life and from wrath to grace, however, the gospel is counterintuitive. So if we allow reason and experience—that which is inherent, familiar, and inwardly certain—not only to guide our access to but to determine reality, we will be left with Kant and “the moral law within.” The good news has to be told, and to the extent that it is conformed to what we think we already know and experience, it will not be good news at all—perhaps pious advice, good instruction, and practical suggestions, but not good news.

Does salvation come to us from outside ourselves, from above, from heaven, as the triune God acts in history for us? Or does salvation come from our own inner resources, enlightenment, and experience? Does God’s Word declare into being a new creation, or give us helpful principles and motivations for our own self-transforming and worldtransforming activities? How we answer these questions

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determines not only our view of the sufficiency of Scripture but of the nature of the gospel itself.

The “Two Sects” Today: Assimilating God’s Voice to Our Own n our day, the “two sects” of enthusiasm are alive and well. First, there is the “high church” version. Roman Catholics continue to argue that the Bible is the inspired “letter” that requires the “living voice” of the church (especially the pope) today. The Word of God cannot disrupt, overrule, or criticize the church because Christ has given absolute and unqualified authority to the church to speak in his name. When the church speaks officially, its pronouncements are infallible, even if the doctrines and practices it promulgates have no warrant in Scripture. This position is still maintained as recently as the Second Vatican Council and in the pastoral instruction of the current pope.

It is the church’s action in offering Christ as the sacrifice for sin in the Mass that has saving value. It is the church’s works, in the various programs of confession, penance, indulgences, and prayers or other offerings for the dead, that achieve saving benefits for the people of God. In recent decades, many Protestants have become attracted to this line of thinking. Methodists like Stanley Hauerwas, Lutherans like Robert Jenson, Presbyterians like John Franke, and Baptists like Stanley Grenz have all argued that the Bible is “the church’s book.” Echoing the Counter-Reformation arguments, these theologians maintain that the church created its canon. The Bible arose over millennia as the expression of the Spirit-led community’s pious experience and virtuous practices. It was the church that officially authorized the books that make up our biblical canon, they argue, and therefore the church is “the mother of Scripture.”

Yet the second “sect” to which Calvin referred—the Anabaptists—is also alive and well today, even beyond the groups historically identified with this tradition. Like the “high church” position, this view holds that the Scriptures are a dead letter from the past awaiting the further supplementation by the Spirit in order to make it relevant— “living and active”—in the present. The living voice of the church may be replaced with the living voice of the pious believer or circle of truly committed disciples, but the assumption is the same. The Bible is crucial as an inspiring testimony of spiritual heroism in the past and as a quarry for various principles. However, it is not sufficient for doctrine and life. It falls on the “letter” side of the ledger, requiring some further activity by us to make it spiritually relevant and effective today.

The quasi-Gnostic presupposition of this trajectory is that the spiritual, ethical, private, universal, ideal, inward, and autonomous are divine, while the physical, theological, public, particular, concrete, external, and heteronomous are merely human corruptions of pure religion.4 Where interpreters like Irenaeus, Augustine, Luther, and Calvin understood Paul’s statement “The letter kills, but the Spirit makes alive” (2 Cor. 3:6) as refer-

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ring to the law’s command without the promise, Gnostics old and new have interpreted it in terms of the external as opposed to the internal word. Not only the visible church but the Bible itself becomes relegated to the “external religion” that threatens individual autonomy.

The doctrine of the church as a creation of the external Word disputes every claim that prioritizes human agency (individual or corporate) over divine agency. “Deeds, not creeds,” amounts to “Law, not gospel.” The Bible may be a useful source for our activity, but it is not allowed to have its full force as a sovereign Word of judgment and grace.

Kantianism is a good indicator of what we are left with apart from an external Word, the surprising evangelical announcement. The law is intuitive and familiar, while the gospel is counterintuitive and strange.

Kant’s contrast can be discerned not only in the assumptions of the average person in our day (for example, in John Lennon’s song “Imagine”), but in the regular report that Americans (and Westerners generally) are “spiritual, but not religious.” One might describe this phenomenon as “postmodern,” but it is in fact the old Enlightenment creed and has maintained its parallel course alongside Christianity, often under the pretense of “pure religion,” ever since the serpent’s enticement to look within for authoritative revelation. However, this “spirituality” and “morality” does not need the Spirit—that is, the third person of the Trinity, any more than it needs a divine redeemer, since “spirit” refers primarily to the inner self.

This “enthusiast” legacy has found fertile soil in American religious experience, particularly in the history of revivalism. Writing in the nineteenth century, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that Americans wish “to escape from imposed systems” of any kind, “[t]o seek by themselves and in themselves for the only reason for things, looking to results without getting entangled in the means toward them.” They do not need external guidance to discover truth, “having found it in themselves.”5 Of course, placing human experience at the center was a more general trend in European Romanticism, notes Bernard Reardon, with its “intense egoism and emotionalism.”6 The effect of Pietism (especially culminating in the Great Awakening), as William McLoughlin observes, was to shift the emphasis away from “collective belief, adherence to creedal standards and proper observance of traditional forms, to the emphasis on individual religious experience.”7 The effect of the Enlightenment was to shift “the ultimate authority in religion” from the church to “the mind of the individual.”8 Of course, Romanticism simply changed the faculty (from mind to heart), not the subject (from the self to an external authority).

Even evangelical hymnody was drawn into this Romantic tide, as in the familiar line from the Easter song, “You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart.” Yet this inner spark, inner light, inner experience, and inner reason that guides mysticism, rationalism, idealism, and pragmatism in all ages is precisely the autonomous self that, according to the New Testament, must be cruci30 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

fied and buried with Christ in baptism so that one can be raised with Christ as a denizen of the new age.

Even when preaching is properly submitted to the text as canonical norm, private practices of reading are often abstracted from their wider covenantal ambiance. When we read the Bible primarily to discern, “What does this mean for me? How can I make it relevant for my daily living?” even the Bible becomes a servant of our autonomous self-creation rather than a sovereign Word that opens us up and places us in a disorienting, covenantal ambiance before God and among his covenant community. As we have seen, the public proclamation of the Word not only is a social event, it creates a new society.

When Luther said that “the church is not a pen-house but a mouth-house”9 and the Westminster divines confessed that the Spirit blesses “the reading but especially the preaching of the Word” as a means of grace,10 they were asserting that faithful, meditative, and prayerful reading of Scripture in private or family devotions was subordinate to the public ministry of the Word in the common life of the church. Just as the Word creates the community, it can only be truly heard, received, and followed in the concrete covenantal exchanges within that community.

The Reformers’ notion of the church as the creation of the Word affirmed neither the inner eye of rationalism nor the outer eye of idolatrous gaze, but the hearing of God’s voice in a covenant assembly. Through the organ of the ear, the whole person—not simply the mind or the emotions—is justified and renewed, since “faith comes by hearing the word of God” (Rom. 10:14). The emphasis on the sacramental Word shifts the discussion to the plane of covenantal discourse: a divine speaking and human answering that is dramatic and eventful at its very core.

In his Word and Church (T & T Clark, 2001), John Webster sees this inextricable connection between sola scriptura and the gospel when he observes that the gospel creates the church rather than vice versa. Challenging the growing fascination with talk of the Bible as “the church’s book,” Webster observes that according to its own testimony the Bible is neither the book of the individual believer nor the book of the church, but God’s book. It is not chiefly a resource that we use, but the means that God uses to reveal and save. In fact, he calls the perspective I’ve summarized here “hermeneutical Pelagianism.” This is a theologically precise way of putting the point: To reverse the priority of God’s speaking and human speech is in fact to substitute God’s saving grace for our own works. This can be done in a “low church” (individualistic) manner or in a “high church” (corporate) way, but in either case it is to exchange God’s Word for talking to (and therefore saving) ourselves.

In evangelical circles today, these “two sects” converge.

This is explicit, for example, in the work of Stanley Grenz, who combined his Anabaptist-Pietist heritage with “high church” arguments. I interacted with his views in a previous article this year (see “God’s Word in Human Words: The Inspiration of Scripture” in the March/April 2010 issue).

Essentially, spirituality takes precedence over doctrine, per-

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sonal and communal experience over external authority, and inspiration is extended beyond Scripture to include the Spirit’s speaking through believers and the community— indeed, even culture, today. Reason, tradition, and experience serve alongside Scripture as the four legs of the stool.

Nowhere in this account does Grenz locate the origin of faith in an external gospel; rather, faith arises from an inner experience. “Because spirituality is generated from within the individual, inner motivation is crucial”—more important than “grand theological statements.”11 The Christian life is not defined by God’s action through Word and Sacrament. In fact, “The spiritual life is above all the imitation of Christ.”12 We go to church, he says, not in order to receive “means of grace,” but for fellowship, “instruction and encouragement.”13 Grenz acknowledges that his interpretation calls into question the confessional Protestant emphasis on “a material and a formal principle”—in other words, solo Christo and sola scriptura.14 Conclusion ust as creation is the result of a conversation between the persons of the Trinity, the church is the offspring rather than the origin of the gospel. It is no wonder then that Paul compares the work of the gospel to God’s Word in creation (Rom. 4:16–17). While the covenant community is temporally prior to the inscripturated canon, the Word that creates ex nihilo asserts its temporal and communicative priority over both. Happily, the Church of Galatia (or Corinth, Ephesus, or Rome) is not canonical, though the apostolic letters addressed to them are. The script has priority over even its most significant performances. Furthermore, the canon not only judges our poor performances but also liberates us from having to repeat or defend them.

As we see, for example, in the giving of the Law at Sinai (Exod. 20:2–3), the gracious act of the Great King in saving his people justifies his sovereignty—and the authority of his constitution “above all earthly powers.” Church courts have a ministerial authority to interpret this constitution, but they cannot create it. Otherwise, the church would be its own mother rather than the offspring of the Word and Spirit, and its own savior rather than the beneficiary of salvation. Thus, the priority of canon over church is the corollary of the priority of God’s grace over “human will or exertion” (Rom. 9:16).

When the church dares to speak to the world as God’s ambassador, it also humbly reminds its hearers that it too stands under that Word’s judgment and grace. If Jesus himself appealed to the Father’s authority for his speech (John 12:49–50), and the Spirit only “speaks what he has heard” from the Son (John 16:13–15), then it would be presumptuous, to say the least, for the church to do otherwise.

In Holiness (Eerdmans, 2003), John Webster reminds us, “Theology is not free speech but holy speech. Hence the authority of Scripture is a matter for the Church’s acknowledgement, not its ascription.” When firmly ensconced in its proper covenantal context, the preaching of the law as

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well as the gospel contributes to the upbuilding of God’s sanctuary. Appealing to the 1541 Geneva Catechism, Webster says that the solo verbo (by the Word alone) is the correlate of the sola fide (through faith alone). To give priority to the Word is to give priority to the action of God. Defined by Word and faith, the church is not a selfrealising institution with Scripture as an instrument of its steady identity. Through Scripture the church is constantly exposed to interruption. Being the hearing church is never, therefore, a matter of routine, whether liturgical or doctrinal. It is, rather, the church’s readiness “that its whole life should be assailed, convulsed, revolutionised and reshaped.”

An individual or a church that simply talks to itself can never be converted. The dethroning of all human sovereignties is actually our liberation. The “then and there” of the play itself, now committed to a written script, stands over (and sometimes against) its performances here and now, and this means that even the church can be saved.

As the body cannot be equated with its sovereign head, the church’s speech (tradition) cannot be equated with God’s Word. Since Christ’s person and work—and apostolic testimony to it—are qualitatively distinguished from the church and its practices, the canon does not simply offer us a good story to complete by imitation (a corollary of an exemplary view of the atonement) or repeat by further acts of atonement and reconciliation, but a completed script that draws us into its storyline as performers.

The canonical characters are in a class qualitatively different from the postcanonical church that performs the play. Even to speak of intentionally departing from the script is to assume that the script is normative.

As the church recognized when it received it, the canon is authoritative simply because of what it is and whose it is in the sphere of God’s activity, not because of what we make of it individually or corporately. The practice that gives the words their sense is first of all God’s, not our own, since not only the speech but the practices of bap-

Speaking Of…

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or what similarity is there in appearance between the Pope and the Anabaptists? And yet, that you may see that Satan never transforms himself so cunningly as not in some measure to betray himself, the principle weapon with which they both assail us is the same. For when they boast extravagantly of the Spirit, the tendency certainly is to sink and bury the Word of God, that they may make room for their own falsehoods.”

—John Calvin, “Calvin’s Reply to Sadoleto,” A Reformation Debate: John Calvin and Jacopo Sadoleto N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 0 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 31

tism, the Supper, fellowship, the prayers, outreach, and diaconal care also find their authorization and efficacy in the canonical Word.

God’s Word does not render us silent; it gives us back our voice—or, rather, gives us back the appropriate lines in the script intended for us. As Stephen Webb describes the Reformation view of the Word in preaching and liturgy, “Words could spring forth as praise because God had already said the Word that releases us from our sin.”15 Once more we see that the forensic Word generates an effective economy that is as extensive as it is intensive.

The Word that rules is the Word that first of all liberates.

Unlike the other words of other sovereigns to which we give our allegiance, this Word brings about a liberating captivity and a captivating liberation. Yet it is always something strange, something to which we must be converted by the Spirit. And this is true as much for the community as for the self, neither of which can be exempt from this sovereign grace that refuses to let us define ourselves, which would be our death. Like Isaiah, we are “undone,” yet only to be forgiven, clothed, and sent out with good news on our lips and in our hearts.

While the church is not the master of the text, it is the

The Self-Authenticating Word

By Michael Horton

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brief survey of Calvin’s treatment in the Institutes of the Christian Religion (1.7–9) is instructive.

Calvin challenges the idea that the church is the mother of Scripture: “[Paul] testifies that the church is ‘built upon the foundation of the prophets and apostles’ [Eph. 2:20]. If the teaching of the prophets and apostles is the foundation, this must have had authority before the church began to exist” (1.7.2). Augustine’s famous maxim—“I would not have believed that the Scriptures are God’s Word unless I had been taught this by the church”—is nothing more than the relation of his own experience of how he came to faith rather than the source of the faith’s authority (1.7.3). Unless the credibility of doctrine is established by divine rather than human authority, our consciences will always waver. Those who seek to first prove the reliability of Scripture by appeals to an authority external to it (whether church or reason) are “doing things backwards” (1.7.4). “Scripture indeed is self-authenticated [autopiston]; hence, it is not right to subject it to proof and reasoning” (1.7.5). Once this divine authority is firmly established, we may certainly appeal to such external arguments, including the church’s ministerial authority, as “very useful aids” (1.8.1). “In this way, we willingly embrace and reverence as holy the early councils, such as those of Nicea, Constantinople, Ephesus I, Chalcedon, and the like, which were concerned with refuting errors—in so far as they relate to the things of the faith” (4.9.1).

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amphitheater in which the Word creates the reality of which it speaks, the place where a valley of dry bones becomes a resurrected community (Ezek. 37). Just as we come to God with empty hands to receive Christ in salvation, we come to his Word as hearers rather than as judges and lords. Yet even this emptying of our hands is the judging and liberating work of a God who is too gracious to let us have the last word. ■

Michael Horton is J. Gresham Machen Professor of Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido).

John Calvin, “Reply by Calvin to Cardinal Sadoleto’s Letter,” in Tracts and Treatises on the Reformation of the Church, ed. Thomas F. Torrance; trans., Henry Beveridge (reprint of Calvin Translation Society edition: Baker, 1958), I, 36.

2William Placher, The Domestication of Transcendence: How Modern Thinking about God Went Wrong (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996).

3G. C. Berkouwer, Studies in Dogmatics: Holy Scripture (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1975), 172.

4On the quasi-Gnostic character particularly of American Protestantism, see Philip E. Lee, Against the Protestant Gnostics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). Describing himself as a Jewish Gnostic, Harold Bloom wrote a magnificent book, The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), making many of the same points, although largely in praise rather than criticism. Interestingly, he singles out Karl Barth and J. Gresham Machen as two notable exceptions to the dominance of “Gnostic” tendencies in the modern West (212–213, 228–229).

5Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. J. P. Mayer, trans. George Lawrence (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 429.

6Bernard Reardon, Religion in the Age of Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 9.

7William McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 25. I am grateful to Toby Kurth for providing this and the following reference.

8Ned Landsman, From Colonials to Provincials: American Thought and Culture, 1680–1760 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 66.

9Quoted in Stephen H. Webb, The Divine Voice: Christian Proclamation and the Theology of Sound (Grand Rapids, Brazos Press, 2004), 143, from Martin Luther, Church Postil of 1522.

10Westminster Shorter Catechism in The Book of Confessions (PCUSA: General Assembly, 1991), Q. 89.

11Stanley Grenz, Revisioning Evangelical Theology: A Fresh Agenda for the 21st Century (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1993), 46.

12Grenz, 48.

13Grenz, 54.

14Grenz, 62.

15Webb, 107.

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SOLA SCRIPTURA

The Formation of the Christian Bible

By L. W. Hurtado

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ehind the familiar list of writings that make up the Christian Bible lie struggles over major issues of religious beliefs. In the earliest period of Christianity, particularly the second century CE, the shape and contents of the Christian Bible were neither inevitable nor uncontroversial matters, but instead reflected influential decisions on major struggles. The results are much more interesting and meaningful than most may realize, reflecting important developments and decisions in Christian beliefs. The process that led to a closed canon began surprisingly early and went on for a few centuries.

The final list of canonical writings was not the decision of a church council but the result of a long period of Christian usage, reflection, and discussion.

The “Old Testament” et’s begin with basics. As any reader of the Christian Bible knows, it is made up of two main component collections, the “Old Testament” and the “New Testament,” but even this was by no means inevitable.

Instead, this bipartite structure represents a particular outcome of what was perhaps the major theological struggle of early Christianity in the second century. This struggle was over two related questions about who is the Christian God and whether Christian faith is rightly understood as linked to the biblical story of Israel and her Scriptures. From the many citations of the Old Testament

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in the New Testament writings, it is clear that earliest (first-century) Christian circles regarded the Old Testament as Scripture, in keeping with the Jewish religious tradition that was the matrix in which Christianity was born. But by the second century, most Christians were non-Jews (“Gentiles”), and many came to see the Old Testament as problematic.

To be sure, there remain some differences among the three major Christian traditions over how many writings should be considered valid parts of the “Old Testament,” but all major Christian communions agree in having an Old Testament. For Protestants, this comprises solely the Scriptures of Judaism, although these writings are counted and arranged differently—the twenty-two writings of the Jewish Scriptures comprising the thirty-nine writings of the Protestant Old Testament. Several additional writings, however, are included in the Roman Catholic Old Testament (including Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticu, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, and a few other smaller texts), and in Eastern Orthodox churches these additional writings plus several others (including 1 Esdras, 3 Maccabees) are treated as Scripture. But these are minor differences in comparison to the polarization of Christians in the second century over whether to treat any of the Old Testament texts as Christian Scripture, and whether the deity described in these writings was the true God whom Christians were to worship.

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relations and its consequence of childbearing. The ascetic tendency must have been very Scripture in Christian circles from the beginning, strong in the early centuries, for it influenced emergent orthoto be sure, but the popularity of Marcion’s ideas dox/catholic Christianity as well.

But in orthodox/catholic circles, shows that the retention of these writings in the there was neither the wholesale rejection of creation and its creChristian Bible required a decision to do so. ator-deity nor a programmatic The most well-known exponent of the view that the condemnation of marriage and childbearing. Orthodox/ Old Testament had no place as Christian Scripture is the catholic circles also insisted that the Old Testament should second-century figure Marcion who broke with the be read and used as Scripture, especially in liturgy and in church in Rome in about 140 CE.1 He also insisted that the framing theological beliefs. The frequent citation of Old Old Testament deity, though a real god, was not the highTestament writings evidenced in the New Testament conest and ultimate deity from whom Jesus had come. In his tinued in the writings of second-century orthodox/catholic view, there were irreconcilable tensions between the Christianity (e.g., Justin Martyr) and thereafter. Additional thrust of the Old Testament and the gospel message. For evidence of the use of Old Testament writings is found in example, he contended that the Old Testament portrayed the many early Christian copies of these texts. Indeed, the a deity of law, whereas Jesus came preaching grace. The single most frequently attested text in identifiably Old Testament presented a deity concerned with Israel, Christian manuscripts of the first three centuries is Psalms, whereas the gospel was a universal message. Marcion and there are multiple early Christian copies of other Old rejected any attempt to smooth over the differences, for Testament texts as well.2 example, through allegorizing interpretations of the Old As indicated already, the question of whether the Old Testament. In his view, the Old Testament writings were Testament should be treated as Scripture was connected purely for the Jews and should form no part of Christian with the larger questions of who the Christian God is, worship or theology. whether the creator-deity and creation itself are to be Down the centuries since, there have occasionally been seen as good or evil, and associated issues about the body, voices of a somewhat similar stance, though rarely as sexuality, and other matters. These were obviously huge forthright or as effective as Marcion. When the church in matters and the stakes were high, involving the whole reliRome refused his views, he walked out (and was refunded gious orientation and nature of Christianity. Is the physithe large contribution he had made to the church when he cal creation the cruel act of the creator-deity, a tyrant, and joined) and started what quickly became a very successis salvation thus deliverance from this creator and his creful version of Christianity formed around his teachings ation? Is the physical body a prison-house of the soul, bodthat competed with what was then emergent orthodox ily appetites and functions (especially sex and procreation) Christianity. We get some idea of the continuing attracsimply a participation in the delusion and evil from which tiveness of Marcion’s ideas from the five-volume refutathe heavenly Christ came to free us? Is Jesus to be seen as tion written by the church teacher Tertullian over sixty the true fulfilment of Old Testament and Jewish mesyears after Marcion launched his teachings (Against sianic hopes, and is the gospel the further fruition of Marcion, ca. 210 CE). divine purposes inaugurated in ancient Israel? Or is the There were others as well who rejected both the Old Old Testament irrelevant for Christian faith, and is the Testament and its deity, particularly those Christians Christian gospel to be defined as the totally new message referred to as “Gnostics.” A disdain for the Old Testament of a previously unknown deity who has now broken into and its deity is characteristic of Gnostic Christian texts. the domain of the evil creator-god to deliver the souls of Indeed, in some cases the Old Testament god is portrayed the elect from his tyranny? For a period of time, especially in the late second century CE, all these things and more as a tyrannical and evil being, who sought to deceive peowere very much in dispute. It is an exaggeration to say ple into thinking that he was the only god, with statethat “Christianity” could have gone either way (it is actuments such as “I am the first and I am the last; besides me ally not apparent that Gnostics, who seem to have had an there is no god” (Isa. 44:6) presented as proof of his vanelitist outlook, were ever all that popular or ever intended ity and arrogance. to be popular). But Marcionite Christianity certainly seems Marcion and the Gnostics did not question that the Old to have had sufficient success to worry orthodox Christians Testament deity was the creator-deity. In fact, they argued for some time. that this was a powerful reason to reject him. In their view, That there is an Old Testament in the Christian Bible, the creation of the world was a sorry event that brought thus, is the result of a resolute rejection of Marcion and with it problems of sexuality, procreation, and the entrapsimilar views by most Christian circles of the second cenment of pure souls in the world of matter. They preferred tury CE. Old Testament writings had been regarded as a much more ascetic life, especially refraining from sexual

Old Testament writings had been regarded as

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Scripture in Christian circles from the beginning, to be sure, but the popularity of Marcion’s ideas shows that the retention of these writings in the Christian Bible required a decision to do so. The presence of an Old Testament in the Christian Bible is the enduring physical expression of the outcome of this major theological struggle.

The “New Testament” t is also more noteworthy than may be realized commonly that there is a “New Testament” in the Christian Bible, and that the New Testament comprises the particular collection of writings so familiar to us. Here again, there were major issues that are now largely lost from popular sight but loomed large in the ancient churches.

As noted already, for the very first Christians the Jewish Scriptures (which became the Old Testament) were their Scriptures also; but from an early point we have indications that certain Christian writings were also beginning to be held in a similar regard. In the first two centuries or so, before canon lists or other more formal indicators, the key signal that a text functioned as Scripture is that it was read as part of the liturgical action of the gathered church.

We know that the apostle Paul wrote letters to churches and that these letters were read out in/to the gathered congregation (for example, see the directive in 1 Thessalonians 5:27 and the reference to the circulation of Paul’s letters in Colossians 4:16). It is not so surprising, therefore, that the earliest reference to any Christian writings functioning as Scripture concerns Paul’s letters. In 2 Peter 3:15–16, the author refers to Paul’s letters appreciatively, but also warns that “the ignorant and unstable” misuse them “as they do the other scriptures.” Note that Paul’s letters are explicitly likened to other Scriptures and that they are used to justify and promote religious beliefs.

Indeed, 2 Peter 3:15–16 suggests that the author knew of a collection of Paul’s letters (note the reference to “all his letters”), and may even have expected his readers to know of such a collection as well. A collection of Pauline letters is significant, for it means that Paul was seen in some way as an authoritative figure, his letters gathered and copied, and functioning as instructive for Christians beyond the churches to which they were originally addressed. As Harry Gamble has noted, the New Testament canon is “a collection of collections” or a collection of component collections, each of which has its own history.3 The Pauline letter collection seems to be the earliest of these component collections, and so may be regarded as the first stage of what became the New Testament canon.

Unfortunately, we do not know how many writings the author of 2 Peter thought comprised “all” of Paul’s letters.

Gamble has proposed that there was an early edition comprising ten letters but arranged to emphasize that they were addressed to seven churches (in the order 1–2 Corinthians, Romans, Ephesians, 1–2 Thessalonians, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon).4 In addition to his rejection of the Old Testament and its deity, however, Marcion is also known for his view that Paul was

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the only true apostle. Marcion formed his own canon of scriptures, which was solely a ten-letter Pauline collection and the Gospel of Luke. In Marcion’s canon, however, the Epistle to the Galatians (which Marcion seems to have regarded as most important) headed the list of Pauline letters.

It seems that the Pastoral Epistles (1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus) were not originally included but came to acquire scriptural status somewhat later, perhaps sometime in the late second or third century CE. On the other hand, in some circles the Epistle to the Hebrews was counted among the Pauline letters, as reflected in the Chester Beatty papyrus (P46, dated ca. 200 CE), the earliest extant manuscript comprising a collection of Pauline Epistles.

Another intriguing question concerns the physical format in which a Pauline letter collection may have circulated in the earliest period. Overwhelmingly, the roll was preferred for literary texts. But at a remarkably early point (earlier than any of our extant Christian manuscripts, some of which take us back perhaps to the mid-second century CE), Christians appear to have preferred the early form of the leaf-book, known as the “codex,” and especially for the writings they regarded as having scriptural significance. One theory is that this Christian preference for the codex may have commenced with the use of this format to accommodate a Pauline letter collection, but there are other proposals as well and we cannot linger over the matter here.5 Some have suggested that the codex facilitated the formation of a biblical canon. Perhaps, but we should note that ancient Judaism also developed a closed canon (and roughly contemporaneously with the formation of the Christian canon), and yet preferred the book roll for Scriptures till several centuries later. So, it appears that the formation of a closed canon did not require the codex, and the codex may not help us much in accounting for a Christian canon.

In any case, at about the same time as the composition of 2 Peter and its reference to a collection of Pauline Epistles, the four Gospels were written and began circulating as well. The Gospel of Mark, widely thought to have been the first Gospel (written ca. 70 CE), was followed within a few years by Matthew and Luke (which exhibit a strong literary relationship with Mark), and then by the Gospel of John (typically dated to the 80s–90s CE).

The available manuscript evidence and the citations in early Christian writers indicate that throughout most of the second century these writings were copied and circulated separately, and that they varied in popularity. John and Matthew were clearly the favorites among the Gospels, and Mark least cited and copied.

Nevertheless, there are indications that all four Gospels were held in high regard in various second-century Christian circles and came to be linked conceptually (if not physically copied in one book) as a fourfold Gospel collection, perhaps as early as 120–150 CE. In his large work, Against Heresies (ca. 170 CE), Irenaeus (ca. 115–202 CE and bishop of Lyons) explicitly insisted that the four Gospels N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 0 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 35

familiar to us were the only valid ones, and it is now thought likely that he was defending a view that had been held more widely and for some time. Various scholars in recent years have posited still earlier evidence that a fourfold Gospel was gaining acceptance in the early decades of the second century.6 The earliest extant fourGospel codex is the Chester Beatty Gospel papyrus (P45, dated ca. 250 CE), which contained the four canonical Gospels and the book of Acts as well.7 Probably sometime in the late second or early third century, Christians had begun to produce a codex adequate to accommodate all four Gospels in one manuscript.

For some early Christians, however, perhaps for many, the plurality of the Gospels posed a problem.8 How could there be more than one authoritative account of Jesus? It was as evident to ancients as it is to us that the four Gospels differed, in some cases in striking ways. Marcion is again the most notorious example of someone who found it impossible to accommodate this. Just as he rejected the complexity posed for Christian faith by treating the Old Testament as Scriptures, he also rejected the complexity of multiple Gospels. For him, there could be only one true Gospel book, and this was the Gospel of Luke (probably because it had become associated in early tradition with the apostle Paul, whom Marcion regarded as the only true apostle).

On the other hand, another important second-century figure, Tatian, sought to resolve the problem by weaving the four Gospels together into a cohesive account, in a work known as the Diatessaron (Greek for “one from four”), which appeared sometime prior to 172 CE. This work proved enormously popular, was translated into various languages, and in Syriac Christianity quickly came to be treated as Scripture, the form in which the Gospel was read in liturgy, for a few centuries.

But, as surprising as it will seem, most Christian circles insisted on retaining all four Gospels and as discrete writings (not harmonized), allowing them to stand as they are, differences and all. This is something for which all subsequent historians must be grateful and which could also be seen as an impressively courageous stance. As we have noted, it appears that all four Gospels came to be regarded as Scripture very early, so in one sense the inclusion of them in the New Testament canon was a vote for tradition.

But, nevertheless, it also had the effect of validating the diversity represented in the four Gospels. Theologically, it meant that the full witness to Jesus required this fourfold testimony, with all its diversity (which proponents of the fourfold Gospel preferred to portray as a richness).

Indeed, what became the agreed New Testament canon can be seen as a programmatic affirmation of Christian diversity, four Gospels (not simply one), and multiple apostles (Epistles ascribed to Peter, James, John, and Jude, as well as the Pauline collection). This is important to note today for various reasons. There is a popular notion that the Christian canon represents essentially an exclusion of competing texts in favor of a narrow definition of 36 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

Christian faith. But it seems more accurate to see the canonizing process as a progressively wider inclusion of a certain diversity of texts and emphases, over against more narrow agendas of people such as Marcion. The shape or architecture of the resultant canon comprises real complexity, with the Old Testament Scriptures, multiple Gospels, multiple apostolic testimonies, and a variety of genres of texts. Perhaps modern Christianity could benefit from carefully examining the historical process and the important issues reflected in the all-too-familiar body of writings that make up the Christian Bible. ■ For further reading For more on the figures and texts mentioned, consult the following reference works: Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, ed. Everett Ferguson, 2nd ed. (New York/London: Garland, 1998); Dictionary of Early Christian Literature, eds. Sigmar Döpp and Wilhelm Geerlings (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1998). For an excellent collection of scholarly studies on the process of canonization in ancient Judaism and Christianity, consult The Canon Debate, eds. Lee Martin McDonald and James A. Sanders (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002), which includes a bibliography for further reading.

L. W. Hurtado is head of the School of Divinity and professor of New Testament Language, Literature & Theology at New College, University of Edinburgh, in Scotland.

Paul Foster, “Marcion: His Life, Works, Beliefs, and Impact,” Expository Times 121 (2010): 269–80; and in the same issue note articles

by Sebastian Moll, “Marcion: A New Perspective on His Life, Theology, and Impact” (281–86), and Dieter T. Roth, “Marcion’s Gospel: Relevance, Contested Issues, and Reconstruction” (287–94).

2Larry W. Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), esp. 15–41.

3Harry Y. Gamble, “The New Testament Canon: Recent Research and the status Quaestionis,” in The Canon Debate, eds. Lee Martin McDonald and James A. Sanders (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002), 267–94 (citing 275).

4See Gamble’s discussion, 282–87.

5See the extended discussion of the matter in Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts, 43–93.

6For example, see G. N. Stanton, “The Fourfold Gospel,” New Testament Studies 43 (1997): 317–46.

7For a group of recent studies pertaining to P45, see Charles Horton, ed., The Earliest Gospels: The Origins and Transmission of the Earliest Christian Gospels—The Contribution of the Chester Beatty Gospel Codex P45 (London: T&T Clark International, 2004).

8Oscar Cullmann, “The Plurality of the Gospels as a Theological Problem in Antiquity,” in The Early Church: Studies in Early Christian History and Theology, ed. A. J. B. Higgins (London/ Philadelphia: SCM/Westminster, 1956), 39-54.

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SOLA SCRIPTURA

Responding to Objections to Sola Scriptura

By Kenneth Richard Samples

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he authority of Scripture holds supreme importance in a Christian worldview, especially for Protestant evangelicals who believe that their faith and the way they live depend upon Scripture. Other branches of Christendom and skeptics, such as the convert to Roman Catholicism Peter Kreeft, sometimes raise objections to this crucial distinction.1 They suggest that this principle is incoherent or unworkable. Responses to seven common objections explain how sola scriptura impacts Christian theology.

Objection #1: Scripture itself does not teach the principle of sola scriptura; therefore, this principle is self-defeating.

Response: The doctrine of sola scriptura need not be taught formally and explicitly. It may be implicit in Scripture and inferred logically. Scripture explicitly states its inspiration in 2 Timothy 3:15–17, and its sufficiency is implied there as well. This passage contains the essence of sola scriptura, revealing that Scripture is able to make a person wise unto salvation. And it includes the inherent ability to make a person complete in belief and practice.

Scripture has no authoritative peer. While the apostle Paul’s reference in verse 16—to Scripture being “Godbreathed”—specifically applies to the Old Testament, the

apostles viewed the New Testament as having the same inspiration and authority (1 Tim. 5:18; Deut. 25:4 and Luke 10:7; 2 Pet. 3:16). The New Testament writers continue, mentioning no other apostolic authority on par with Scripture. Robert Bowman notes: “The New Testament writings produced at the end of the New Testament period direct Christians to test teachings by remembering the words of the prophets (OT) and apostles (NT), not by accessing the words of living prophets, apostles, or other supposedly inspired teachers (Heb. 2:2–4; 2 Pet. 2:1; 3:2; Jude 3–4, 17).”2 Scriptural warnings such as “do not go beyond what is written” (1 Cor. 4:6) and prohibitions against adding or subtracting text (Rev. 22:18–19) buttress the principle that Scripture stands unique and sufficient in its authority.

Christ held Scripture in highest esteem. The strongest scriptural argument for sola scriptura, however, is found in how the Lord Jesus Christ himself viewed and used Scripture.

A careful study of the Gospels reveals that he held Scripture in the highest regard. Jesus said: “The Scriptures cannot be broken” (John 10:35); “Your word is truth” (John 17:17); “Not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law” (Matt. 5:18); and “It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the least stroke of a pen to drop out of the Law” (Luke 16:17).

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Whether tradition was acceptable or not depended on God's written Word. This recognition by

Response: This objection fails for four reasons.

First, the early church had the living apostles to teach Christ of God’s Word as the supreme authority them. Though the inscripturation process took some time, supplies powerful evidence for the principle of immediacy wasn’t an issue because the apostles were still sola scriptura. living. And the written New Testament circulated among the Christ appealed to Scripture as a final authority. Jesus even churches early in the first century. asserted that greatness in heaven will be measured by obeSecond, Christ promised to send the Holy Spirit who dience to Scripture (Matt. 5:19) while judgment will be would guide his apostles “into all truth” (John 16:13), as measured out by the same standard (Luke 16:29–31; John well as bring to their “remembrance” everything Christ 5:45–47). He used Scripture as the final court of appeal in said (John 14:26). In this way, Jesus put his stamp of every theological and moral matter under dispute. When approval on the New Testament yet to come (prospecdisputing with the Pharisees on their high view of traditively), as he had done for the previously written Old tion, he proclaimed: “Thus you nullify the word of God by Testament (retrospectively).4 your tradition” (Mark 7:13).

Third, considering his identity, the words of Jesus Because Scripture came from God, Jesus considered it (Gospels) would carry at least the same authority as the binding and supreme, while tradition was clearly discrewords of the Old Testament prophets. tionary and subordinate. Whether tradition was acceptable Fourth, Christ’s apostles, who were promised Spiritor not depended on God’s written Word. This recognition guided illumination and recall, placed their writings on par

by Christ of God’s Word as the supreme authority supplies with the Old Testament. The apostolic witness to Scripture powerful evidence for the principle of sola scriptura. claims it is inspired, infallible, and authoritative (Acts When Jesus was tested by the Sadducees concerning the 4:25, 28:25; Rom. 3:2, 9:27, 29; 2 Tim. 3:15–16; 2 Pet. resurrection, he retorted, “You are in error because you do 1:20–21). not know the Scriptures” (Matt. 22:29). When confronted with the devil’s temptations, he responded three times with Objection #3: The Roman Catholic Church wrote, canthe phrase, “It is written,” followed by specific citations onized, and interpreted Scripture. The Bible cannot be (Matt. 4:4–10). In this context, Jesus corrects Satan’s misgreater than its cause—the Church. use of Scripture. Theologian J. I. Packer says of Jesus: “He treats arguments from Scripture as having clinching force.”3 Response: First, the claim that the church produced the Bible is wrong. (Note: Protestant scholars typically view Christ deferred to Scripture. Jesus based his ethical teachthe early church as catholic but not Roman). The church ing upon the sacred text and deferred to its authority in his did not exist officially when the prophets and patriarchs Messianic ministry (Matt. 19:18–19; Mark 10:19; Luke wrote the Old Testament books. And the church accepted 18:20). His very destiny was tied to biblical text: “The the Old Testament canon on the authority of Jesus Christ’s Son of Man will go just as it is written” (Matt. 26:24). “This personal testimony. As an institution, the church did not is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the produce the New Testament writings either. The apostles dead on the third day” (Luke 24:46). Even while dying on and their close associates (initial leaders of the church at the cross, Jesus quoted Scripture (see Matt. 27:45, cf. Ps. large) wrote those books under the Holy Spirit’s direct 22:1). His entire life, death, and resurrection seemed to be inspiration. arranged according to the phrase, “The Scriptures must be fulfilled” (Matt. 26:56; Luke 4:21; 22:37).

Though the early church preceded the apostolic writClearly, Christ accepted Scripture as the supreme ings, it was the gospel message preached––later recorded authority and subjected himself to it (Matt. 26:54; Luke 24:44; John 19:28). Jesus did not place himself above and expounded in those writings—that by divine grace Scripture and judge it; instead he obeyed God’s Word produced the church. This progression can be described as: completely. A follower of Christ can do no less. A genuinely biblical worldview requires Scripture to be the Gospel ––> Church ––> New Testament supreme authority.

The New Testament books became a permanent, infalObjection #2: The earliest Christians didn’t have the lible record of an oral message. Because Scripture is idencomplete New Testament. Therefore, references to tified with the preached gospel, it is authoritative. The Scripture by Jesus and his apostles apply only to the Old church (made up of gospel-believing communities) subTestament. mits to the Word (gospel) that created it. Scripture derives 38 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

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no authority from the church; the authority of Scripture is inherent because the very words of God are the text (2 Tim. 3:16).

The early church did not create Scripture. The church merely received Scripture and recognized its inherent authority. God determined the canon by inspiring certain books and then guided the church to recognize and receive them.

The true church derives authority from rightly understanding and applying Scripture. The purpose of Scripture is to bear witness to Christ, who himself bears witness to the integrity and authority of Scripture: “You diligently study the Scriptures....These are the Scriptures that testify about me” (John 5:39).

Objection #4: Oral apostolic tradition is mentioned in Scripture (see 1 Cor. 11:2; 2 Thess. 2:15; 3:6; 2 Tim. 2:2) and granted divine authority alongside the apostolic writings.

Response: While living, the apostles could express their authoritative statements either orally or in writing, for they were hand-selected authoritative spokespersons for the Lord Jesus Christ. This apostolic authority in both forms must have been tremendously helpful as the early church emerged in the first century. It’s reasonable to conclude that the oral communication of the apostles was no different in content from their writings.

After the apostles’ deaths, however, the only way to confirm whether a particular so-called extrabiblical (apostolic) tradition is in accord with what the apostles taught and believed is to rely upon the permanent written Word (Scripture). Not all such claims were historically authentic and factually true even in apostolic times (John 21:22– 23). Bowman makes this point: “Nowhere in the New Testament is it stated or implied that the church was commissioned to transmit to future generations oral traditions teaching doctrines or practices not found anywhere in the Bible––much less any guarantee that they would do so infallibly.”5 Ancient church traditions may serve as a type of noninspired subordinate norm in theology, but they possess a derivative and ministerial function only. However, such church traditions often suffer from being contradictory, biblically inconsistent, and even nebulous in nature.

Objection #5: Sola scriptura is an unhistorical position.

Nobody believed in it before the sixteenth century. Sola scriptura was therefore a theological innovation of the Protestant Reformers.

Response: Because the doctrine of sola scriptura is derived from Scripture (see response to objection #1 above), it is not a sixteenth-century innovation. Sola scriptura did not appear as a fully developed and consistent theological position until the time of the Protestant Reformation, but

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the foundations for the position appeared much earlier in church history. Historical theologian Richard A. Muller explains: The views of the Reformers developed out of a debate in the late medieval theology over the relation of Scripture and tradition, one party viewing the two as coequal norms, the other party viewing Scripture as the absolute and therefore prior norm, but allowing tradition a derivative but important secondary role in doctrinal statement. The Reformers and the Protestant orthodox held the latter view, on the assumption that tradition was a useful guide, that the trinitarian and christological statements of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon were expressions of biblical truth, and that the great teachers of the church provided valuable instruction in theology that always needed to be evaluated in the light of Scripture.6 Other historical theologians, such as Reinhold Seeberg and J. N. D. Kelly, cite a number of early church fathers as believing Scripture to be the absolute authority as a doctrinal norm.7 Debates over the exact relationship between Scripture and church tradition took place long before the Protestant Reformers came along. In fact, some of the most powerful quotations concerning biblical authority can be drawn from two of the greatest Catholic thinkers in history, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.

Augustine of Hippo (354–430) wrote: It is to the canonical Scriptures alone that I am bound to yield such implicit subjection as to follow their teaching, without admitting the slightest suspicion that in them any mistake or any statement intended to mislead could find a place.8 He [God] also inspired the Scripture, which is regarded as canonical and of supreme authority and to which we give credence concerning all the truths we ought to know and yet, of ourselves, are unable to learn.9 There is a distinct boundary line separating all productions subsequent to apostolic times from the authoritative canonical books of the Old and New Testaments...in the innumerable books that have been written latterly we may sometimes find the same truth as Scripture, but there is not the same authority. Scripture has a sacredness peculiar to itself.10 Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) stated: We believe the prophets and apostles because the Lord has been their witness by performing miraN O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 0 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 39

Protestants accept the New Testament books as canon because it can be verified that Jesus’ apostles and their associates produced them with his authorization. cles...and we believe the successors of the apostles and prophets only in so far as they tell us those things which the apostles and prophets have left in their writings.11 Only to those books or writings which are called canonical have I learnt to pay such honour that I firmly believe that none of their authors have erred in composing them.12 Objection #6: Private interpretation leads to denominationalism. Sola scriptura is therefore unworkable as an authoritative principle.

Response: Roman Catholic apologists in particular bring this major objection against sola scriptura. Simply stated, if the Bible is so clear, why are there so many denominations within Protestantism?

The first point is that not all denominational splits are scandalous. Wholesale departures from historic Christianity by theological liberalism must be opposed. When historic churches deny the very essence of the faith (the creeds), then division is obligatory. Packer gives a concise and forceful answer to this objection: To the traditional Roman Catholic complaint that Protestant biblicism produces endless divisions in the church, the appropriate reply is twofold: firstly, the really deep divisions have been caused not by those who maintained sola scriptura, but by those, Roman Catholic and Protestant alike, who reject it; second, when adherents of sola scriptura have split from each other the cause has been sin rather than Protestant biblicism, for in conventional terms the issues in debate have not been of the first magnitude.13 Packer goes on to identify six concerns that divide Protestants: (1) God’s sovereignty and man’s freedom, (2) the Lord’s Supper, (3) ecclesiology (church order), (4) church/state issues, (5) baptism, and (6) eschatology (last things).14 One explanation for the differences on secondary issues is that diverse groups use a variety of hermeneutical approaches. Another factor is that no one has all of the spiritual and scholarly gifts and abilities to rightly interpret every detail of Scripture. It should also be noted that Catholicism, regardless of its Teaching Magisterium15 40 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

(teaching office) and its claim to infallibility, has as much diversity as Protestantism.16 And it must be remembered that the East/West (Orthodoxy/Catholicism) church schism of 1054 severely divided the church five centuries before the Reformation.

Objection #7: The original biblical manuscripts did not contain a table of contents to designate exactly which books were canonical and which were not. Therefore Protestants relied upon Roman Catholic tradition in order to even produce the canon of Scripture. This dilemma is self-defeating for the principle of sola scriptura.

Response: The process that the Christian community went through in deciding which books should be included in the canon is open to historical investigation. It seems unreasonable that a Protestant must rely upon Catholic tradition (as some type of revelation) to objectively investigate this historical process. The canonical debate is not part of what Catholics consider “apostolic tradition.”

Protestant Christians can warrant knowledge of the canon on the objective internal evidences of the biblical texts. Those books belong in the canon that: (1) profess to be Scripture or are acknowledged so by other such books; (2) are authentic (written by the persons to whom they are attributed); and (3) have some objective evidence supporting the claim that they are part of the inspired canon.

In practical terms, Protestants accept the Old Testament as canon because Jesus, whose inspiration is evident, did so. And Protestants accept the New Testament books as canon because it can be verified that Jesus’ apostles and their associates produced them with his authorization.

Catholic apologists admit that the ecclesiastical process that resulted in the biblical canon was long and drawn out.

But this assertion seems inconsistent with their claim that the pope possesses the gift of infallibility. Why were there so many different lists and such strong disagreement about certain books? For example, even the great patristic scholars Augustine and Jerome differed over the canon. Why didn’t the pope at the time, as the Vicar of Christ on Earth, simply intervene with the definitive list and settle the issue quickly and permanently? Could it be that in the early church the Bishop of Rome wasn’t recognized as having that power?

It is a mistake to assert that the early church determined or created the canon of Scripture. Rather, the early church recognized the inherent inspiration in the apostolic writings. In other words, an ecclesiastical pronouncement did not inspire scriptural writings; instead the pronouncement followed what had always been considered inspired revelation. When were the canonical books inspired? Not at the Councils of Hippo (A.D. 393) or Carthage (A.D. 397).

Each book was inspired the day it was written. Clearly the

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inspiration of Scripture preceded the pronouncements of councils some three hundred years later.

The divine inspiration and authority of Scripture is selfauthenticating (“God breathed,” 2 Tim 3:15–16). The church cannot function as the one who confirms Scripture’s authority (determining the canon), for only God can attest to the truth of his Holy Word. Therefore, an unofficial (but decisive) list of canonical books, namely, the self-authenticating books written by the apostles or their associates, emerges. Their inspiration identifies the books as canonical. The Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture provides the final confirmation that a book is canonical, not the church’s later recognition of that fact. ■

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1995), and James R. White, Scripture Alone: Exploring the Bible’s Accuracy, Authority, and Authenticity (Minneapolis: Bethany, 2004). For audiotapes of a Protestant-Catholic dialogue between Kenneth Samples and Father Mitchell Pacwa (S.J.) on the question of religious authority, contact: St. Joseph Communications, Inc., P.O. Box 720, W. Covina, CA 91793 (1-818-331-3549).

16For a discussion of the broad diversity that exists within the Roman Catholic Church, see Kenneth Richard Samples, “What Think Ye of Rome? An Evangelical Appraisal of Contemporary Catholicism,” Part I, Christian Research Journal (Winter 1993), 32–42.

“Christians, Awake, Salute the Happy Morn”

By John Byron (1692–1763)

Kenneth Richard Samples is senior scholar at Reasons to Believe (a science-faith think tank) and an adjunct instructor of apologetics at Biola University. This article is an excerpt from Kenneth Richard Samples, A World of Difference: Putting Christian Truth-Claims to the Worldview Test (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), 120–27.

For a summary of Roman Catholic criticisms of sola scriptura, see Peter Kreeft, Fundamentals of the Faith: Essays in Christian Apologetics (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988), 274–75.

2This quote is taken from Robert M. Bowman, Jr.’s unpublished study outline entitled: “Sola Scriptura: The Protestant Doctrine of the Authority of Scripture,” n.d. (available by request from http://biblicalapologetics.net).

3J. I. Packer, “Fundamentalism” and the Word of God: Some Evangelical Principles (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958), 55.

4See F. F. Bruce, The Books and the Parchments (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1991), 96.

5Bowman, “Sola Scriptura.”

6Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, s.v. “Sola Scriptura” (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006).

7Reinhold Seeberg, Text-book of the History of Doctrines, vol. 1, History of Doctrines in the Ancient Church (Grand Rapids: Baker,1964), 358; J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrine (San Francisco: Harper, 1978), 42–43.

8Augustine, Letters 82.3, in Philip Schaff, ed., A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 9th ed.

(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956 reprint).

9Augustine, City of God 11.3.

10Augustine, Reply to Faustus 11.5.

11Thomas Aquinas, De veritate 14.10, ad 11.

12Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1a.1.8.

13J. I. Packer, “‘Sola Scriptura’ in History and Today,” in God’s Inerrant Word, ed. John Warwick Montgomery (Canadian Institute for Law, Theology & Public Policy, 1974), 55.

14Packer, 55–56.

15For a defense of the Roman Catholic view of the papacy, see Scott Butler et al., Jesus, Peter and the Keys: A Scriptural Handbook on the Papacy (Santa Barbara, CA: Queenship, 1997). For a Protestant critique of the papacy, see Norman Geisler and Ralph Mackenzie, Roman Catholics & Evangelicals (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1

Christians, awake, salute the happy morn Whereon the Saviour of the world was born Rise to adore the mystery of love Which hosts of angels chanted from above With them the joyful tidings first begun Of God incarnate and the Virgin’s Son Then to the watchful shepherds it was told Who heard the angelic herald’s voice: “Behold, I bring good tidings of a Saviour’s birth To you and all the nations upon earth This day hath God fulfilled His promised word; This day is born a Saviour, Christ the Lord.”

He spake, and straightaway the celestial choir In hymns of joy, unknown before, conspire The praises of redeeming love they sang And heaven’s whole orb with alleluias rang God’s highest glory was their anthem still Peace upon earth and unto men goodwill To Bethlehem straight the shepherds ran To see the wonder God had wrought for man And found, with Joseph and the blessed Maid Her Son, the Saviour, in a manger laid Amazed, the wondrous story they proclaim The earliest heralds of the Saviour’s name Let us, like these good shepherds, them employ Our grateful voices to proclaim the joy Trace we the Babe, who hath retrieved our loss From His poor manger to His bitter cross Treading His steps, assisted by His grace Till man’s first heavenly state again takes place Then may we hope, the angelic thrones among To sing, redeemed, a glad triumphal song He that was born upon this joyful day Around us all His glory shall display Saved by His love, incessant we shall sing Of angels and of angel-men the King N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 0 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 41

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Sola Scriptura: A Dialogue between Michael Horton and Bryan Cross For our special issue on Sola Scriptura, Michael Horton, editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation and a co-host of the White Horse Inn, shared in the following exchange with Bryan Cross (M.Div., Covenant Theological Seminary), who was raised Pentecostal, became Presbyterian and then Anglican, and in 2006 was received into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church.

Michael Horton: I’m assuming that we agree on the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture. The Reformation debate was never over the nature of Scripture (aside from the question of the Apocrypha) but rather its relation to tradition: the sufficiency of Scripture as the norm of Christian faith and practice. The Reformers affirmed the ministerial role of the church’s teaching office (and tradition), especially the ecumenical creeds. However, it was because these creeds summarize the teaching of Scripture (magisterial authority), not because of the authority of the church. Could you lead off by offering a Roman Catholic response to this distinction between the ministerial and magisterial authority of the church in relation to Scripture?

Bryan Cross: We do agree on the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture, which is important common ground to keep in view when discussing our disagreements. To answer your question, let me back up a bit. In Catholic doctrine, Christ gave teaching authority to the apostles.

That is why he could say to them, “The one who listens to you listens to me, and the one who rejects you rejects me; and he who rejects me rejects the One who sent me” (Luke 10:16). The apostles handed down that teaching authority to

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their successors, and they to their successors, down to the Catholic bishops of the present day. This living teaching authority of the church is the servant of Scripture, teaching only what has been handed on to her, explicating Scripture faithfully by the guidance of the Holy Spirit and guarding Scripture from misinterpretation.

In that respect, we agree that the church has a ministerial role, serving both the Word of God and the flock of Christ. But from the Catholic point of view, the reason the creeds have authority is not because they summarize the teaching of Scripture. Many systematic theology books also summarize the teaching of Scripture, and yet they are not thereby something that all Christians should affirm, as are the ancient creeds. The creeds have a higher authority than do systematic theology texts. The reason for that is precisely because the creeds were taught by the church’s living teaching authority, and that is how we know that they rightly summarize Scripture. It is to this living teaching authority that St. Augustine refers when he says, “For my part, I should not believe the Gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church.” Scripture and the church’s living teaching authority are never to be separated, nor do they ever compete against each other. They work together

and only together—one as source and the other as steward. In order to interpret and understand Scripture rightly, we should do so in the church in humble obedience to her living teaching authority that was given to her by Christ.

And in order for the church to follow Christ, she must believe and obey the Scripture that was divinely entrusted to her.

So from a Catholic point of view, the deficiency in the Reformers’ distinction between the authority of Scripture and the ministerial role of the church is that it left out the teaching authority of the successors of the apostles. If that authority is set aside, then the practical result is first that the church is thought to be serving Scripture only when she is conforming to one’s own interpretation of Scripture and that of those who share one’s interpretation of Scripture. And second, when living magisterial authority is left out, the “church” comes to be defined as those who sufficiently agree with one’s own interpretation of Scripture regarding what are the marks of the church. So from a Catholic point of view, those who lose sight of the church’s divinely established living teaching authority lose sight of the church, and this leads to the fragmentation of denominationalism, even where the authority of Scripture is affirmed.

There cannot be living ministerial authority without living magisterial authority, because without living magisterial authority the basis for ministerial authority is reduced to sufficient agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture.

Michael Horton: You raise other important issues (for example, Augustine’s comment, which the Reformers interpreted—rightly, I believe—as his way of saying that it was through the church and its teaching authority that he came to faith, not on the basis of that authority itself). However, I’d like to focus on the magisterial-ministerial distinction.

Ultimately, it rests on a distinction between the extraordinary office of the apostles and the ordinary office of ministers. So I’d appreciate your take on the following response.

Jesus excoriated the Pharisees for elevating the tradition of the elders alongside Scripture: “So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God” (Matt.

15:6; Mark 7:8). And yet Paul exhorted the Thessalonians to “stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter” (2 Thess. 2:15; cf. 2 Thess. 3:6). Paul commends the Corinthians “because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you” (1 Cor. 11:2). Jesus and Paul are talking about two different types of tradition: one is the inspired speech of prophets and apostles, which forms the foundation of the church (Eph. 2:20), and the other is the interpretation of this speech. Jews and Protestants hold that the Old Testament canon closed with Malachi, so “the traditions of the elders” was non-inspired teaching. With the apostles, however, we have further revelation from God. Yet that apostolic office, too, came to an end and the result was our New Testament canon.

Paul said that he had “laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it” (1 Cor. 3:10).

That is the order: apostolic foundation followed by the ordinary ministry of the church on that basis.

“For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (v. 11, emphasis added). There is the foundation-

laying period and then the building phase. Paul implies that he was the last apostle (1 Cor. 15:7–8), and instructs Timothy to receive and pass on what he has heard from him. In fact, Paul warns the Corinthians “not to go beyond what is written” (1 Cor. 4:6), even while he and the other apostles were still living. “The faith once and for all delivered to the saints” is something the post-apostolic ministers are called to “contend for,” not to add to (Jude 3). So the extraordinary ministry of the apostles (mediating divine revelation) is qualitatively distinct from the ordinary ministry of pastors and teachers (interpreting divine revelation).

The post-prophetic “teaching of the elders” in Jesus’ day was not divinely inspired, nor is the postapostolic teaching of the church. It would seem that this distinction is denied by the Roman Catholic Church, which insists upon an ongoing apostolic office, with Scripture and Tradition as two forms of the one Word of God. How would you respond to this argument?

Bryan Cross: I agree that when Jesus criticized the Pharisees for putting the traditions of men above the word of God, he was talking about a different type of tradition than St. Paul was talking about in the passages you cited. But I don’t see any justification from Scripture (or elsewhere) for assuming that the traditions St. Paul commends are only those that are divinely inspired or only those that are written. He specifically exhorts the believers to “hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us” (2 Thess. 2:15). We need not assume that every time St. Paul taught he was divinely inspired.

The reason for that is that in Catholic theology, as in Protestant theology, “inspiration” is a technical term meaning that God is the principal author of the inspired

words, not just their editor or providential cause. We agree that all of Scripture is divinely inspired. But in Catholic theology, inspiration is to be distinguished from another category—speech or writing that is not inspired, yet is protected from error by the Holy Spirit. Over the course of their lives after Pentecost, the apostles taught many things not written down in Scripture, and these teachings are part of the single deposit of faith because they came originally either from Christ or from the Holy Spirit speaking through the apostles. These unwritten teachings and practices informed the belief and practice of the early church long before the canon was collected. While we don’t assume that this unwritten tradition of the apostles was divinely inspired, we do believe it was protected from error by the Holy Spirit and is part of the authoritative deposit of faith. St. Paul says that his oral preaching is the Word of God when he writes, “And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as what it really is, the word of God” (1 Thess.

2:13).

From a Catholic point of view, the notion that whatever is not divinely inspired is a mere tradition of men is a false dilemma. The unwritten tradition is neither divinely inspired nor a mere tradition of men, and yet it is authoritative because it came from Christ or from his Spirit through those men whom Christ authorized and equipped to teach and lead his church.

Regarding Ephesians 2:20, St. Paul there says that the household of God is built on the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus being the cornerstone. The church then is built on authorized persons, having a divine Person as its cornerstone.

We can see that also in Revelation 21:14, where the twelve apostles are shown to be the twelve founda-

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Paul places even himself and the other apostles under the authority of God’s Word when he warns the Galatians, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.” tion stones of the church. But eight of the twelve apostles never wrote anything that was canonized. So Revelation 21:14 cannot be referring to their writings.

We are discussing here the nature and relation of three things: the written tradition (i.e., Scripture), the unwritten tradition, and the Magisterium (i.e., the church’s living teaching authority). From the Catholic point of view, each of the three is authoritative in its own way, yet they function rightly only in concert, as Dei Verbum notes. “It is clear, therefore, that sacred tradition, Sacred Scripture and the teaching authority of the Church, in accord with God’s most wise design, are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others, and that all together and each in its own way under the action of the one Holy Spirit contribute effectively to the salvation of souls” (DV, 10).

With regard to the apostolic office, the Catholic Church makes a distinction. To be an apostle, one had to have seen the Lord. This gave the apostles the unique authority that comes from being an eyewitness of the incarnate Christ.

But being an eyewitness was not sufficient to be an apostle. One also had to be sent by Christ. This conferred a different kind of authority from the authority of an eyewitness. The two kinds of authority do not compete; they are fully compatible and were both present in the first apostles. This second kind of authority we call “Holy Orders.”

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that sense the apostolic office came to an end and with it the possibility of further revelation. But, Holy Orders is not limited to eyewitnesses, because the authorization of commission and stewardship could be handed down by the apostles, and it endures to this day by a continuous succession from the apostles. These successors of the apostles are not apostles in the eyewitness sense but possess the apostolic authority the apostles themselves received from Christ through Holy Orders—that is, the divine authorization to teach and govern the church in Christ’s name as his representatives, binding and loosing with his authority.

So while I agree with you that the successors of the apostles are not themselves apostles in that same sense, it does not follow that the successors of the apostles do not have magisterial authority to provide the authoritative interpretation of the deposit of faith. In other words, the end of the apostolic office in the eyewitness sense of apostle does not entail the termination of the authority of commission, by which the successors of the apostles preserve and authoritatively interpret the deposit of faith entrusted to them by the apostles.

Michael Horton: As a Reformed minister, I can agree (with some qualification) with your comments on three points: (1) it was not the apostles who were inspired but their writings that became part of the canon; (2) the oral proclamation and instruction of the apostles was as much the Word of God as written

texts; and (3) even preaching today is the Word of God and the church has a delegated authority from Christ today to teach, preach, absolve, baptize, and administer Communion in his name. The ecumenical creeds and Reformed confession and catechism are binding because they summarize the teaching of Scripture. Yet this authority to proclaim the Word, forgive sins, baptize and discipline resides in the office, never the person. To be sure, early Christians had no reason to feel compelled to follow Peter’s opinions about sports or politics. In 1 Corinthians 7 Paul could even distinguish between his apostolic command and his moral advice as a father in the faith. But when the apostles died, so did their office.

The scriptural canon is the constitution of the church and the church’s communal interpretation of Scripture in broader assemblies (synods and councils) is analogous to judicial courts. Case precedent is to be weighed heavily, but only the constitution is normative.

Tradition is still important. At its best, it is illumined (not inspired) by the Spirit. But tradition can go wrong in the post-apostolic era just as it could and did in the postprophetic era of Jesus’ day. The medieval church was widely influenced by the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite, supposedly the figure mentioned in Acts 17 as a convert of Paul’s in Athens. As it turns out, they were the writings of a seventh-century Christian NeoPlatonist. A huge number of traditions allegedly passed on from the apostles have been exposed as forgeries. Furthermore, councils have sometimes contradicted each other.

The same church that embraced the conclusions of one council condemned those conclusions in another council. I know you’re aware of examples. For instance, there were three popes in the fourteenth century who anathematized each other and their sees. That means that everyone in Christendom was excommunicated by at least

one pope. Even Benedict XVI (as Cardinal Ratzinger) admitted that the Western Schism in the fourteenth century shattered the confidence of millions in the church as the bearer of salvation. So the church has erred even on matters vital to the matter of salvation. The church has Christ’s authorization for its ministry of Word, Sacrament, and discipline. Yet the church can and does err and always stands under the canonical Word that corrects and reforms it.

It receives its authority from the Word; the Word does not receive its authority from the church.

Paul places even himself and the other apostles under the authority of God’s Word when he warns the Galatians, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:8–9). The Reformers believed that Pope Leo and the Council of Trent were in fact preaching “a gospel contrary to the one [we] received” from the apostles, and confessional churches in this heritage maintain that Rome continues to do so. Doesn’t Paul warn us to reject the promulgation of another gospel even if an apostle or angel from heaven is its source?

And if so, doesn’t this imply that (1) the post-apostolic church is even more subordinate to the Word and (2) the gospel is the criterion for valid ministry, not vice versa?

Bryan Cross: The problem with claiming that “the Reformed confession and catechism are binding because they summarize the teaching of Scripture” is that it leaves out “according to whom.” Lutherans also think that their confession and catechism are binding because they summarize the teaching of Scripture. Any Christian group that wishes to be confessional can make such a claim about

its own confession or make its own confession if it wants. I came to believe that the Westminster Confession of Faith has no authority, because the only basis for its “authority” was my own agreement with its interpretation of Scripture. And agreement with oneself cannot be the basis for authority. This is why denominationalism necessarily follows the loss of living teaching authority.

Regarding the apostolic office and its closure, obviously because seeing the incarnate Christ was required in order to be an apostle, there could be no more apostles after the apostle John died at the end of the first century. On that we agree. But the point of disagreement, I think, is what kind of authority their successors had and how these successors acquired this authority. Catholics believe that these successors of the apostles were authorized to be such by the apostles themselves. This authorization gave them the authority to teach and govern, bind and loose.

No one could take this authority to himself; it had to be given to him by those already having it. When St. Paul writes to St. Timothy, he tells him to guard the treasure that has been entrusted to him and urges him to entrust the things he has heard from St. Paul to faithful men who will be able to teach others also (2 Tim. 1:14, 2:2). So we see in Scripture this apostolic understanding of handing on the deposit of faith and entrusting it to faithful men. We believe also that this ordination involved the laying on of hands, by those having the authority to confer such authority (cf. Acts 6:6; 1 Tim. 4:14).

Those not having this authorization could not speak for the church or provide the authoritative interpretation of the deposit of faith.

Believers who did not have this authority were to be subject to those having this authority. As the author of Hebrews says, “Obey your leaders, and submit to them; for they keep watch over your

souls, as those who will give an account” (Heb. 13:17). What is meant by “leaders” here is not “those who agree with your interpretation of Scripture.” The “leaders” referred to are only those authorized by the apostles. The laymen’s understanding of Scripture was to be conformed to that of those authorized teachers. This shows that it wasn’t only Scripture that was normative but also the instruction and teaching by those authorized to explicate the deposit of faith. In that sense, the apostolic office continued after the death of the apostles—not occupied by apostles, of course, but occupied by those authorized by the apostles.

This is why the bishops authorized in succession from the apostles sat in the apostles’ seats to which Tertullian refers when he says, “Go through the Apostolic Churches, in which the very seats of the Apostles, at this very day, preside over their own places” (Liber de praescriptione haereticorum, 36). And Eusebius tells us that after the martyrdom of St. James the Less (bishop of Jerusalem), Symeon the son of Clopas was found to be worthy of “the episcopal throne of that see” (E.H. 3.11). Eusebius likewise tells us that when Symeon was martyred under the emperor Trajan in A.D. 106 or 107 “his successor on the throne of the Jerusalem bishopric was a Jew named Justus” (E.H. 3.35). The very idea of the successors of the apostles sitting in the seats (or thrones) of the apostles wouldn’t make sense unless they understood themselves to possess and carry on their authority.

The notion that when the last apostle died, the only authority left in the church was that of Scripture and whoever or whatever agreed with one’s own interpretation of Scripture, is a notion we don’t see at all in the writings of the early Church Fathers. Let me point to two examples: St. Clement of Rome and St. Ignatius of Antioch.

In St. Clement of Rome, before the end of the first century, we see

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him exercising authority when he says to the Corinthian usurpers, “You therefore, who laid the foundation of this sedition, submit yourselves to the presbyters, and receive correction so as to repent, bending the knees of your hearts.

Learn to be subject, laying aside the proud and arrogant self-confidence of your tongue [c. 57]. Receive our counsel, and you shall be without repentance….[H]e who in lowliness of mind, with instant gentleness, and without repentance has observed the ordinances and appointments given by God—the same shall obtain a place and name in the number of those who are being saved through Jesus Christ [c. 58]. If, however, any shall disobey the words spoken by Him through us, let them know that they will involve themselves in transgression and serious danger” (c. 59).

And St. Ignatius (d. A.D. 107) even more strongly describes the authority of the bishops. In his epistle to the Ephesians he writes, “Let us be careful, then, not to set ourselves in opposition to the bishop, in order that we may be subject to God” (c. 5). “For we ought to receive every one whom the Master of the house sends to be over His household (Matt. 24:25) as we would do Him that sent him. It is manifest, therefore, that we should look upon the bishop even as we would upon the Lord Himself.” In his epistle to the Magnesians he writes, “As therefore the Lord did nothing without the Father, being united to Him, neither by Himself nor by the apostles, so neither do ye anything without the bishop and presbyters” (c. 7). That’s just a sample, as you know. St. Ignatius’s epistles are filled with this notion that the bishops continue in the place of the apostles, as the apostles continued in the place of Christ. So he continually exhorts the believers to obey their bishop as they would obey Jesus Christ, because the bishops have been sent by Christ, through the apostles.

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Thus it doesn’t seem that the early church had this notion that after the death of the apostles only Scripture had authority and that one should “submit” only to those who shared one’s interpretation of Scripture, or only to those teachings that conformed to one’s own interpretation of Scripture. It seems instead that the early Church Fathers recognized a living teaching authority in the church. Through humble obedience to this living teaching authority, one finds the true apostolic teaching and interpretation of the deposit of faith.

Regarding the reliability of tradition, there is a fundamental difference between Catholics and Protestants here. Protestants are typically quite suspicious of tradition in the Fathers, judging it by their own interpretation of Scripture. I have referred to this stance as “ecclesial deism.” That’s the notion that Christ established the church but then withdrew and let it fall into all sorts of doctrinal errors (see http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/07/ecclesial-deism/). By contrast, Catholics read Scripture in light of the tradition, relying on the Magisterium to guide us in distinguishing authentic tradition from error. Catholics are not ecclesial deists; we believe strongly in providence. Christ is with his church, protecting and guiding her even when it may not seem so to the eye of human reason. We view the Fathers as heroes of faith and bearers of the tradition, not as bearers of a corrupted tradition. So while you apparently see the theological influence of the works of pseudo-Dionysius as a theological disaster, we see it as an act of divine providence. That’s because we believe that the church is not a merely human institution but a divine institution, having Christ as its Head. So from a Catholic point of view, whether or not the works attributed to Dionysius were written by him, Christ will never allow the universal church to teach falsehood.

Insofar as the works alleged to be those of Dionysius contributed to the church’s understanding and penetration of the faith, it is not the church that is threatened or corrupted, but rather those works of Dionysius that are, in those respects, divinely affirmed and elevated.

Also, it is important to distinguish between apostolic tradition (e.g., the canon of Scripture), which is part of the deposit of faith, and ecclesiastical traditions (e.g., fasting on Fridays), which may be good and pious but are not in their specifics from the apostles.

Ecclesiastical traditions are not matters of doctrine. They can change, and can be good or not good. But the apostolic tradition cannot change. So when criticizing some Catholic practice or belief, it is important to note whether the church holds it to be part of the apostolic tradition or only an ecclesiastical tradition.

As for councils, it is no problem for a Catholic to acknowledge that local councils can contradict each other; but ecumenical councils cannot and have not done so. As for the Western Schism, there were never actually three simultaneous popes; two were antipopes. An antipope is not the actual pope but an imposter who claims to be the real pope and lives during the reign of the actual pope. There were been quite a few antipopes in the history of the church, going back to St. Hippolytus (yes, “St.”) in the early third century. But there can never be two popes at the same time. So if one person is pope, and a conclave tries to elect another pope, the election is null. And that is why the election of Robert of Geneva (who took the name Clement VII) was null and he was an antipope, because Urban VI was already the duly elected pope; and for the same reason Alexander V was an antipope. Of course the Western Schism shattered the confidence of many people, as have many scandals in the church’s his-

tory. But we have to distinguish between events that cause scandal and the cessation or destruction of living teaching authority. In every century of the church’s history there have been sins that caused scandal among many, but in no century of the church has the living teaching authority of the church been lost or destroyed. On Good Friday the confidence of many of Christ’s disciples was undoubtedly shattered. But it would be a non sequitur to conclude from this loss of confidence that Christ therefore erred on matters vital to salvation.

The doctrine of infallibility is precisely defined. This charism does not guarantee that those having magisterial authority will never act imprudently. It specifies that when exercising her full authority in defining a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole church, the church’s living teaching authority is divinely protected from error.

I do agree with you that the church’s living teaching authority receives its authority from the Word, but the Word is the Second Person of the Trinity, not the same thing as the Scripture. The Bible did not authorize the apostles or their successors. Christ authorized the apostles and through them authorizes their successors to continue to guard, interpret, and explicate the deposit of faith handed down to them.

Lastly, St. Paul’s point in Galatians 1:8–9 is that the gospel has already been laid down irrevocably. No one has the authority to take it up and lay down a new foundation. The church cannot replace the deposit of faith; it is irreformable because God cannot lie. But St. Paul’s statement is not a green light for schism-whenever-the-Magisterium-goes-againstmy-interpretation-of-Scripture.

That’s how it has wrongly been interpreted by some. St. Paul is not calling into question the trustworthiness of the church to guide the faithful into all truth and to remain the pillar and ground of truth until

Christ returns. He is not saying that we don’t need the church to know what is the deposit of faith, what is the canon of Scripture, and what is the gospel. He is not enjoining each individual to build (or do) church in his or her own interpretive image. Galatians 1:8–9 is not about the authority or infallibility of the church; it is about the established permanence of the deposit of faith within the New Covenant. Because that foundation is fixed forever, the church can never depart from it and can only build upon it.

The Reformers assumed that their own interpretation of Scripture was a better way of determining what is the gospel than what the Magisterium said at Trent.

So Reformers, on the basis of their own interpretation, judged the church to be apostate. But, from a Catholic point of view, the church preserved, explained, and deepened her understanding of the gospel at Trent, and the Reformers misinterpreted Scripture, and on the basis of their misinterpretation falsely judged the church to be apostate. Of course this looks like an impasse, and this is precisely why the schism has lasted almost five hundred years. But in order to sort this out, we have to determine how to distinguish the case where one’s own interpretation is right and the church is wrong, from the case where the church is right and one’s interpretation is wrong. It is not enough to look at the Scripture and judge the church to be wrong, because the person misinterpreting Scripture and falsely judging the church to be wrong does the very same thing. There, various heretics in church history all thought they were rightly interpreting Scripture.

And this means that there is a real burden of proof on the person standing on his own interpretation of Scripture and accusing the church of apostasy. He cannot just show that the church could be wrong; he has to show that the church is not possibly right. And in my opinion, no one has yet done that.

Michael Horton: We all have to answer that “according to whom” question.

Why the Church of Rome? Why not the East, Wittenberg, Geneva, or Canterbury? Or, for that matter, Tulsa or Salt Lake City? At some point, you came to believe that the Church of Rome has magisterial authority over the whole body of Christ, but why? Even if you now submit unquestioningly (fides implicita) to everything taught as necessary by the Church of Rome, you still had to make a decision about which side you thought was correct when you left Reformed Christianity.

It’s interesting biographically when you say, “I came to believe that the Westminster Confession has no authority, because the only basis for its ‘authority’ was my own agreement with its interpretation of Scripture. And agreement with oneself cannot be the basis for authority.” Sifting out the caricature, I see your point, but as an argument it seems quite dangerous to me. It seems to assume that the Bible is murky, confusing, perhaps even contradictory, requiring the clarity of an infallible teacher.

When it comes to Scripture, one has to interpret a lot, but when it comes to the Magisterium, no interpretation is necessary. I don’t believe one could find a single respected Roman Catholic theologian or cleric who would agree with you on that one, but it is certainly a radical surrender of one’s fate to ecclesial authority. Quite aside from the specifics of actual church history (which renders the assumption of a clear and self-consistent Magisterium implausible), I puzzle over what appears to be a radically postmodern (skeptical) view of the possibility of a faithful interpretation of Scripture coupled with a radically modern (absolutist) view of ecclesial interpretation.

Although there are passages I don’t understand, the Bible seems marvelously clear on the essentials of doctrine and life—so clear, in

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Although there are passages I don’t understand, the Bible seems marvelously clear on the essentials of doctrine and life—so clear, in fact, that Christians across all times and places can agree with its summary in the ecumenical creeds. fact, that Christians across all times and places can agree with its summary in the ecumenical creeds. In sharp contrast with Scripture is the massive library of deliverances from councils, counter-councils, counter-counter councils, popes, counter-popes, and so forth. Rome has to require implicit faith in everything that the church teaches.

How could one even be aware of everything that the church teaches? The scandal of opposing Protestant denominations and interpretations that weaken public confidence in the ability to arrive at truth is also apparent throughout the history of the church prior to the Reformation—and in Rome ever since.

My concern is that the position you defend is naive both in its confidence in magisterial infallibility and clarity as well as in its interpretation of church history. First, even the presence of the living apostles did not preserve the church from internal strife. The Epistles address a variety of errors and disciplinary issues in the churches, even questioning whether the church in Galatia was a true church. Yet it is the apostolic canon of the New Testament that is the infallible rule, not the apostles themselves. If so, then it is even more certain that the ordinary ministers who followed were subject to the authority of Scripture—even if one’s pastor happened to have been a disciple of one of the apostles.

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this Word through the instruction of pastors and teachers (held in check by elders). It’s not an infallible, fail-proof system. But then, neither is Rome. History simply stands against any claim that the Church of Rome has been as selfconsistent or clear as Scripture.

And I repeat my earlier point that the anathemas of the Council of Trent (reaffirmed ever since) actually set Rome in opposition to the clear, marvelous, and saving gospel that is taught in Scripture. So even if there were an infallible teaching office in the church today, Rome would fail that crucial test.

When you say concerning contradiction that “ecumenical councils cannot and have not done so,” I suppose a lot depends on what you include. Not only Protestants, but Eastern Orthodox bodies, would be unable to endorse Rome’s list. In fact, some Western councils anathematized the East, while others anathematized Protestants; and in one, as I mentioned, the medieval church anathematized itself. By definition, an ecumenical council cannot be subordinate to a single pastor.

(Indeed, “Roman Catholic” is an oxymoron, since the catholic church is the whole body of Christ in all times and places.)

All of the passages you offered speak of the necessity of submitting to our pastors and elders in the church. Yet not one passage in the New Testament supports the idea that the apostles handed off their apostolic office to their successors.

Peter and John emphasize that their apostolic authority derived from their being directly and immediately called by Jesus as eye-

witnesses and ambassadors of his ministry. At the beginning of Galatians, Paul also labors this point concerning his office. Yet the apostles speak of their ministerial successors as pastors and elders in each city (Acts 14:23; 1 Tim. 5:17– 22; Tit. 1:5; James 5:14; 1 Pet. 5:1; Rev. 4:4), having their authority conferred upon them by Christ indirectly and mediately, through the laying on of hands by the whole presbytery (presbyterion; 1 Tim. 4:14).

Even at the Council of Jerusalem, neither Peter by himself nor even the whole college of apostles decided the matter. On the contrary, the phrase is repeated throughout Acts 15 that “the apostles and elders” arrived at the synod’s dogmatic conclusions that were then binding on the whole church. Even with the living apostles, the decision was reached in communion. The official practice of the church was not determined by a single apostle, or even by the college of apostles, but by delegated representatives (apostles and elders). Furthermore, the decision was not delivered from a single church to the rest of the body or left to the judgment of each local church.

Rather, it was reached by these representatives from all the churches in assembly together.

If this was true in the apostolic church, it is surely to be the case in the post-apostolic era. The apostles laid that foundation by their extraordinary calling and ministry, while the ordinary ministers who follow them will build on that foundation (1 Cor. 3:9–17). The apostles gave us the deposit and now ministers like Timothy are told to “guard the good deposit entrusted to you” (2 Tim. 1:14), “and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also” (2 Tim. 2:1–2). In the face of heresy and schism, the ordinary ministers and elders are to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).

There is a magisterium—a proper teaching authority—in the church after the apostles, but it is representative rather than hierarchical, catholic rather than based on a single pastor or city, fallible rather than infallible, and ministerial rather than magisterial.

Even Pope Benedict XVI, as well as Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas, acknowledge that presbyterian government was the earliest form of polity (see John Zizioulas, Being as Communion [Crestwood, NJ: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997], 195: “On the one hand [the bishop] was understood as a ‘copresbyter,’ i.e. as one—presumably the first one—of the college of the presbyterium. This is clearly indicated by the use of the term presbyters for the bishop by Irenaeus [Haer. IV 26:2]. This should be taken as a survival of an old usage in the West, as it can be inferred from I Clement 44, 1 Peter 5:1, etc.” [195, fn. 85]. In Called to Communion [trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996)], Pope Benedict [then Cardinal Ratzinger] acknowledges that presbyter and episcopos are used interchangeably in the New Testament [122–23]).

You cite the early Father Clement of Rome: “In St. Clement of Rome, for example, before the end of the first century, we see him exercising authority when he says to the Corinthian usurpers, ‘You therefore, who laid the foundation of this sedition, submit yourselves to the presbyters, and receive correction so as to repent, bending the knees of your hearts. Learn to be subject, laying aside the proud and arrogant self-confidence of your tongue’ (c. 57)” (emphasis added).

In the New Testament Epistles, the terms elder (presbyteros) and bishop (episkopos) are used interchangeably for the same office. Eventually the bishop became the moderator of presbytery and then, by Irenaeus’s day, was a separate office.

Regardless of whether one affirms presbyterian or episcopal govern-

ment, however, none of these early Fathers argued that the bishop of Rome was the universal head of the church, much less endued with infallibility.

The argument of Irenaeus against the Gnostics makes sense.

The Gnostics were basing their heretical teachings on spurious writings, and they gathered their own circle of false apostles.

Irenaeus, a disciple of Polycarp who was a disciple of John the Apostle, could appeal to an obvious and publicly recognized circle of pastors in the line of the apostles who walked with Jesus. However, this historical argument became a dogmatic argument that went beyond the church’s constitution (Scripture). After Constantine, churches in both the East and the West began to imitate the hierarchical political system of the empire. Yet as late as 597, Pope Gregory the Great famously declared, “I say with confidence that whoever calls or desires to call himself ‘universal priest’ in selfexaltation of himself is a precursor of the Antichrist” (quoted in Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages [NY: Columbia University Press, 1979], 64). The bishops of the East certainly agreed with this statement, but Gregory’s successors were less inclined to such pastoral humility.

Of course, the Spirit could have preserved the Jewish elders and Sanhedrin from error, but he did not—which is why Jesus placed the authority of Scripture over the Magisterium in Matthew 15:6 and Paul did as well (1 Cor. 4:6; Gal. 1:8–9). The Spirit could have preserved the Christian elders and teaching office from error, but he has not—although he does lead his true church into all truth through pastors and elders who are instructed, examined, and held accountable to the Scriptures by the wider church in its representative assemblies.

The church was full of all sorts

of doctrinal errors during the time of the apostles. In spite of the clarity and power of God’s Word, the church is a mess and has always been so. Yet Christ’s pledged presence with his church in the power of his Word and Spirit remains in effect. Again, there seems to be a lot of unhistorical nostalgia for a church that never was and a certainty that is absolute and visible in this world that no longer requires interpretation and is no longer susceptible of differences and tragic divisions. But that has never been and will never be until our Savior returns to glorify his ecclesial body and we behold him face to face.

“Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly!”

Bryan Cross: Thank you very much for inviting me to participate and for being gracious. I feel we only scratched the surface. I hope we can pursue this in greater depth at some point in the future. May Christ make us instruments of his peace for the reunion of Protestants and Catholics.

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REVIEWS w h a t ’ s

b e i n g

r e a d

Searching for the Ties that Bind Evangelicals Together evangelicalism purports to be.

Unlike the wayward mainline denominations, evangelicalism is again Protestants apparently believe that change is a big part of being Christian. supposed to stand for the faith once delivered to the saints, in The Bible and the Holy Spirit will change the lives of believers, sometimes in rad- addition to standards of decency and morality in public life. But if ical proportions. In evangelicals are constantly changing, their conservative reptheir public presentautation looks less plausible. tion, evangelicals are The tension between change and conservation may be not shy about being the consequence of the narrative that Balmer tells. Four “change-agents.” transformations have been decisive for American evangeliChange is even an calism. The first occurred in teaching on salvation. During important feature, at the First Great Awakening (1740s)—when preachers and least on paper, of evantheologians such as George Whitefield and Jonathan gelical worship since Edwards dominated the scene—born-again Protestants held one of the chief reasons generally to the five points of Calvinism, especially the sovfor substituting praise ereign work of the Holy Spirit in conversion and the suffisongs for hymns is that ciency of Christ’s death on the cross for those regenerated by the older music was the Spirit. But this Calvinistic teaching ran aground in the repetitiously boring. next and Second Great Awakening, the one led by Charles Supposedly, contempoFinney (1820s and 1830s). Instead of encouraging wouldrary Christian music be Christians with the news that they could depend not on provides congregations themselves but on God for salvation, evangelists exhorted with songs that permit converts to take control of their own spiritual destiny variety but also change through obedience to God’s law. To be sure, Finney did not worshipers from staid deny divine sovereignty or the graciousness of salvation.

The Making of and cold believers into Neither did he care for a scheme that turned believers into Evangelicalism: From Revivalism to those filled by the ultipassive bystanders.

Politics and Beyond mate change agent, the The second change of direction in American evangelicalby Randall Balmer Holy Spirit. ism came later in the nineteenth century when born-again Baylor University Press, 2010 In Randall Balmer’s Protestants altered their expectations about the kingdom of 120 pages (hardback), $19.95 brief narrative of evanGod and its relationship to the return of Christ. Prior to the gelicalism in the United late nineteenth century, evangelicals were postmillennial in States, change is a prevalent feature. The Barnard College their understanding of salvation history. For Finney and his professor does not identify change as the topic that orders his cohorts, evangelism was not only a way to convert sinners material. Instead, in a helpful and readable introduction to but also a means for establishing a righteous society. As stanborn-again Protestantism in the United States, Balmer specdards of holiness became more pervasive in the United ifies four pivotal turning points. Since these episodes introStates and around the world, Christ would return after a duced significant changes among evangelicals, change could thousand-year period of righteousness. But evangelicals plausibly be the thematic glue that holds together these after the Civil War rejected postmillennialism and adopted dangling threads. A certain irony, by the way, follows from premillennial dispensationalism as both a better interpretathis interpretation since change is not exactly the first thing tion of the Bible and social developments. For these we associate with conservatism, the sort of Christianity that Protestants, human history was not progressing but deteri-

I

f you listen much to Christian radio (though I can’t say I recommend it), born-

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orating, as was the church. As dispensationalists saw it, this pattern was typical of biblical history where God’s people over and over broke faith with God only to receive his just punishment. Evangelicals between 1870 and 1950 came to believe that history was regressing, that the church was apostatizing, and that when God had seen enough he would send his Son to establish righteousness, thereby establishing his kingdom.

Premillennialism in turn ushered in the third transformation of evangelicalism, one where born-again Protestants rejected as worldly those efforts to transform society, withdrawing to a spiritual ghetto. This was the period when Bible colleges, foreign missions agencies, Christian radio, fundamentalist magazines, and independent congregations dominated evangelical Protestantism, when informal networks established by radio preachers, Bible conferences, or Christian publishers—instead of Protestant denominations— gave coherence to born-again believers.

The last transformation, the one in which born-again Protestants left behind their subculture to join the ranks of the Religious Right, is the one that Balmer struggles most to explain. He is clearly correct that leaders like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson adopted a significantly different posture to the world and their responsibility for it from fundamentalists. Balmer is also right, though he may show too much glee in mocking the claims of the Religious Right, that the interest in national politics had less to do with Roe v. Wade than many suppose. (Balmer’s favorite explanation is policy revisions that removed tax exempt status for religious institutions, such as Bob Jones University, that practiced segregation.) As useful as these points may be, the emergence of evangelicals as an electoral bloc was almost entirely unexpected both by insiders and outsiders. The one possible explanation is that the Arminian and postmillennial activism of the Finney era never left the evangelical soul, and that dispensationalism and cultural withdrawal were simply the best ways to persist for a time. But once changes in American society threatened the ability of parents and churches to pass on the faith to the next generation, evangelicals left the ghetto for the public square.

Although Balmer’s narrative is familiar and his organization is handy, the book suffers from an affliction that characterizes the study of evangelicalism. What is evangelicalism if it has no church or institution that defines membership? For close to fifty years, historians and theologians have debated the matter, and Balmer’s simple definition is no better or worse than most: the necessity of conversion, the reverence for Scripture, and the zeal for evangelism.

Since these attributes would apply to most Christians (including the Jesuits for much of their history), this definition is porous. But it does explain why Balmer can group together the Congregationalist Edwards with the Anglican Whitefield with the Presbyterian-turned-Congregationalist Finney with the Baptist Falwell. What may be unique about evangelicals is that they stress conversion, the Bible, and evangelism to the exclusion of church polity, worship, and

creeds. But few evangelicals would put it that way and instead would claim to be in continuity with the early church, the Reformation, and modern-day revivalism. The question remains, then: What is evangelicalism and is it anything more than a Platonic form in the eye of the beholding scholar?

This is not an esoteric question, because the changes that Balmer plausibly charts only make sense as pivotal if evangelicalism is indeed so vague. Granted, many groups of Christians, which we commonly link by noting their communion or church membership, have experienced important changes to their traditions. Presbyterians in the twenty-first century are not what they were when they came to North America or when the English Parliament called the Westminster Assembly. Some have become liberal, while others have simply followed contemporary fads and lost most ties to the past. But underneath the vicissitudes of denominational life lies a core of teachings and practices that give even liberal and conservative Presbyterians a remote resemblance, sort of like distant cousins who both display the jowls or hair texture of a great grandfather. But evangelicalism has no such core; whatever coherence it has comes more from scholars than from church officers, because the professors write dictionary articles while life on the ground in evangelical circles is in constant flux. In which case, Balmer can map major changes among evangelicals and assume somehow that evangelicals deep down are still the same. This is a remarkably useful perspective for preserving the idea that evangelicals are conservative, because it means that changes that would have constituted liberalism for other Protestants are just more of the same for evangelicals.

But such murkiness is not very helpful for those evangelicals who might need to hear warnings about inconsistencies rather than praise for relevance.

This is not to say that Balmer is without criticisms of evangelicalism. In the section on the Religious Right, he repeats arguments regarding right-wing faith-based politics that he made in Thy Kingdom Come: An Evangelical’s Lament: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America (Basic Books, 2006). But readers come away from this book with the sense that Balmer is a wounded lover of evangelicalism and would prefer a return to the faith-based politics of Finney and the postmillennialists who ironically wanted a Christian America as much as Jerry Falwell. How Balmer reconciles good evangelical politics with the bad is one more instance of the conceptual problem that haunts this book.

D. G. Hart is visiting professor of history at Hillsdale College.

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Jesus Manifesto: Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christ

By Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola Thomas Nelson, 2010 240 pages (hardcover), $14.99 “In this book, we are arguing that Christianity is Christ—nothing more, nothing less” (23). “If the church does not reorient and become Christological at its core, any steps taken [in the future] will be backwards” (xiv). So say Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola in their co-authored volume Jesus Manifesto: Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christ.

These quotes and the subtitle of this book alone are enough to pique the interest of any Christian who truly loves Christ and his church.

The fact that much of the church, especially the American church, has lost its focus on Jesus Christ is not a new insight to readers of Modern Reformation. In fact, MR’s editor-inchief wrote a book on that very subject in 2008 titled Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church. However close the goals of these two books are, the similarities between the two end at the subtitles. In Christless Christianity, Michael Horton focused on recovering in the church not only the person of Christ but also his work in accomplishing the redemption of God’s people, which is itself the gospel message. What is so startlingly absent from Jesus Manifesto is any real treatment of the work of Christ, which results in the authors improperly defining what the gospel itself is. In their identification of the problem and in part the recovery of the person of Christ, their lack of clarity on what Christ actually came to earth to do makes this promising volume deficient.

Before substantiating my claims above, I first need to offer a preliminary word of critique about the formatting of the book. For a book intended for Christian renewal, I found it most frustrating that all the Scripture citations were put in the endnotes instead of within the text itself. Having to stop your reading and go to the back of the book to find a Scripture reference makes it very cumbersome, not to mention the problem of gaining familiarity with Sweet and Viola’s interpretation of the Scriptures. The reader also needs to beware of a lack of citations for many claims and few if any references for many of the Greek and Hebrew word studies contained within the text and footnotes.

Given that this book attempts to reclaim the supremacy of Christ, it is remarkable that Christ’s reconciling work is not discussed until after some thirty pages. Even then, there is little about the vicarious penal substitution that propitiated 5 2 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

God’s wrath against sinners. The authors do rightly state that Christ, “the spotless one ‘became sin’ incarnate,” and I applaud them for stating that because of the cross we “stand holy, spotless, blameless, without reproach and accusation in the sight of a holy God” (29, 30). Beyond this, however, there is no discussion of how these transactions actually are applied (imputation), no citation of Scripture texts (i.e., 2 Cor. 5:21; Rom. 5:12–19, etc.), and no connection with Christ’s work as being the substance of the gospel. This leads to another serious flaw of this book: its confusion about what the gospel actually is.

According to Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, the gospel message is “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.” In contrast, Sweet and Viola define the gospel in various other ways: “The gospel is not the imitation of Christ; it is the implantation and impartation of Christ....We are called to manifest Jesus’ presence” (72); “The good news is as scary as it is good.

It is safe to be ‘like’ Jesus; it is scary to ‘be’ and ‘do’ Jesus” (74); “The glory of the gospel is that we who are fallen, tarnished, and marred have been invited to live our lives in the exact same way that Jesus lived his life: by an indwelling Lord” (127, emphases added). Finally, they state that “Jesus Christ is like a vast ocean. He is too immense to fully explore, and too rich to fathom. You are like a bottle. The wonder of the gospel is that the bottle is in the ocean, and the ocean is in the bottle” (34, emphasis original).

Out of the dozen or so times (by my count) the term “gospel” or “good news” is defined, explained, or used in the book, there is not a single instance where I could find it connected to the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Surely there is some truth to some of the quotes above, but only as a result of the work of Christ for us; and these results are not to be considered part of the gospel message that directs our sight completely outside of ourselves and solely to Christ and his finished work. Sweet and Viola fall into the common trap of confusing law and gospel.

There is not enough space for me to critique many other aspects of the book to which readers of MR would take exception, such as the understanding of the church, various trinitarian formulations (one suspects they are beginning to resurrect some ancient heresies), and even the treatment of union with Christ in which the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is noticeably absent. I want to comment briefly, however, on what I found to be one of the more problematic chapters.

Chapter 9, “A House of Figs,” fleshes out the assertion that “there is no gospel” that is not a “social gospel” (108). The chapter is essentially an allegory relating to the town of Bethany, “which depicts what the Lord is looking for in every city across this planet” (146). In the process, the authors take significant liberties in their interpretation of this small town as it appears in the Gospels—liberties that are in no way justified by the text. For example, they assert that Jesus found in Bethany “the beauty and music of the seashore” (146, footnote 19). This is a head-scratching claim given that Bethany is at least twelve miles as the crow flies

from the closest body of water, which happens to be the Dead Sea (which is only debatably a beautiful and musical seashore). One wonders if the authors were thinking of Capernaum, which is actually on the Sea of Galilee and is a place where Jesus lived (Matt. 4:13) in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy (Isa. 9:1–2; cf. Matt. 4:15–16) and spent a good part of his ministry—this despite the authors’ claim that Bethany was the “only place on the planet where Jesus Christ was received with welcome” (145).

In conclusion, as I was reading this book I began to wonder if I was too critical a reader and if my Reformed theological understanding of the person and work of Christ for individual salvation was overshadowing my reading of some of their fair and helpful points. Unfortunately, the authors plainly state in the final pages of the book that they “have never discussed” issues of “ecclesiology, eschatology, soteriology, economics, globalism, or politics” (172, emphases added). In this reviewer’s opinion, it is remarkable that in cowriting a 174-page book about Jesus Christ, the authors did not have the occasion to discuss the salvation he won for us. Given the title from which it begins, this is a very disappointing volume in the end.

Mark Vander Pol (M.Div., Westminster Seminary California) is a ministerial candidate in the United Reformed Churches in North America and webmaster for Modern Reformation and White Horse Inn.

Church Planting is For Wimps: How God Uses Messed-Up People to Plant Local Churches That Do Amazing Things

By Mike McKinley Crossway Books, 2010 128 pages (paperback), $10.99 Church Planting is For Wimps begins with a counterintuitive title and builds a contrarian case for church planting from there. It directly assails the conventional wisdom about who the ideal church planter might be, how to go about the task of planting a church, and how success should be measured. The book is one of a series by 9 Marks, sponsored by Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC. The packaging is lighthearted, with a title and cover reminiscent of the best-selling young adult series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Like the Wimpy Kid books, it is more self-deprecating memoir than heroic “how-to-do-

it.” The table of contents lists chapter headings designed to produce a knowing smile: “Church Planting—Slightly Preferable to Unemployment,” “How to Ruin Everything,” and “No Offense, but Everything You’re Doing Is Wrong.”

Considering the immensity of the task (the evangelization of a post-Christian culture that erroneously thinks it knows what it has rejected), the incidence of failure (some authorities place the failure rate for church plants at around 80 percent), and the sacrifices called for (most church planting is done on a shoestring), a little levity is a good thing.

But there is more than levity here. McKinley is making a point, and it is a good point to make—namely, that churches are planted by God’s strength, not ours.

While the package brings a kid’s book to mind, the contents resemble the popular television show Myth Busters. There is no shortage of nonsense circulating about what it takes to plant a church, most of it for sale by church growth consultants. I’m afraid my discipline of missiology is guilty of a great deal of harm here. Although it helped recover the connection between church planting and evangelism, it has also been guilty of promulgating a naive pragmatism. Pipe wrenches are for pipes, yet in a pinch you can use one to drive in a nail. But make a habit of it and you’ll bend a lot of nails. Worse, you may lose the ability to tell the difference between a pipe wrench and a hammer. Pragmatists ignore design and recognize only their own intentions. That’s why so many church planters reach into toolboxes full of tools designed for other professions. The results can be laughable if you just step back a little bit. Here’s McKinley on the one tool consultants tell us we absolutely must have if we hope to plant a church: the mission statement. “What if the New York Yankees wrote a mission statement? It would look like this: Our mission is to win the World Series every stinking year.” In other words, our mission is both obvious and given.

“Somehow the church survived for almost two thousand years before [Aubery] Malpurs and [George] Barna told us we had to have [mission statements]” (Kindle, 814; ch. 4).

I couldn’t agree more, though I didn’t get the impression that McKinley is some sort of methodological puritan. What I did sense is a desire to use biblical tools, tried and true tools, tools that have been with us for two thousand years and were handed to us by the Lord himself. McKinley wants us to make sure those tools are the primary ones we use.

Another malady the book addresses is “contextualization.” This concept, lifted directly from literature on crosscultural missions and given a marketing gloss, has done more damage to the health of local churches and to Christian witness than perhaps anything arising from Protestant Liberalism.

We all know the gist of it. We need to contextualize the gospel to the sundry cultures of contemporary society. Fine.

But what constitutes a culture? And is every subculture worth the effort? What’s a passing fad and what’s a genuine culture? Shouldn’t a culture persist through time? Failure to ask these sorts of questions has not only led to a great deal of silliness and triviality (biker churches, punk rock N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 0 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 5 3

churches, ad nauseam), it has also resulted in real damage— churches that are symptomatic of a culture in decline. When these cultural ephemera pass away, so will many of these churches.

McKinley does a nice job of calling us back to healthy intergenerational church life. While it is true that an urban center like Manhattan will be home to churches with unusually high numbers of single yuppies, we need to remember that most of those folks grew up in places like Iowa. Manhattan is an aberration, perhaps an unhealthy one. Yes, a witness to the gospel must be there, but perhaps one of the things such a witness should do is point out the obvious: Manhattan needs the world more than the world needs Manhattan. If this brings to mind the proper relationship between creation and redemption, good. That’s one of the things churches should teach the world.

Throughout Church Planting is For Wimps there is a stress on forms of worship and fellowship that bridge generations and ethnicities. Instead of healing a fragmented world, too many “missional” churches want to segment it further, keeping the church “relevant” by breathlessly chasing an ever more segmented and fickle market. McKinley calls us back to the “Blue Plate Special” of Word and Sacrament and does so proudly.

My only gripe with Church Planting is For Wimps—and it is a small one—is that church revitalization and church planting are conflated. As such, McKinley’s work may be better classified as radical church revitalization. While he recognizes the differences, I think this book could have been two books. Since I’ve been involved with both efforts at various times, I think there are enough differences to warrant separate treatments. But there are also enough similarities to keep this from being a fatal error. With that in mind, this book is highly recommended.

C. R. Wiley is the pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Manchester in Manchester, Connecticut. He writes young adult fiction under his pen name, Mortimus Clay. For nearly ten years he was involved with urban ministry and church planting in Boston, Massachusetts.

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POINT OF CONTACT: BOOKS YOUR NEIGHBORS ARE READING The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

By Michael Lewis W. W. Norton & Company, 2010 266 pages (hardcover), $27.95 No one saw it coming. In April 2005, former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan spoke glowingly of the burgeoning subprime mortgage industry.

At his Senate confirmation hearings a few months later, current Chairman Ben Bernanke similarly disavowed any danger of a housing bubble. Policymakers, financiers, and captains of industry have spoken in near-unanimous chorus: no one saw it coming.

Michael Lewis’s The Big Short is the story of some of those who not only anticipated the collapse but made a fortune betting on it. Clearer and more comprehensive accounts of the tumult have been written, but none delivers with such force its human particulars.

The central figure in Lewis’s character-dominated account is Steve Eisman. As an analyst at Oppenheimer, Eisman earned a reputation for being brash and excessively honest about the dim prospects of the companies he evaluated.

“Even on Wall Street, people think he’s rude and obnoxious and aggressive,” his wife tells Lewis. He left to run a hedge fund in 2001, and by spring 2005 his pessimism focused chiefly on the same subprime mortgage industry lauded by Greenspan. Lenders seemingly couldn’t issue mortgages quickly enough, often with little or no proof of the borrower’s capacity to make good on the payments. Eisman began looking for ways to bet against bonds backed by subprime mortgage debt. What he found was the now-infamous credit default swap (CDS).

The buyer of a CDS effectively owns insurance against the default of a bond. But why would anyone want to be on the other side of the bet, buying the risk associated with these bonds? It is one of the strengths of Lewis’s book that he embeds lucid explanations of arcane concepts in an engrossing narrative. He unpacks one more needed piece of terminology here: the collateralized debt obligation (CDO).

Picture many towers of credit default swaps backed by subprime mortgages. At the top of each tower are the highest-

rated bonds and at the bottom are the riskiest bonds. In a collateralized debt obligation, slices from the lower levels of each tower are packaged together into one financial instrument. Ratings agencies accepted the argument of Wall Street firms that because the slices were coming from different mortgages all over the country, they couldn’t possibly all default at the same time. And so, although each slice was risky, the new tower couldn’t be—or so said the ratings agencies (who are the targets of some of Lewis’s sharpest criticism), pronouncing the CDOs worthy of AAA ratings, safe enough for pension funds and insurance companies (AIG, for instance), who couldn’t get enough of them.

Lewis recounts that one night in (where else?) Las Vegas over dinner with a CDO manager, Eisman realized how these pieces fit together. “I love guys like you who short my market,” the manager tells Eisman. “Without you, I don’t have anything to buy.” Wall Street’s demand for subprimebacked CDOs couldn’t be met by the stock of actual mortgages, no matter how many of them were issued. But when Eisman bought credit default swaps on those mortgages, he wasn’t merely making side bets; he was actually providing a stream of income that replicated the bonds, effectively synthesizing new mortgages without the hassle of finding an actual house or borrower. Eisman’s pessimism about the subprime market was literally fueling its growth. (This is a good place to address the widely held notion that short-selling is inherently harmful. It is helpful to allow investors who believe that the price of an asset will fall to place bets to that effect; these help to prevent bubbles from developing. Short positions that generate more of the asset against which they are taken, of course, are another matter.) Freed from the fetters of being backed by actual homes, the market could grow without bounds, which is why its collapse was capable of such universally devastating effects. “There’s no limit to risk in the market,” Eisman explains. “A bank with a market capitalization of one billion dollars might have one trillion dollars’ worth of credit default swaps outstanding. No one knows how many there are! And no one knows where they are!” As the book ends, reality is setting in—Bear Stearns is no more and Lewis’s protagonists are wondering just what they’ve done.

Twenty years ago, Lewis was shocked when readers of his first book, an autobiographical account of the greed he encountered in his stint as a Wall Street analyst, treated it like a how-to manual for getting ahead in finance. The same dynamic is on display here: No one who could see how rotten the subprime market had become had any incentive to do anything but seek to profit from it. The book logically leads to an appeal for better regulation to keep greed in check, a conclusion of inescapable merit. Reformed Christians are, of course, familiar with the civil use of the law to restrain evil. But as Augustine put it, “[C]ertain laws are established which are called civil laws, not because they bring men to make a good use of their wealth, but because those who made a bad use of it become thereby less injurious.” Lewis’s elucidation of the human stories underlying the movements of vast and impersonal markets serves as a

corrective to the tendency to place inordinate degrees of hope in regulation. Regulation can do no more than restrain the human heart, just as markets can do no more than channel our greed toward generally beneficial ends. But neither offers any ultimate remedy for what is so vividly depicted, though never named, in Lewis’s book—namely, sin.

Lewis’s book puts a human face on the financial crisis that dominates the news of the day. Those readers will be best served who can recognize their own faces in its pages.

Neither Wall Street nor Washington, DC is the sole repository of human depravity, but it’s also the case that the institutions that dominate them do not exist independently of the people who fill them or of the need for regeneration in their hearts. To paraphrase G. K. Chesterton: What’s wrong with Wall Street? I am.

Nathan Barczi is an economist, and an elder at Christ the King Presbyterian Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he lives with his wife and son.

T

he Venetian hotel—Palazzo Ducale on the outside, Divine Comedy on the inside—was overrun by thousands of white men in business casual now earning their living, one way or another, off subprime mortgages. Like all of Las Vegas, the Venetian was a jangle of seemingly random effects designed to heighten and exploit irrationality: the days that felt like nights and the nights that felt like days, the penny slots and the cash machines that spat out $100 bills, the grand hotel rooms that cost so little and made you feel so big. The point of all of it was to alter your perception of your chances and your money, and all of it depressed Steve Eisman, the CEO of FrontPoint Partners, a hedge fund that detected the subprime mess before nearly everyone else. He didn’t even like to gamble. “I wouldn’t know how to calculate odds if my life depended on it,” he said. At the end of each day his colleague Vinny would head off to play low-stakes poker, his other colleague Danny would join Deutsche Bank trader Greg Lippmann and the other bond people at the craps tables, and Eisman would go to bed.

That craps was the game of choice of the bond trader was interesting, though. Craps offered the player the illusion of control—after all, he rolled the dice—and a surface complexity that masked its deeper idiocy. “For some reason, when these people are playing it they actually believe they have the power to make the dice work,” said Vinny.

—Excerpt from The Big Short

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FINAL THOUGHTS f r o m

t h e

d e s k

o f

t h e

e d i t o r - i n - c h i e f

Has God Really Said?

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n the garden, the serpent began by adding to God’s Word in an effort to make God come

culture or high culture, respectively. Little is said off as a cosmic legalist. “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the gar- that cannot be heard elsewhere. den?’” (Gen. 3:1). What kind of creator surrounds you with a lush garden laden with Protestantism has always been divided over whether fruit-bearing branches and then says, “Don’t eat any of it!” the church is bound by Scripture alone in matters of worEve properly responded, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees ship, church government, and the like. However, it may well in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of be that the regular reading, preaching, singing, and praying the tree that is in the midst of the garden,’” but then added of Scripture—not just proof-texting and phrases—has never a clause of her own: “‘or touch it, lest you die’” (vv. 2–3). Now been at a lower ebb in self-professing “Bible-believing” minSatan went for the direct assault against God’s authority: istry. Are our young people more likely to name the mem“You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of bers of the latest pop band than the twelve apostles? What’s it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowtheir favorite psalm or even hymn? How does their undering good and evil” (vv. 4–5). standing of God’s attributes or the doctrines of creation, the The sufficiency of God’s Word is threatened by addition Fall, Christ’s person and work, or the consummation of the kingdom shape their lives here and now? Is the whole minand subtraction. Adding to God’s Word, legalism raises doubtistry of the church focused on making “the word of Christ ful interpretations, rituals, and rules to the level of revealed dwell in [them] richly” (Col. 3:16)? truth. In fundamentalism, the fundamentals often become We don’t need more “conversation” between God and buried under a heap of teachings and expectations that culture, but more proclamation of God’s Word to his world. have dubious support in Scripture. On the other side, The church—and the individual believer—needs to hear God Scripture’s sufficiency is threatened by antinomianism: the again, and only then will it be able to say something to the temptation to turn away from God’s external Word altoworld that’s worth hearing. gether and to listen to our own inner voice. It should not be surprising that many of today’s most polemical critics of Scripture were reared in fundamentalist Protestant and Roman Catholic backgrounds, just as most of the Michael Horton is editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation.

Enlightenment philosophers were raised in German Pietism.

Where fundamentalism gets things going in this business of subordinating God’s Word to unauthorized human speech, liberalism finishes the job. It is naive to imagine that the Bible, written in pre-modern cultures, could provide e have learned from insight into human nature better than psychology, sociology, and other human sciences. Doctrines such as original sin are none others the plan oppressive, not empowering. Treating Christ’s death as a substitutionary atonement is a species of “divine child abuse.” of our salvation, than “You shall not surely die,” the false prophets continue to tell the people. There is no heaven above us or earth below us, from those through whom the gospel has no arraignment up ahead that will result in any consignment come down to us, which they did at one time of many human beings to eternal judgment. It’s all a smokescreen to keep us down. proclaim in public, and, at a later period, by the Only today, it is more difficult to distinguish the evangelicals from the liberals. In surveys, an evangelical may be will of God, handed down to us in the Scripmore likely to affirm orthodox formulas. However, surveys also reveal a growing ignorance in evangelical churches tures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith.” concerning the most basic teachings of Scripture. Both evangelicals and liberals reflect a sycophantic relationship to cultural authorities, offering a “Christian” version of popular —Irenaeus (2nd century–c. 202)

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