train-up-a-child-january-february-2001

LEARNING HEAVEN’S LANGUAGE | DOES SCRIPTURE ANSWER EVERY QUESTION?

MODERN REFORMATION

TRAIN UP A CHILD: Becoming People of the Word in a Culture of Images

VOLUME

10, NUMBER 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2001, $5.00

C J

A

N

U

O A

R

Y

/

F

E

N B

R

U

A

T R

Y

2

0

E 0

1

|

N V

O

L

U

M

T E

1

0

S N

U

M

B

E

R

1

TRAIN UP A CHILD: BECOMING PEOPLE OF THE WORD IN A CULTURE OF IMAGES

17 Learning to Hear Again in a World of Noise: Appreciating the Practical Benefits of the Lord’s Day Sabbath is to creation what cult (worship) is to culture (work): not intrinsically opposed, but separated after the fall, and awaiting final reunion in the new creation. Until then, the Sabbath is the in-breaking of the everlasting rest. by Michael Horton Plus: A Year of Signposts—Following the Church Calendar

25 Continually Learning the Meaning of our Baptism Christians, young and old, learn the language of their heavenly Father the way all children learn languages— beginning to use words we have heard before we fully understand their meaning. by Peter Bender Plus: Interview with Will Willilmon on Catechesis

32 How the Bombarding Images of TV Culture Undermine the Power of Words Contrary to popular belief, television changes us not chiefly by its content but by its form—making viewers less creative, less patient, less able to make subtle distinctions, and more interested in “things.”

by Douglas S. Groothuis Plus: Charles Hodge on Christian Nurture

40 Applying God’s Word to All of Life? The Use and Abuse of the Bible Liberals are the only ones who have problems understanding the nature of scriptural authority, right?

Not so fast. by Robert Letham

COVER PHOTO BY PHOTODISC

44 The New England Primer: Revisiting Colonial America’s Best-Seller A historical and literary look at the tool by which countless Americans from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries learned their cultural and theological grammar. by Rachel S.Stahle In This Issue page 2 | Letters page 3 | Open Exchange page 6 | Ex Auditu page 8 | Speaking of page 13 Between the Times page 14 | Resource Center page 28 | Free Space with Ellen T. Charry page 47 Reviews page 51 | On My Mind page 56 J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 1

I

N

|

T

H

I

S

|

I

S

S

U

E

MODERN REFORMATION Editor-in-Chief

Dr. Michael Horton

Catechesis

Executive Editor

Benjamin E. Sasse Assistant Editor

Ann Henderson Hart

“C

atechism”—the word itself suggests to many the elevation of a “man-

Production Editor

Irene H. DeLong Book Review Editor

made” book over God-breathed Scriptures. To counter this mistaken

Dr. Mark R. Talbot Column Editors

Lisa Davis Brian Lee

impression—and because this issue argues not merely that catechesis is

beneficial but actually that it is biblically mandated—it is helpful to begin by distinguishing between “catechesis” (an act) and “catechism” (a kind of book).

Before discussing particular confessional summaries of the Faith (e.g., Luther’s Small Catechism, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Westminster Shorter Catechism), let’s be persuaded that “catechesis” is an obligation of all local congregations and Christian households.

Catechesis is the process of orally instructing someone in the Faith. We typically associate it with children, but it is just as truly the process that adults undergo when we are repeatedly taught the biblical system and the meaning of our baptism.

That the Scriptures command those in authority (parents over children; church officers over laypeople) to inculcate the Faith cannot be seriously questioned: “Impress [the Ten Commandments] on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them…; bind them….Write them….[And] when your son asks you, ‘What is the meaning of…,’ tell him, ‘When we were slaves…the LORD brought us out….’” (Deut. 6:7-9, 20-21). “Elders,…be shepherds of God’s flock…” (1 Pet. 5:1-2).

“Fathers,…bring your children up in the training and instruction…” (Eph. 6:4). Luke even says that his purpose in writing his Gospel account is so that Theophilus can “know the certainty of the things you have been taught”—literally, “catechized” (Luke 1:3-4).

“Very well,” someone might respond. “As a Christian, I am to learn and transmit the substance of the Faith, but why must I learn it in a set form? Why can’t I simply open the Scriptures?”

Rather than answer Next Issue immediately, let’s first The Holy Spirit ask why anyone seeking and Division to understand redemp-

2 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

Copy Editor

tion would want to approach the Bible without the benefit of the communion of saints across time. By analogy, someone interested in understanding creation could certainly begin a trek into nature without a map and without the accumulated wisdom of generations of biologists, geologists, and ecologists. But why would he or she want to—given the possibility of getting lost, of mistaking a local trail for the main road?

In the same way, the prudent path to understanding Scripture is with the “maps” that are the orthodox creeds and catechisms.

These aids to reading are not substitutes for the biblical texts; rather, they are guides compiled by the community of faith, highlighting main themes and alerting us to common errors. These churchly statements are not infallible (and they don’t claim to be— which is why many of them explicitly state that Scripture itself is the only unnormed norm), but they are surely priceless summaries.

The benefits of the great Reformation catechisms do not end at their substance, however. For the established forms are not dangerous, but are in fact pedagogical assets.

Children who memorize the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Apostles’ Creed (around which all major Reformation catechisms were constructed) before they can even understand them are internalizing much of the “data” of Christian theology. They are having planted inside themselves the seeds of future questions, “Mommy, what does x mean? And why does the world I see seem to contradict x?”

And the parent, with Christians across time, will gratefully begin, “When we were slaves, the LORD….”

Alyson S. Platt Contributing Editor

Diana S. Frazier Layout and Design

Lori A. Cook Proofreader

Celeste McGhee Production Assistant

Kathryn Baldino Marketing Assistant

John J. McClure Alliance Council

The Rev. Alistair Begg The Rev. Mark E. Dever Dr. J. Ligon Duncan, III Dr. W. Robert Godfrey Dr. John D. Hannah Dr. Michael Horton Mrs. Rosemary Jensen The Rev. Ken Jones The Rev. John Nunes Dr. J. A. O. Preus Dr. Rod Rosenbladt Dr. R. C. Sproul Dr. Mark R. Talbot Dr. Gene E. Veith, Jr. The Rev. Paul F. M. Zahl Contributing Scholars

Dr. Allen C. Guelzo Dr. D. G. Hart Dr. Carl F. H. Henry Dr. Arthur A. Just Dr. Robert Kolb The Rev. Donald Matzat Dr. John W. Montgomery Mr. John Muether Dr. Richard A. Muller Mr. Kenneth A. Myers Dr. Tom J. Nettles Dr. Leonard R. Payton Dr. Lawrence R. Rast Dr. Kim Riddlebarger Mr. Rick Ritchie Dr. David P. Scaer Dr. Rachel S. Stahle Dr. David F. Wells Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

© 2001 All rights reserved. The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals exists to call the church, amidst our dying culture, to repent of its worldliness, to recover and confess the truth of God’s Word as did the Reformers, and to see that truth embodied in doctrine, worship and life.

For more information, call or write us at: 1716 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103 (215) 546-3696 ModRef@Alliance Net.org www.AllianceNet.org ISSN-1076-7169

SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION

Benjamin E. Sasse Executive Editor

US US Student Canada Europe Other

1 YR $22 1 YR $15 1 YR $25 1 YR $34 1 YR $35

2 YR $40 2 YR $45 2 YR $62 2 YR $65

L

E

T

T

I just read the September/October 2000 issue— and I was stunned! It seems you took a beating in the readers’ feedback on the May/June issue, “The Malling of Mission.” I re-read a couple of letters to make sure I had it all straight. I thought that perhaps we hadn’t read the same magazine.

If the printed reader response is any indication, you struck a nerve…. Let me be clear: This (doctrinally) conservative Southern Baptist pastor thought “The Malling of Mission” to be one of the best issues yet. The infection of pragmatism has been in the evangelical body for a long time. It appears that it now infects the bloodstream. Only truth can rout this infection. Stay the course.

Rev. Glenn R. Baker Forsyth (Illinois) Baptist Church

I enjoyed your issue on the “Malling of Mission.”

On reading the number of negative letters to the editor, I thought I should also respond. I imagine that those letters represent only a small portion of the people who read the issue. But I also believe those responses are largely to be expected from evangelicals in America. What you had to say about American approaches to Church Growth are exactly what many non-American church leaders are saying, namely that many of the “Church Growth Principles” are more specifically American than they are biblical. They reflect basic American values that are (wrongly) assumed by many Americans to be “supracultural” rather than cultural values. One of these is pragmatism. It is yet another example of ethnocentrism—assuming that one’s own values are not just cultural but are “biblical.”

E

R

S

I would also challenge the assumption, as evidenced in one of the letters, that it is the substance (content) and not the form that is important. In many communication events, the form becomes a large part of the content. How often are we told, “it’s not just what you say but how you say it that is important”? That “how” is most specifically the form of a message. A moment’s reflection will show this to be true in almost any situation. Much in communication studies today demonstrates that the method in which something is communicated (i.e., its form), helps to shape the overall meaning. I fell in love with rock-and-roll precisely because of its form. I see many seekers going to church “because of” the churches’ form, because of how Christianity is packaged and not because of its substance.

That this is seen as “success” is troubling.

Although the church in the U.S. is growing numerically, it is becoming no different in substance from the surrounding culture. For instance, abortion and divorce are just as high in evangelical circles as in the wider society. A recent Barna survey claims that the rate of divorce is higher among evangelicals in the U.S. than in the rest of American society. A more than cursory study of cultural and social change reveals why this is so. If distinctions are no longer drawn between “Christian” forms and the broader cultural forms, one is in danger of losing the essential nature of one or both. I leave you to guess which has been influenced most by the other: the church or the society.

Leon Beachy Thame, UK

Judging from your letters in the September/October issue, you should be encouraged that you are not preaching to the choir with MR, and that these crucial discussions are reaching the very people who need to hear them.

Your last question to the Willow Creek minister in that issue raised the general question of the church growth movement’s relationship to the

J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 3

L

E

T

T

church across time and space. Though the word “tradition” wasn’t explicitly used, it well could have been. Tradition is a very unpopular word with evangelicals, but the contempt for tradition can have very detrimental consequences. One of the key problems with the Willow Creek approach is its abandonment of the ancient, universal Christian tradition of celebrating the Divine Service (i.e., the “corporate worship service”) on Sunday. This tradition is surely apostolic, not “Western, Monastic, Scholastic, European and Roman.” Yet, Willow Creek is happy to subvert this tradition (because it didn’t work, “proved fruitless,” p. 45) by making the Sunday service a “seeker service” and having a “believers’ service” during the week (another interesting sort of segregation). Is this just a harmless, neutral adjustment in order to win unbelievers? I would argue that this disregard for the church’s tradition is, at best, a bait-and-switch scheme, and at worst, introduces the unbeliever to a works religion.

The problem lies in the fact that, though Willow Creek has no qualms about rethinking what Sunday church is supposed to be, the unbelievers they seek to win have a strong cultural memory: They know Sunday is the day Christians go to church and do whatever it is they do. When invited to church, they reasonably expect to find Christians doing what they do, but at Willow Creek, the unbelieving visitor finds that he is the main participant—that he is the focus of the service. Hence, it is a bait-and-switch. And what is the bait? Tradition! The unbeliever goes to church on Sunday because of the ancient tradition, but what he gets is something quite different. If the unbeliever doesn’t detect the bait and switch, or does and isn’t offended by it, he is introduced to a religion of law— topics drawn from the Sermon on the Mount and Proverbs with no prerequisite redemptive context.

This is what Mr. Donahue and Willow Creek don’t seem to appreciate: The practical issues discussed in Proverbs, the Sermon on the Mount, and James are addressed to the redeemed believing community, not to “seekers.”

Is there a place for a church to have a midweek gathering where the questions and doubts of visiting unbelievers are addressed? I see no problem with that. (Note that Paul’s address on Mars Hill was of this sort—not a regular “worship service” at an appointed time and place.) But to replace the celebration of the Divine Service on the traditionally appointed day with something different introduces confusion and ambiguity to the

4 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

E

R

S

“seeker,” who desperately needs to clearly hear and see Christ crucified.

Blane Conklin Chicago, IL

Do Theonomists Get a Fair Shake in MR? I have noticed that you allow representatives of dispensational ministries to answer for themselves in your Free Space interview column. You also do this for “seeker” ministries. Yet, you do not seem to extend this courtesy to postmillennial Christian Reconstructionists. Why not? It is not unusual to read frequent “just take our word for it, they’re wrong” types of statements and sentiments woven into otherwise outstanding articles. For instance, there was a strong suggestion in the September/October issue that Christians who do not embrace the moral pragmatism of American pluralism are somehow modern “Pharisees,” especially if they believe that objective moral principles form the only just form of human government. Yet, quite unlike all others, from charismatics to almost anyone else in the professing community of Christ’s people, you simply do not engage any of the spokesmen of this wing of the Christian Faith in the same dialog with which you will gladly open your pages to others. Am I wrong?

Paul Strange Waxahachie, Texas

I believe that Dr. Michael Horton sets up a false dichotomy between the earthly and the heavenly in his article “Defining the Two Kingdoms.” He argues that only the heavenly kingdom can claim to be Christian, and that “the earthly city is always Babylon.” However, this definition of the two kingdoms clearly contradicts Scripture. If “the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdom of our Lord and His Christ” (Rev. 11:15) we should not be viewing the earthly kingdoms as irreversibly Babylonian (or should Christ also be addressed as Nebuchadnezzar?).

The idea that the earthly kingdom is beyond the reach of Christian influence seems a little too reflective of the old Gnostic heresy. Matter (the earthly kingdom) is not inherently evil, and is, in fact, quite redeemable. It is still my belief that one day Christ will be pleased to bring about reformation in not only the heavenly kingdom, but

L

E

T

the earthly as well: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

David P. Henreckson Age 15

The definition for “postmillennial view” that you quoted in your September/October issue seems somewhat misleading. Any genuine Christian who holds this view is likely to believe that it is not merely “natural means” but rather “the Spirit-blessed Gospel” that will bring the whole creation Coram Deo! Katsunori Endo Kobe Theological Hall

Translations, Translations It is not surprising that the sons of the churches of the vernacular tongue would get their Latin wrong and say “In Memorium” instead of the correct usage “In Memoriam” (on the cover of the September/October issue of MR). But it is unforgivable that your proofreaders (probably Reformed!) let “Oberamagau” get by them with impunity in the letters section of the same issue.

I do realize that there is a Swiss bias to MR, but the Swiss, when they are good, can speak German.

Aaron D. Lewis Washington, D.C.

Really? Reformed People Who Follow Calvin on the Sacraments?

I am a simple layman and I have no formal theological training. Additionally, presenting my views in English is a challenge. Nonetheless, as far as I can see, Dr. Horton’s writings are Christocentric and Gospel-oriented—and the same can be said about many other Reformed contributors to MR. I wish that all Reformed pastors and theologians shared these views. Dr. Horton’s high view of the Lord’s Supper and Baptism may certainly be found inside the Reformed tradition, but I am afraid it is a minority position today. All of the so-called Reformed folk I know are unreserved Zwinglians as far as the sacraments are concerned. Not only do they typically belittle the sacraments, they also claim scriptural reasons for practicing their antiRomish legalistic liturgy (no Creed during the service, no written prayers, etc.). At least this is what we see in my country.

T

E

R

S

My impression is that many of them can hardly see any Gospel whatsoever when the Word is wrapped in water, bread, and wine. I am certain that this is not Calvin’s position, but poor Calvin died so many years ago and his writings and heritage were somewhat reinterpreted by many Puritans. Consequently, many of his evangelical children have departed from Calvin’s scriptural positions, and have fallen prey to either radical versions of Puritanism or modern varieties of fundamentalism. (I do not even mention theology inspired by rationalism because it is not Christian.)

In both cases we deal with a sort of “enthusiasm” which, in some aspects, stands miles away from what Calvin believed and taught.

Surely Pierre Marcel’s Baptism: Sacrament of the Covenant of Grace represents a genuine Reformed explanation of Baptism, but do you sincerely believe that many American Presbyterian pastors would share Dr. Marcel’s views?… Similarly, I know quite a few so-called Reformed churches and denominations where the Baptist and paedo-baptist views of Baptism coexist, but where an episcopal view of church polity would surely not be tolerated in their midst. This indicates how “highly” most Reformed people today regard the sacraments.

(Fortunately, the enthusiasts have not been able to do as much damage to Lutheranism.) …Thank you for a publication where there can be fruitful dialogue with Lutherans, and where the “Reformed” people are actually confessional, rather than closet American-style fundamentalists….

J. S. Ruiz Toledo, Spain

Join the Conversation!

Modern Reformation Letters to the Editor 1716 Spruce Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 215.735.5133 fax ModRef@AllianceNet.org Letters under 200 words are more likely to be printed than longer letters.

J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 5

O

P

E A

|

N F

O

R

U

M

E F

O

X R

R

C E

A

D

E

H R

R

A E

S

P

N O

N

S

G

E

E

by Robert E. Lynn

Reformation Churches Vying for Shelf Space?

C

ritics of the modern church growth movement rightly note that we must challenge the exaltation of “choice” as an idol of our age. But what about the way church practice and church planting in Reformation circles often embody that exaltation of choice? It seems to me that we are as guilty of “niche marketing” to religious consumers

Interested in contributing to Open Exchange?

Send your name, address, and essay topic to: Open Exchange c/o Modern Reformation Magazine 1716 Spruce Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 or contact us by e-mail at OpenExchange @AllianceNet.org

as any megachurch. We’re just not as sophisticated.

I’ll speak here from the perspective of a Presbyterian, since that’s what I know most intimately.

Some Presbyterian denominations wouldn’t think twice about planting a church across the street from a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church because there is “no Reformed witness in that community.” If that’s not niche marketing, then I don’t know what is. It’s like different brands of cornflakes vying for shelf space in the grocery store. “Well, yes, those Post cornflakes are indeed cornflakes, but they’re not Kellogg’s cornflakes.”

On what grounds do the Presbyterian Church in America and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, with identical confessional standards and government, continue to exist separately other than brand loyalty?

Maximizing consumer choice seems to be afoot here. “I like a little more doctrinal starch in my shirts, thanks,” or “I prefer a bit more evangelistic fizz in my cola.”

With the loss of the parish system, the single town steeple, and state church funding, the churches of America have had to compete for “market share,” with the pastor cast as chief marketer. This is a way of ministry we have been refining for over two hundred years. Why else do our worship services climax with a presentation from the chief marketer, rather than the representation of Christ in the Lord’s Supper? Just like televangelists, we’ve substituted the preacher for Christ. Being invisible, God isn’t amenable to media and the methods we prefer.

Notice, as well, the decline in our worship of the reading of Scripture. You might go months without hearing Jesus’ words from the Gospels, but not a

6 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

single week goes by without a thirty-minute (or longer) word from the preacher. Indeed, not to hear from the preacher is deemed, at least in Presbyterian circles, a violation of Scripture. Apparently, it is far worse not to hear from the pastor than from Jesus.

This extends to church planting, as well. I was talking with a Mexican church leader the other day. He said (with tongue in cheek, a little cynicism, and some anger) that he was shocked the first time he visited a church outside Mexico. This church had stolen his church’s hymns, building style, even their 11 a.m. hour for worship. Church planting is often little more than the franchising of our particular way of doing church (shades of McDonald’s, which is the same everywhere around the world). We train emerging Church leaders to think like us, act like us, do church like us, assume our questions are the most important questions, and that our answers are the only answers.

As Luther reminded us in his first thesis, the entire life of believers is to be one of repentance.

Reform and renewal do not come in the Church when we thank God that we are not like those other churches. It comes when we are more broken over the plank in our own Reformational eye than the speck in the eye of others.

Robert E. Lynn is director of the Turkic World Presbyterian Association in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which facilitates church planting and leadership development among the Turkic peoples. He is also a teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church in America.

ESSAY CONTEST 2001 FIRST PRIZE: $1000 · RUNNER-UP: $500 THREE HONORABLE MENTIONS (BY EDUCATION LEVEL)

MODERN REFORMATION PRIZE IN THEOLOGY & CULTURE Reaching the Lost Without Losing the Reached Christians are called to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. But some today would argue that the evangelical movement is captive to American culture. To what extent have concessions been made for the sake of evangelism that have actually compromised the evangel? Can we get beyond the impasse of either compromised outreach or smug passivity?

MODERN REFORMATION Magazine invites essays from students of up to 2,000 words to address this topic constructively.

Submissions are expected from a variety of disciplines (theology, sociology, history, philosophy and the arts, cultural studies, anthropology, etc.).

Since 1991, MODERN REFORMATION (MR) has worked to create a community of discourse for a different kind of Evangelicalism.

Having seen modernism deny both the authority of Scripture and the supernatural character of the Gospel, and having grown tired of the world-denial of fundamentalism, Carl Henry and the "neo-evangelicals" understandably wanted to unite around all that they had in common. Where there had been minority groups opposed to liberalism in each mainline denomination, fundamentalism and later Evangelicalism sought to bring these refugees together.

This attempt was both understandable and noble. But, as we see it, it suffered from at least two major problems. One of these was inherent in the vision; the other developed over time. First, the nature of "minimalism" (focusing almost exclusively on that which we share) can lead people to believe that matters about which we differ (the Sacraments for instance) actually don't matter at all. Over time, this tends to undermine people's identification with particular church bodies.

The second problem relates to the first, but shouldn't be totally imputed to its founders. Refugees from liberalism knew what they had in common and why they were coming together, so they didn't see the need to define and confess the entire substance of the faith. They focused instead on defending the Bible and the supernatural generally.

It simply didn't occur to this first generation of neo-evangelicals that the very reason the Bible and the supernatural needed to be defended—that is, for the sake of the Gospel—might be forgotten over time.

But by not directly subscribing to historic confessions of faith, by not connecting sufficiently to the older traditions of the Church, the substance that these brave pioneers affirmed implicitly was not passed on to their children and grandchildren.

Sociological conceptions of an evangelical (a conversion experience, belief in personal prayer, affirmation of moral absolutes, particular political policy positions, etc.) began to replace the common theological substance that had defined an evangelical. In other words, minimalism was troubling enough, but undefined minimalism led to a devolution of even the limited theology that was originally held in common by the first generation neo-evangelicals. In our day, it is not at all clear what an evangelical affirms about the work of Christ in the salvation of sinners. So what is the point of being an "evangelical" at all?

In dissent from many of today's evangelical leaders, we believe that the label "evangelical" should communicate a certain set of precise the-

ological convictions. Being an evangelical shouldn't be a sociological category—communicating things about political beliefs or musical preferences. Instead, "evangelical" should be thought of as a "genus" category, with the "species" being particular denominational traditions that are faithful to historic Protestantism.

For the complete and continuing text, please go to our web site listed below.

ELIGIBILITY: This year's contest is open to undergraduates, seminarians, and graduate students who are enrolled at colleges, universities, or divinity schools during the fall 2000 semester.

FORMAT: Essay Style and Length: In 2,000 words or less, students are to engage the practical theological challenge of our time and place, as outlined above. Essays should be word processed, double-spaced, stapled, and with the final word count noted at the end. All entries must be the original, unpublished work of the student and only one essay per student per year may be submitted. Send hard copy and disc.

DEADLINE: Entries must be received on or before February 1, 2001, at: Essay Contest 2001, Modern Reformation Magazine, P. O. Box 2000, Philadelphia, PA 19103-8440. No faxed or emailed submissions will be accepted. We are unable to notify contestants of receipt of their entries, or to return the manuscripts.

JUDGING: A distinguished committee of theologians representing the various Reformational confessional traditions reviews the essays and chooses all winners. All decisions are final. Winners will be notified in April 2001. Essays may not be submitted elsewhere until the awards have been announced.

RIGHTS OF PUBLICATION: The winning essays will appear in MODERN REFORMATION. These essays may not be published elsewhere without the written permission of MODERN REFORMATION. An entry form and guidelines are available on-line at: www.AllianceNet.org or send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to MODERN REFORMATION Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals 1716 Spruce Street · Philadelphia PA 19103 215-546-3696

J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 7

E E

|

X X

A

M

P

L

E

S

A O

F

C

U H

R

I

S

T

D -

C

E

N

I T

E

R

E

T D

S

E

R

U M

O

N

S

Behind the Curtain: The Gospel of the Holy of Holies

W

hen we think of the Gospel of God’s coming to man in redemptive mercy,

Abraham and brought his son out! Israel had grumbled then our hearts and minds tend to go straight to the New Testament and sinned against God as they journeyed to the Sinai, revelation of Christ. Yet, also the Old Testament testifies of this message but God had pulled them on to himself with bands of love. of salvation in powerful ways. One area is At the foot of Mount Sinai the institution of the tabernacle and temple, Israel formally agreed to the From shadows of better things to come (Gal. 3:24; covenant demands of God. CORNELIS Col. 2:17; Heb. 10:1).

Twice they had promised to VAN DAM In this article, let’s consider especially the do all that the Lord had said Holy of Holies in God’s revelation of (Exod. 24:3, 7). On this himself. Reflecting on this topic may lead to covenantal basis God could a deepened appreciation and understanding go ahead with the tabernacle Professor of the salvation we may have in Jesus Christ. plans to come and live with Theological College of them. the Canadian God’s Desire to Be with Israel Reformed Churches But, at the very time that God was informing Moses The perfect communion God enjoyed with his how he planned to live in the son and daughter, Adam and Eve (cf. Gen. 5:1–3; Luke 3:38), was destroyed by sin. But God midst of Israel (Exod. 25:9; cf. Exod. 25–30), God’s immediately began his work of restoration by people below the mountain had their own ideas of putting hostility between Satan and our first how they wanted God to be with them. They parents and by giving his sure promise of salvation made a golden calf and said, “This is your God O Israel who brought you up out of Egypt” (Exod.

(Gen. 3:15).

Now it was ultimately because of this ongoing 32:4–8). God with us—as Israel wanted it! God desire to restore the fellowship once experienced responded in anger, but he did not abandon his in Paradise that God also wanted to be with his people (Exod. 33). people Israel. He wanted to live in their very midst One could sum up the chain of events this way.

(Exod. 25:8; 29:44–46). Therefore, he called his In spite of all the sin of Israel—the idolatry in son Israel out of Egypt (Exod. 4:22–23; Hos. 11:1) Egypt and the sinful grumbling during the and renewed the covenant with his people at the wilderness trek to the Sinai—God persisted in his Sinai. How the people trembled when they heard grace to achieve his saving purpose with them. He the very voice of God thunder the Ten who dwells on high came down to his people, but Commandments to them! They were in awe of his own people received him not! Although he God! And they needed to be! Of mere grace alone, came in holy glory and covenant truth at the Sinai, God had delivered them out of Egypt where they his people had no true regard for his glory. Indeed had served other gods (cf. Josh. 24:14; Ezek. 20:7). they pictured his glory and presence as a golden But God had remembered his covenant with calf. They wanted God with them, but on their

8 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

own terms. God came to his people, but actually, there was no room for him in the camp of Israel.

Israel had their own ideas of what they wanted and the presence of sin made the saving presence of holy God extremely difficult.

Yet, in spite of all this rebellion and sin, God in grace nevertheless persisted with his tabernacle plans. There may not have been any place for God on sinful earth, not even among his own people, but God was not stopped by that! He would make a place for himself!—a place where he could dwell in glory and holiness in the midst of Israel. That place was the Holy of Holies!

The Plan of the Tabernacle When you look at the illustration accompanying this article, you will see that the floor plan of the tabernacle was very simple.

Around the tabernacle itself was a fence. Within the fence and before the entrance of the tabernacle was the great bronze altar for the whole burnt offerings, as well as the laver. If a priest walked toward the tabernacle from the east, he would enter the tabernacle compound and so pass the great altar and the laver and come to the entrance of the tabernacle itself. On entering it, he would go into the Holy Place. On his right would be the table of bread of the presence and on his left the golden lamp stand. At the end of the Holy Place and immediately in front of the curtain was the golden altar of incense. Behind the curtain which formed the end of the Holy Place, was the Most Holy Place (or Holy of Holies). Here, in the innermost part of the tabernacle, God himself lived in the midst of Israel! Here was the ark of the covenant with the mercy seat (KJV) or atonement cover (NIV).

A Well-Guarded Place The walls of the tabernacle were made of curtains, and there was a curtain which separated the Holy from the Most Holy Place. A notable feature of all these curtains was the cherubim that were embroidered on them (Exod. 26:1, 31; 36:8, 35–38). Cherubim filled the tabernacle. Here was God’s dwelling place. The cherubim on the curtain giving entrance to the Most Holy Place stood guard as if it were before the very throne of God. Were not the cherubim the ones who had guarded the way to the tree of life in Paradise, lest Adam and Eve reenter (Gen. 3:24)? Here embroidered on the curtain, they stood guard before the small piece of ground that God had claimed as his very own as he sought fellowship with his people, fellowship as once enjoyed in paradise.

This paradise motif may very well be in view and

emphasized in Solomon’s temple where extensive use was not only made of cherubim but also of palm tree, pomegranate and floral motifs (1 Kings 6:18, 29, 35). One needs to remember that God also designed Solomon’s temple (1 Chron. 28:12, 19), a design that would have been consistent with his wishes regarding the tabernacle.

The cherubim embroidered in the tabernacle were a reminder of God’s holiness. But, how can the Holy One really live in the midst of his sinful people? This is an important question, and the Lord our God provided the answer by, as it were, insulating his people from the full glory of his majesty and holiness. He enclosed and surrounded, as it were, his dwelling place with the service of reconciliation through the mediation of the priests and the Levites. God would live in the midst of his people, but only if the tribe of Levi camped next to and around the tabernacle and so formed a buffer as it were between God and Israel “so that wrath will not fall on the Israelite community” (Num. 1:53) but God’s blessing (cf. Deut. 10:8). Closest to the entrance the Lord placed the camp of the priests.

Anyone else who approached the sanctuary was to be put to death (Num. 1:51; 3:38). God is holy and a devouring fire in the presence of sin (e.g., Lev. 10:1–3).

The Way to God The only way to God is the way of blood. Blood had to be shed (cf. Lev. 17:11). God instituted the priesthood whose responsibility was to offer sacrifices (e.g., Deut. 33:10). Only the shedding of blood made reconciliation and God’s dwelling with men possible. So important was the sacrificial blood for the atonement of sins that only for this purpose was entrance to the very presence of God inside the Most Holy Place permitted. On just one day in the year, the Day of Atonement, could the high priest, as representative of the people, go past the cherubim into God’s very presence. But he had to be accompanied with the prayers for peace and reconciliation—prayers that were symbolized with the cloud of incense that filled the Most Holy Place (Lev. 16:12–16; cf. Ps. 141:2).

Once inside the Holy of Holies, the high priest had to sprinkle sacrificial blood in front of and on the golden lid of the ark. This cover was called “the mercy seat” (KJV) or “the atonement cover” (NIV). On one part of this cover were two cherubim facing each other and looking downward, with their wings spread upward overshadowing the cover. There, above the cover the Lord would meet Israel through their representative (Exod. 25:20–22). Here the blood of atonement was to be brought close to God (Lev.

J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 9

16:14–15; Heb. 9:23) who was enthroned between the cherubim (Exod. 25:22 Ps 80:1). In a sense the atonement cover was the heart of the tabernacle and temple. Scripture once even spoke of the temple as the house of the atonement cover (1 Chron. 28:11).

Here before the Lord reconciliation was to be made by the atoning blood. What a miracle—God with man—especially considering that no actual restitution had as yet been made. After all, the blood of animals cannot atone for the sins of humans (Heb. 10:4). But God in his mercy passed over sins, in anticipation of the Christ who was coming (Rom. 3:25). In this connection it is important to remember that inside the ark with its atonement cover was the Testimony (Exod. 25:16).

This testimony was the two tables of stone containing the Ten Words of the Covenant (Exod.

31:18). It is the law that made the ark, the “ark of the covenant” (Num. 10:33) or “of the Testimony” (Exod. 25:22). The presence of the law in the ark also emphasized that the relationship God had with his people was a legal and binding one as revealed in the covenant: “I am the Lord your

G

people. God with Israel, a miracle of his grace.

After all, God, the sovereign one, came of grace alone in his electing love (Deut. 7:7–9). He would guide them on to the promised land (Exod.

40:36–38) where he would continue to inhabit the tabernacle. When Solomon dedicated the temple, God again came in view of all the people in a visible form, in the cloud of presence, to inhabit the temple (1 Kings 8:10–11). What an awesome reality. As Solomon put it: “But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27).

This greatness of God reminds us that his saving presence could not be taken for granted. God is holy. When the people did not honor his covenant and holiness then God became a consuming fire (e.g., Num. 11:1–3). This holy God is also sovereign. He could even allow his ark to be taken in battle when Israel sinned grievously, but as sovereign Lord he made sure it came back to Israel (1 Sam. 4–6). In Jeremiah’s days, God, as sovereign Lord, also punished haughty Israel, who thought they had a monopoly on God’s presence, by promising to leave (Jer. 7; 26:4–6). And he did leave. od went forth on the day of Pentecost to claim as his temple and dwelling place the con- This departure is described in a vision of Ezekiel as the gregation of Jesus Christ. This was his New Creation. glory of the Lord going up from the city and moving eastwards (Ezek.

9:3; God.” The atonement cover also reminds us that 10:18–19; 11:23). But, in a subsequent vision, the the forgiveness granted was a real one, be it in Lord’s glory mercifully returns from the east and anticipation of Christ’s redemptive work. It was occupies the new temple (Ezek. 43:1–5). mercy consistent with God’s justice and It is noteworthy that there is no record of the righteousness. In the promised redemption, his glory of the Lord coming to occupy the temple that throne of justice is also the atonement cover. was built after the return from exile. But, in a Now, if forgiveness was real and sin could be promise alluding to the coming Messiah, God atoned for, then God the Holy One could come to declared that the glory of this post-exilic temple dwell with his redeemed people. And so after the would be greater than that of Solomon’s temple priesthood and the tabernacle and its contents had (Hag. 2:9). Indeed, for this temple would see the been consecrated at the Sinai, God himself came! glory of God revealed in Jesus Christ who would bring the promised peace (Hag. 2:9; cf. Matt. 12:6).

God’s Coming to His People We read in Exodus 40:34 that “the cloud God With Us covered the Tent of Meeting and the glory of the In the fullness of time, God came down in Jesus Lord filled the tabernacle!” It is difficult to grasp Christ. Again there was really no place for him, but the full significance of this awesome event. The God made room for himself in a manger in Almighty God came down in person. He was Bethlehem. He came to his own, but his own fulfilling his promise to be with his people. In the people received him not (John 1:11). “The Word cloud of presence (in which fire was visible at became flesh and tabernacled among us. We have night) God came in a form that Israel could seen his glory” (John 1:14). Immanuel, God in perceive. Here was God in the tabernacle. Here human form with his people! Why? To fulfill the now was a piece of truly holy ground, guarded covenant testimony, the law so that God’s desire to symbolically by cherubim, a piece of paradise that be with his people, a desire as old as paradise, could spoke of the fellowship between God and his rest on a true juridical foundation.

1 0 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 1 1

Our Savior came to do what no other high priest could do. He would go through the heavenly Holy of Holies to present his own blood which the sacrifices had pointed to. He did what no quantity of animal blood could do. He secured the redemption of his people and made it possible for God to live with his people on the basis of the full atonement having been made for all their sins (Heb. 7:27; 9:11–10:25). With his death, the temple curtain ripped from the top to the bottom (Matt. 27:31). It was no longer necessary.

The full payment of the sins of his people had been made. Now the very presence of God no longer needed to be confined to that small piece of new creation in the Holy of Holies. God went forth on the day of Pentecost to claim as his temple and dwelling place the congregation of Jesus Christ. This was his New Creation. On the Day of Pentecost, there were again powerful signs of God’s presence—the sound of a mighty wind and what appeared to be tongues of fire (Acts 2:2–3). Again there really was no room, but God who is sovereign and gracious created room for himself by inclining and turning hearts in true repentance to him (Acts 2:41, 47). God’s coming at Pentecost in the Spirit means that the congregation has now replaced the temple as God’s dwelling place and temple (1 Cor. 3:16–17; 6:19; Eph. 2:22). In God’s people is now the new creation, holy ground— God with us, Immanuel (cf. 2 Cor. 5:17).

Yes, being Church is occupying holy ground and being claimed completely for God himself by his Spirit. The Church is a piece of new creation which shows the glory of God (2 Cor. 3:18). This fact also speaks of better things to come. For, God is Lord of all creation, and his glory is not to be confined to just where his people happen to be.

The whole earth must be filled with his glorious presence (cf. Ps. 72:19). Indeed, the whole earth must be as the tabernacle and as the Holy of Holies and all the nations must be able to worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness (cf. Ps. 96).

This is precisely the reality of the new world that is coming. When the apostle John saw the new heaven and earth, he heard a loud voice from the heavenly throne announce the absolute fulfillment of the tabernacle presence of God. The voice said: “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God…. Behold, I make everything new.”

(Rev. 21:3, 5) Remarkably, the measurements of the city of God are proportionally identical to the Old Testament Holy of Holies—its length, width, and height are the same (Rev. 21:16). Then all the earth will be full of the glory of the Lord and the

1 2 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

new creation will be a fulfilled reality. And, therefore, no more tears, death, mourning, or pain.

No more struggle against sin. The leaves of the tree of life in the paradise of God will be for the healing of the nations (Rev. 21:3–5; 22:1–2).

God with us! We have more than God’s covenant people of old. But we too have but a beginning of what awaits us. What has been foreshadowed in the Old Testament Holy of Holies will find its complete fulfillment when renewed creation comes in perfection. It will be like the Holy of Holies. The presence of the glory of God will then make the sun superfluous (Rev. 21:23–24).

And “we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2; cf. Rev. 11:19)! That’s the gospel of the Holy of Holies as foreshadowed already in the Old Testament.

Cornelis Van Dam (Th.D., Theologische Universiteit, Kampen, The Netherlands) is Professor of Old Testament at the Theological College of the Canadian Reformed Churches in Hamilton, Ontario. His writings include The Urim and Thummim: A Means of Revelation in Ancient Israel (Eisenbrauns, 1997).

MODERN REFORMATION Magazine seeks qualified applicants for senior editorial positions. Qualified applicants will have literary and/or editing experience, strong administrative skills, and serious study in at least one confessional Protestant tradition.

Send resume and salary requirements,

by January 9, 2001, to: MR SEARCH COMMITTEE, Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, P.O. Box 2000, Philadelphia, PA 19103

Speaking of...

T

he electronic media are “probably

the strongest nonfamilial forces on child socialization that have ever existed.”

Thomas Cochran, Business in American Life: A History, 296.

O

ur core audience is the television babies who grew up on TV and rock and roll…. The strongest appeal you can make … is emotional. If you can get their emotions going, forget their logic, you’ve got ’em….We make you feel a certain way as opposed to you walking away with any particular knowledge. … It’s the style, not the substance…. At MTV, we don’t shoot for the fourteen-year-olds, we own them.

MTV Chairman Bob Pittman, quoted in Quentin Schultze, Dancing in the Dark, 192.

C

hristians spend thousands of hours a year interacting with complex systems that, in ways not fully understood, impact our desires, temperament, dispositions, and sense of normality. Far from being distinctive in themselves, Christians see their once-distinctive stories and symbols deployed against them in efforts to make them buy, desire, and dream like everyone else. Liberal reform notions to the contrary, the main “problem” with global culture industries is not “bad” content and will not be addressed by “better” content. The church does not gain if the 20 to 30 hours of TV viewing each week changes from cops and sleaze to socially uplifting messages—it wouldn’t gain from 20 to 30 hours of TV viewing of religious programming, for that matter. With so many hours of human existence in the thrall of commercial culture industries, with human attention surrounded by barkers and enticers and noisemakers, the quiet but singleminded call of the Gospel cannot be heard.

Winning back members of the Body of Christ will not be done by imitating the techniques of the culture industries. Those who can be ransomed will be drawn to a radically reformed and revitalized vision of the Church and its role in Jesus’ mission—or they will not be ransomed at all.

Michael Budde, The (Magic) Kingdom of God: Christianity and Global Culture Industries, 95–96.

T

he goal of good liturgy is always to transform the lives of people … by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is hardly accomplished if the liturgy is subjected to the whimsies of culture. Culture, untransformed by liturgy, in effect destroys that liturgy. The Church becomes indistinguishable from the culture and the Gospel is lost. This is the real secularization and destruction of the Gospel.

Arthur A. Just, “Liturgical Renewal in the Parish,” in Fred L. Precht, ed., Lutheran Worship, 22.

J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 1 3

B

God and Rorty at Yale n October 5, 2000 philosopherturned-literary critic Richard Rorty addressed the Yale community on “From Religion Through Philosophy to Literature: The Way the Western Intellectuals Went.” Responding repeatedly to the charge that his version of postmodernism is brashly relativistic and indifferent to “truth,” the Stanford professor demonstrated how his ideas can be simultaneously repulsive and appealing to theological conservatives.

On the former (repulsive) hand, he admitted that— while he doesn’t deny the “truth” that two plus two equals four, or the “truth” that rape is bad—he does reject the belief that there is any grand truth. As he put it at one point: there isn’t any meaning beyond that which human beings decide to create in their lives.

Arithmetic and moral statements are not “truths” based on any laws outside of human experience, but are

O

SUM + of the = TIME

E

T

W

E

E

“true” only in the pragmatic sense that they are useful for the good ordering of communal life.

Yet, even as it became clear why Christians are uncomfortable with Rorty’s crude, man-centered pragmatism, there were also obvious hints as to why he and his postmodern colleagues might be regarded as allies in certain battles. If “my enemy’s enemy is my friend,” then Rorty as the champion of literature is at least the friend of the theologicallyminded insofar as he joins the attack against idolatrous, hegemonic varieties of philosophy.

(Reformational Christianity is not anti-philosophical or anti-intellectual, but it has always sought to hold in view the Romans 1explicated tendency of Adam’s descendants to make ourselves and our reason the judge over the Word of God. For shorthand, this idolatrous move has often been called the magisterial—as opposed to ministerial—use of reason. Reason is not the

79

Percent of Americans who tell pollsters George Gallup and Timothy Jones that they do not doubt God’s existence, compared to only 66% who had that level of confidence a decade prior.

1 4 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

N

|

T

H

king—and when it tries to be, it is a rebel against the reign of Christ. Yet reason is indeed a wonderful tool—and when it is used to understand the God who speaks and the world he has made, the Creator who gave us the gift of intellect is glorified.

Christians are obligated then both to employ this good tool, and also to guard against mistaking the tool for the source of knowledge.)

Returning to Rorty, his attack against the abstraction “truth” certainly includes a rejection of revealed religion—and thus the understandable Christian concern with his work. His proposal that literature should replace philosophy as the queen discipline is certainly not a plea for the restoration of theology—but it is at least a helpful attack on the long reign of foundationalism.

Here, in the attempt to knock philosophy down a few pegs, common cause can be made with Rorty.

But moving beyond his critique to his constructive proposals is another matter.

As he reads Western intellectual history (again, “From Religion Through Philosophy to Literature”), Christianity implanted in European minds the need (he occasionally calls it a “psychosis”) for redemption.

All of those shaped by this tradition share the nagging sense that something is incomplete; we know that

E

|

T

I

M

Richard Rorty

we have an eschatological need. Christianity called the problem sin, and understood the solution as the intervention of Christ in history. Philosophy (aware that reports of God speaking could not be trusted and, more generally, that miracles simply could not happen) rejected the Christian identification of the problem and solution as sin and Christ—but philosophers could not shake the sense that “redemption” of some sort was needed.

Thus philosophy—and especially philosophy of science—abstracted this need from personal justification to the collective search for “absolute truth.”

But, this former philosopher who now often announces the “end of philosophy” retorts, what happens if biology and physics and chemistry do one day offer a unified theory of everything?

We may thus finally discover

E

S

the “truth” for which we’ve been searching, but does anyone want to defend the proposition that this will solve the problem of human longing? Will this great philosophical/scientific victory redeem us?

Exit Rorty the philosopher; enter Rorty the newlychristened expert on comparative literature. The quest truly worthy of the intellectual is not micro-biological or astrophysical, but literary.

For here the thirsty soul can begin the process of redemption through the richness and diversity of prose and poetry from all of the world’s traditions. Only here can one find genuine meaning—“meaning” being perhaps the best summary of

ÍIn ancient Athens, lawmakers feared that allowing individuals to profit from the hardships of others would lead to the creation of perverse, antisocial incentive systems and thereby the atomization of community.

As a consequence, they outlawed the development of markets surrounding death and burial rituals.

Why should some Athenians benefit from the death of a soldier who had been defending even that profit-seeker? In capitalist America, the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) has recently demonstrated that it lacks not only concerns about the encroachment of markets into death, but

what the older term “redemption” has come to mean.

But even as Rorty roared against Christian understandings of redemptive history (boldly announcing that there will be no redemption coming “from outside of ourselves”!), he simultaneously again made himself useful as an ally against a common opponent.

A scholar rose to ask him why he was so dogmatic in his rejection of the word “truth.” Why can’t what he referred to as the “richness and diversity” of various forms of literature simply be called “truth”?

Rorty replied: I hear this all the time—people wanting to talk about “literary truth,”

also the encroachment of our society’s ubiquitous cameras. NFDA officials have begun to promote “memorial Webcasts”— funeral services broadcast over the Internet for those lacking the time to attend in person. The provision of this virtual event technology is expected to speed the process of corporate consolidation in the undertaking industry. ÍAugsburg Fortress Press, the publishing house of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), has announced the release of a new critical edition of The Book of Concord, the confessional standards of Lutheranism.

Edited by LCMS theologian (and MR

or “narrative truth,” or “aesthetic truth.” To me, it just seems cowardly. Why can’t we respect the philosophers’ right to the term that defined their quest? Why can’t we find our own term, rather than living off of borrowed capital? It reminds me of those theologians at the start of the Enlightenment who stopped believing in the Christian God but didn’t have the courage to admit it.

Whenever a philosopher would confront an apostate theologian with a new intellectual challenge— searching for redemption and finding meaning outside the Christian tradition—the theologian would simply reply that that too was what

contributor) Robert Kolb and ELCA church historian Timothy Wengert, the new volume is expected to replace the current version, edited by Theodore Tappert in 1959. The Kolb/Wengert volume is the product of over 100 scholars and translators and contains many new introductions. It is available at www.augsburgfortress.org. ÍAccording to the Religion News Service, a Canadian cardiologist has found that, contrary to widely-held opinion, sharing a common communion cup probably doesn’t make people sick.

Dr. David Gould’s study showed that there is a much greater probability

he meant by “God.” But it wasn’t true; it hadn’t been what he meant by “God.” And I don’t plan to follow that path, just redefining the philosophers’ word “truth.”

Let us at least praise Rorty for honesty. We may think that his new quest into comparative literature will ultimately prove just as fruitless as was the old trek into abstract philosophy, but at least he has the intellectual integrity to admit what he is up to. Perhaps one day he will realize that the need for “redemption” not only isn’t a psychosis, but isn’t even chiefly an intellectual problem; for it is first a legal and moral problem.

for church attendees to become sick from airborne sources than from the common cup. Since a 1987 report on AIDS, many North American Christians have inaccurately believed that the Eucharist could contribute to the spread of disease. In fact, the wine kills most germs, and— Gould emphasized— human hands typically contain more germs than do mouths. His one recommendation was that the cup be wiped with a cloth following each communicant to limit the spread of infection from the outside of the cup where there is less wine.

J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 1 5

TR AI N UP A CHILD | Becoming People of the Word in a Culture of Ima ge s

Learning to Hear Again in a

World of Noise: Appreciating the Practical Benefits of the Lord’s Day istening is a difficult business these days. We live in a talk-show culture that makes everybody’s opinion as good as anyone else’s, where the now arrogant vice of believing in the true, the good, and the beautiful has been replaced with the apparent virtue of following the useful, the preferred, and the stimulating. Seducing distractions are everywhere. The New Yorker magazine writer John Seabrook calls it the “Buzz” that is produced by “the culture of marketing, the marketing of culture.” Seabrook offers a snapshot of the Buzz in his own experience, standing in the middle of Manhattan:

L

The air was fuzzy with the weird yellow tornado light of Times Square by day, a blend of sunlight and wattage, the real and the mediated—the color of Buzz.

Buzz is the collective stream of consciousness, William James’s “buzzing confusion,” objectified, a shapeless substance into which politics and gossip, art and pornography, virtue and money, the fame of heroes and the celebrity of murderers, all bleed. In Times Square you could see the buzz that you felt going through your mind. I found it soothing just to stand there on my way to and from work and let the yellow light run into my synapses. In that moment the worlds outside and inside my skull became one.1 Is it possible that we in the Church have mistaken our cultural obsession with this Buzz of the new and improved for the presence of the Spirit? And what can we do

B Y M I C H A E L H O RT O N

to become good listeners again? First, I’d like to refer to Seabrook’s marvelous way of capturing the cultural shifts that have contributed to making our lives so noisy and dependent on the latest and greatest. Then we will return to Scripture and the wisdom of the faithful.

What’s All the Buzz About? eabrook uses the “dumbing down” of The New Yorker magazine as an illustration of the more general phenomenon, and much of what he says in this regard has easy parallels in the Church. This involved “wading a little bit deeper in the vast, tepid swamp of Buzz, with its surrounding cedar bogs of compromise.” Despite his analysis, Seabrook’s book, Nobrow: The Culture of Marketing—The Marketing of Culture, is not a jeremiad against contemporary culture, but an insightful and often sympathetic exposé. Turning each page, I found numerous applications to Church life. For instance, he says that “the real problem was that the culture of the writers and the culture of the ad people were too disconnected from each other to have much in common.” We are used to blaming theology for differences and divisions among us, but theology has little to do with things these days, at least in explicit terms. The real problem is not that there are people who hold to this theology over that theology, but a hostility to any theology.

S

The culture of the educated exegete (the writers) is increasingly disconnected from the culture of ecclesiastical entrepreneurs (the ad people).

Seabrook charts the seminal shifts: “The old cultural arbiters, whose job was to decide what was ‘good’ in the sense of ‘valuable,’ were being replaced by a new type of arbiter, whose skill is to define ‘good’ in terms of ‘popular.’” A “hierarchy of hotness” has replaced the older hierarchy of value, and there is no such thing as poor taste any more, just different tastes.2 Listing specific examples of The New Yorker’s decline, Seabrook says, “Articles became much shorter, their deadlines were firm, and their publication was pegged to Buzz-making happenings.”3 We could replace “articles” here with sermons, especially in the light of his next sentence: “Doing stories that were topical, trying to get the public’s attention, trying to be controversial, trying to sell magazines … became the norm.”4 Seabrook himself came to appreciate pop music: “Pop was goofy, fun, sweet, open, honest, but at the same utterly fake.” “Without pop culture to build your identity around, what have you got?”

Seabrook asks. Buzz, otherwise known as pop culture, has “by its nature abhorred distinction and consumed all single points of view.”5 This is also readily apparent in contemporary Church life.

Seabrook contrasts the world of the town house in which he was raised by “middle-brow” parents in

A Year of Signposts—Follo

I

realizethatfollowingtheChurchcalendarisnotthepracticeofsomechurches.However, ithasbeeneffectiveinmanyofourchurchesthathaveinheriteditfromancientpractice, andit’sbeingdiscoveredbyotherstoday. Whileitshouldneverbefollowedslavishlyor withsuperstition,ithelpstohavesignpostsintheyearthatfocusourattentiononthe momentouseventsinthelifeofChristandthefoundingofhisNewCovenantassembly. ItisanotherwayofgettingustoorientourChurchlifearoundthedivinedrama: Advent(culminatinginChristmas),Epiphany(theappearanceofthewisemen—or,more properly,theappearanceofChristtotheGentiles),Circumcision(thebeginningofourLord’s consecration),Lent(Jesus’wildernesstemptationoffortydays,culminatinginGoodFriday),Easter, Ascension,andPentecost. Thisisamarveloustoolforeducationovermanyyears,aslongasit doesn’tdeterioratetomerehabit.

Growing interest has generated a virtual cottage industry of new guides to catechism for all ages, with curricula for both Church and home. Again we are reminded of the importance of Church practice. It doesn’t matter if we assent to all the right doctrine, unless we really believe it. And we can enter into per-

1 8 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

sonal confidence in the truth of God’s Word only by growing up into it, as we experience it in community as the people of God. We are shaped in our beliefs as much by concrete worship practices and decisions about what we sing over many years as we are by the propositions to which we yield assent.

Paul tells us in Colossians 3:16, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.” He is telling us that one of the chief ways of getting God’s Word into us—and not just into us in a mindlessly repetitive way, but so that it will “dwell in [us] richly in all wisdom,” is through what we sing. This singing is not only a matter of praise, but of education: “teaching and admonishing one another.” Does our music serve this purpose and fit these criteria? It is ineffective to sing traditional psalms and hymns without thought, but it is surely no better to substitute contemporary

New York and the world of the megastore. Again, as you read this, just insert “traditional church” and “contemporary church” in the place of the town house and the megastore: In the town house was symmetry, in the megastore multiplicity. In the town house was quiet, in the megastore cacophony. In the town house was the carefully sequestered commercialism of my father’s world, in the megastore the rampant commercialism of mine. In place of New Yorker distinctions between the elite and the commercial, there were MTV distinctions between the cult and the mainstream. In the town house, quality was the standard of value; in the megastore, the standard was authenticity. In the town house you got points for consistency in cultural preferences; in the megastore you got status for preferences that cut across the old hierarchical lines. In the town house there was content and there was advertising. In the megastore there were both at once. The music videos were art—music videos offered some of the best visual art on television—but videos were also, technically speaking, ads for the music, and the money to make them came from the music industry or the artist, not from MTV.6

So what’s the Buzz about? Nothing. Or, more precisely, it’s about itself. The music video is about (i.e., an ad for) the product: the album. The evening news need not be about noteworthy events in the world, but merely about the event of “reporting” it. Advertising need not be about products, but merely create a consumer experience.

And when the Buzz comes to Church, worship need not actually be about God and what he has done, is doing, and will do to and for us, but need only be about itself. “Let’s just praise the Lord.”

What Lord? And why? Never mind all that theology: Let’s just enjoy the “worship experience.”

If the Buzz isn’t about anything, what’s the point? Stimulation. The consumption of experiences, audiovisual candy. So what is the alternative? Let’s turn from critique to construction, as we attempt to answer that question.

Reel Time—A Time to Listen hen we think about who God is and who we are by comparison, it is remarkable that he not only has time for us but that he has invited us—uniquely among his creatures—to enter into his everlasting hours.

It is probably apparent by now that I am trying to introduce the controversial subject of the Christian Sabbath or Lord’s Day. The Lord’s Day has always occupied a place of prominence in the piety of the

W

owing the Church Calendar “clips” from the Psalms and vacuous phrases about our state of consciousness. A fresh initiative, across the denominational landscape, appears to be emerging that seeks to produce new music with both fresh creativity and theological and musical integrity.

A revival of traditional Christian practices whose practical success has the record of impressive centuries of vital witness will not look—should not look—like the first century, fifth century, twelfth century, sixteenth century, or eighteenth century. But it cannot look like the twenty-first century stripped of these antecedents.

We will, no doubt, find our way back to these resources as people of our time and place. In doing so, we will be surprised at how similar some of our problems are to those faced by our brothers and sisters in other times and places. We’ll be lifted out of our snobbery toward the past, as if our generation were the only important one in the history of the Church. And we will also encounter new questions that they will help us answer: How can we enjoy the Sabbath

in our day of commuter churches? What will regular catechism practices look like in today’s over-committed and often broken homes? Is there an emerging approach to Church music that reaches beyond the dead end of traditional-versus-contemporary and contemporary-versus-traditional? If style isn’t neutral, what criteria should we develop so that God’s Word may dwell in us “richly in all wisdom”? But these are all exciting questions, if we have already accepted the challenge to move in these directions. We can expect variety as we step up to the plate ourselves, in our time and place, understanding and incorporating, but not slavishly imitating, that which has gone before.

J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 1 9

Reformed and Presbyterian churches, although it has fallen on hard times in our circles as in others.

There are few subjects that are more richly practical especially in the light of our concern for becoming better at hearing God and seeing his action in our lives. Christians often say these days, “I know it’s important to get to know God and to understand the Scriptures. I’d even like to dig into a bit of lay theology, but there’s just no time.” That is just the practical problem that this issue addresses: God has provided a time not only for us to enjoy him, but for him to enjoy us. It is the glad day of rest in a restless world. Allow me to first present the biblical-theological development of this theme and then settle on some concrete applications.

The Sabbath was instituted by God in the Garden of Eden, where he invited Adam into his communion and imitation of his own reign. This is one of the most astonishing aspects of this institution. Far from being an aloof, “wholly Other” deity, God is eager to be in the company of human beings whom he created in his own image. This is why he created Paradise, with its order, productivity, justice, and harmony—a “living room” where he could dwell with his imagebearers and they could dwell safely with him.

after the fall. No one but the true and faithful Adam could have eaten of that tree, for himself and those whom he represented.

Therefore, right from the beginning, all of history was moving toward the Consummation—the state of living beyond the possibility of sin and death and sharing God’s Sabbath rest with him forever. We see this fleshed out throughout the development of redemptive history, right up to the end, where in Revelation—because of Christ’s fulfillment of the probation, all of those who are in him are given the right to finally eat of that Tree of Life (Rev. 2:7; 22:1–5).

In its character, therefore, the Sabbath is not cessation from activity, but cessation from a particular kind of activity—namely, the six-day labor that is intrinsically good but has suffered the curse after the fall. God did not rest because he was tired; rather, it is the rest of completion, the rest of a king who has taken his throne. Representing the Consummation, this sabbatical pattern was the way of not only hoping for the new creation but of experiencing it and participating in its peace.

The Sabbath gave a pattern, a measurable meaning, to human existence, just as the festivals in Israel’s history annually impressed the vertical-horizontal development of redemptive history after the fall. These Once upon a time, Christians claimed that theology was divisive; that it was are not opposed: the Resurrection, sufficient to responsible for the differences among us. The problem today is not that there are move the Sabbath to Sunday, reverses the curse placed on people who hold to this theology over that theology—but that there is hostility creation because of man and represents the birthday of the new creation. Furthermore, it toward consciously holding any theology. represents the privilege that we as creatures, not just as The Sabbath was the enthronement of the Christians, were meant to possess.

Alpha-Creator as the Omega-Consummator, the While the whole creation will with us one day Beginning and the End. As professor Meredith be raised in newness of life, only human beings Kline observes, “God sets forth his creative acts were created for fellowship with God. And one within the pictorial framework of a Sabbath- day, just as the kingdoms of the world will be made crowned week and by this sabbatical pattern he the kingdom of Christ, every day will be a Sabbath identifies himself as Omega, the One for whom all day, rest from sin, injustice, oppression, and sufferthings are and were created, the Lord worthy to ing. One of writer Wendell Berry’s “Sabbath receive glory and honor and praise (cf. Rev. 4:11).”6 Poems” captures this: “make your land recall/In Creation must not be viewed in static terms, as if workdays of the fields/The sabbath of the woods.” there was nothing more, nothing better, ahead. The Sabbath gave rest to the land, to animals, to This impression is often given when we think of employees and employers and their families, anticthe Consummation (viz., the return of Christ and ipating the end of using the natural world and the the new heavens and new earth) as a return to beginning of our real enjoyment of it.

Eden. But Adam, as the federal head of the human The ordinary week is a microcosm of God’s race, was on probation in Eden. Although created “time,” just as the temple in Jerusalem was a microrighteous, he was capable of rebelling. Had Adam cosm of God’s heavenly “place.” Like the week, not sinned, he would have won the right to eat history has a beginning and an ending. The from the Tree of Life, but as it turned out, God Sabbath is the weekly link to both past creation posted heavenly guards at the entrance to that tree and future consummation. Thus, it keeps us

2 0 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

anchored to the order that God established before the fall as creatures sharing his image as well as stretching our necks forward, longing for our full entrance into the Sabbath day that the Second Adam already enjoys with God. As the Sabbath is to calendar time, the temple was to temporal space—anticipating the day when “the glory of God shall cover the earth,” bursting the dimensions of both days and places. Humans having failed to enter God’s rest in the beginning, will, because of Christ their forerunner, enter that rest at the last.

But unlike temple worship, the Sabbath was not a sacrament of the Church but an ordinance (like marriage, vocation, and the state) of creation and is not abrogated in the New Testament, but is strengthened and confirmed. The reinstitution of the Sabbath after the fall is actually very good news: It means that God still held out the hope of entering his rest. There was still a promise out there on the horizon, which they could taste weekly: Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.

As the fourth of the Ten Commandments that God gave his people at Sinai, the Sabbath institution was, after the Exodus, anchored not only to creation but to redemption. Notice how the version of the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy supplements the Exodus account. The prohibition is the same, but the rationale is slightly different: “And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God has commanded you to keep the Sabbath day” (Deut. 5:15). So the Sabbath is rooted in both creation and, for the believer, redemption. It is part of our story: “I am the God who brought you up out of Egypt.”

Let’s look at a passage from Mark 2: Now it happened that [Jesus] went through the grainfields on the Sabbath; and as they went his disciples began to pluck the heads of grain. And the Pharisees said to him, “Look, why do they do what is not lawful on

the Sabbath?” But he said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he was in need and hungry, he and those with him: how he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the showbread, which is not lawful to eat except for the priests, and also gave some to those who were with him?” And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Therefore the Son of Man is also the Lord of the Sabbath” (vv.

23–28).

And Jesus confirmed this last remark by healing on the Sabbath (3:1–6).

The Pharisees had misinterpreted the Sabbath, since God had never prohibited works of necessity or mercy. The disciples were not working the fields but receiving God’s provision to sustain their life— the very thing that the Sabbath itself signified.

God’s everlasting rest is not the cessation of activity, as the Pharisees seemed to view it: “My Father has been working until now,” Jesus says, adding, “and I have been working.” The Father and the Son are working redemption, which the healings represented. It is resting from creation-labor, not cessation from activity, that the Sabbath envisioned for us as well as God. Jesus audaciously (as far as the Pharisees were concerned) claimed that he was the Covenant Lord who instituted the Sabbath in the first place. He, therefore, offers the authoritative interpretation of the Law. To turn the Sabbath into a burden is to utterly contradict its purpose, although to ignore it is surely to violate God’s stated will and gracious invitation to enter into the blessings not merely of Adam’s once-a-week rest, but into the Second Adam’s eternal rest that is enjoyed “through a glass darkly” in this age through the Christian Sabbath.

“Today” is “the day of salvation,” not simply one solar day, but “this age” in which the Spirit has reinstituted the Abrahamic covenant through its New Testament administration. This “today” is the time that God has allotted for us to enter into God’s seventh day through the door that Jesus Christ has thrown open by his resurrection and ascension. He who is “the Resurrection and the Life” calls for his brothers and sisters to join him, to move beyond the six days of work into the seventh day of rest.

And the sign of this was his resurrection on the day beyond the Old Testament Sabbath. Matthew’s Gospel seems to go out of its way to make this connection: “Now after the Sabbath, as the first day of the week began to dawn, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb,” but were greeted by the angel’s glad announcement, “He is not

J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 2 1

here; for he is risen, as he said” (Matt. 28:1–6).

Instead of pointing forward to the new creation, as the Old Testament Sabbath did, the arrival of the new creation in Jesus Christ signaled the beginning of God’s everlasting week. What the Romans called Sunday was in fact the birthday of the new world.

So decisive was this event that it shifted the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday and was now acknowledged as “the Lord’s Day.” The Lord’s Day, or the Christian Sabbath, reiterates continuity not only between Old and New Testaments, but between creation and redemption.

The Lord’s Day is the festival of the new creation to be treasured, a day not only that we set aside but that sets us aside. As children of this day, we proclaim that we are not our own but are bought with a price—the very rationale given in Deuteronomy.

It is a weekly Easter Day, transforming our identity and relation to this age by that power of the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead.

It is no less true in our day than it was in Israel’s that the knowledge of God and participation in his

covenant is easily crowded out by a love of the world. Now, as then, the Church loses its vision, its mission, and its power when it surrenders the Sabbath to “the world [that] is passing away” instead of to “the age to come.” God has given us six days a week to labor and to participate in the good gifts of creation along with non-Christians, but the Sabbath belongs to the Lord.

While the Sabbath is to be observed, it is not to be observed with rigor, but with gladness.

Princeton theologian B. B. Warfield captured this transformation of the Sabbath by its fulfillment when he wrote, “Christ took the Sabbath into the grave with him and brought the Lord’s Day out of the grave with him on the resurrection morn.”8 Warfield observes how John stresses the Sabbath, noting Jesus’ appearance to his disciples on “the first day of the week.” His absence from the disciples fell between Easter morning and the next Sunday, when he appeared to the assembled disciples. There were four Sundays before the Ascension. “But there is an appearance at least that

Home Schooling: Recovering th

H

istorically, many Christians have thought that the main context of religious and moral instruction takes place in the home, not in church. That is why the Protestant Reformers prepared catechisms—manuals of instruction summarizing the Bible’s basic teaching, to be learned by rote in the earliest years (like a new language) and then investigated, elaborated, and even tested by mature scriptural reflection in later years. There was a time when an average Christian young person knew by heart the questions and answers of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, the Heidelberg Catechism, or Luther’s Small Catechism. A few years ago I recall a woman returning to Church after she had abandoned it for a life of immorality. “I just couldn’t get those questions and answers or the Bible verses I had to memorize along with them out of my head,” she said concerning the catechism of her youth.

Not too long ago, it was still common for children to be dropped off after school or on Saturdays for weekly catechism classes, supplemented by the parents around the evening meal.

To be sure, it was a matter of going through the motions for a lot of kids, but that was the fault largely of the parents who sent them. The kids returned home and found little of the practical, living reality of that truth, and they learned from the home to separate theory from practice. Imagine the enormous practical

2 2 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

difference that this could make on so many levels—practical differences that a month of “practical” sermons and programs have fallen far short of matching. Abraham Kuyper, pastor, theologian, and Dutch prime minister, said it well, commenting on Philippians 3:6: “ ‘Let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing.’ … For that reason study is necessary. A Church which does not teach her youth can never hope to retain a pure confession, but relinquishes it, cuts off all contact with the past, divorces herself from the fathers, and forms a new group.… If you desire to confess, you must learn.”

Richard R. Osmer, a Princeton Seminary professor, points to the declining use of the catechism as a major source of mainline disintegration. “Somewhere along the way, the church failed these people,” and now they are out the door—attracted to exotic religions or none at all. “It failed to provide them with the intellectual and spiritual resources needed in a postmodern world.”1 In addition to public worship, Osmer observes, catechism shaped generations of believers who—even in their early youth—had a better grasp of scripture and its teachings than many pastors today. “The sequence of infant baptism, catechetical instruction and then admission to the Lord’s Table provided a structure for education that dominated most Protestant churches from the Reformation period through the nineteenth century.”

the first day of the week was becoming under this direct sanction of the risen Lord the appointed day of Christian assemblies.”9 Let me conclude this defense of the Christian Sabbath with New Testament scholar Richard Gaffin’s marvelous summary. God saw that all he made was “very good.” “But he did not yet see the ‘very best.’

That was because even before he created, God had decided that ‘the best of all possible worlds’ was not to be at the beginning but at the end of history.”

The Lord’s day is about worship because it is first of all about the gospel. It is a sign, to the church and a watching world, that we ‘are not our own’ (1 Cor.6:19) but are depending on our God, not ourselves, to provide for us.

It is a sign that our trust is not in ourselves and our own efforts as fallen sons and daughters of Adam, but in the perfect righteousness of the last Adam and in God’s faithfulness to his covenant promise to do for us what we are unable to do for ourselves…The

pattern of six days of activity interrupted by one of rest is a reminder that human beings are not caught up in a meaningless flow of days, one after the other without end, but that history has a beginning and ending and is headed toward final judgment and the consummation of all things.10 In other words, the regular observance of the Sabbath keeps us oriented to God’s drama of redemption and catches us up into it as the Spirit reconciles us to God through Word and Sacrament. On this day, we announce that we are expecting the redemption of the earthly creation and not merely of individual souls. The creation that has been in bondage to decay because of us will be liberated because of Christ. On this day, we announce to the world that when our Savior cried out, after his perfect works throughout his earthly life, “It is finished!”, he had finally secured for his new humanity admission to the Tree of Life. The workweek completed, he now calls out through his ministry in this age, “Come to me, all

he Disciplined Art of Catechesis Osmer briefly summarizes the changes: The earliest of these was the Enlightenment’s critique of dogmatic authority. In some corners, teaching of the catechism came to be viewed as the epitome of authoritarian indoctrination. More important in the U.S. was the challenge of the Sunday school movement. Lay-led and evangelical in its theology, this parachurch movement came to shape congregational life over the course of the nineteenth century and pushed catechetical instruction into a secondary position. By the turn of the twentieth century, moreover, the language of the catechisms seemed increasingly archaic; and questions were being raised about the viability of the theology expressed in the catechisms…. But these programs undermined two further developments. The first was the rise of modern educational and psychological theory that attacked the basic assumptions of the humanistic education program with which catechetical instruction had long been associated. Briefly put, these emerging fields placed far more emphasis on the active role of the learner in the construction of knowledge and advocated a teaching style that was oriented toward the emerging experience of the child. The text-based methods of humanistic educa-

tion, which stressed internalizing classic modes of speaking and writing, were portrayed as antichild and authoritarian.2 According to Osmer, restoring catechism is essential particularly because the average young person today is now speaking multiple “languages” and living in multiple worlds of thought and action. He or she needs to have fluency in Christian speech. While in the past a number of public and private institutions would combine to inculcate some knowledge of Scripture, today that simply is not the case. If churches and homes will not catechize the next generation, it will not happen at the YMCA or Boy Scouts, much less at the arcade machines or the mall.

If Paula [a young woman who illustrates this trend] follows the pattern of the average American child, she will watch 30 hours of television a week and by the age of 12, will have viewed on TV approximately 100,000 violent episodes and 13,000 people violently destroyed. At her public school, she will receive no Christian education and little moral education. If she follows trends found in every major study of higher education since the 1950s, Paula’s experience of college will have a secularizing impact on her faith, mediating the intellectual relativism and cultural eclecticism that is so much a part of her postmodern world.3

b y M I C H A E L H O RT O N J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 2 3

you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28–29).

Structuring Our Sabbath magineawholedayofChristianproclamation,instruction, praise, fellowship, and edification.

Ourcallings in the world often require occasional daylong orevenweeklong“continuingeducation”seminars,and similarly Christian conferences in theology have sprouted up across the landscape in our time.

But what if each week we could really “taste of the powers of theagetocome”bysustainedattentiontowhatGodhasdone, is doing, and will do for us by his Spirit in Jesus Christ?

Wouldn’t webecomebetterparents,withouthit-and-run sermons on parenting?

Wouldn’t we become mature worshipers without having our theological education crammed into a morning lecture?

And wouldn’t we develop deeper, richer, and more lasting relationships withoutrequiringbanaltipsonmakingfriends?

Christianity cannot be inculcated merely through moral aphorisms oreventhroughthestatementandrestatementof true propositions.

Itmustbeexperiencedregularlyinacommunitythatisinitfor thelonghaul.

We rail against consumerism even as we belong to the teeming masses whose cars flood shopping mall parking lots on the Lord’s Day. Isn’t this precisely the sort of activity that God forbade the Israelites from engaging in, when six days of gathering the manna were, to their mind, not enough?

Imagine how revolutionary it would be if a majority of Christians stopped shopping, working, or watching TV on Sunday? “I’d love to dig into the Scriptures, but I just don’t have time—what with work and all.” Given the statistics, many of us who say this have plenty of time for entertainment, shopping, sports, and the like. We would have to do no more than recover Sabbath practice in order to have enough time for growing in the grace and knowledge of our Savior.

We can take a break from consuming and engage in works of mercy. In fact, a practice in many of our churches is to visit the elderly in a nursing home on Sunday afternoons. As we refuse to surrender this day to the tyranny of the clock and the gods who amuse us, we are enjoying a foretaste of heaven and also proclaiming to the world that God is our refuge. Take the family on an afternoon walk and have them recite a Psalm that they have memorized while you point out to them the concrete beauties of God’s creation, the signs of the fall, and the promise of redemption. Why not ask each of them to explain the sermon and then dis-

I

2 4 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

cuss its implications? You are teaching your family to turn off the Walkman and the whirl of the week, to stop and listen. They are becoming listeners to God’s Word, integrating faith and life as they go.

There’s one last practical note on the Sabbath.

This day was given to us not because we are strong, but because we are weak. Many who might respond to the preceding arguments with the objection, “But every day is the Lord’s day,” do not actually set aside every day for sustained attention to the things of God. To be sure, there may be a brief moment of daily devotions and periodical prayers, but every day does not belong to the Lord, at least in part, because we have not discovered the enormous power of the Lord’s Day to reorient our ordinary workweek. “But every day is the Lord’s day” often leads to the unintentional consequence that no day is the Lord’s day. As Dorothy C. Bass writes concerning the Lord’s Day, “No other days can be the same, after this one.”11 The Buzz is claiming us—though we are claimed already by Another, and it will increasingly come for our children and grandchildren. But we don’t have to accept this as fate, any more than we simply accept any other truce with worldliness. More and more, we and our neighbors are captive to the whirl of the new and improved, the consumer world of endless choice and unchallenged preferences.

We still like to be told, “You shall be as gods.” But even if it were possible, we are no more justified in fleeing our time and place than any other generation of saints. It is not those who retreat into suspicious ghettos nor those who embrace as normal “the way things are” who will be called blessed of the Father, but those who are willing to take risks of faith and obedience. And while our responses will probably be marked by all three of these tendencies—even simultaneously, may God give us the grace that can shake off the fake yellow glow from the Buzz of a fading age and lustily sing, Savior, if of Zion’s city I, through grace, a member am, Let the world deride or pity, I will glory in Thy name.

Fading is the worldling’s pleasures, All his boasted pomp and show; Solid joys and lasting treasures None but Zion’s children know.12 ■ Michael Horton (Ph.D., Wycliffe Hall, Oxford and the University of Coventry) is associate professor of historical theology and apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary in California, and chairs the Council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.

T RA IN UP A CHILD | Becoming People of the Word in a Culture of Ima g e s

Continually Learning the Meaning of our Baptism hen a child utters her first words it is a joyous occasion for her parents. Though her voice is that of a child and her pronunciation may falter, father and mother recognize her words as their own. The words that she uses came from them. For months the child has listened to father and mother. Now she is finally beginning to speak. She is “echoing” words that she first heard in her ear perhaps a thousand times. This understanding of hearing the Word and “echoing” the Word in the confession of one’s mouth is central to the Church’s ongoing work of catechesis. To catechize means to speak a word in the ear that is echoed by the catechumen who has received it. To catechize means to speak a word that both creates faith and becomes the Christian’s own word in confession and prayer.

W

Luther’s Favorite Texts for Catechizing n catechizing the young and old alike, Martin Luther emphasized the need to return to the basic texts of the Ten Command-ments, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer.

In the ancient Church, these texts, particularly the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, were given to the newly baptized so that they would have a word to say by which they would confess the faith and cry out to God in p r a y e r .

According to Luther, these texts contain everything a Christian needs to know and believe in order to be saved. They are to be used as the basis for catechesis and as a daily prayer book for the Christian life. These texts outline a “pattern of sound words” (2 Tim. 1:13) through which the believer learns to understand himself and his relationship to God: “I am a poor miserable sinner.

The Ten Commandments show me my sin and how

I

by P E T E R B E N D E R J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 2 5

much I need a Savior. The Apostles’ Creed teaches me who God is, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ is my Lord. He has redeemed me from sin through the shedding of his precious blood. He loves me in all his works. He has made me his own dear child in holy baptism, that I, with all my brothers and sisters, might call out to him in faith for all that we need, saying, ‘Our Father …’ The Lord’s Prayer teaches me that my life is a holy life because I live by faith in the promises of God in Christ.”

The texts of the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer are the oldest catechism of the Church. It is clear that Christians in the apostolic era were catechized to understand the significance of God’s law (the Ten Commandments) and how it demolished self-righteousness and served faith in Christ. Jesus preached the law in the Sermon on the Mount, like the Jews had never heard it preached: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:27–28 NKJV). No one could escape the condemning force of the law. The law was necessary in the Church, not chiefly for its ethical value, but to direct us to Christ, the only Savior of

heaven …” The Lord’s Prayer is a classic example of receiving a Word from God that is to become our own. The Word of God is what makes our lives holy as it creates faith and directs us to rely upon all that God promises us in Christ. Each petition of the Lord’s Prayer is first a promise of God. Through these promises God invites the baptized faithful to call upon him as dear children call upon their dear father.

Unlike so many catechisms, these texts were intended to be spoken out loud and to serve the Christian for a lifetime in his daily vocation, confession of faith, prayers, and meditation upon Scripture.

Luther wished for his catechumens to develop a love affair with these texts. To know and believe in these texts was to know God. “First teach them the words, then teach them what they mean” is an axiom for Luther’s approach to catechesis. Baptized children, young and old alike, learn the language of their heavenly Father in the same way all children learn a language. They hear their father and mother speaking to them over and over and over again, until they begin to echo the language themselves. They begin to use the words that they have heard, even before they fully understand what the words mean. So it is for the baptized. We hear the Word of God over and over and over again until it becomes embedded in our hearts. We begin to hear, learn, and use words To be sure, the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures are the only authority for the before we fully understand what those words mean. In Church's oral proclamation, but the primacy of oral proclamation for the creation and fact, learning to believe and understand those words is the sustaining of faith in Christ must be clearly understood. lifelong process of catechesis.

This process, like faith itself, begins with hearing and sinners. This is how Paul used the law in his cate- receiving the Word through the ear. chesis, “Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in his sight, for by the law is the The Language of Our Holy Faith o be a Christian is to have faith in Christ knowledge of sin” (Rom. 3:20 NKJV). that trusts in him for the forgiveness of sins.

The Apostles’ Creed cannot be found in any sinFaith in Christ is the victory that overgle chapter and verse of Scripture, but every word and phrase of the Creed is biblical. The Apostles’ comes the devil, the world, and our own sin (1 Creed sets forth in simple concrete assertions all that John 5:4). Through such faith in Christ, love is God has done for us in love. All Scripture, like the born in us that we might serve our neighbor.

Apostles’ Creed, proclaims the faith of the Triune Through such faith we learn to live in our earthly God which has Jesus Christ, his incarnation, birth, callings in the joy and freedom of the forgiveness death, resurrection, and ascension, at its very center. of sins. Jesus Christ is the object of our worship This is what Christians believe in: “God the Father and the source of our life and salvation. He is our almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, and in highest good. Catechesis is the passing on of the Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, who was con- language of our holy faith, God’s own Word, that ceived … born … died … rose again … and ascend- we might be led to embrace Christ by faith in every ed into heaven, and the Holy Spirit who raises us time, place, circumstance, and need of our lives.

The goal of all catechesis is faith in Christ. from the dead and gives us eternal life in Christ.”

The centrality of the Lord’s Prayer is also taught by “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and the Gospel of of God” (Rom. 10:17 NKJV). The ear is the organ Luke: “When you pray, say: Our Father who art in to the heart. The pastor is called to teach.

T

2 6 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

Christians are called to listen. Oral teaching is the primary method of catechesis. Written material is no substitute for what the Apostle Paul calls, “the Word of faith which we preach.” This “Word of faith,” he declares to the catechumens of the congregations of Rome, “is near you, even in your mouth and in your heart” (Rom. 10:8 NKJV). To be sure, the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures are the only authority for the Church’s oral proclamation, but the primacy of oral proclamation for the creation and sustaining of faith in Christ must be clearly understood.

The pastor’s primary goal in catechesis is to convert the catechumen’s heart to faith in Christ. This is true both for the unconverted and for Christians who still struggle with their unbelieving Old Adam.

Faith always lays hold of the Word that is proclaimed, so that the catechumen learns to confess: “I believe what God’s law says of me, that I am a poor miserable sinner, that I have sinned against the God who loves me, that I deserve his wrath and punishment; and I believe what the Gospel says of me, that for Christ’s sake my sins are forgiven and there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

Such “learning” is fundamentally an issue of the faith of the heart, rather than the knowledge of the mind. As such, it is highly experiential in nature.

Catechumen’s are confronted with the Word of God that is contrary to the sinner’s nature and one that he does not want to hear: “All my righteousness is filth” and “faith in Christ is a gift of God, not of works.” These are the two major stumbling blocks for the catechumen. Unless the catechumen is converted to these two truths, the catechesis can go no further and nothing else really matters.

It must be remembered that faith in Christ is a miracle of the Holy Spirit. Conversion is not worked by man; it is worked by the Spirit. Thus faithful catechesis will produce either hardness of heart or faith in Christ. This must be clearly understood. There is no middle ground. Nevertheless, the catechist who sows the seed of repentance and faith in Christ is called to be patient with his catechumens, allowing the Holy Spirit to do his work in their hearts when and where he pleases through the Word that has been taught.

Learning the Life of Faith s children learn to speak and live from the words and pattern of life passed on to them by father and mother, so catechumens learn the life of faith in Christ. The texts of the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer are the foundation of that life. By these texts they are firmly grounded in the faith.

They understand who they are before God, what

A

he has done for them, and how they might call upon him. Catechumens are taught to confess sin and to hear Christ’s Word of forgiveness spoken to them. From the reception of that Word in their ears they learn to forgive others who have sinned against them. Catechesis, like a child in the home under the tutelage of father and mother, involves “the doing” of those things which will continue to be part of the Christian’s life after Baptism: attending worship, confessing sin, hearing preaching, receiving the Lord’s Supper, and living in one’s calling. Living in one’s calling involves confessing the faith; loving spouse, family, and neighbor; and contending with the weaknesses of the sinful flesh in the joy and confidence of Christ’s forgiveness.

This is the life into which the catechumen is baptized. All this flows from faith in Christ born of the Word of God received in the ear. ■

Peter Bender (M.Div., Concordia Theological Seminary, Ft. Wayne) is pastor of Peace Lutheran Church, Sussex, Wisconsin. He is also the author of Lutheran Catechesis, and the founder of the Concordia Catechetical Academy (CCA), a society of pastors and laymen dedicated to the promotion of faithful catechesis throughout the Lutheran Church.

Call (262) 246-3200 for information on CCA's annual symposium held each June.

SPEAKING OF

I

willsayfirstofallthatwiththeHebraicfaiththeword outweighs

the numinous [ineffable sacredness].

Of course, the numinous is not absent from, say, the

burning

bush

or

the

revelation

at

Sinai.

Butthenuminousisjusttheunderlyingcanvasfromwhichthe word detaches itself.… A theology of the Name is opposed to any hierophany of an idol.… Hearing the word has taken the place of a vision of signs.

Certainly there is still a sacred space (a temple) and a sacred time (the festivals). But the general tendency, even though it did not entirely or enduringly prevail over its rival, is fundamentally ethical and not aesthetic. To meditate on the commandments wins out over venerating idols.

—Paul Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred, 56.

J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 2 7

R

E

S

O

U

R

In Print January/February Book Recommendations Shepherding a Child’s Heart Tedd Tripp Written for parents with children of any age, this insightful book provides perspectives and procedures for shepherding your child’s heart into the paths of life.

B-TRP-1 PAPERBACK, $14.00 The Well-Trained Mind Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer Veteran home educators, the authors outline the classical pattern of education called the trivium, which organizes learning around the maturing capacity of the child’s mind.

B-WIS-1 HARDCOVER, $35.00 * Children’s “Prove It” Catechism (An introduction to the Shorter Catechism: A Modest Revision for Baptists Today) A catechism for young children with Scripture proofs in NASB originally published by the Reformed Baptist Church of Grand Rapids in 1981.

BOOKLET, $.65 (SEE BELOW FOR INFORMATION ON ORDERING) Training Hearts, Teaching Minds: Family Devotions Based on the Shorter Catechism Starr Meade Meade’s book of daily readings includes key Scripture verses and aids memorization by devoting six days to each question.

B-MEA-1 PAPERBACK, $15.00 Annotations to the Heidelberg Catechism J. Van Bruggen Annotations will aid both ministers and laypeople in personal study of the Heidelberg Catechism and with the task of catechising others.

B-VB-1 PAPERBACK, $14.00 Luther’s Small Catechism and Explanation (1991 edition) This edition of Luther’s catechism includes an appendix with Bible proof texts, descriptions of Lutheran confessional writings, the Church year and a topical index.

B-LUT-4 HARDCOVER, $5.25 Westminster Shorter Catechism in Modern English edited Douglas F. Kelly A modern English version of the Shorter Catechism designed for the instruction of young people and their parents.

B-WMSN-1 PAPERBACK, $1.75 *Available through Truth for Eternity Ministries, Grand Rapids, MI Phone/616-940-0554 Fax/616-940-0589 www.vor.org/truth To order, complete and mail the order form in the envelope provided. Or, use our secure e-commerce catalog at www.AllianceNet.org. For phone orders call 215-546-3696 between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. ET (credit card orders only).

2 8 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

C

E

C

E

N

T

E

R

On Tape From the Alliance Archives Hymns for a Modern Reformation In a sermon on Revelation 4:9-11, Dr. Boice spoke about the importance of music in worship and the significance of singing: "Isn't it interesting that heaven's worship is expressed in words set to music, in words that are sung? This is more than interesting, of course. It is important, for music is a gift from God that allows us to express our deepest heart responses to God and his truth in meaningful and memorable ways. It is a case of our hearts joining with our minds to say, ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!' to the truths we are embracing.… It is what the four living creatures, elders, angels, and the entire creation are doing today in heaven. We join that great heavenly choir rightly, wisely, and joyously when we sing."

During the last year of his life, Dr. James Boice and Dr. Paul Jones, Music Director at Tenth Presbyterian Church, collaborated on writing 12 hymns. The collection is now available in a hymn booklet, on cassette tape and compact disc. In addition, the musical arrangements for brass and percussion are also available.

C-HMR CASSETTE, $10.00 C-HMR-CD COMPACT DISC, $15.00 B-HMR HYMN BOOKLET, $4.00 B-HMR HYMN BOOKLET IN LOTS OF 10, $3.00 EACH B-HMR-P MUSIC PARTS FOR BRASS QUINTET/PERCUSSION, $40.00 EACH Biblical Criticism and Apologetics Dr. Kim Riddlebarger In this eleven-tape series, White Horse Inn host and pastor Dr. Kim Riddlebarger introduces us to the various views of Scripture and the role of apologetics. Included in this series is a walk through the history of biblical and textual criticism, the various ways of apologetics, and a presentation of the reliability of the Bible.

C-BCA-S 11 TAPES IN AN ALBUM, $38.00

Defending the Faith A White Horse Inn series The Apostle Peter commands us to "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have" (1 Peter 3:15). In this three-part series, White Horse Inn hosts Michael Horton, Kim Riddlebarger, and Rod Rosenbladt help us do just that as they introduce us to the field of apologetics. A round table discussion with R. C. Sproul, Robert Godfrey, Rod Rosenbladt, and Michael Horton on the differences between Classical, Evidential, and Presuppositional apologetic methods is included in the set. Making clear that methodology is an in-house debate, this tape is one of the most helpful, lively discussions you'll ever hear and benefit from on this topic.

C-DTF-S 3 TAPES IN AN ALBUM, $18.00 Come Change Our World Ninth Annual Conference on Reformed Theology This seven-part series from our conference archives looks at revival and how it comes about. Topics include the elements — such as prayer, preaching, witnessing, and repentance — that are necessary to see true revival and a proper accompanying reformation of American society. Speakers include Dr. R. C. Sproul on “Revival and Today’s Church,” Dr. Roger R. Nicole on “Prayer: The Prelude to Revival,” Dr. John Richard de Witt on “Preaching: The Means for Revival,” Dr. James Boice on “Witnessing: The Progress of Revival,” Dr. John H. Gerstner on “Reformation: The Impact of Revival,” Dr. Edmund P. Clowney on “Repentance: The Fruit of Revival,” and the Reverend Eric J. Alexander on “Worship: The Glory of Revival.”

C-82-0A 1977 PCRT Series, 7 messages on 7 tapes in an album, $38.00.

Or select a single tape from the listing, indicate 1982 PCRT conference and the title and speaker. $5.00 each.

Subscribe to Modern Reformation Magazine Six times a year, Modern Reformation will sharpen and challenge you.

Why not subscribe today?

U.S. One year $22 (MR1YR) Two years $40 (MR2YR) U.S. Student One year $15 (MRS1YR) Two years not available Canada One year $25 (MR1YR) Two years $45 (MR2YR) Europe One year $34 (MR1YR) Two years $62 (MR2YR) Other One year $35 (MR1YR) Two years $65 (MR2YR) To subscribe, complete and mail the order form in the envelope provided.

Or call 215-546-3696 between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. ET (credit card orders only).

J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 2 9 7

Working on O

William Willimon on Why Being Catech In last issue’s Free Space column, we sat down with the dean of the Duke Chapel, Methodist minister Will Willimon, to discuss preaching. As the complete interview was too long to run but too good to truncate, we saved a portion of that interchange that touched on catechesis and discipleship for this issue. —EDS. MR: Professor Willimon, you have been critical of viewing preaching primarily as translation. This “translation mode” has long been popular in liberalism but we now hear of it all the time in conservative circles as well. Help us understand both what this model is and why you are critical of it. Isn’t it almost Paul Tillich’s method of correlation?

WW: That’s a hateful thing to say! Yeah, I’ve said that most of the theology I got in seminary was in the “translation mode.” You are supposed to take whatever happens to be the culturally approved mode of making sense. For us it was existentialism.

And so if you’re [Rudolph] Bultmann or Tillich, you take the existentialism, you put the Gospel in this sieve, and then you shake it. And whatever’s left is what you can preach.

Well, I think we are learning—and [retired Yale theologian] George Lindbeck has been particularly good about this—that there is a sort of “intranslatability” (or I think he calls it “a lack of commensurability”) between one philosophy and another. It would be hard to take existentialism and sift it through Christianity and come out with something that’s fair to existentialism.

Or, when the traffic is moving in the other direction, you haven’t preached Jesus when you’ve basically first submitted to the language of Marxism, or feminism, or existentialism, or self-esteem, or capitalism, or whatever else. As we sometimes say, “something is lost in translation.” And what is lost may in fact be the very essence of the stuff.

People are always telling us that Christians have a language problem. Supposedly, we have this old, archaic, pre-scientific, pre-modern language about redemption and atonement, and sheep and shepherds, and all that. So what you do, in the translation mode, is you just find good linguistic correlation for that. Don’t say “God”; say “ultimate reality.” Don’t say “faith”; say “ultimate concern.” And then you go with that.

3 0 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

But I say that anybody who can understand whatever “ultimate concern” is ought to be able to understand what “faith” is. You know, stuff is lost.

Well, as Lindbeck shows, becoming a Christian is a little bit like learning to speak French. And you just can’t learn to speak French by reading French novels in English translation. You’ve got to stick to the grammar. You’ve got to learn the vocabulary.

MR: Which is something “boomers” don’t particularly like to do. They just want to have someone “Net it out.”

WW: Yeah, I must say that one great thing about being a preacher in a university—maybe the only great thing—is that people are doing nothing but vocabulary most of the time. In fact, when you sign up for a course in, for instance, psychology, half the semester is spent learning words. And you can’t get to the psychology apart from learning all the terminology. If someone said she wanted to skip the vocabulary, the professor replies, “Hey, the terminology is the psychology.”

It’s kind of beautiful that nobody walks into a physics class, waits for the professor to start lecturing, and then raises his hand to say: “Wait a minute. I’m a North American. I’m living in California. I ought to be able to understand this. I have a right to be able to get this without any effort or work.” And the professor just says: “Shut up.

Keep writing the stuff down. It’ll be on the exam.”

I think as Christians, there’s an odd sort of Constantinian, imperialistic notion that says: “Oh, I’m lucky enough to be born in North America; this is a Christian country. Therefore, I’ve become Christian by being born here. Therefore, I ought to be able to walk in off the street and ‘get it.’”

Preachers just need to say: “No, dear, you live in North America, one of the most violent cultures ever created. Christianity’s going to be a reach for you. It’s going to take a lot of time and effort.

Our Grammar:

hized Is Like Learning a Foreign Language There’ll be stuff you won’t get at first hearing.

We’ve got people in their eighties that still come out shocked on a Sunday morning. This is the way of the Cross, and it’s a narrow way. It’s not for everybody, but it just happens to be true.”

But being in the university is great because I’ve got a higher percentage of people who all day long are busy learning new vocabularies; they’re busy becoming different people because they’re majoring in chemistry. And so Christianity can kind of say: “Hey, we’re sort of like chemistry. You’re not born with it. We have to baptize you into it.

You’ve got to fit, and we’ve got a weird language.”

But it’s no weirder than the language of, say, baseball. You can’t get baseball by being born in North America. You’ve got to learn about the vestments and the rules; you’ve got to learn about the expressions.

My wife and I were recently watching a football game. She turned to me at one point and said, “I have not understood one word in the last fifteen minutes.”

The commentators were busy analyzing the plays and talking about good execution in the backfield.

Well, Christianity’s a little bit like that. It just can’t be user-friendly—which is why we call it “conversion.” (Or, I like “detoxification”—especially if you’re from California.) Part of being a Christian means to take up a new language.

I know a student who said to me, “I’m really trying to discipline myself to use the right words for stuff.” I said, “What do you mean?” And she replied, “Well, I’m trying not to say, when I do something wrong, ‘Oh, I made a mistake.’ Rather, I try to say, ‘Gee, I’ve sinned’ or ‘This was wrong.’ And I’m trying not to say things like, ‘Well, I’ve decided what I ought to do is . . .’ Instead, I’m trying to say, ‘I wonder what God’s will is for me in this situation.’”

I love the way she called that discipline. It really is.

It takes discipline to call things by their proper names.

MR: Speaking of calling things by their proper names, you and some of your “postliberal” colleagues have occasionally referred to preaching as “peculiar speech.” What does that mean?

WW: Well, a lot. And I wonder if, just perhaps,

evangelical preaching, in its reaching out to speak to the world, sometimes tries a bit too hard to make Christianity look “normal” to the world. I mean, clearly, Jesus told us to “go out in the world and make disciples.” But how are we to do that, Lord?

“Well, by baptizing, teaching them everything I’ve told you, and I’m with you always.”

Evangelicals have often been that wing of the church that has taken that Great Commission very seriously. We’re not to hunker down here with our own. We’re to keep getting out and trying to grab them, and baptize them, and teach them. Well, I wonder if sometimes—in leaning over to speak to the world—we fall in; we give away too much. It’s the kind of interpretative battle that is over before we get started because the world says to us, “Hey, you’ve got to use our language before we’ll talk to you.”

Well, if that’s what the world says, then it’s got a problem. That isn’t our problem; that’s the world’s problem. But I think a lot of preaching today acts like it’s addressed to people outside the church, to people who have never heard, to people who need to be enticed toward the Christian faith.

And indeed, there is legitimately that kind of preaching—apologetic or evangelistic preaching.

But I’m kind of concerned about what we say to those people who say: “Yeah, I’d like to follow Jesus. Here I am. Give me the stuff.”

I wonder what we then give these converts. I’m not sure we take seriously that they’re baptized, that they are being washed, that they are being born again, that they are being detoxified. How would we do that? The only way we do that is we give them a peculiar speech, the speech of the baptized, where we talk funny about the world.

So when I stand up and say “like Caesar,” or “like Bill Clinton,” or “like Bill Gates,” the world doesn’t know that that is a negative thing to say. I mean, these are not our favorite people. But to know why Christians are so negative about politicians and rich people, you’ve got to kind of know the story.

Christians have a story. And people who use peculiar speech are those who have been formed by this peculiar story of Jesus Christ.

J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 3 1

TRAIN UP A CHILD | Becoming People of the Word in a Culture o f I m a g e s

How the Bombarding I TV Guide published a short manifesto—actually, an advertisement by ABC—on the goodness of television, just in case anyone doubted it.

For years the pundits, moralists and self-righteous, self-appointed preservers of our culture have told us that television is bad. They’ve stood high on their soapbox and looked condescendingly on our innocuous pleasure….

Well, television is not the evil destroyer of all that is right in this world. In fact, and we say this with all the disdain we can muster for the elitists who purport otherwise—TV is good.

TV binds us together. It makes us laugh.

Makes us cry. Why, in the span of ten years, TV brought us the downfall of an American president, one giant step for mankind and the introduction of Farrah Fawcett as one of “Charlie’s Angels.” Can any other medium match TV for its immediacy, its impact, its capacity to entertain?1 Indeed, no one can dispute television’s unrivaled immediacy, impact, and entertainment capabilities.

But it is exactly these features that make it a potent agent of truth decay in postmodernity. Television is an unreality appliance that dominates our mentali-

ty. We then take this unreality mentality and impose on the rest of the real world. That is, we (mis) understand the world in terms of the mentality inherent to the form of communication that is television.

In my writing, I have distinguished between postmodernity as a truth-decaying social condition and postmodernism as a truth-decaying philosophy, as well as emphasizing that these reinforce each other in various ways. One primary engine or dynamo for truth decay is the cultural system of television. I will highlight five ways in which television contributes to the loss of truth, and then give three practical suggestions for overcoming these effects.

Television seldom, if ever, directly addresses postmodernist philosophy (or any other philosophy). However, its very nature contributes to a loss of truth by reinforcing certain crucial themes in postmodernism. Television has become a commercial and cultural institution in American life; as such, it is unproblematic to the vast majority of Americans and, therefore, highly influential.

Theologian Jacques Ellul is right that “Television acts less by the creation of clear notions and precise opinions and more by enveloping us in a haze.”

Undermine the P 3 2 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

by DOUGLAS S. GROOTHUIS

Images of TV Culture New York University professor Neil Postman captures our sad situation: “Television has achieved the status of a ‘meta-medium’—an institution that directs not only our knowledge of the world, but our knowledge of the ways of knowing as well.”2 While many have noticed—and object to—the content of television fare (too much sex, violence, anti-Christian material, etc.), television’s “nature as a medium” is largely ignored, thereby granting it a kind of epistemological immunity from criticism.

Yet Scripture calls us to “test everything. Hold fast to the good. Avoid every kind of evil.” (1 Thess.

5:21–22).

The medium of communication matters since it always shapes the messages it carries, and these mediated messages shape us. A novel and a television series based on a novel differ in crucial ways, for example. Therefore, any medium should be exegeted to determine its nature, function, and structure.

Only in this way can we ascertain what it does well, what it cannot do, and what it does poorly. This is what Marshall McLuhan meant by his hyperbolic slogan, “the medium is the message.” Taking his cue from the discussion of idolatry in Psalm 115, McLuhan also remarked that, “We become what we behold” (see also Ps. 1). When we become habituated to a particular form of communication, our mentalities and sensibilities bear its mark.

Power of Words J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 3 3

A raft of studies from several decades indicate that Americans consume vast quantities of television—an average of about four to five hours per day, with many taking in much more. Televisions are also becoming nearly omnipresent, imperialistically colonizing automobiles, airports, restaurants, classrooms, bars, day care centers, and computers.3 They are even being placed on some gasoline pumps. Once, while attempting to explain a family member’s stroke-like symptoms in the “triage” area of a hospital emergency room, I found myself competing with a blaring television. After I turned it off (without asking permission), the attendant behind the check-in desk huffily turned it back on. Nearly one hundred percent of American homes have at least one television, and three out of four have more than one. Eighty-four percent of households have at least one VCR. Many have elaborate home theaters costing thousands of dollars. And half of all Americans say they watch too much television!

The Image Over the Word: Discourse in Distress hat is there about the nature of the television medium that shapes its message?

First, television emphasizes the moving image over written and spoken language. It is imagedriven, image-saturated, and image-controlled. This is precisely what television does that books, recordings, and pictures cannot do; it brings us visual action. However, when the image dominates the word, rational discourse ebbs. We are attracted to the incandescent screen just as medievals were attracted to stain glass windows; as McLuhan noted, the light comes through them as opposed to light being shown on them (as with books and photographs and other objects in the physical world).

These technologically animated images move and combine in ways unknown only a few decades ago, thus increasing their power to mesmerize.

Ellul observes that the “visionary reality of connected images cannot tolerate critical discourse, explanation, duplication, or reflection”—all rational activities required for separating truth from error. Cognitive pursuits “presuppose a certain distance and withdrawal from the action, whereas images require that I continually be involved in the action.” The images must keep the word in check, keep it humiliated, since “the word produces disenchantment with the image; the word strips it of its hypnotic and magical power.”4 Words can expose an image as false or misleading, as when we read in a magazine that a television program “re-created” an event that never occurred. Novelist Larry Woiwode further develops the implications:

W

The mechanics of the English language have

3 4 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

been tortured to pieces by TV. Visual, moving images—which are the venue of television—can’t be held in the net of careful language. They want to break out. They really have nothing to do with language. So language, grammar and rhetoric have become fractured.5 When the image overwhelms and subjugates the word, the ability to think, write, and communicate in a linear and logical fashion is undermined.

Television’s images have their immediate effect on us, but that effect is seldom to cause us to pursue their truth or falsity. Television’s images are usually shorn of their overall context and meaning, and are reduced to factoids (at best). Ideas located within a historical and logical setting are replaced by impressions, emotions, and stimulations. While images communicate narrative stories and quantitative information well (such as graphs and charts), words are required for more linear and logical communication. Propositions and beliefs can be true or false; images in themselves do not have truth value. The persuasiveness of the image on television led media theorist Tony Schwartz to claim that truth is now an outmoded concept, since it belongs to a time when print communication was dominant.

Media critic Malcolm Muggeridge understood this well: The one thing television can’t do is express ideas…. There is a danger in translating life into an image, and that is what television is doing. In doing it, it is falsifying life. Far from the camera’s being an accurate recorder of what is going on, it is the exact opposite.

It cannot convey reality nor does it even want to.6 The images of television may be arresting, alluring, and entrancing, but, they are prefabricated presentations that shrink events into factoids or create outright falsehoods. This is a feature of the very nature of television, as theologian Francis Schaeffer pointed out: TV manipulates viewers by its normal way of operating. Many viewers seem to assume that when they have seen something on TV, they have seen it with their own eyes….

But this is not so, for one must never forget that every television minute has been edited.

The viewer does not see the event. He sees … an edited symbol or an edited image of that event. An aura and illusion of objectivity

and truth is built up, which could not be totally the case even if the people shooting the film were completely neutral.7 The triumph of the televised image over the word contributes to the depthlessness of postmodern sensibilities. Reality becomes the image, whether or not that image corresponds to any objective state of affairs—and we are not challenged to engage in this analysis. The above-mentioned ABC piece of propaganda advises us to “celebrate our cerebral-free nonactivity.” As a consequence of such nonactivity, truth suffers, and truthfulness is downplayed if not ignored. Joshua Meyrowitch, a professor of communication, complains that his students “tend to have an imagebased standard of truth. If I ask, ‘What evidence supports your view or contradicts it?’ they look at me as if I came from another planet.” This is because “It’s very foreign to them to think in terms of truth, logic, consistency and evidence.” Such oblivion exists not only in the case of media students, but is true of culture at large, as cultural critic Kenneth Myers stresses: “A culture that is rooted more in images than in words will find it increasingly difficult to sustain any broad commitment to any truth, since truth is an abstraction requiring language.”8 In postmodernism, truth and logic are mere social constructions, which can be deconstructed and reconstructed at whim. Television gives a powerful object lesson in these notions of truth, and so furthers truth decay in the souls of millions for hours every day.

Muggeridge commented that when the Israelites worshipped the golden calf instead of waiting for the Word from Moses, they attempted to televise (or make visible) God. Biblically speaking, God commands that we not make graven images or attempt to televise the invisible. In the beginning was the Word, not the image (John 1:1).

God gave us a book, and spoken word from incarnate preachers. When, in any culture, written language is marginalized by television, biblical truth begins to lose its vibrancy. Christians must restore the primacy and power of the Word as an antidote to truth decay by television.

The Loss of Self: Truth Removed econd, along with the displacing of the word by the flickering television image comes a loss of authentic selfhood, whereby the self is deemed as a moral agent inexorably enmeshed in a moral and spiritual universe. Instead, the self is filled with a welter of images and factoids and sound bites lacking moral and intellectual adhesion. The self becomes ungrounded and fragment-

S

ed by its experiences of television. This matches the postmodernist abandonment of a unified and normative self that is disciplined and directed by transcendent truths.

By contrast, a love of serious reading orients the self toward grand narratives and abstract truths— such as the holiness and mysteries of God, moral truth, the pursuit of virtue, the dangers of vice, immortality—and these truths place the self in a position of rectitude before them. People whose sensibilities and worldview are adjusted through serious reading tend to live by what they have read.

They live in conversation with great minds, even when they are not reading. As Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing noted, “It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds.” Watchers of television, on the contrary, simply engage in the imitation of proliferating images and multiple personae. Author Barry Sanders sounds this grim theme: “With the disappearance of the book goes that most precious instrument for holding modern society together, the internalized text on which is inscribed conscience and remorse, and, most significant of all, the self.”9 Postmodern illiterates live their lives through a series of television characters (better: shadows of characters), and changing channels becomes a model for the self’s manner of experience and its mode of being. Moral and spiritual anchorage is lost. The self is left to try on a pastiche of designer personae in no particular order and for no particular reason.

The reading of great literature, on the other hand, immerses us in realities beyond ourselves, although not unrelated to our selves. But this life of reading requires an existential participation not permitted by television, which simply sweeps us along at it own pace. One cannot muse over a television program the way one ponders a character in William Shakespeare or C. S. Lewis, or a Blaise Pascal parable, or a line from a T. S. Eliot poem, such as “But our lot crawls between dry ribs/to keep its metaphysics warm.” No one on television could utter such a line seriously. It would be “bad television”—too abstract, too poetic, too deep, just not entertaining. As such, a serious selfhood—in which the self knows itself as a unique actor in a great cosmic drama that is larger than one’s self—is rendered impossible. Inwardness and self-reflection are replaced by an outward compulsion for increasingly more mediated experiences that draw one increasingly further away from the essence of one’s soul and its ultimate, eternal fulfillment. As fallen beings, we have always been mysterious to ourselves, but television can only exacerbate our sad stupidity. Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard per-

J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 3 5

ceived that the self is quite easy to lose in the ways of the world:

gain the whole world (televised for all to see) and forfeit our souls (Matt. 16:26)?

About such a thing as [the self] not much fuss is made in the world; for a self is the thing the world is least apt to inquire about, and the thing of all things the most dangerous for man to let people notice that he has it. The greatest danger, that of losing one’s own self, may pass off as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, that of an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc., is sure to be noticed.10

A “Peek-A-Boo World”: Discontinuity and Fragmentation hird, television relentlessly displays a pseudo-world of discontinuity and fragmentation. Its images are not only intrinsically inferior to spoken and written discourse in communicating matters of meaning and substance, but the images appear and disappear and reappear without a proper rational context. An attempt at a sobering news story about slavery in the Sudan is followed by a lively advertisement for Disneyland, followed by an appeal to purchase panty hose that will make any woman irresistible, etc., ad nauseum.

This is what Postman aptly calls the “peek-a-boo world”—a visual environment lacking coherence, consisting of ever-shifting, artificially linked images. In order to detect a logical contradiction, “statements and events [must] be perceived as interrelated aspects of a continuous and coherent

Through television, oblivion to self is amplified and broadcast globally and ceaselessly. As a consequence, the self is destabilized, deracinated, and hollowed out; it becomes ungrounded, weightless, truthless, opaque to itself—and it likes it that way, because no alternative is available (on television).

Postmodernism prevails; the loss of the self in relation to truth is celebrated, not mourned, for “TV is good.” But, as Jesus intoned, what is it worth if we

T

Charles Hodge on

[I

tis]ascripturaltruththatthechildrenofbelieversarethechildrenofGod;asbeingwithinhiscovenant withtheirparents,hepromisestothemhisSpirit;hehasestablishedaconnectionbetweenfaithful parentaltrainingandthesalvationofchildren,ashehasbetweenseed-timeandharvest,diligenceand riches,educationandknowledge.Innoonecaseisabsolutecertaintysecuredorthesovereigntyof Godexcluded.Butinall,thedivinelyappointedconnectionbetweenmeansandend,isobvious.

That this connection is not more apparent, in the case of parents and children, is due in great measure, to the sad deficiency in parental fidelity. If we look over the Christian world, how few nominally Christian parents even pretend to bring up their children for God. In a great majority of cases the attainment of some worldly object is avowedly made the end of education; and all the influences to which a child is exposed are designed and adapted to make him a man of the world. And even within the pale of evangelical churches, it must be confessed, there is a great neglect as to this duty. …We of course recognize the native depravity of children, the absolute necessity of their regeneration by the Holy Spirit, the inefficiency of all means of grace without the blessing of God. But what we think is plainly taught in Scripture, what is reasonable in itself, and confirmed by the experience of the church, is, that early, assiduous, and faithful religious culture of the young, especially by believing parents, is the great means of their salva-

3 6 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

tion. A child is born in a Christian family, its parents recognize it as belonging to God and included in his covenant. In full faith that the promise extends to their children as well as to themselves, they [give] their child to him in baptism. From its earliest infancy it is the object of tender solicitude, and the subject of many believing prayers. The spirit which reigns around it is the spirit, not of the world, but of true religion. The truth concerning God and Christ, the way of salvation and of duty, is inculcated from the beginning, and as fast as it can be comprehended.

The child is sedulously guarded as far as possible from all corrupting influence, and subject to those which tend to lead him to God. He is constantly taught that he stands in a peculiar relation to God, as being included in his covenant and baptized in his name; that he has in virtue of that relation a right to claim God as his Father, Christ as his Saviour, and the Holy Ghost as his sanctifier; and assured that God will recognize that claim and receive him as his child, if he is faithful to his baptismal vows. The child thus trained grows up in the fear of God; his earliest experiences are more or less religious; he keeps aloof from open sins; strives to keep his conscience clear in the sight of God, and to make the divine will the guide of his conduct. When he comes to maturity, the nature of the covenant of grace is fully explained to him, he intelligently and deliberately assents to it, publicly confesses

context.”11 When the context is one of no context, when fragmentation rules, the very idea of contradiction vanishes. Without any historical or logical context, the very notion of intellectual or moral coherence becomes unsustainable on television.

In reflecting on an essay by Walter Benjamin, Jerry Mander discusses the implications of the detachment of image from context with respect to artistic values.

The disconnection from inherent meaning, which would be visible if image, object and context were still merged, leads to a similarly disconnected aesthetics in which all uses for images are equal. All meaning in art and also human acts becomes only what is invested in to them. There is no inherent meaning in anything. Everything, even war, is capable of becoming art.12 Since postmodernism thrives on fragmentation, incoherence and, ultimately, meaninglessness as

modes of being and acting (since there is no God, no objective reality, and no universal rationality to provide unity to anything), this facet of television serves postmodernist ends quite well.

The biblical conception of truth contradicts this surrender to incoherence, since truth is a noncontradictory, unified whole, and because God’s universal plan proceeds in a linear (if often mysterious and unpredictable) fashion. The prologue to Luke’s Gospel would have made bad television, since Luke claims that he “carefully investigated everything from the beginning,” such that he could “write an orderly account” of Jesus’ life, so his original reader, Theophilus, might “know the certainty of the things [he had] been taught” (Luke 1:3–4).

Pathologies of Velocity: No Time for Truth ourth, the increasingly rapid pace of television’s images makes careful evaluation impossible and undesirable for the viewer, thus rendering determinations of truth and falsity difficult if not impossible. With sophisticated video tech-

F

n Christian Nurture himself to be a worshipper and follower of Christ, and acts consistently with his engagements. This is no fancy sketch. Such an experience is not uncommon in actual life. It is obvious that in such cases it must be difficult both for the person himself and for those around him, to fix on the precise period when he passed from death unto life. And even in cases, where there is more of a conflict, where the influence of early instruction has met with greater opposition, and where the change is more sudden and observable, the result, under God, is to be attributed to this parental training.

What we contend for then, is, that this is the appointed, the natural, the normal and ordinary means by which the children of believers are made truly the children of God. And consequently this is the means which should be principally relied upon, and employed, and that the saving conversion of our children should in this way be looked for and expected. It certainly has the sanction of God. He has appointed and commanded precisely this early assiduous and faithful training of the young. These words, saith the Lord, which I command you this day, shall be in thine hearts: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou risest up. Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. As this

method of religious training has the sanction of a divine command, so it has also the benefit of his special promise. Success in the use of this means is the very thing promised to parents in the covenant into which they are commanded to introduce their children. God, in saying that he will be their God, gives them his Spirit, and renews their hearts, and in connecting this promise with the command to bring them up for him, does thereby engage to render such training effectual. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it, is moreover the express assurance of his word. There is also a natural adaptation in all means of God’s appointment, to the end they are intended to accomplish. There is an appropriate connection between sowing and reaping, between diligence and prosperity, truth and holiness, religious training and the religious life of children.

Charles Hodge (1797–1878), professor of theology at Princeton for most of his life, is considered by scholars to have been among the most influential thinkers in nineteenth century America. Excerpted from Essay and Reviews by Charles Hodge (New York: Robert Carter and Bros., 1857), 307–311.

J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 3 7

nologies, scenes change at hypervelocities, and become the visual equivalent of caffeine or amphetamines. The human mind was not designed by its creator to accommodate to these visual speeds, and so the sensorium suffers from the pathologies of velocity. This means that one simply absorbs hundreds and thousands of rapidly changing images, with little notion of what they mean or whether they correspond to any reality outside of themselves.

The pace of this assault of images is entirely imposed upon us; it bears little if any resemblance to reality.

As Ellul notes, “The person who puts the images in sequences chooses for you; he condenses or stretches what becomes reality itself for us. We are utterly obliged to follow this rhythm.”13 This, of course, is the exact opposite of what happens in reading.

Habituation to such imposed velocities tends to make people intellectually impatient and easily bored with anything that is slow moving and undramatic—such as reading books (particularly thoughtful ones), experiencing nature in the raw, and engaging in face-to-face conversations with fellow human beings. Hence, the apprehension of difficult and demanding truths suffers and withers.

The pace of television’s agenda disallows edification, understanding, and reflection. Boredom always threatens and must be defended against at all costs. The overstuffed and overstimulated soul becomes out of sync with God, nature, others, and with itself. It cannot discern truth; it does not want to. This apathetic attitude makes the apprehension and application of truth totally irrelevant.

On the other hand, the godly art of truthfulness requires a sense of pacing one’s senses and thoughts according to the subject matter before one. As Augustine said, “The peace … of the rational soul [is] the harmony of knowledge and action.” The acquisition of knowledge (warranted belief in what is true), requires intellectual patience and fortitude.

One must linger on perplexing notions, work them through, compare them to other ideas, and attempt to reach conclusions that imply wise and rational actions. Before God, one must shut up, listen, and be willing to revolutionize one’s life accordingly (see Eccles. 5:1–7). God’s Word—“Be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10)—simply cannot be experienced through television, where stillness and silence are only technical mistakes called dead air. Television thus becomes a strategic weapon in the arsenal of postmodernist cynicism and apathy.

The Entertainment Imperative: Amusement Triumphant astly, television promotes truth decay by its incessant entertainment imperative.

Amusement trumps all other values and takes

L

3 8 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

captive every topic. Every subject—whether war, religion, business, law, or education—must be presented in a lively, amusing, or stimulating manner.

The best way to receive information interpersonally—through the “talking head”—is the worst way according to television values; it simply fails to entertain (unless a comedy routine is in process). If it fails to entertain, boredom results, and the yawning watcher switches channels to something more captivating. The upshot is that any truth that cannot be transposed into entertainment is discarded by television. Moreover, even off the air, people now think that life (and even Christian ministry) must be entertaining at all costs. One pastor of a megachurch advises preachers that sermons should be roughly twenty minutes in length and must be “light and informal,” with liberal sprinklings of “humor and anecdotes.” Just like television, isn’t it?

The truth is that truth, and the most important truths, are often not entertaining. An entertainment mentality will insulate us from many hard but necessary truths. The concepts of sin, repentance, and hell, for instance, cannot be presented as entertaining without robbing them of their intrinsic meaning.14 Jesus, the prophets, and the apostles held the interest of their audience not by being amusing but by their zeal for God’s truth, however unpopular or uncomfortable it may have been.

They refused to entertain, but instead edified and convicted. It was nothing like television.

Becoming Untelevized: The People of Truth s Postman, Ellul, and other critics have noted, television is not simply an appliance or a business: It is a way of life and a mentality for approaching reality. As such, it amplifies and reinforces postmodernist themes of truth decay. Ellul is right: People are “being plunged into an artificial world which will cause them to lose their sense of reality and to abandon their search for truth.”15 To thwart television’s power, one must refuse its seductions. Television is good at some forms of entertainment but is very bad at helping us develop the habits of being that lead us deeper into truth for God’s sake and the sake of our own souls.

Mander does not overstate the cause when he claims that “Television effectively produces a new form of human being—less creative, less able to make subtle distinctions, speedier, and more interested in things…”16 Given this dire condition, some very practical steps can be taken to reverse television’s truth-decaying effects on the human being.

A

• Engage in a TV-free fast for at least one week and note the changes produced in your thoughts and attitudes. Discuss these effects with those closest

to you and/or record them in a journal. I require students in one of my courses to engage in a media fast of some sort, and most pick television.

They almost uniformly report that the fast revealed a level of attachment to the tube they did not expect. They did suffer some withdrawal at first. However, they later experienced a calming effect and a more contemplative attitude to life; they found more time for friends, family, and reading. When they went back to watching television, many were shocked to realize what they had not seen when they were habituated and desensitized to this medium: Most television programming is insipid, illicit, and idiotic.

• If either the will or the ability to go cold turkey is lacking, create instead TV-free zones and times. For instance, many watch television when they are physically or emotionally drained. This is the worst time to do so, since television decreases intellectual vigilance and is not truly relaxing. Therefore, one might make the two hours after returning from work a TV-free zone.

The same could be done for the two hours before going to bed. Instead of having the television be the focus of the living or family room (with all chairs drawn in its direction), place the television in another, less-frequented room so that one has to go out of the way to watch it.

This breaks the television reflex and leaves the way open to better things, truer things.

• Replace television watching with truth-enhancing activities, particularly reading thoughtful books. The desire to read and the ability to read well suffer under the ruthless regime of television, as do writing skills. Therefore, truth suffers. The very act of reading demands a deep level of intellectual engagement and bestows tremendous pleasure and benefit for the faithful.

We watch television; we read books. Few have described the truth-conducive nature of print and reading as well as Postman: Whenever language is the principle medium for communication—especially language controlled by the rigors of print—an idea, a fact, a claim is the inevitable result….

[Print] is serious because meaning demands to be understood. A written sentence calls upon its author to say something, upon its reader to know the import of what is said. And when an author and reader are struggling with semantic meaning, they are engaged in the most serious challenge to the intellect. This is especially

the case with the act of reading, for authors are not always trustworthy. They lie, they become confused, they over-generalize, they abuse logic and, sometimes, common sense. The reader must come armed, in a serious state of intellectual readiness.17 The mental act of reading is not passive, but active; it engages the mind and the imagination in wondrous ways not possible through television— in ways that are, in fact, discouraged by television.

Through reading, truth becomes possible and knowable. The discipline of wresting meaning from texts and assessing their truth is invaluable for people who aspire to “speak the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15). Truth is restored by attending to the Good Book—whose authors are trustworthy, but not always easy to understand (2 Pet. 3:16)—and to good books, which require the kind of cognitive criticism Postman describes (Phil. 4:8).

The author of Hebrews chastised his or her readers because of their slowness and laziness in learning important biblical truths, which resulted in spiritual ignorance and immaturity. In our truth-decayed day, when television hinders the acquisition, internalization, and application of so much truth, we should transpose this ancient warning to apply to ourselves.

We have much to say about this [Jesus’ priesthood], but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. (Heb. 5:11–14) Neutralizing the acids of truth decay means refusing the enticements of one of its chief postmodern agents—television. ■ Douglas S. Groothuis (Ph.D., University of Oregon) is associate professor of philosophy at Denver Seminary. This article is adapted from his book, Truth Decay: Defending Christianity Against the Challenges of Postmodernism (InterVarsity Press, 2000).

J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 3 9

TR AI N UP A CHILD | Becoming People of the Word in a Culture of Ima g e s

Applying God’s Word to All of Life?

The Use and Abuse of the Bible he motto that appears on the bulletin cover at my Delaware congregation reads: “Applying God’s Word to all of life.” It sounds very good, but it needs refinement. We hold that the Word of God is addressed to the whole man and to the whole of life. The problem is that there are a number of fallacies that can easily crop up. If followed, they lead down superficially attractive but misleading bypaths. We need to see what these traps are so we can avoid them.

T

The Liberal Fallacy irst, let’s dispose of an obvious problem. There are those who hold that the Bible is unreliable. They pick holes in it. Some claim it is patriarchal and against women. It follows from this that there is little point in applying it to this or that aspect of life. If it is less than reliable about God and salvation, even less so for matters of this world, so these people say. For them, statements such as Paul’s in 2 Timothy 3:16–17 are without force:

F

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

by R O B E RT L E T H A M 4 0 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

In contrast, Jesus and the apostles believed the Scriptures and lived according to their teaching.

Instead of calling on hosts of angels, Jesus was prepared to die on the cross to fulfill the Word of God. When I began work on my doctorate at the University of Aberdeen, I was given a study overlooking the five-hundred-year-old quadrangle. I shared it with an American. After a day or two (and I assure you there was no connection with my arrival) he told me he was abandoning his studies and returning home. He had intended to enter the ministry but realized he didn’t believe in Christianity after all; so he left. Now, I respect such a decision. He was honest and took a sensible view. Given his lack of faith, why should he waste his time in the Christian ministry?

However, there are many today who share that man’s unbelief but still occupy Christian pulpits.

There are many men and women who take a salary from Christian believers and spend their time undermining the Christian faith. They do not believe the Apostles’ Creed. For them, the Bible is simply a book of human religious insights—some are of value, but others are based on an outmoded patriarchal social system. Many in Protestant denominations even practice goddess worship. If any of you come into this category and persist in this attitude, there seems to me only one honest thing to do: Get out! You have no right to occupy a Christian pulpit. As Oliver Cromwell thundered to a recalcitrant Parliament: You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you! In the name of God, go!1 The Pietist Fallacy o much for the liberals. However, problems arise even with those who hold to the authority of Scripture. Firstly, there is what I term the pietist fallacy. By pietism here I mean the idea that God’s Word relates to purely spiritual matters. When it comes to questions of politics or science, it has nothing substantive to say. These, some claim, are purely secular matters. The Bible is not interested in them. It is given to teach us salvation and guide us to heaven, and no other questions are relevant.

Why is this a fallacy? At the deepest level, it misses the point that God created all things, and thus there is nothing outside his concern. In turn, Christ is the mediator of creation (e.g., Col. 1:15–20), for he created and sustains all things.

Abraham Kuyper once said that there is not a single square inch of this earth of which Christ cannot say, “This is mine.” The incarnation underlines the

S

point—the second person of the Trinity took to himself a complete human nature, body and soul.

So our salvation does not exist apart from the bodily Resurrection of Christ, and it is not complete apart from the resurrection of the body. You see, the problem with the pietist fallacy is it is based on an unbiblical dualism between spiritual and material, originally a Greek idea but one that has an ongoing life of its own. In consequence, those who take this position think that spirit is superior to matter.

The Fundamentalist Fallacy econdly, and from another angle, arises what I term the fundamentalist fallacy. I use these words in a different way than usual. What I mean here, in this context only, is the faulty notion that the Bible does pronounce on all of life and does so explicitly on all conceivable matters. In other words, it is omnicompetent. Thus, if you want to know how the universe was created, turn to the Bible. If you want to understand true science, study the early chapters of Genesis. If you need to know how frequently you should spank your child, do a detailed study of Proverbs. For anything and everything, all we really need is the Bible, a good concordance, and an ability to find a collection of Bible verses that addresses our topic.

This approach is helped to no end by copies of Scripture containing instructions as to where to turn in different situations. Are you sad? Turn to Psalm this or that. Are you depressed? Turn to this passage. Are you happy? Look at this verse. These are well-meaning attempts to help and encourage, but they create a mentality that treats the Word of God either as a command manual (where we have no option but to follow instructions) or merely as an answer to our personal problems.

This fallacy has spawned a number of damaging consequences. For science, all that’s needed is to read Genesis 1 (not Job 38 mind you, we don’t want anything that questions our own exegesis, do we?), to be sure we have the approved system of interpretation and—presto!—we, too, can create science. Forget about geology, of course, it doesn’t conform to the truth as we know it. The most fatuous comment I ever heard from a pulpit came from a lay preacher who declaimed, “We learn from Scripture that a lion roars after its prey.”

As for child-raising, many want exact and precise details regarding how to treat their child in this or that situation. There are self-styled Christian child-raising experts who provide what is needed, complete with Bible verses to back it up. Should your toddler have this piece of furniture or not?

When should the infant nap? How should you load your kids into the car? Just turn to the Word

S

J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 4 1

of God: It has all the answers you will ever need.

On a wider political and social level, some say thoroughgoing instruction for law-making and for economic life is given us in the Mosaic civil law. All we need today is to take that law and drop it into our world, and God will bless us greatly. Detailed laws and penalties, taxes, interest rates, property law, and more, it’s all there. There is no escaping it, in political discussion as in literally everything else one can think of, the best book to read is the Bible.

fore, rather adapts his discourse to common usage … for he does not call us up into heaven, he only proposes things which lie open before our eyes.2

The Westminster Confession of Faith says the Bible is utterly sufficient for salvation, faith, and life: “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 In the Bible, all roads lead to Christ, to his cross, to his resurrection. The Bible be deduced from Scripture” (1:6). In short, while the surely addresses certain questions of creation, politics, and family life, but it does Bible addresses certain questions of creation, politics, not do so exhaustively. Rather it paints these with a broad brush—for its central and family life, it paints these with a broad brush for its concern is our salvation. central concern is our salvation. In this, the pietists were Where the pietist confines Scripture to an inter- right. On the other hand, the advocates of the funest in the purely spiritual, fundamentalists consider damentalist fallacy have a point in that Scripture the Bible to have the precise answers to each and does address a wide range of concerns. It speaks every question and dilemma we will ever face. All “of many things, of shoes and ships and sealing we need to do is to dig deeply and we will find the wax, of cabbages and kings.”3 Where this fundamentalist approach goes solution. This view is very common among conservative Christians. It sounds good, since it pur- wrong is in undermining the clear teaching of ports to have a high view of Scripture. It keeps its Scripture (in Genesis 1) on our God-given duty to followers in a secure, protective cocoon away from subdue the earth. In fact, in the very next chapter unbelieving scientists and others who may disturb we find Adam engaging in a primitive form of science, in classifying the animals. God does not their faith. It provides a sense of certainty.

However, all is not so clear as it seems. Calvin hand us everything on a plate. He expects us to has some very sage comments in his commentary think, to work, to labor. He does not treat us as on Genesis, on the first chapter. He writes that children who are to be told everything they must God accommodated himself to our condition, do. He expects us to grow up. If the fundamendescribing the creation in terms the ignorant and talist view were true, we would be like automatons unlearned could understand. He underlines the following some preset command manual. As the integrity of scientific activity. From our angle it Confession states in the section previously quoted, seems that the moon is much larger than Saturn, some things are set down expressly, but there are a but if we ask the astronomers they tell us that vast range of matters that are not.

Saturn is much larger than the moon. Thus, if we want to learn astronomy we should go elsewhere. The Solution he Bible does address all things.

Genesis was not written for this purpose.

Sometimes it does so directly and specifically. The Ten Commandments are an Moses wrote in a popular style things which, obvious case—together with all they entail. The without instruction, all ordinary persons, commandments effectively restate and reinforce endued with common sense, are able to God’s creation ordinances—marriage and the famunderstand; but astronomers investigate with ily, work and rest, life, property, personal reputagreat labor whatever the sagacity of the tions, and, over all, the duty to love and worship human mind can comprehend…. [Moses] God. The great moral exhortations of Old and chiefly chose those subjects which would be New Testaments take the Decalogue and apply it intelligible to all. If the astronomer inquires to new situations and new times. respecting the actual dimensions of the stars, However, the Bible mostly addresses day-tohe will find the moon to be less than Saturn; day affairs only indirectly. It does spell out the but this is something abstruse, for to the boundaries of right conduct with great clarity. But sight it appears differently. Moses, there-

T

4 2 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

there is a huge area, and a host of matters within these boundary fences, on which it is silent. This silence is not a silence of indifference or lack of interest. It points to areas in which we are given discretion and the responsibility to exercise the wisdom God gives us.

In other words, the Bible provides a framework—better, a window—through which we view the world around us, ourselves, and other people.

By looking through this window we will view the panorama appropriately. For example, it teaches that the world is created, and thus contingent. It points to God as the creator of all things. Over the course of biblical revelation, it impresses on us that God is triune and that our own distinct personality, since we are made in his image, echoes his on a creaturely level. It teaches that we are put here to rule the earth. It shows that God gave his law to regulate human life. The creation ordinances are reaffirmed in the Ten Commandments. In so doing it teaches that we have a moral responsibility toward God and other people—to their life, property, marriage, and reputations, and that we are to worship God in the way he chooses. It teaches that the human race is alienated from God, and under his wrath, due to sin. It declares that only through Christ, the eternal Son of God made flesh, can our relation with God be repaired.

From this window, science can take place. The scientist will go elsewhere than to Genesis 1 in his theoretical and empirical work but in some way with the assumptions Genesis 1 provides. Indeed, where a scientist does not expressly share these assumptions, it is only by some axiomatic basis derived from the Judeo-Christian worldview that pure science as we have known it can even occur.

Only a cosmos that is orderly, that displays rationality, that has unity-in-diversity and diversity-inunity can produce on the human level a rational investigative science. Postmodernism’s denial of objective truth spells the end of science.

Again, the freedom and responsibility this window provides is the basis for a corresponding balance of freedom and responsibility in society. It is no accident that the rule of law emerged in specifically Christian contexts that were grounded on the Word of God. And it is where this worldview is abandoned that we see the rule of law increasingly under threat. The great philosopher of science, Michael Polanyi, argued that freedom under law is utterly necessary for science to exist and flourish.4 Now an important point to make is that all this can only truly exist where the holy Trinity is worshipped. Only then, when the human mind is saturated—soaked through—with the recognition that the God we worship is one and yet lives

in three persons can an acceptance of human persons emerge and can an appreciation of the world in both its unity and diversity flourish. To sum up, the Bible doesn’t solve every question for us, but it gives us the tools to do the job ourselves, under the sovereign direction of the Holy Spirit. Only then can the central theme of Scripture be properly appreciated. Paul puts it in a nutshell: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15).

In England, all roads lead to London for “he who is tired of London is tired of life, for there is in London all that life has to offer.”5 Dr. Johnson was right—and he still is. Far more so even than that, in the Bible all roads lead to Christ, to his Cross, to his Resurrection. The fundamentalist position misses, for it can obscure the wood for the trees amidst all the heated polemic on recondite matters (days of creation), on theories of child-raising, on the application of biblical law, or other issues.

Because all roads lead to Christ and to the triune God, we must read everything else on which it speaks—the whole of life—in this connection.

Unless we do, we misread them. The Bible can be considered to be a bicycle wheel: All points on the rim of the wheel are connected by spokes to the hub. So all the parts of the Bible, and so the whole of life, find their focus, their meaning, in Christ.

All parts of life, and every aspect of it, are connected in some way to the holy Trinity. “In him we live and move and have our being.”6 Clearly, this is a topic beyond the reach of a single article: It is the task of a lifetime! Let us ask the gracious and wise God for the wisdom we need. ■

Robert Letham (Ph.D., University of Aberdeen) is Senior Minister at Emmanuel Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, Delaware. He has books forthcoming on the Lord’s Supper and the doctrine of assurance. Dr. Letham’s sermons are available online at www.accradio.com.

J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 4 3

TR AI N UP A CHILD | Becoming People of the Word in a Culture of Ima g e s

The New England Primer: Revisiting Colonial America’s Best-Seller little more than three hundred years ago, The New England Primer was introduced in Boston as a textbook for the instruction of the colony’s children, not only in the basics of the English language, but in the basics of Christian doctrine and Bible knowledge. This small volume served America as the primary text for elementary education until the dawn of the twentieth century. From the nation’s founders to its Civil War soldiers, from youths in rapidly burgeoning colonial cities to farm kids on the frontier, everyone would have been familiar with its lessons, and would have been expected to follow its fundamental moral tenets. It is not an exaggeration to observe that in the fabric of America, the Primer serves as a key, unifying thread for character formation and the literacy which was seen to be integral to responsible Christian citizenship.

A

The motivation for the Primer’s publication was the assumption that learning to read was crucial to a child’s ability to handle worldly responsibilities. But even more so, literacy was crucial to growth in knowledge of the Bible, to godly living, to the application of biblical principles to daily life. The Christian child who was part of society was also a child under God’s covenant of grace, and so was accountable for knowing the costs of sin, his need for repentance, and his duty to improve society as a member of the holy priesthood of all believers.

Whatever his calling, the child needed to be trained in righteousness, and simply could not glorify God and serve neighbor without the ability to read. There was no antithesis among America’s early settlers between religious and secular, or private and public life. Wherever Puritan culture reached in the colonies, it was thought that the

by R A C H E L S . S TA H L E 4 4 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

reign of Christ could not be extended without a biblically well-versed, disciplined community of believers who could understand sophisticated sermons and in turn articulate their faith in a sophisticated manner.

The contents of the Primer did not change significantly from its first publication by Benjamin Harris in 1690.1 The book opens with the hymn, “How Glorious Is Our Heavenly King,” by Isaac Watts, who also records a morning and an evening prayer in subsequent pages. Sections noting proper formation of vowels, consonants, and syllables follow. Consequently, numerous pages use pictures and rhymes to depict each letter of the alphabet.

For “B” the author advises, “Heaven to find, The Bible Mind.” “Christ crucify’d For sinners dy’d” illustrates the letter “C.” Throughout the alphabet are references to Elijah, final judgment, Job, Lot, Moses, Noah, Peter, Esther, Samuel, Timothy, and Xerxes, among others. But in this section, as in the rest of the volume, there is a keen emphasis upon human mortality. The letter “G” has this message: “As runs the [hour] Glass, Our Life doth pass.” The letter “Y,” meanwhile, observes, “While youth do che[e]r, Death may be near.”

The Primer proceeds with other alphabet lessons using biblical passages, notes the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed, and presents “Dr. Watts’s Cradle Hymn,” which compares the birth of Christ with that of the student. “‘Twas to save thee, child from dying, save my dear from burning flame, Bitter groans and endless crying, that thy blest Redeemer came. May’st thou live to know and fear him, trust and love him all thy days!” Some ten “Verses for Children” follow Watts’s writing, each of which places special emphasis upon knowledge of the Word of God. In the first, we read, “Though I am young a little one, If I can speak and go alone, Then I must learn to know the Lord, and learn to read his holy word.… When God that made me, calls me home, I must not stay I must be gone. He gave me life, and gives me breath, And he can save my soul from death, By JESUS CHRIST my only Lord, According to his holy word.” Elsewhere, “I In the burying place may see, Graves shorter there than I, From death’s arrest no age is free, Young children too must die.” And, “Eternal King I fear thy name, Teach me to know how frail I am, And when my soul must hence remove, Give me a mansion in thy love.”

A potent message to one reading the Primer is the advice from English Reformation martyr John Rogers, who was burned at the stake in London in 1554. Rogers shows concern that his readers avoid the blasphemies of “that arrant whore of ROME,” while caring for the poor, living modestly, and

being “never proud by any means.” Rogers concludes, “Our days begin with trouble here, our life is but a span, And cruel death is always near, so frail a thing is man.”

The Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647) occupies a substantial portion of the remainder of the Primer. This Reformed catechism has been subscribed to by Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists alike. Though at times criticized for its view of predestination, the Catechism surely is not out of place in the Primer. Protestants of all stripes would have been accustomed to a dogmatic approach to religious education, so that even a form of scholasticism for children would have been valued as strict discipline needed for a godly community. This mindset, coupled with the reality that many children did not live to see their tenth birthdays, demonstrates the perceived importance of encouraging the growth of childhood faith.

The Primer’s inclusion of the Westminster Shorter Catechism also reflects the typically Reformed concern for confessionalism and proper doctrinal teaching which Martin Luther had advocated in his Small Catechism of 1529. His concern in that age was to protect children from Roman Catholic and Aristotlean teachings and to produce a guideline through which they might be instructed for confirmation. John Calvin followed suit by writing a catechism parents could use to teach their offspring sound biblical ideas at home; his Institutes served a comparable purpose for adults. The Scots Confession (1560), Heidelberg Catechism (1563), and Belgic Confession (1566) all represent efforts to maintain orthodoxy while presenting the basics of the Gospel message to the up-and-coming generation of Christians. While children were accountable before God to understand and live out the law written on their hearts, their parents, pastors, and teachers were accountable for teaching them well. The Primer and its catechetical equivalents were attempts at responsible parenting; they also served as strong bonds which unified Reformed religious culture across the Atlantic.

That very religious culture held the belief that the word, whether written or oral, possessed a power which could transform a soul, and transform society. That word was significantly more powerful when it was the Word of God, the proclamation of the living Word Jesus Christ, who alone could redeem the sinner and grant him eternal life.

When Johannes Gutenberg shifted the capacity for popular catechesis from oral tradition to written record, the power of that Word was suddenly and dramatically available to everyone. Not only could everyone read the Bible for oneself, he or she could also learn Christian doctrine and theology,

J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 4 5

between sermons.

While the Primer does teach basic theology and presents numerous brief biblical quotations, it was to the child studying it a concrete symbol of the disciplined, structured Christian life. The practical energies in one’s Increase Mather. Portrait by John van der Spriett, calling, his medi1688. MHS image number 1442. Note that tations, prayers, Mather’s collar is made to look like an open book. and worship, were direct outgrowths of this inheritance to him by his parents, teachers, and ministers through the Primer.

After the Westminster Shorter Catechism, it is a natural progression to John Cotton’s catechism, “Spiritual Milk for American Babes, Drawn Out of the Breasts of Both Testaments, for Their Souls’ Nourishment.” Cotton (1585–1652), having emigrated from Britain to Boston’s First Church in 1633, was the premier preacher of his era. His cat-

cepts such as self-esteem and actualization.

Modern students may be taught about the perspectives various religions espouse, but are not taught the value of grasping onto faith in Christ as the only means of deliverance from self-destructive sin.

And it is the exception, not the rule, for religious belief to be seen as the foundation of one’s personal and public life; indeed, the idea of morally grounded citizenship and service has been replaced by a selfish consumer identity that contributes to society only to the extent that that contribution benefits personal fulfillment. Nevermind the decline in valuation of linguistic competency or even eloquence. The Primer is for us a symbol of how far our culture needs to climb to espouse once again principles of absolute truth, the beauty of the word, sinfulness and redemption, personal and corporate accountability, servanthood, and humility in the face of mortality.

Difficult as it is to conceive of the Primer again being used in the United States, the book still stands as a marvelous resource for Christian children. I personally found it to be a refreshing read, one which reminds us of our desperate need for the grace of God in Jesus Christ. As kids today are often distracted with soccer games, music lessons, and with cultural messages that glorify sexuality, greed, “It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds.” and rebellion against authority, asking them to take a few —William Ellery Channing moments to read in clear, concise terms the fundamentals of Christian faith will bring a welcome respite in echism focuses squarely on justification by grace peaceful truth. Perhaps the very novelty of a text through faith in Christ and permits enjoyment of which was once taken for granted can stir young the gift. For Cotton, education of any sort was an hearts to sincere belief; indeed, there is no other integral part of being human, since we are created book quite like it. ■ to live in society, in covenant with others and with God. The educated person most fully participates Rachel S. Stahle (Ph.D., Boston University) completed her in human society, for he learns how to live and first year of teaching at Quincy University, Quincy, Illinois, what to believe, and cannot make enduring contri- and is a staff member at the First Presbyterian Church in that butions to the world without that knowledge. By city. She is currently working on a book discussing human means of a question-and-answer format, Cotton suffering and continues her studies on the theology of Jonathan teaches fundamental concepts about God, sin, the Edwards.

Decalogue, Jesus Christ as Redeemer, humility, faith, prayer, the Church, and the Sacraments of baptism, and the Lord’s Supper.

Cotton grimly ends his catechism, and the Primer, with “A Dialogue between Christ, Youth, and the Devil.” Since the reality of damnation is so rarely taught today even in American churches, it is mind-boggling to imagine these common lessons among children just over a century ago. Further, instruction about human mortality might today raise many eyebrows, given the popularity of con-

4 6 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

F F

R O

R

D

E I

A

L

O

E G

U

E

| O

U

T

S S

I

D

P E

O

F

A O

U

R

C C

I

R

E C

L

E

S

Interview with Ellen T. Charry

Is Theology Practical?

Our "Free Space" column, unlike the feature articles, is the opportunity for those outside of our circles to respond. It doesn't imply editorial endorsement, but encourages the open exchange of ideas. —EDS MR: You weren’t always a theologian. How did you become interested in this vocation?

ELLEN T. CHARRY Margaret W. Harmon Associate Professor of Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary

EC: It is not exactly that I became interested in becoming a theologian. I started out studying religion. Religion is dangerous business. It generates a lot of problems. Religion has been the source of much violence and hatred throughout history, into our own day. I came to see that religions need constant care—pruning, feeding, and watering—to remain healthy and vibrant. In the course of studying religion, I started reading theology. By conviction, I believed that the theologian’s job is to help the tradition be the least dangerous possible.

However, in the course of reading, theology seeped under my skin, shaping me in its own image. In fact, I met God through studying theology. I came to see that the theologian’s job is also to help people to know and love God better. So, I revised my original conviction. One way the theologian helps the tradition be as healthy as possible is to help people know and love God in ways that enable her and the society in which she lives flourish spiritually, morally, intellectually, and socially.

As I read great theologians I saw that they were correcting one another’s mistakes and addressing the wrong or unclear turns that the tradition had taken before them. Karl Barth, for example, was correcting Calvin; Calvin was correcting Luther; Luther was addressing issues in the medieval tradition; Anselm was correcting Augustine, and so forth. Each later theologian had the advantage of seeing how the earlier theology worked out over the long haul. Theology is a living conversation between the living and the dead. I ended up joining that conversation.

When I first became “hooked” on theology my husband bought me a T-shirt that read “Junior Theologian.” When it was clear that I would set my life in this direction he bought a sweat(!)shirt that read “Serious Theologian.”

MR: Your recent book, By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine, announces from the outset that it arose “from reading classical texts of Christian theology slowly.” Can you explain this a bit?

EC: In reading St. Thomas Aquinas’s account of Christ’s passion, I saw that he explained tiny details of the story of Christ’s death with an eye toward the effect these otherwise insignificant details would have on the salvation of the world: he was lifted high upon a cross to clear the air; or, he stretched out his arms on the cross that all might come within the sweep of his saving embrace; or, the cross extends in all directions to reach to all the nations of the world. As I read with careful attention to detail and went back in history, I saw that the great theologians explained details of the story of salvation that seemed to be odd or unusual to us as intentional acts on God’s part to get our attention in a certain way. None of it was arbitrary; each detail was intended to affect us. I realized that Christian teachings not only explain the logic of Christian beliefs, but they expect to change us.

In reading the great theologians of the Christian tradition I saw that they puzzled over things that also puzzle us: Why did God put an innocent man to death to redeem us? It looks like God is either powerless, cruel, or simply not very clever. St. Augustine, St. Anslem, and St. Thomas all worried

J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 4 7

over this as well as other tricky questions. They developed answers that were designed to persuade doubters that God was really in control of the events of our salvation, and that when we take the time to understand them well, we will not only come to respect God but to fall in love with “him.”

Their assumption is that God knows what “he” is doing. If things about the Christian story look odd to us, we must be missing something. God has chosen just this and no other way to deal with us because this way is best for us. When we thoroughly understand and take seriously who God is through what “he” has done for us, we will come to understand ourselves more realistically.

MR: You seem to believe that developing character and enjoying life—truly enjoying life—are the direct effects of theology, that knowing more about God in Jesus Christ and who we are in Christ, far from being obstacles to the practical life, are essential for it. Do you think this conviction is missing in a lot of churches today, as doctrine is increasingly marginalized or kept from shaping practice?

EC: Everyone has a theology. That is, everyone operates according to beliefs and values that shape their desires, behavior, and thinking. Character and attitudes are shaped not only by our personalities and the environment we grow up in—within the limits of our genetic endowment—but by our expectations as well: what we think we should want and not want, what we think we should have and not have, and what we think we should do and refrain from doing. Most people’s theology is implicit. We operate in the world most of the time without reflecting carefully on the motivations, values, and beliefs that actually guide us. Or, we profess certain beliefs and values but are actually guided in our daily activities by an operative theology that is somewhat different from our professed theology. One task of theology is to help people articulate their theology and synchronize it with what they profess. This is difficult. It is an important reason why theology easily becomes marginalized from the church.

Christian doctrines—beliefs about God and the world and practices that make those beliefs tangible—intend to shape those expectations, hopes, and responsibilities. When properly exegeted, they convey to us how we should conceive ourselves and what we should expect from ourselves and others.

They convey to us our place in the universe, in relation to God, the physical world, and other people.

One of the tasks of doctrinal theology is to reshape the values and beliefs about ourselves and the world in line with God’s will and destiny for us.

Who God is and how “he” is known to us shape

4 8 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

how we understand our aspirations, our obligations, our talents. On the Christian view, true happiness is enjoyment of life as God wants us to practice it, and as “he” gives us leave to do so. Theology from this vantage point, then, seeks to help those who do not have time or the inclination to examine their implicit theology to become more self-conscious about it so that it becomes more explicit and better able to guide one’s daily life. Without a selfconcept shaped by God’s being and actions, something else will come and shape it. The practices of Christian piety, private devotions, public worship, Bible study, participation in the sacraments and other spiritual disciplines hold us accountable to the faith we profess in our personal relationships and in how we spend our time and treasure.

MR: Even while proclaiming itself “postmodern,” much of contemporary theology and practice—in evangelical as well as mainline circles—seems to buy into the modern notion of progress and to apply it to theology. So, for instance, going back to retrieve some insight from Augustine, Luther, or Calvin is immediately labeled “repristination”—parroting the past.

But you write, “In this regard there is no reason not to consider our theological forebears at least as intelligent and insightful as we are, despite our disagreements with them.”1 Do you see the tide turning in this regard, perhaps as a result of changing views concerning the way we understand (i.e., hermeneutics)?

EC: Our age is in danger of cutting itself off from the past. We are living under the dangerous misperception that because we have more effective technology and science that we are smarter than people who lived before us who lacked these things. The strength of the economy is based on the ideas of novelty and consumption. What is used or “old” is to be cast away for what is new and untried. Change is thought to be a good in itself.

The fact that we have cars and computers may have little to do with progress in godliness, however. To theologize—that is, to seek to understand God, ourselves, and the world—based solely on our own time and place in history, gives us little critical distance on ourselves or on our theology.

To some extent, theology has bought into the nineteenth-century ideology of progress and development. Now, while it is true that over the long haul, unfortunate turns in Christian teaching become evident and so available for correction, the notion that later is better and that we ought to overcome the past rather than learn from it, is a trap. It belies a smug attitude that says that we do not need guides to help us know and love God, and to guide the Church and its members. Learning from seasoned Christians does not mean slavishly adhering to their teachings. What they offer us,

however, is a critical distance on ourselves that no one else can offer.

Despite our need for interlocutors who have different prejudices than we have, in order to offer us an other against whom we can press our ideas and who can press us beyond our own rationalizations and self-interest, I think it unlikely that the deep prejudice against the past will be broken through any time soon. The prejudice that the present is superior to the past is simply too deeply ingrained in the modern, and the postmodern sensibility to allow for much conversation on this point. The journey into the past will increasingly be undertaken by a few brave souls, like a space odyssey.

At the same time, I do see some cracks beginning to appear in our resistance to learning from the past, especially among evangelicals. Books are appearing and questions being asked about aspects of the Christian tradition that have long been dismissed out of hand. Practices of the church that have been discarded are being reconsidered. Many factors contribute to this including excellent recent scholarship, ecumenism, and shifts in the training of religious leaders.

Additionally, the decay of our culture calls for escape networks, places where people can go to be healed from the spiritual damage incurred from our economic and educational systems. The Bible and the church provide such havens, respite care from the rat race. At its best, the Christian way of life can inconvenience our secular assumptions. It ought to be a nuisance, challenging us to ask if God’s way for us in the thick of global capitalism is not other than consumption and novelty.

MR: What do you think that the reformers particularly could contribute to our situation today?

EC: By reformers, I mean those brave Christians, beginning with St. Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth century, and continuing through the sixteenth who held up the need for ecclesiastical as well as spiritual correction of the church. In addition to St. Francis and those who lifted up the evangelical value of poverty as a protest to the wealth of the hierarchy, reformers of the church include Savanarolla, Julian of Norwich, and St. Catherine of Siena in the fourteenth century. They were, in turn, followed by John Wycliffe and Jan Jus. Many of them protested current belief and practice, but never gained the political power necessary to effect widespread change. It was only in the sixteenth century that the magisterial reformers gained enough power to change the face of the Western Church.

If we think of the Age of Reform broadly as the four hundred years from Francis to the Council of

Trent, we find many things that the reformers may contribute to our situation today. I will mention but two of them. One is that to benefit from the Christian faith people must understand it. The rise of the mendicant preaching orders, like Luther’s preparation of catechisms and the setting up of schools, all suggest that Christians who can articulate their faith have an advantage over those for whom the church may be a comforting place but who do not grasp the faith they profess sufficiently for it to guide their lives.

A second lesson we can learn from the reformers is that theology is tied to the context in which Christians find themselves. Paul’s letters—the backbone of Christian theology—were all written in response to specific needs. The theology of both Julian of Norwich and Martin Luther grew out of their worry over the pastoral needs of Christians who were paralyzed by fear at the wrath of God taught to them in their little corner of the Church.

For his part, Calvin saw the antinomian effects of Luther’s teaching misunderstood, and sought to balance the teaching on God’s unconditional grace with teaching obedience to God’s law. The lesson we might draw from them is that theology responds to the spirit of the age. It is contextual, even if the truth of God it seeks to explain is not.

That is why there cannot be any theology above careful criticism.

MR: Elsewhere you are critical of aspects of Calvin’s view of guilt and grace. But you write, “A secular age, like our own, that is no longer sure that we need help, or, even if we did, what help would look like, will have difficulty with Calvin.”2 Some of us think that the evangelical movement, which in many respects has held out so much promise after the erosion of doctrinal commitments in the mainline, has tended in recent years to abandon theology in general and a serious theology of sin and grace in particular. What do you think?

EC: I am not in a position to judge whether evangelicals have abandoned a serious theology of sin and grace. What I do think is that it is time for a reconsideration of sin and a reconsideration of grace so that both can be proclaimed in ways that can be heard by the uncatechized who do not share the Christian vocabulary. Classical talk of sin and grace is difficult to hear in our culture. The church has tended to have a one-size-fits-all understanding of sin. As modern psychology has enabled us to understand temperamental and psychological differences among people, our understanding of sin must become more nuanced—aware that different people sin in different ways. At the same time, the permissiveness of our culture has led to some serious social and economic problems and to increas-

J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 4 9

ing levels of violence. It may be Christianity’s gift to the culture to be able to speak about the requirements of the law of God, such that our economic and social behavior as well as our sexual behavior are called to account before God. One of Calvin’s greatest contributions to the Christian theological tradition was his focus on the greatness of God and the powerful stimulus of the fear of God’s judgment in helping us to understand ourselves better. Measurements for self-assessment seem to be in short supply in the age of self.

Calvin’s writing stands as an important reminder that we are not to measure or guide ourselves by our own lights, but be humbled by and obedient to God’s will for us as best as we can apprehend it.

The Christian doctrine of grace has sometimes been cheapened into the idea that our behavior doesn’t matter, for God’s love conquers all if only we believe that it is so. The challenge for the preaching of grace in our day is perhaps to awaken a yearning for God in our culture. While we cannot force anyone into life with God, we can surely pray that God “himself” will entice those who need “him” (who doesn’t?) to take hold of “him” through the Incarnate One. We cannot command ourselves or one another to love God, only God can do that. But we can commend one another to God. The task of the church is to allow those who have—by God’s grace—come to yearn for God, follow that yearning into the presence of God in moral and spiritual union with Christ. That, it seems to me, is the witness to God’s grace that the church is called to make.

MR: Could you conclude with a few suggestions for reintegrating faith and practice in the post-Christian West?

EC: Practicing the Christian life is a refuge from the bloated and harsh culture that dwells within us.

Here are a few suggestions for practices that grow out of the theological conviction that we are happiest when we glorify God in all that we do: • Reclaim marriage as a sacrament, that is, as a means for practicing a holy life, a life united to God through Christ. Marriage sanctifies the human body and brings it under divine guidance.

• Uphold holy friendship. In John’s Gospel, Jesus calls his disciples friends, those bound to one another by his solidarity with them on one hand, and his solidarity with the Father on the other. The ecclesia is a community of friends bound together by their love for Jesus and subsequently their baptismal vows. Christian friendship requires great skill. A map for learning how to do it was charted by Aelred of

5 0 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

Rivaulx in the twelfth century. Learning to be the church requires learning to be a friend.

Perhaps the practice of foot washing can support holy friendship.

• Scripture enjoins us to be still and know God. Being still is virtually impossible in our society.

We cannot stay socially or economically still, lest our careers, our businesses, and our relationships falter. We are wearied simply with keeping going. Suppose Christians were again to practice keeping holy silence, unplugging the wires and gadgets to which we are hooked up like a patient in intensive care, as if we can no longer live without them. Silence is a way of honoring God’s presence, even in the midst of our busyness. It is a sure way to abstain from sins of the mouth and to discern the leading of God. • Reclaim the practice of Lent, in which Christians are invited annually to review their Christian witness and ministry, perhaps by being visited by other members of the congregation in their home or places of business. Lent is the Christian season of stocktaking. It is a time for Christians to build one another up in the Lord.

• Reclaim family prayer, Bible study, and hymn singing. Being a child and being a parent are quite difficult today. Teaching parents to bless and encourage their children as they grow into the full stature of Christ is perhaps one of the best ministries the church can undertake at the moment. Teaching parents how to teach young children to pray for friends, family members, teachers, and especially strangers (perhaps out of the newspaper) is a great and lasting gift.

• Reclaim the Sabbath. Sabbath is a time for restoring the soul. Abstaining from the marketplace and any activity connected to violence one day a week is a life-affirming practice. Rest is not the same as entertainment, or rather being entertained. Rest is time just to be. It is also time to exercise those parts of our minds and bodies that are neglected in the course of our work. Some persons are restored by being alone, while others are restored by social intercourse.

R

B O OK

E

V

I

E

W

S

| Toward the Future of Reformed Theology

Nuancing the Reformed Faith?

A

s a seminary professor, I am sometimes asked, “What does it mean to be

several overt tendencies. First is the pervasive presence of Reformed?” This is an eminently sensible question in light of the many stereo- Karl Barth. This is as much a festschrift to Barth as it is to types that abound about the Reformed tradition. One way to begin to answer it Calvin, with the closest example to a “pure Reformed church” throughout being the Confessing Church, is to say that, for the Reformed, the bound- under Hitler’s regime, standing squarely against aries of one’s theological convictions are to Nazism. Second, being “doers of the faith and not be no more nor any less than the bound- hearers only” amounts largely to supporting proaries of the Bible. To be Reformed is to be gressive gender and racial and especially environdefined by the Scriptures. This is the so- mental agendas. And, third, the ecumenical creeds called “formal principle” of the of the early Church, in contrast to any Reformation Reformation, “sola Scriptura!” era or even any contemporary Reformed creeds, are At first glance, this collection of essays viewed across this collection as uniquely foundais simply trying to elaborate what it tional for the Church today. The authors’ “ecumeans to be faithful to this fundamental menical” concerns drive them to be suspicious of Reformational virtue today. The editors any creeds that are parochial and tradition-specific.

Nevertheless, this collection is a gold mine of say in their introduction, “We must resist the temptation to empty God’s Word of information about the current state of middle-ofits content, and reawaken a delight in the the-road Reformed folk who are neither evangelicontent, fullness, clarity and specific rationality of cal/confessional nor radical and pluralistic. This Toward the God’s Word.” And yet too often this book’s tone subgroup of the larger Reformed community has Future of suggests that it is not this but rather the very fluidi- been greatly chastened by the failure of theological Reformed ty of the tradition itself that is the tradition’s chief liberalism but remains equally suspicious of fundaTheology: virtue. The clarion call to “reform the Church” is mentalism with its emphasis upon doctrines and Tasks, Topics manifest throughout. Less than manifest is the call confessions. It desperately wants to recover the larger narrative details of the Christian story withand Traditions to “reform the Church in accord with the Scriptures.”

The collection is weighted toward theologians out the consequent controversies about inerrancy from the mainline tradition of American and inspiration. It also wants to be viewed as ethiedited by David Presbyterianism and European Reformed churches, cally responsible in the present context while holdWillis and Michael including five representatives from Princeton ing onto something of the past.

Welker Theological Seminary and three from Union The essays are divided into three general groupWilliam B. Eerdmans Theological Seminary in Virginia. These are not ings. The first set deals with the global implicaPublishing Company, 1999. the mainline’s radical wings, but they are not the tions of being Reformed today, the second set with $40.00, 549 pages confessional end of the Reformed tradition either. particular theological topics, and the third with While it would be irresponsible to characterize thir- specific historical episodes. Overall, the first set is ty-one different essays with the same broad brush, the least careful and the least orthodox. Brian it is fair to say that the whole collection exhibits Gerrish’s opening essay and the essay by Jurgen

J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 5 1

Moltmann are disappointing largely because they are merely programmatic and their generalizations are far too broad to be insightful (e.g., Gerrish: “Be deferential to the past and be critical of the past,” and Moltmann: “To be reformed is to be confessional— but confessions that are always being reformed”).

One hopes for more from such luminaries.

The second set opens with an interesting, carefully argued essay by Tom Torrance, the most distinguished Scottish theologian of his generation, on the nature of confessional subscription. He defends the view that implicit within the Westminster Confession of Faith is a central core of doctrine that has defined Christendom, that is evident in the ancient creeds, and that every Christian ought to be able to confess. This core cannot be altered. It is the faith once and for all delivered to the saints. It includes the “great and fundamental truths, such as the Trinity, the incarnation, the deity of Christ, propitiation, salvation, regeneration, justification, resurrection, etc.” Yet this “central core” cannot be definitively and uniquely located within any set of particular doctrinal propositions. So, Torrance argues (following Charles Hodge, whom he quotes liberally), subscription to the Westminster Confession of Faith, required of all ministers in the Church of Scotland, obligates adherence to these core doctrines but not necessarily to the full range of the Confession’s doctrinal propositions. Whether one agrees with Torrance or not, this is a clear and careful and historically sensitive argument.

The only attempt at a genuinely biblical argument in the whole collection appears in William Placher’s “The Vulnerability of God.” Placher is an especially keen expositor of postliberal or narrative theology. Here he offers an interpretation of the Gospel of Mark that purports to manifest the explicit ways in which Mark sought to demonstrate God’s vulnerability. The essay is a helpful exegetical treatment of Mark’s larger narrative of the identity of Jesus, but it is less obvious that it calls into fundamental question God’s impassibility, as Placher supposes. No doubt, Mark was concerned to emphasize the ways in which Jesus turned the expectations of the powers-that-be upside down: the first shall be last; the strong shall be shown to be weak; mercy is more powerful than vengeance.

These themes need emphasis in a “success” era like our own, but Placher takes them yet further as manifestations of the “suffering God” who is so strongly interwoven into modern theology and into Barth and Moltmann in particular. It is unclear why the “paradox of the incarnation,” as evident in the early ecumenical creeds, will not suffice to explain these biblical themes.

5 2 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

Leanne Van Dyke’s essay, “Towards a New Typology of the Doctrines of Atonement,” is less a call for a new set of categories to interpret the diverse theories of the work of Christ than a call for a new understanding of the work of Christ itself. She defends the cogency of John McLeod Campbell’s theory of the atonement, which was declared heretical by the Church of Scotland in 1831. Campbell suggested that Christ did not suffer an infinite punishment for our sins. Rather, he vicariously repented for our sins, was humiliated on account of them, and manifested genuine remorse for them. In this way, he “satisfied” the demands for reconciliation with an infinitely perfect and holy God. The central advantage of this understanding of the atonement, according to Van Dyke, is that it is a nonviolent, noncoercive alternative to a penal substitutionary account.

Christ’s sufferings did not evidence God’s wrath or sin’s punishment, but were a response of God’s love to the affront of sin. Unfortunately, the essay contains little exegesis and not much appreciation for the overwhelming witness to the penal substitutionary theories of the atonement in historic Christendom and especially within the Reformed tradition.

Dawn DeVries’s intriguing essay compares Calvin’s sermons on the Luke 2 birth narratives with those of Frederick Schleiermacher. She argues that Schleiermacher’s attempt to find a route around the historical-critical questions of this text—in particular, around D. F. Strauss’s contentions that most of the details of the birth narratives are fictitious—do not in the end blunt the historical critics’ attack. For Schleiermacher still needs some historical details to be true. He still needs to make good on the claim that the “ideal must have become completely historical in Christ,” and thus he cannot bypass history altogether. For good or ill, then, DeVries argues, the Reformed tradition cannot simply side-step the critics of historicity.

There are two interesting essays on the legacy of Jonathan Edwards for the American Reformed tradition, the first by Sang Hyun Lee, the philosophical theologian at Princeton Theological Seminary, and the second by Amy Plantinga Pauw. Lee extends some of his early work on Edwards by further expounding Edwards’s “dispositional analysis of the Trinity.” This analysis supposes that reality does not consist of “substances” but of “dispositions” or tendencies; reality is essentially a network of dispositional forces rather than a system of particular substances. Being, then, is essentially disposed to further activities and thus to further increases of being.

God is essentially a set of perfectly actualized dispositions (which thereby explains why God is “loving” from all eternity). Thus, God’s glory can increase while God is at all times perfectly glorious.

And thus Edwards, according to Lee, can more fully and richly maintain the traditional Reformed paradox of the full sovereignty and absoluteness of God as well as the genuineness of his interaction with time. Reading Lee reminds one of the brilliant, although not always readily comprehensible, genius of Edwards, the greatest of America’s theologians.

Pauw’s essay argues nicely if rather broadly for a recovery of “community” on the basis of Edwards’s theology. Edwards’s notion of community accommodates the convictions both that living out the Christian faith in community reflects the purpose and reality of God and that being a Christian in today’s world implies a fundamental interrelatedness with the entirety of God’s creation. For Edwards, all truly virtuous love among created beings is dependent upon, and derived from, love to God. But this should not stop Christians from joining forces with others who yearn for the day in which peace and justice embrace. Indeed, our confessional commitment to living out the story of God’s reconciling acts with humanity requires these transformative efforts. But it will also keep us from placing our ultimate trust and hope in these efforts. A worthy reminder indeed!

The final essay by Eberhard Busch, the wellknown biographer of Barth, asks the ultimate question, “What makes us Reformed?” Busch argues that in spite of the divergences among the global Reformed community and the historically diverse Reformed confessions, there is something common to them, all of which might be referred to as a “Reformed profile.” This has two central features.

First, for the Reformed there has always been the polarity of fundamental theological assertions— Scripture alone (rather than Scripture and tradition), Christ alone (rather than Mary and Christ), grace alone (rather than nature and grace), through faith alone (rather than through faith and works)— even as there remain true bipolar mysteries—Jesus as God and Man, God’s majesty and God’s abasement, Word and Spirit, justification and sanctification. Knowing where the polarities and bipolarities reside has always been key to the peculiar Reformed way of thinking. Second, there is the Reformed profile’s “anti-pagan” stance, which identifies “idolatry” as the fundamental sin (whereas, e.g., in Lutheran theology, “works-righteousness” is the fundamental sin). These are broad generalizations but ones that nonetheless help to explain the richness and depth of the Reformed tradition.

As with any collection of essays, some are stronger and some weaker. The sheer magnitude of essays in this volume makes one wary of drawing too many interpretative conclusions about the collection as a whole. But that magnitude also argues for the vitality of the Barthian tradition today. Yet if it is evi-

dent that the Barthian theologians are vigorous and engaged, it is also evident that they would much rather dialogue with the left than with the right.

The voices of evangelical and confessional Reformed folk are virtually absent from this collection. (John Leith’s essay moves in this direction but comes up short.) These voices would have meant taking the Reformed tradition yet more seriously, and that would have been a very good thing indeed.

Rev. Richard Lints Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary Boston, Massachusetts

SHORT N OTIC E S Jesus and the Rise of Early Christianity: A History of New Testament Times

by Paul Barnett InterVarsity Press, 1999 $29.99, 448 pages In an interview about this book with IVP’s Daniel Reid, Paul Barnett—Anglican bishop of North Sydney, Australia, and research professor at Regent College, Vancouver, B.C.—recounts his astonishment when, as an undergraduate in ancient history thirty-five years ago, “We heard of Jesus only in the third year, and then only in relation to Constantine and the circumstances in the fourth century.” Barnett, already a theology graduate and a seminary junior professor, was amazed that all that he had studied from the Bible “had made so little splash in the minds of ancient historians.”

Starting from the premise that one of the primary tasks of historians is “to notice change and to account for it,” Barnett set out to write a New Testament history that took proper notice of the historical changes wrought by early Christianity.

What could plausibly account for its actual impact?

Barnett’s answer is that “Jesus himself is the ‘engine’ that drives the story of the New Testament.” He drives it because, in fact, “the ‘Christ of faith’ was one and the same as the ‘Jesus of history.’”

“So long as an unbridgeable gap is seen to lie between ‘Jesus’ and ‘Christ,’” Barnett observes, “then ‘Christ’ can be held at arm’s length as one deity among others on offer and … Christianity itself can be regarded merely as a matter of religious poetry and mystical worship.” But if this gap is historically untenable, then “Christ’s claims on individuals and societies are tenacious and real because they are based on the genuine historicity of Jesus as the Son

J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 5 3

of David, on his death for sins and upon his bodily resurrection.” Barnett works to establish this by using standard methods of historical research and analysis. These include taking the historical facts that are incidentally related in the New Testament epistles especially seriously, since they were not written to convey new information about the historical Jesus or the rise of early Christianity.

He also argues that the history of the New Testament is a sacred history that fulfills all that was promised beforehand in the sacred history of the Old Testament. Thus, there is historical continuity between the Old Testament and Jesus, which leads the New Testament writers to present his claims in messianic rather than in charismatic terms. “The core belief of the New Testament is that Jesus is the Christ.” And strikingly, as Barnett notes, even early unbelievers like Josephus, Pliny, Tacitus, and Suetonius always saw Jesus as “Christ” or as “Jesus the so-called Christ.” It was unbelievers who, just a handful of years after Jesus’ death, invented the name “Christians.” The Greeks and Romans, Barnett observes, did not call Jesus’ followers “Jesusianoi, ‘followers of Jesus,’ but Christianoi, ‘Christians,’ ‘adherents of Christ.’” This, Barnett claims, “must reflect very early preaching that Jesus was the Christ, a doctrine that, in turn, arose out of the conviction that Jesus was, indeed, the Christ.”

So here is even more reason to think that the ‘Jesus of history’ and the ‘Christ of faith’ are not as distinct as, for instance, J. Dominic Crosson maintains.

Barnett says that completing this work has meant that “after a lifetime of attempting to do so by other means, I am now at last beginning to grasp the message and meaning of the New Testament.”

Indeed, this book, although not taking the shape of a doctrinally motivated defense of the historicity of the events related in the New Testament, tends to confirm its readers in their truth. It comes with the strongest recommendations of scholars such as D. A. Carson and Robert Yarbrough.

Dr. Mark R. Talbot Wheaton College Wheaton, Illinois

The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God

by D. A. Carson Crossway Books, 2000 $12.99, 93 pages This slender volume packs a punch well beyond

5 4 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1

its number of pages. With characteristic incisiveness, D. A. Carson works to dispel the confusions that surround current thinking about God’s love.

After explaining why this doctrine is difficult, Carson distinguishes five different ways in which the Bible speaks about God’s love: there is the intra-Trinitarian love shared between the Father and the Son, God’s providential care for all of his creation, the love by which God yearns for the salvation of each and every sinner, his “particular, effective, selecting love toward his elect,” and those aspects of his fatherly love that are conditioned upon his people’s obedience.

Each of these ways of talking about God’s love must be given its due, Carson warns, or there can be disastrous doctrinal and pastoral consequences.

For instance, if we take God’s love to be directed exclusively toward his elect, then “it is easy to drift toward a simple and absolute bifurcation: God loves the elect and hates the reprobate.” Rightly understood, Carson admits, “there is truth in this assertion,” but when it is isolated from complementary biblical truths, it leads toward hyperCalvinism. So some young Reformed ministers today “know it is right to offer the Gospel freely, but … have no idea how to do it without contravening some element in their conception of Reformed theology.”

Chapters follow on John’s claim that “God is love,” on God’s love and his sovereignty, and on how God’s love and wrath relate. By setting biblical passages in their contexts and understanding scriptural themes according to their places in redemptive history, each helps us to avoid some unbiblical thinking—such as recent egalitarianmotivated denials of the functional subordination of the Son to the Father or current “openness of God” proposals that deny God’s unconditioned sovereignty because it is perceived to be incompatible with human responsibility.

Carson states that we must not only “gratefully acknowledge that God in the perfection of his wisdom has thought it best to provide us with these various ways of talking of his love if we are to think of him aright, but we must hold these truths together and learn to integrate them in biblical proportion and balance.” Scripture’s claims about God’s love must neither be homogenized nor separated. The way to a proper systematic doctrine of the love of God runs through—and not around— the full diversity of its claims.

Dr. Mark R. Talbot Wheaton College Wheaton, Illinois

Short Notices

How the Bombarding Images of TV Culture Undermine the Power of Words

[ C O N T I N U E D F R O M PA G E 5 4 ]

by Douglas Groothuis

The Effective Pastor: The Key Things a Minister Must Learn to Be

TV Guide, August 9–15, 1997. No author is listed. 2Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves

1

to Death (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), 78–79. The dominance of television as a medium in American culture also fits into the category of what Ivan Illich calls a

Christian Focus Publications, 1998 $17.99, 260 pages

“radical monopoly.” See Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (New York: Harper and Row,

With thirty-four years of Christian service under his belt, Peter White, a Scottish pastor, has given us a book on effective pastoring. When I learned of it, I looked forward to reading material written from outside the American context that had the idea of the “key things” for pastoral ministry at its heart. Its content is broken into five large categories: Before God (the character, vision, walk, etc., of the minister), Among the People (ministry of the Word, worship, prayer), With Individuals (caring, listening, discipling), Development and Outreach (strategy and evangelism), and Organization (leadership, team, time, stress).

Its distinct Word-centeredness makes it very much worth owning. It gives good demonstration of methods and models in most of the areas it covers. Among its most refreshing features is its great reliance on Church history as well as on a wide variety of sources—White quotes everyone from Richard Baxter to Bill Hybels.

Because of its wide scope, it best serves as a resource to be regularly consulted rather than as a once-through read.

Perhaps it tries to do too much. I would have preferred a narrower scope with expansion of some categories. The strongest categories are the first two, on the pastor himself and the ministry of the Word.

Guilder, Life After Television (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1994).

1973), 54–61. 3George Guilder believes the days of old-fashioned television are numbered, because its basic functions will be absorbed by computers. See George

Jacques Ellul, The Humiliation of the Word, trans. Joyce M. Hanks (Grand Rapids, MI:

4

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1985), 142. 5Larry Woiwode, “Television: The Cyclops That Eats Books,” Imprimus, February 1992), 1. 6Malcolm Muggeridge, cited in Woiwode, 3. 7Francis Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1976), 240; see also Ellul, 140. 8Kenneth Myers, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes: Christians and Popular Culture (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Publishers, 1989), 164. 9Barry Sanders, A is for Ox: The Collapse of Literacy and Rise of Violence in An Electronic Age (New York: Vintage Books, 1996) 77–78. 10Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling and the Sickness Unto Death, trans. Walter Lowrie (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954), 165. 11Postman, 109 12Jerry Mander, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 1977), 288. Mander is discussing Walter Benjamin’s essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” from the collection Illuminations. See also, Birkerts, 224–229. 13Ellul, 141 14For a satirical treatment of this see the chapter, “Making Repentance Fun,” in Tom Raabe, The Ultimate Church: An Irreverent Look at Church Growth, Megachurches, and Ecclesiastical ‘Show Biz’ (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1991), 39–42. This is a neglected classic, and a rare piece of thoughtful evangelical satire. 15Jacques Ellul, The Technological Bluff, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 1990) 337. 16Jerry Mander, In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology in the Survival of the Indian Nations (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books), 19196. 17Postman, 50; see also, Sven Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in the Electronic Age (New York: Faber and Faber, 1994), 122. This book is highly recom-

Rev. David White College Church Wheaton, Illinois

mended.

Applying God’s Word to All of Life? by Robert Letham Oliver Cromwell, cited by Winston Churchill, The Second World War: The Gathering

1

Storm (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948), 659. Also cited by Lady Antonia Fraser, in her biography of Cromwell, The Lord Protector (also issued under the title, Our Chief of Men). 2John Calvin, Commentaries on the First Book of Moses called Genesis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948), 85-86. 3Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass. 4Michael Polanyi,

E N D N O T E S

Personal Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958). 5Famous quote

Learning to Hear Again in a World of Noise by Michael Horton

The New England Primer by Rachel S. Stahle

John Seabrook, Nobrow: The Culture of Marketing—The Marketing of Culture (NY: Alfred A.

1-6

Knopf, 2000).

attributed to Dr. Samuel Johnson. 6Acts 17:28.

Selections are from The New England Primer (Aledo, TX: WallBuilder Press), 1991.

1

Meredith Kline, Kingdom Prologue, vol.1 (self-published) 26. B. B.

7

8

Warfield, John Meeter, ed., “The Sabbath in the Word of God,” Selected Shorter Writings (Phillipsburg, NJ:

Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1970) 319. 9Ibid.,320.

Richard Gaffin, Jr. “The Sabbath: A Sign of Hope,” (Orthodox Presbyterian Church),

10

Free Space Ellen T. Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine

1

(New York: Oxford, 1997), 17. 2Charry, 218.

6. 11Dorothy C. Bass, “Receiving the Day the Lord has Made,” Christianity Today (March 6, 2000), 67. 12John Newton, “Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken,” Trinity Hymnal (Philadelphia, PA: Great Commission Publications, 1987), 269.

Home Schooling: Recovering the Disciplined Art of Catechism Richard R. Osmer, “The Case for Catechism,” Christian Century, April 23-30, 1997, 408.

1

Ibid., 409. 3Ibid., 411.

2

J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 5 5

O R U M I N A T I O N S

N F R O M

|

M

A L L I A N C E

Y O F

|

C O N F E S S I N G

M

I

E V A N G E L I C A L S

N C O U N C I L

D M E M B E R S

J. Ligon Duncan

“In Name Only” Christianity

N

ominalChristianityisthegreatestweaknessintheevangelicalchurchesintheWesternworldtoday.Bythat

prevalent than the nominal Christianity of yore. There’s Imeanthat—even in the Gospel believing churches of the West, those churches nothing new about nominal Christianity. It’s been around whose doctrinal norms have not strayed for a long time. But last century, vital orthodox Protestants far from historic orthodox Christianity, those had only to deal with two basic types of nominal churches where the evangel of salvation by grace Christianity: dead orthodoxy (those who were alone through faith alone in Christ alone can still credally orthodox but experientially lifeless) and be heard, those churches in which the membership infidelity (those who were influenced by rationalism still formally embraces classical Christianity— pro- but wanted to retain the name ‘Christian’). Now fessing Christians half-heartedly assent to the there exists a wider variety of “in name only truths of the faith, while bearing all the marks of Christianity.” There is rampant doctrinal nominalism worldliness in their thinking, lives, and priorities. (a ‘who cares about doctrine’ attitude eloquently Our churches, our people, our pastors (!) are too captured in a bold statement by a ‘Christian’ weightJ. LIGON much like the world. loss priestess: “Women don’t care about the Trinity.

DUNCAN I know that this is not news. So why am I They just want to lose weight.”). There is ethical preaching to the choir? Good question, and I think nominalism (a disconnect between grace and rightSenior Minister I have a few good answers. First of all, we need con- eousness, spawned by a psychologized version of First Presbyterian tinually to be reminded of the big picture and the the Pauline doctrine of justification). There is an Church Jackson, Mississippi main problems. We are constantly being told of ecclesial nominalism (a low view of the family of new “keys” to ministry success and church health, God, in which individual allegiance to the communand constantly being alerted to new problems that ion of the saints is rare and undernourished). There the church simply must address through the is even Gospel nominalism (a spirit afoot in the deployment of new strategies and programs. These church and ministry which has no real confidence in siren calls from the experts often divert us from the the efficacy of the Gospel itself or in the sufficiency larger issues and the main things. If we are spend- of God’s appointed means of grace). The church ing all of our time working on the wrong prob- must be ready to be the church in precisely these lem(s), our solutions (however creative) are all val- areas of challenge if we are adequately and effecueless. The crying need of the hour is a church tively to respond to nominal Christianity. populated with God-honoring, truth-loving, BibleThird, I mention nominal Christianity because believing, whole-souled, single-minded, it is not enough for us to complain about it, we Christians. That is to say, our goal must be to pro- must respond to it. But how? Creating new paramote a practical recovery of real robust reforma- church organizations won’t do it. Political activity tional (i.e., biblical) Christianity in the local won’t do it. Erudite sociological evaluations of the church. We need to be recalled to this vision problem won’t do it. Denominational recoveries because we are buffeted on all sides by different won’t even do it. The answer lies, of course, with assessments of and trends in church life, and some- God and the Gospel. But, specifically, God and the times we wonder if we are crazy.

Gospel must be brought to bear upon us via the Second, I mention the problem of nominal renovation of four divinely appointed vehicles: Christianity because it seems to me that the kinds of family religion, the local church, the ordinary nominalisms that we face today are more diverse and means of grace, and church discipline. That’s where modern reformation will really begin!

5 6 M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 1