we-believe-in-one-holy-catholic-apostolic-church-march-april-2003

CONTROVERSY ❘ HOPE ❘ DIALOGUE

MODERN REFORMATION

We Believe in One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church VOLUME

12, NUMBER 2 , MARCH/APRIL 2003, $5.00

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WE BELIEVE IN ONE, HOLY, CATHOLIC, AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH

11 The Unity of the One Church A friend’s journey from Evangelicalism to Rome causes this author to take a journey of his own to discover what true unity means and why, as a Protestant, he can assent to being part of “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic” church.

by Paul C. H. Lim

18 The Holiness of the Church Through reading both the New Testament and the pages of church history, we see countless examples of impurity in the church. Yet, the author argues, we must seek to make our local congregations “colonies” of the heavenly Jerusalem.

by Hywel R. Jones Plus: The Nature and Future of Evangelicalism: A Dialogue

25 Truly Catholic: The Impossible Dream?

God promises to work through his church in a unique and powerful way—through Word and Sacrament—no matter what the pollsters say. by Michael Horton Plus: Who Speaks for the Church?

39 Being and Remaining: The Apostolicity of the Church in Lutheran Perspective COVER: PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES, COMPOSITE/LORI A. COOK

While the two largest Lutheran denominations in America share a desire for “a church that is historically continuous over time,” they have serious unresolved theological issues which keep them from becoming the perfect couple.

by Mickey L. Mattox Plus: Should I Stay or Should I Go?

In This Issue page 2 | Letters page 3 | Open Exchange page 4 | Ex Auditu page 5 Speaking of page 7 | Between the Times page 8 Resource Center page 28 | We Confess page 47 | Free Space page 48 | Reviews page 51 | On My Mind page 56

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MODERN REFORMATION Editor-in-Chief Michael Horton

Zion, City of Our God

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hen measured against the frustration and pain that some of us have experienced in church, the songs about the church that are found in the average hymnal may seem unrealistic, at best. Sometimes it seems that the

Body of Christ, here on earth, is hardly even a shadow of that glorious Bride of which we sing. When faced with much of what passes for “church” in our current situation, some of us blindly grasp at unhelpful and even dangerous ideas to guide our thinking and practice. Is there any hope for the Lord’s work through the church here on earth?

If left to our own imaginings and clever solutions, the church would undoubtedly fail.

But the church’s survival and success does not ultimately rest on our efforts, nor on the efforts of the generations that have preceded us. Scripture assures us that the church’s success is both a current reality (the church is already victorious) and a future hope (the church is not yet victorious).

One way in which Christians have confessed this dual reality throughout the ages is by reciting together the Nicene Creed, in which we proclaim our belief in the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.” In this issue, our writers—who are bound together by a love for this perfect and imperfect church— explore the meaning of each phrase of the Creed’s description of the church.

Presbyterian theologian Paul C. H. Lim examines the way in which the church is one by surveying Scripture’s witness to the one people of God who share the same faith from creation to consummation. Presbyterian Next Issue May/June: “Good News: The Gospel for Christians” Is the gospel only good for evangelism (getting one into the Christian life) or does it also enliven the day-to-day existence of Christians? Jerry Bridges, Rod Rosenbladt, and Gil Harp teach us how to rejoice in the continual good news of a life lived by grace in the shadow of the cross.

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pastor and theologian Hywel R. Jones reminds us of the reality and necessity of the church’s holiness in the face of a watching and cynical world. Reformed theologian and editor-inchief Michael Horton urges us to recognize the church’s catholicity in the face of the deleterious effects of denominationalism. And amid recent controversies in the two largest Lutheran denominations in the United States, Lutheran theologian Mickey L. Mattox invites us to reconsider Luther’s teaching on the apostolic nature of the church.

Despite the sometimes tattered and soiled appearance of the Lord’s Bride here on earth, we can take comfort in the promise that, in the words of one hymn, “God himself is with us” and is working out in time and history all the glorious promises he himself has made to his church from creation through redemption. These promises should encourage us to embrace again a proper doctrine of the church, holding fast to the organism and organization in which and through which our King has promised to extend his kingdom in our hearts and around the world.

On modernreformation.org this month, please check out the study questions related to Paul C. H. Lim’s and Hywel R. Jones’s articles.

E-mail us at modref@alliancenet.org to let us know if this new resource is helpful to your small group. See also the short piece by Mark Talbot presenting the biblical case for our Lord’s having bequeathed to the visible institutional church the power and authority to proclaim his gospel and to discipline his people.

Executive Editor Mark R. Talbot Managing Editor Eric Landry Alliance Council Gerald Bray ❘ D. A. Carson Mark Dever ❘ J. Ligon Duncan, III W. Robert Godfrey ❘ John D. Hannah Michael Horton ❘ Rosemary Jensen Ken Jones ❘ John Nunes J. A. O. Preus ❘ Rod Rosenbladt Philip Ryken ❘ R. C. Sproul ❘ Mark R. Talbot Gene E. Veith ❘ Paul F. M. Zahl Department Editors Brian Lee, Ex Auditu Benjamin Sasse, Between the Times D. G. Hart, Reviews Staff ❘ Editors Ann Henderson Hart, Assistant Editor Diana S. Frazier, Contributing Editor Alyson S. Platt, Copy Editor Lori A. Cook, Layout and Design Celeste McGhee, Proofreader Katherine VanDrunen, Production Assistant Contributing Scholars Charles P. Arand ❘ S. M. Baugh Jonathan Chao ❘ William M. Cwirla Marva J. Dawn ❘ Don Eberly Timothy George ❘ Douglas S. Groothuis Allen C. Guelzo ❘ Carl F. H. Henry Lee Irons ❘ Arthur A. Just Robert Kolb ❘ Donald Matzat Timothy M. Monsma ❘ John W. Montgomery John Muether ❘ Kenneth A. Myers Tom J. Nettles ❘ Leonard R. Payton Lawrence R. Rast ❘ Kim Riddlebarger Rick Ritchie ❘ David P. Scaer Rachel S. Stahle ❘ David VanDrunen Cornelis Van Dam ❘ David F. Wells Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals © 2003 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: Modern Reformation 1716 Spruce Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 (215) 546-3696 ModRef@AllianceNet.org www.modernreformation.org ISSN-1076-7169

Eric Landry Managing Editor

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sus traditional music debate. If we did not have so many theologians, pastors, worship leaders, and church members who loved “rock and roll,” there would be no debate over music in the church. The “rock and roll” genre, born outside the church, by the most part, of unregenerate musicians, is quickly becoming the norm in evangelical churches. 1 John 2:15 is admonition enough to reject rock music in both its secular and religious form.

Bill Chandler Marion, Iowa

As a minister in a church holding to a capella exclusive psalmody, I must take exception to Dan McCartney’s “Music and the Worship of the Living God” (November/December 2002). His presentation of the regulative principle was seriously flawed. First, he misrepresented the Westminster Confession of Faith when he said that it lists “the singing in praise of God” as an element of worship.

Actually, the Confession teaches that the “singing of Psalms with grace in the heart” is an element of worship. More substantially, though, McCartney overlooked the discontinuity in worship from the Old Covenant to the New. Worship in the New Covenant is to be offered in spirit and truth, as opposed to the typical shadowy worship of the Old Covenant. A long line of Reformed theologians has understood that musical instruments (as well as incense, candles, etc.) were given by God to aid the worship of his “immature” people. Our worship, in contrast, ought to discard those Old Covenant “toys.” Outside of the Apocalypse, musical instruments are conspicuously absent from the New Testament. A true biblical theology of worship must recognize these legitimate discontinuities.

Rev. Charles A. Brown Westminster Reformed Presbyterian Church Prairie View, Illinois

In the “Song of Moses in the City That Never Sleeps” (November/December 2002), Michael Horton, though he says he hates to admit it, affirms his love for “rock and roll” music. Herein lies one of the root causes of the contemporary ver-

As a church musician—I play hand drums (conga, djembe, etc.) at my church—I read with great interest “Lift Up Your Voice!”

(November/December 2002) and I read with keen interest, Gene E. Veith’s article, “Church Music and Contemporary Culture.” At my church, Bishop Cummins Memorial Church (Reformed Episcopalian), we do have a mixture of music (classical, hymns, contemporary) at our 11:00 a.m. service and it blends well as does the “praise band,” choir, and organ. The music chosen is done so prayerfully and supports the Scripture readings and the pastor’s sermon. My music director also chooses the contemporary songs based on their texts (he looks for “meaty” texts and there are quite a few of those songs around from England and Australia).

He also composed the service music for our liturgy and several “praise and worship” songs. In addition, he introduces a hymn each month. So, various styles of music can coexist peacefully and give God the honor and glory due him!

Dale McNamee Halethorpe, Maryland

Join the Conversation!

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by Ken Aldrich

Evangelism and Changing Words

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on-Christians used to be considered lost. The idea is biblical. Jesus came “to seek and to save that which was lost.” In Luke 15 he told three parables with the same theme: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost (or prodigal) son. Jesus came for the lost and lost people are, well…lost.

Lost people need to be found. In fact, those who are “found” have a responsibility to look for (seek) those who are “lost.” Recall the Fanny Crosby hymn “Rescue the Perishing”:

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

Rescue the perishing, care for the dying; Snatch them in pity from sin and the grave…

Rescue the perishing, duty demands it; Strength for thy labor the Lord will provide…

When Crosby penned this hymn, lost people were considered lost – “in sin and the grave” – and those who were “found” needed to act. Indeed, “duty demands it,” she wrote.

A perilous development among many evangelicals is illustrated by the fact that we have stopped referring to non-Christians as “lost” and started calling them “seekers.” Whereas Scripture portrays unbelievers as spiritually dead and in the grave (hardly any condition to be “seeking” God), we have begun to speak as if non-Christians were actually “seekers.” This change in words is more than mere semantics. Rather, it reveals a tragic ignorance of the spiritual condition of lost people.

“A natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them” (1 Corinthians 2:14).

Among unbelievers “there is no one who seeks God” (Romans 3:11). In fact, Scripture describes non-Christians not as seeking God, but as following “the prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2).

The fact that so many evangelicals entertain the thought that nonChristians “seek” God exposes the extent to which

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we have abandoned a biblical doctrine of anthropology.

This erroneous view of lost sinners affects the way we do evangelism. Whereas the responsibility for evangelism used to be on believers (the “found” actively seeking the “lost”), it has now shifted to non-believers (the lost supposedly “seeking” God) – a thoroughly unbiblical concept! Can you see why evangelism has become a mostly passive endeavor in many churches? “Let them come to us.

We have to make sure they enjoyed their visit. We need convenient parking, extra seating, comfortable air-conditioning, and hazelnut coffee to ‘win’ them for Christ.” While this approach seems active – it demands many people to brew the coffee and staff the parking lot—it still implicitly leaves the responsibility for evangelistic action with non-believers. Hence, our mindset for “outreach” often gravitates towards a “let’s be nice so they come back to our church” attitude—a sorry substitute for the Great Commission.

Scripture portrays believers as the seekers: seeking God and seeking to evangelize the world!

The Great Commission calls believers to action: Go. Make disciples. Baptize. Teach. Believers are called to evangelize in an outward direction (Acts 1:8). Paul actively journeyed from city to city teaching “publicly and from house to house” (Acts 20:20). He actively went to Mars Hill (Acts 17).

The very model of Jesus is one of actively seeking lost sinners. As Wesley wrote, “He left His Father’s throne above.”

Christians today should seriously consider how [ C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 4 6 ]

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Matthew 14:22–33

Staying Put in the Storm

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he boat was being tortured” (Matt. 14:24). This seems a very strange way

“Ahhh! I’m scared!”

Jesus is here.

to talk about a boat, but that is what the text literally says: The boat was being tortured.

Jesus had just finished feeding the 5,000. After dinner, he went up into the hills to hide so that he could pray all by himself, while the disciples went down to the Sea of Galilee and got into a boat. It was getting dark and they were going to sail across the lake to their next destination.

When we meet them, the twelve have been rowing since sundown. They are three or four miles from land (John 6:19), it is after three in the morning and they are making no progress. They are exhausted, just completely spent. Then you have this very strange, strong word to show how bad it was for them: the boat was being tortured.

“And Jesus went to them walking on the water.”

This verse uses all the normal words for going and for walking. It does not say that Jesus was pitched, or sprayed, or soaked. No, Jesus is just walking on the water, ordinary, smooth, even-paced, going-toget-to-the-other-side-eventually walking.

When Jesus arrives at the tortured boat, he finds tortured disciples. They start screaming, “Ahhhhh!

It’s a ghost!” To which Jesus responds, “Cheer up!

Don’t be scared! I AM!” What Would Peter Do? Matthew is a book of the Bible that is all about discipleship: about being made a disciple and then living as a disciple. It was written for Jews who were trying to figure out who Jesus was and what life in him was all about. This little episode, it seems to me, pretty much sums up the Christian life: Ahhh! I’m tortured!

Jesus is coming.

It certainly seems to sum it up for Peter. Of course, you know what I’m worried about now, don’t you? I’m worried that you are about to jump From over the side of the boat into THE REV. SCOTT the water. I’m worried that BRUZEK you are going to follow St. Peter. Peter the hero. Peter the example. I’ve already copyrighted the bracelet: Senior Minister WWPD—What Would Peter St. John Do? Lutheran Church Wheaton, IL Yes, I am afraid that you all are about to go for a swim, completely confident that, having heard this story a dozen times, you will do much better than St. Peter. But before you get your socks wet, I wonder if you could just stay in the boat and listen to the rest of the story, remembering this: The Bible is about Jesus.

Faith is about Jesus.

Discipleship is about Jesus.

And this story is about Jesus.

In short, this story is not all about you, because you are not the center of the universe. So let’s take a moment and listen to Jesus just a little more closely.

In verse 27 Jesus quite literally says, “Cheer up!

Don’t fear! I AM!” With that pithy little introduction, Jesus is sending a message. Those pious, yearning Jews for whom Matthew was writing would have heard it. “I am not a ghost or a hallucination due to hours of rowing a tortured boat in a storm.”

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But: I AM … the God at the burning bush.

I AM … the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

I AM … the God who parted the Red Sea. I AM … the fire and cloud that filled the tabernacle.

I AM … the God who put his Name in Solomon’s temple to forgive sins.

I AM … Immanuel, God with you the fruit of Mary’s womb.

I AM … the One who called you.

I AM … the One who loves you.

I AM … God in flesh and blood, the One who came to die on the cross to take away your sins.

I AM … the One who put my own Name on you in my baptism.

I AM … the One who puts my own Body and Blood into you at my Supper.

I AM … the One who never leaves you.

I AM … here, present, located, saving, helping.

So, cheer up! Don’t be afraid! I AM! Great! They wanted him, they got him. So why does Peter get his socks wet? Well, why does Peter ever do the things he does? Because he is an awful lot like you and me. Sometimes it seems that there is nothing worse than a disciple with a good idea.

In the middle of this tortured sea, sitting in his tortured boat, with his tortured co-disciples, just as Jesus, the great I AM, arrives to save them all, Peter decides to go for a walk.

Stop to think about what that means. Instead of letting Jesus get into the boat, Peter gets out of the boat. Why? Why did Peter get out of the boat?

Was it an act of faithfulness or unfaithfulness?

People disagree.

Some folks say it is because Peter had a great big faith, and that is true. You remember that Jesus named Peter “the Rock,” and he really turned out to be quite a witness for Christ. Seeing Peter’s big faith, they preach a sermon like this: “You all go home now and be like Peter. Over the side, into the waves, let’s go, all of you, just like Peter.”

The problem with a sermon like that is that when you go home, one of two things happens.

Perhaps you get proud. You go home and say, “Look at all the big risks I’m taking for Jesus, look at all I’m doing, I’m just like Peter, and I am much better than the eleven wimps who sat in the boat.

‘Lord, I’m glad that I’m not like other men … ’ (Luke 18:11).” Or you get scared. You go home and say, “I can never measure up to Peter. I keep my smiley face on so nobody will know that I don’t ever pray and that I yell at my wife and that way deep down I am tortured.”

Why did Peter get out of the boat? Some folks

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say its because Peter had a really little faith, and that is true. Peter was brash, impulsive, and it seems he was always trying to prove how good he was, scolding the Lord at Caesarea Philippi (Matt.

16:13, 22), or cutting off somebody’s ear at just the wrong time (John 18:10). So he hops over the side, but thirteen seconds later the water is right up to his nose and he is crying out, “Save me!”

Jesus does, of course, but as he reaches down and grabs him, he gives Peter another name: “Hey, Little Faith, why did you doubt?” The text doesn’t just say, “O, you of little faith, why did you doubt?”

Rather, Jesus gives him a new name. “O Little Faith,” says Jesus, sighing as you do when your kids have done something a little bit bold and a little bit stupid, and it has all gone wrong. “O Little Faith, why did you have to go and doubt me?”

So which is it? Is it that Peter had a great big faith or a real little faith? And the answer is: Peter was Lutheran. At least Peter was what Luther said we all are: simul justus et peccator. Total sinner and total saint; total big faith and total little faith; big faith in control sometimes, little faith in control other times—all sinner, all saint, all the time.

Fixin’ to Walk on the Water So now what do we do? That is what you really want to know, I think. What do we do? Do we get our socks wet or not? Is it in the boat or over the side for us? And still it seems we do not know.

I once heard about a seminarian who was assigned to preach on this text for his very first sermon in his very first preaching class. He was from Texas and this is how he started: “Jesus was fixin’ to walk on the water.”

There. That’s the answer. Brilliant. I hope he stopped right there and I hope he got an A. Jesus was fixin’ to walk on the water. That’s the answer! This text is all about Jesus! It is not about Peter and it’s certainly not about you. It’s not about you doing or getting what you want, taking a risk, throwing yourself overboard. It’s not about your walking on water or your sinking, nor is it about your faith. It’s not about you using Jesus to do a miracle.

It is about Jesus, and it is about Jesus fixin’. Not just fixin’ to walk on the water, but fixin’ everything.

It is about Jesus coming near, the great I AM. It is about Jesus doing what he does and getting what he wants—and what he wants is you. It is about Jesus throwing himself overboard.

Maybe, just maybe, it is even about a Jesus who is willing to let you pull him under, a Jesus who comes to you in the middle of your tortured life and does whatever it takes to reach down, grab you, and pull you up, even if it pulls him down, [ C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 5 5 ]

Speaking of...

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ur divisions should never be discussed

except in the presence of those who have already come to believe that there is one God and that Jesus Christ is His only Son. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 6

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’m wary of ecumenism. I see nothing wrong with having six or 10 or 15 different churches of Christ in town and people trouping to each one. If the alternative is some nondenominational New Agey all-purpose homogenized feel-good exercise, then give me schism.

Garrison Keillor, The Lutheran magazine (January 2002)

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ou have perhaps heard the phrase ‘deeds not creeds.’ Human organizations are based on that idea.

They are voluntary associations held together by common deeds. Not so the church. What cements us together is not a commonality of culture, race, financial status, good works, or anything in us, although so often we want to insist on these types of commonalities. Rather, the tie that binds is something that lies outside of ourselves. It is the forgiveness of sins that God gives us through the Gospel of Jesus Christ who loved us and gave Himself for us. That Gospel puts us sinners right with God, and it creates and is received by faith alone. The church’s historic creeds are simply summary statements of the one true faith centered in the one true Gospel that makes us one in Christ. Creeds not deeds hold us together as the church of Jesus Christ.

Paul R. Raabe, Concordia Journal (April 1992), 194

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When Does a Denomination Become Only an Affiliation? he Presbyterian Church (USA) has been soft on Scripture for decades. Many individual ministers, and an even larger percentage of the laity (perhaps a majority according to some survey data), have remained theologically faithful. But the denomination as a whole has tolerated unbiblical views on essential matters like whether Jesus is the only way to God since at least the 1930s.

Nonetheless, because the body long continued to take

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SUM + of the = TIME 88.1–91.9 Range on the FM dial that has become the battleground in the largest war in recent radio history. As both Christian radio and National Public Radio have exploded in popularity since the mid1990s, the left end of the radio dial—which the government reserves for non-commercial stations—has become a

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its presbyterian polity—or church government—seriously, the orthodox within the denomination could still always appeal questionable actions to wider assemblies (from the local church to presbytery, to regional synods, and to the annual general assembly). The plaintiffs did not always like the outcome of the hearings they received from these deliberations, but at least the debate centered on the proper “interpretation” of the confessions. Disputants may have differed over the meaning of these documents, but everyone at least claimed to agree that the documents— the summaries of Scripture— governed the church.

In the last few years, however, it appears that even paying lip-service to the mainline Presbyterians’ foundational statements may no longer be required. And if this is so, to what degree can the PC(USA) be regarded as one corporate church at all, even a mixed one?

According to Rev. Bob Davis, a California minister and the executive director of the Presbyterian Forum, a renewal organization urging reformed laypeople to take a more active role in church affairs, the latest escalation of problems began in 1993 with the first “Reimagining God” conference.

Various PC(USA) leaders were included among those who came together to speculate about God’s nature and

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works, not based on the clear revelation of the Bible, but instead based on the “idol factories that are our fallen minds”—as Calvin would put it. The denominational hierarchy, some of whom had participated, took no concrete steps to condemn the false worship. Soon the practices were spreading to local congregations, again without consequence.

Recently, for instance, a congregation in the Hudson River Presbytery sent out materials advertising a worship service in a PC(USA) church at which prayers were offered to various deities, including “the unknown god.”

More frequently, the issue highlighting the blatant disregard of the PC(USA)’s confessional documents is “SAUPH’s”—the acronym of art for “self-avowed, unrepentant, practicing homosexuals.” The denomination’s constitution states unambiguously that SAUPH’s may not be ordained and recent votes on proposed amendments to the constitution have reaffirmed these commitments by an increasing margin of support. Nonetheless, multiple presbyteries are explicitly refusing to enforce the constitution.

Unlike past battles, the liberals are not claiming to interpret the rules differently; they are now saying simply that, as a “matter of conscience,” they will not obey.

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Photo courtesy of the Presbyterian Lay Committee

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“Reformed and always reforming?” Some mainliners suggest that bread and wine are too symbolically destructive and the the church needs new, more natural “sacraments.” Here participants in a heterodox rite experiment with milk and honey.

In the most publicized case, Rev. Don Stroud, a local pastor in the Baltimore Presbytery has made flagrantly clear that he is participating in an active homosexual relationship that he will neither abandon nor repent of. A complaint was filed with the stated clerk of presbytery, who formed an investigative committee which ultimately recommended that no charges be filed. The plaintiffs appealed to the presbytery’s Permanent Judicial Committee (PJC), which subsequently affirmed the recommendation of “no charges,” effectively ending the disciplinary proceedings.

An administrative (rather than judicial) investigation is now underway by the Synod of Mid-Atlantic, exploring how the presbytery handled

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the matter. The synod may rebuke the presbytery, urging it to enforce the constitution in the future, whether the presbytery agrees with the con-stitutional requirements or not. But if the synod does not so act— which certainly cannot be taken for granted—it would be difficult to regard the outcome as anything less than a schism in the denomination.

It would be a declaration by the liberals that they will abide only by rules with which they agree, and thus that they regard the denomination as merely an affiliation of independent congregations rather than as one connectional body.

Besides being a theological and ecclesiastical tragedy, such an outcome would likely create a host of organizational and financial challenges for the liberal-controlled denominational hierarchy in Louisville. First, the PC(USA), which is already shrinking demo-graphically and being forced to lay off staff because of financial shortfalls, would likely see a further decline in giving through official agencies.

Second, if the hierarchy fails to enforce certain constitutional rules—in theological terms, if there is no discipline—it would be unclear how they could try to enforce other rules prohibiting individual congregations from leaving the denomination with their property. Many faithful individual congregations, having long regarded themselves as outsiders in the PC(USA), might then simply exit with their buildings, further accelerating the demographic decline

and shrinking the stream of lay donations that reach Louisville.

Part of the blame for the current situation, sadly, must be laid at the feet of the evangelicals. As Rev. Davis rightly notes, “liberals have put in the time, served on the committees, and claimed the label ‘Presbyterian.’ And now they control the nominating committees and the denom-inational bureaucracy.” The more orthodox folks, by contrast, have tended to think and act as if they are congregational, ignoring the declarations and practices of the church more broadly as long as they didn’t reach into their local buildings.

With all ten of the PC(USA) denominational seminaries effectively controlled by liberals, most evangelicals seeking to serve in the PC(USA) have long pursued their training at Fuller and Gordon-Conwell, broadly evangelical schools without much instruction in presbyterian polity. To Rev. Davis, a Fuller graduate, the quest for reformation in the denomination must start with the laity beginning to see the church as “theirs” and “Christ’s,” rather than “Louisville’s” and “the clergy’s.” Davis hopes that renewal organizations like his Presbyterian Forum and the Voices of Orthodox Women can augment the training of the soteriologically and scripturally orthodox laity and clergy, persuading them to pray and stay and fight.

For more information, see www.pforum.org, www.vow.org, and www.layman.org.

highly demanded limited commodity. In many parts of the country, religious broadcasters are winning decisively and taking no prisoners. In portions of Louisiana and Indiana, for instance, national Christian media conglomerates have bought up full-power stations, and will soon be able to silence NPR’s low-budget translator stations.

67 Percentage of American adults claiming to have listened to Christian radio, watched Christian television, or read a Christian book in the past month, compared with 63 percent who have attended a Christian service in the same period.

45,000,000 Estimated guaranteed dollars for Tim LaHaye in new four book contract with Bantam Dell Publishing. Parties close to the deal say the series will have an archeology theme, a la Indiana Jones, but will be “a little lighter theologically” than LaHaye’s Left Behind series. Desecration, the ninth in the Left Behind series, was the second best-selling book of 2001, at 2.9 million units.

Bruce Wilkinson’s The Prayer of Jabez sold 8 million copies that year, making 2001 the first time since Publishers Weekly began compiling best-seller lists that two “Christian” books have topped charts.

9,726,391 Number of Bibles sold in 1953, during a previous record-setting moment in publishing history.

53 Percentage of the American public in 1953 that could not name any of the four Gospels.

19.3 Percentage growth in the last decade of Mormonism, making it America’s fastest growing religion.

18.5 Percentage growth in the last decade of the Assemblies of God, the second fastest growing religious group.

14.8 Percentage decline in the last decade of the United Church of Christ, rendering it the fastest shrinking American denomination.

11.6 Percentage decline in the last decade of the country’s second fasting shrinking denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA).

19 Percentage of regularly attending Catholics who claim they have discontinued their financial support of their diocese since the revelation of the sex scandals. 79 percent of regular attendees are calling on the American bishops to break with the tradition of secrecy regarding church finances to report how much the victim settlements are costing the church.

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WE BELIEVE IN ONE, HOLY, CATHOLIC, AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH

The Unity of the

One Church ome on now, how can you, as an evangelical Protestant, speak seriously about the unity of the church? You can hardly agree on anything amongst yourselves!” So guffawed my English Catholic friend whose recent “homecoming” to Rome from Evangelicalism bore all the enthusiasm of a neophyte––along with acute knowledge of the perceived issues and real problems besetting modern-day evangelical Protestantism. At the end of a two-hour debate in an English pub where our topics ranged from personal anecdotes to modestly serious analyses of ecclesiastical history, my friend suggested that I read the seventeenth-century Roman Catholic polemicist, Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, whose History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches would help to disabuse me of the notion that Protestants could, in good conscience, continue to confess the article in the Nicene Creed that we believe the church to be “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.”

That was in September of 1998. Since then I have read Bossuet’s History as well as some contemporaneous Protestant counterarguments from David Blondel, a Huguenot church historian. I have also read treatises by two representative Puritans, John Owen and Richard Baxter, as part of my graduate work in church history. As confessing evangelicals, we can and should reflect more biblically and theologically on the nature and necessity of the church’s unity.

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When Did the Church Begin? hen we discuss church unity, we must ask two crucial and interrelated questions: First, When did the church begin?, and, secondly, What is true church unity?

The first question requires us to clarify how God has worked out his decree of election in history. The church plays a key role in this. Some Christians, while acknowledging that the church––its nature, identity, and the number of individuals within it––is part of God’s eternal plan of predestination, would however limit the use of the word church to the time after its New Testament beginning at Pentecost (see Acts 2). But other Christians, although they would acknowledge some significant differences between Old Testament Israel and the New Testament church, would interpret these differences as matters of development and not as matters of radical dichotomy or of different dispensations. They would interpret what happened on the day of Pentecost as the New Testament and Christological fulfillment of what was foreshadowed in the Old Testament.

Some sixteenth-century reformational confessions unequivocally assert that the church has always existed. For instance, the Heidelberg Catechism (1563) confesses that the “Holy Catholic Church” was chosen “out of the whole human race, from the beginning to the end of the world.” Zacharias Ursinus, in his commentary on that catechism, states that “there is but one church of all times, from the beginning to the end of the world, there can be no reasonable doubt; for it is manifest that the church has always existed, even before the time of Abraham…. And hence it is also evident that the church, both of the Old and the New Testaments, is one and the same.” Similarly, the Augsburg Confession (1530), the Scottish Confession of Faith (1560), and the Belgic Confession (1561) all assert that the church has existed from the world’s beginning and will last until its end.

In his Confession de Foi Du Chrétien, Theodore Beza (who was Calvin’s successor in Geneva) writes that the church is “a multitude and assembly of such persons whom it has pleased God to choose by His grace.” In this sense, the church has existed, at least embryonically and typologically, from the beginning of human existence. In his lectures on Genesis, Martin Luther states that the historical outworking of God’s plan of election and redemption is through the church. He traces its inception to Genesis 2:17, where God prohibits Adam from eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. After observing that “the church [was thus] established by the Word of God,” he asserts that it was established before the family because “God

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wants to show by this sign . . . that man was created for an immortal and spiritual life” of fellowship with God. The fellowship that Adam and Eve enjoyed with God as well as the harmony that existed between them were two complementary aspects of true unity, vertically and horizontally considered. With the Fall, this unity was radically ruptured. In commenting on the story of Cain and Abel, Luther writes: Moreover, here the church begins to be divided into two churches: the one which is the church in name but in reality is nothing but a hypocritical and bloodthirsty church; and the other one, which is without influence, forsaken, and exposed to suffering and the cross, and which before the world and in the sight of that hypocritical church is truly Abel, that is, vanity and nothing. For Christ also calls Abel righteous and makes him the beginning of the church of the godly, which will continue until the end (Matt. 23:35).

Similarly, Cain is the beginning of the church of the wicked and of the bloodthirsty until the end of the world.

These words poignantly reflect the fractured ecclesial reality that Luther faced in 1536.

This view of the church as beginning at creation was not Luther’s novel exegetical invention. Luther cites Augustine’s City of God (bk. XV, chap. 7) as supporting his claim about the coexistence of the true and false church. Writing almost 150 years after Luther, John Owen, in his commentary on Hebrews, agrees that Cain and Abel give us “the Prototype of the Believing and Malignant Church in all Ages; of them who under the profession of Religion are born after the Spirit, or after the Promise; and those that are born after the flesh only…. This,” Owen says, “was the first publick visible acting of the Enmity between the seed of the woman, and the seed of the Serpent.”

What Is True Church Unity? he idea of the church’s unity is tremendously significant for Christian thinking about our life together. In America, rugged individualism has spawned individualistically oriented ecclesiologies that inevitably have bad effects. How can we speak of “one church” when at our local level, we are seldom aware of––or, in fact, are positively apathetic toward––the spiritual well-being and outreach of neighboring churches?

As heirs of Augustine’s distinction between the invisible and the visible church, we may retort that true unity is invisible. The one church, the compa-

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ny of God’s elect, the bride of Christ, and the gathering of those indwelt and empowered by the Spirit, is invisible. Thus, we may make a case for our relatively undisturbed conscience when we discern a lack of visible unity. In addition, a hallmark of American Evangelicalism is our tendency to view the church as a voluntary organization––something like a civic club that we choose to join according to our tastes, our preferences, and our affinities.

These, however, are unbiblical notions.

Scripture describes the church as God’s people (see Heb. 4:9; 11:25; 1 Pet. 2:10); as Christ’s bride (see Rev. 19:7; 21:9; cf. Isa. 62:5; 2 Cor. 11:2; Eph. 5:25–32); and as his body (see 1 Cor. 12:12–27; Eph. 4:12; 5:23). These metaphors, along with some others (see, for instance, Heb. 3:3–6 for the church as God’s house and 1 Cor. 3:6–9 for the church as God’s crop), show that the church is a divine institution (see also Matt. 16:18; Acts 2:47).

The Triune God creates it with his Word and Spirit (see James 1:18; 1 Pet. 1:23; Gal. 3:1–5; Tit. 3:4–7), with Christ as its head (see Eph. 5:23; Col. 1:18; 2:19) and bridegroom, and with his Holy Spirit as its sanctifier (see 1 Cor. 6:11; 2 Thess. 2:13; 1 Pet. 1:2) and the guarantee (see 2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5) that its members will participate in the eschatological wedding supper of the Lamb (see Rev. 19:6–9). So true church unity is grounded in the Triune identity of our God. The mutual indwelling––called perichoresis––within the Persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in their genuinely free and loving, other-exalting and self-giving communion forms the basis of our unity, both with God and with one another. Thus, the Trinity provides an infallible model for the church, and the unity exhibited within the church is to be an earthly reflection of the heavenly Tri-unity of God. This is very clear in Jesus’ high priestly prayer for Christian unity as it is found in John 17:20–23.

Based on the true unity of fellowship that exists between the Father and the Son (v. 21), Jesus asked for an analogous fellowship between the church and the Triune God (vv. 21–22). Calvin says that in this prayer Jesus “again places the end of our happiness in unity, and justly. For the ruin of the human race is that, alienated from God, it is also broken and scattered in itself. Conversely, therefore, its restoration lies in its proper coalescence in one body”––that is, Christ’s body, brought into being through his own redeeming work. Jesus came to restore the unity of will and purpose that was lost in the Garden, both vertically––between God and humanity––and horizontally––among human beings. “Wherefore,” Calvin concludes, “whenever Christ speaks of unity, let us remember how foul and horrible is the world’s scattering apart

Glossary John Owen – Puritan theologian who lived from 16161683 and was committed to the congregational form of church government. While an educator and statesman, Owen is remembered primarily today for his prolific theological writings. He wrote on major themes of Calvinism (including particular redemption and divine election), of traditional Catholic orthodoxy, of church polity, and the pursuit of holiness. (Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 811) Richard Baxter – Considered among the top rank of Puritan theologians, Baxter (1615-1691) is remembered for his exemplary ministerial work, as well as his approximately 200 writings. His work “The Saint’s Everlasting Rest” (1650) underscores “the blessed state of the Saints in their enjoyment of God in glory.” It remains a classic of devotional literature. Largely self-instructed, Baxter was ordained in the Church of England in 1638 and was minister at Kidderminster from 1641-1660. He sought to increase cooperation among Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Independents. (Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 129) Huguenots – The popular name for the Calvinist French Protestants, officially the Reformed Church of France. The word was often used to describe the French Protestants as both a religious movement and a political faction.

The Huguenots’ religious rights were gradually withdrawn during the reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715) and abolished in 1685 with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

With Protestantism illegal in virtually all of France, more than 400,000 of the more than two million Huguenots immigrated to Prussia, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the British Isles, and North America. (Dictionary of the Presbyterian and Reformed Tradition in America, 12)

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from Him.” And let us learn as well “that the beginning of a blessed life is when we are all governed and live by the one Spirit of Christ.”

This emphasis on Christ’s headship of the church as the source of its true unity was part of the earliest Christian theological reflection. In the post-Apostolic period, the leading idea of the church was clearly grounded in Christ: ubi Christus ibi ecclesia (“where Christ is, there, too, is the church”). First articulated by Ignatius of Antioch (A.D. c. 50 – c. 117), this slogan was extrapolated from Paul’s doctrine that Christ is the church’s head and his conviction that the vitality of the church’s faith and witness was utterly dependent upon recognizing that fact. In this sense, the church’s unity is always, first and foremost, a spiritual reality rather than a sociological fact.

Again, Irenaeus (A.D. c. 130 – c. 200), in his classic treatise against the heretics, speaks of the church’s unity in its faith and witness in these terms:

Son, the Son’s Passion and Ascension, and the coming of the Holy Spirit. In this way, the unity of faith in the confession of the supremacy and sufficiency of Christ’s work and thus the establishment of his headship has always been fundamental to the church’s unity.

This emphasis on Christ’s headship of the church as the source of its unity runs down through the Christian centuries. For example, the Westminster Larger Catechism answers question 64, “What is the invisible church?,” like this: “The invisible church is the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one under Christ the head” (my emphasis).

A Closer Look at the Scriptures et us now look more closely at what the Scriptures say about Christ’s church.

Regarding our question, “When did the church begin?,” it is helpful to note that the Greek New Testament’s word for the church––that is, ekklesia––appears 69 times in the Septuagint, which As I have already observed, the Church, havis the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old ing received this preaching and this faith, Testament that the writers of the New Testament although scattered throughout the whole commonly used. In secular Greek, an ekklesia is an world, yet, as if occupying but one house, assembly of people––and especially an assembly of carefully preserves it. She also believes these people that has been summoned by a herald, just as points of doctrine just as if she had but one its etymology suggests. (Ek- is a prefix meaning soul, and one and the same heart, and she “out” and kalein is the root for -klesia and means “to proclaims them, and teaches them, and call.” For a New Testament example of the word hands them down, with perfect harmony, as being employed in its secular sense, see the story of if she possessed only one mouth. the riot in Ephesus in Acts 19:21–41, where ekklesia gets translated “assembly” in vv. 32, 39, and 41.) In He then proceeds to give a remarkable testimo- the New Testament, with the exception of the pasny to this unity in faith among far-flung churches: sage just mentioned, ekklesia always refers to those “For the churches which have been planted in who have been called by God to be his people.

Germany have not believed or handed down anyIn the Septuagint, the word ekklesia translates the Hebrew word qâhâl. Qâhâl refers to a congregation or an assembly of God’s Old Testament people––and The church's unity is always, first and foremost, a spiritual reality rather than a especially those assemblies sociological fact. where God’s people are gathered before him.

For instance, in Deuteronomy 4:10; 9:10; 10:4; and 18:16, thing different, nor do those in Spain, nor those in the noun ekklesia and its verbal equivalents are used Gaul, nor those in the East, nor those in Egypt, nor to speak of the assembly of the covenanted Israelite those in Lybia, nor those which have been estab- community, an assembly whose identity was that of lished in the central regions of the world.” a people called by God out of the land of Egypt in For Irenaeus, the church’s unity is exhibited in the Exodus, whose chief patriarch Abraham was the uniformity of its believing and preaching––it himself called by God out of Ur of the Chaldeans consistently believes and proclaims the apostolic (see Gen. 12:1ff). For these Israelites, their primary kerygma that is at the core of Christian doctrine. identity as God’s people was defined by God’s graThis kerygma testifies to the Triune God’s work in cious condescension in giving them the Mosaic redemption, focusing on the Father’s sending of the covenant.

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In the New Testament, this notion of the “people of God” becomes the framework for Peter’s understanding of the church as those who have experienced the New Exodus through the redeeming work of the prophet who is greater than Moses, namely, Jesus Christ himself. Thus, Peter declares that the church is “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for [God’s] own possession” (1 Pet. 2:9), which clearly reappropriates the Old Testament metaphors concerning Israel’s privileged covenantal relationship with God. Moreover, in Acts we find Stephen speaking of Moses’ being “in the congregation [ekklesia] in the wilderness” (Acts 7:38).

Thus, in both the Old and New Testaments, God’s people find their true unity with God by his bringing them into a gracious covenantal relationship with himself. Moreover, this vertical redemptive realignment grounds genuine expressions of ecclesial unity “horizontally.” In this context it is also clear that God is bringing to completion in the New Testament era what he began in Old Testament times. So, in Romans 9–11, Paul speaks of the inscrutable and marvelous wisdom of God’s purpose in election when the gentiles, “who were not my people” (Rom. 9:25; cf. Hos. 2:23), now become part of his people by being grafted into his olive tree on account of Israel’s rejection of her Messiah (see Rom. 11:1–24). In the unfolding of God’s redemptive mystery, this gentile “engrafting” clearly demonstrates the nature of God’s progressive revelation whereby through Christ’s work, as the seed of Abraham (see Gal. 3:16), the blessing of unity with God and other human beings can finally be enjoyed. In Ephesians 2:14–16, we again find this idea of the one people of God, with Jews and Gentiles gathered together in Jesus who is both Israel’s Messiah (see John 1:41; 4:19–26) and the world’s Savior (see John 4:42; 1 John 4:14).

Thus, while there are indeed some significant differences between Old Testament Israel and the New Testament church, these differences are primarily matters of development and not matters of radical dichotomy or of different dispensations.

What happened on the day of Pentecost is the New Testament and Christological fulfillment of what God had already begun in the Old Testament. And so reformational confessions asserting that the church has always existed are correct.

In considering the biblical evidence for saying that the church, as the people of God, has always existed, we have already begun to unearth some of its evidence for the claim that the church finds its true unity in Christ. One of the chief New Testament metaphors supporting this latter claim

Glossary Heidelberg Catechism – A German Reformed catechism published in 1563. Frederick William III commissioned the principal formulators of this catechism, Casper Olevianus and Zacharius Ursinus, to create a work that would bridge the differences among Lutheran, Calvinist, and Zwinglian disciples during the Reformation.

Historian Max Goebel characterized the resulting catechism as a harmonious blend of “Lutheran inwardness, Melancthonian clearness, Zwinglian simplicity, and Calvinistic fire.” It has been the most widely accepted doctrinal standard among Reformed denominations in America up to the present day.

(Dictionary of the Presbyterian and Reformed Tradition in America, 119) Theodore Beza – A German Reformer, born in 1519, who became Calvin’s successor. He was considered very successful in bringing peace to the Church of Geneva.

Typology – The interpretation of Old Testament events, persons and ceremonies as signs which prefigured Christ’s fulfillment and new covenant with the Apostolic Church. An example of typology is Jonah’s three days in the fish typologically parallels Christ’s three days in the tomb.

Perichoresis – A Greek word referring to the way the persons of the Trinity relate to each other as a mutual interpenetration. It was first articulated by church Father St. Gregory Nazianzus, in the fourth century.

Apostolic Kerygma – The faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.

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involves its references to the “body of Christ” (1 Cor. 12:27; cf. 12:12–27; Eph. 4:12; 5:23). This metaphor speaks of the organic unity that exists between Christ and his church as well as between separate local churches. In this way, it stresses the corporate dimensionality of the church. And so, as I suggested earlier, solitary individualism has utterly no place in Christ’s church, as Calvin emphasizes in his exegesis of 1 Corinthians 12:12. He there draws a very sharp distinction between a civic “body-politic” and the church: [I]t is quite a common thing for any association or company of men to be called a body, as, for instance, the body-politic, the governing body, and the body of the people.

Once, long ago, when Menenius Agrippa wanted to reconcile the Roman people to the senate, against whom they were rebelling, he told a fable, which bore some resemblance to what Paul is teaching here.

But the situation is entirely different in the case of the Christians, for they do not constitute a mere body-politic, but are the spiritual and mystical body of Christ, as Paul himself adds.

The meaning, therefore, is this: even if there are different members in the body, with different functions, yet they are connected together in such a way as to form a unity. Therefore, we who are members of Christ, even if we are equipped with different gifts, ought nevertheless to be concerned about that union with each together, which we have in Christ.

Can any of us, as we reflect on these words, be cavalier about the well-being of other Christians or about the well-being and outreach of neighboring churches?

Referring to this same passage, C. S. Lewis provides an incisive critique of our tendency to see the church as a voluntary organization––something like a civic club that we choose to join according to our tastes, our preferences, and our affinities––when he says, “[T]he Church is not a human society of people united by their natural affinities but the Body of Christ, in which all members, however different … must share the common life, complementing and helping one another precisely by their differences.”

In Christ’s church, there is not only no place either for rugged individualism or for the indulgence of mere subjective affinities. Instead, we must strive for a true communion with all of God’s saints. Indeed, this is our duty, given our convic-

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tion that God the Father is the giver of “every good and perfect gift” (James 1:17), that Christ is our true head, and that we are united through the bond of the Holy Spirit in true brotherly charity.

This body metaphor, with Christ as the body’s head, establishes the sheer necessity of all of us, as members of one body, to coexist and even to become codependent. That is the force of Paul’s epistolary greeting to the factious Corinthians: “Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified to Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours” (1 Cor. 1:1–2).

This greeting then becomes the basis for the following apostolic entreaty: “I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment” (1 Cor. 1:10). In commenting on this verse, Calvin reaffirmed the centrality of the unity of the church for both its witness and its safety: “Let us . . . take note that there is nothing more out of keeping for Christians than their being divided from each other. For the most important principle of our religion is this, that we be in concord among ourselves. Moreover, on this agreement the safety of the Church rests and depends.”

In Ephesians 4:1–16, Paul encourages the Ephesians “to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” by reminding them of the great oneness that already exists in their midst.

Reversing the order of Paul’s exposition here, his logic is something like this. There is only one God and Father of all, whose redeeming purposes and power were most clearly demonstrated in the life, death, and resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ.

This Christ is the one Lord in whom Christians put their one faith. There is also only one baptism by which we Christians receive forgiveness and identify with Christ’s death and resurrection. And there is only one Spirit who sanctifies us and calls us to one eschatological hope. In virtue of all of this, we are therefore reminded of the reality of the one body of Christ, of which we all as Christians are members.

Elsewhere, Paul makes it very clear that we not only share one baptism but that we also share one loaf in the Lord’s Supper, by which “we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf” (1 Cor. 10:17 [NIV]; cf. Rom. 12:5).

One more metaphor that helps us to appreciate the nature of the church’s unity is its description as Christ’s bride. In Ephesians 5:22–33, Paul explores

the mysterious analogy between a husband and his wife and Christ and his church. Among other things, this passage emphasizes that Christ nourishes and cherishes the church by infusing his own life and breath into it. This is the inseparable relationship that exists between Christ and his bride. In the Old Testament, other descriptions of the divinehuman relationship employ conjugal/covenantal terms as well. For instance, in Isaiah 54:4–10, the Lord (that is, Yahweh, the personal, covenant name for God) speaks of the future glory of Zion by using husband-wife imagery, connoting the depth of his affection and concern for his covenant people. In Jeremiah 2 and Hosea 1–2, Israel’s wholesale betrayal of her God is painfully depicted in terms of marital infidelity. Yet in both books, over and against Israel’s covenantal disobedience, the Lord speaks of redemption, restoration, and rest.

This analogy of the church as Christ’s bride reaches its climax in the breathtaking depiction of the wedding supper of the Lamb in Revelation 19:6–9; 21:1–2, 9–14. In this eschatological reality we see the church’s corporate identity to be that of the bride who “has made herself ready” for the consummation of all of redemptive history in her marriage to the Lamb. She will then appear as a “bride adorned for her husband,” and as the “wife of the Lamb.”

Altogether Lovely uch a captivating picture can be both invigorating and discouraging at the same time: invigorating because it is the glorious reality that we will some day participate in, but discouraging because the bride seems to wear a tattered and torn dress all too often. However, as John Murray, the late professor of systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, has said, disunity among Christians is not an option: “The mysterious unity of believers with one another must come to visible expression so as to be instrumental in bringing conviction to the world.”

Yet the unity we should so dearly desire must not be procured or preserved at the cost of the purity of the gospel. The church is to be a living testimony to that pure gospel. Today, our postmodern milieu gives indiscriminate primacy to tolerance, elevating it to the level of orthodoxy and regarding any dissent from it with the utmost intolerance. Thus, a counterfeit banner of unity flies high under the aegis of love and the celebration of differences, including radical doctrinal deviations.

Confessing evangelicals and their churches must not lose their grip either on doctrinal purity or Christian unity. As Herman N. Ridderbos has emphasized: “questions of the legitimacy and of the unity of the Church will continue to find their

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answer in the conformity of the Church to its foundation in the history of revelation.” And since “the Church is built on the apostolic testimony of the great deeds of God in Jesus Christ,” the “unity of the Church lies in its apostolicity”––in other words, in the purity of its faith.

Between 1795–1817 Yale University witnessed four major campuswide revivals under the presidency of Dr. Timothy Dwight. He wrote of his love for the purity of the gospel and for the unity of the church in several hymns, one of which includes these poignant lines: I love Thy church, O God. Her walls before Thee stand, Dear as the apple of Thine eye, And written on Thy hand.

For her my tears shall fall, For her my prayers ascend, To her my cares and toils be given Till toils and cares shall end.

May the Triune God continue to unite our hearts with himself and with one another until the day when faith shall become sight and God’s invisible church becomes gloriously visible in all her bridal splendor. ■

Paul C. H. Lim (Ph.D., Cambridge University), assistant professor of historical and systematic theology at GordonConwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Massachusetts, is an ordained minister in the Korean American Presbyterian Church (KAPC), and author of a forthcoming book on Richard Baxter’s Puritan ecclesiology.

In this article, Professor Lim has quoted from Ursinus's Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism (Eerdmans, 1954), p. 290; Luther's Works (Concordia Publishing House, 1955-1986), I:104, 252; Nathaniel Ponder's A Continuation of the Expositions of … Hebrews … on the Eleventh, Twelfth & Thirteenth Chapters (1684), p. 19; Iraeneus's Against Heresies (Christian Literature Publishing, 1885), I:331; John Calvin's Commentary on the First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians (Eerdmans, 1960), p. 264; Letters of C. S. Lewis (Geoffrey Bles Ltd., 1966), p. 224; John Murray's Collected Writings (The Banner of Truth Trust, 1976), I:271; When the Time Had Fully Come (Eerdmans, 1957), pp. 23-24.

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The Holiness I

nstitutions are in trouble these days and professionals are suspect. The political, legal, financial, educational, and even charitable realms of the western world are crumbling. A lack of moral integrity is at the core of this disintegration. This is sad to admit, but it is true––and not only the “have-nots” and the cynics acknowledge it. Those who ought to be most pro-

tective of an institution’s good name and traditions often seem to be the most indifferent to them.

Intoxicated by prestige and power, they squander their own credibility and the resources of the institutions they represent. Consequently, ordinary people feel disappointed and betrayed. Many of them are soured, lonely, and despairing.

But isn’t there another world, so to speak––a world of peace, joy, and righteousness? Yes there is, in heaven. And heaven has a colony––an outpost––here on earth in the church, the current home of God’s people. Yet to many people this other world seems nonexistent, partly because the church on earth resembles “the kingdoms of this world” far more than “the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ” (Rev. 12:10). What is happening in society at large is also happening in all kinds of churches, from Roman Catholic to evangelical, but with far more serious consequences. And although the church’s holiness is only one of its attributes, the absence of this attribute

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perhaps conceals the church’s real identity more and thus exposes her to more dismissal and derision than the lack of any other. Consideration of the church’s holiness is therefore pressingly relevant.

Asking and answering two very similar questions may help us to appreciate this.

Can the Church Be Worse Than the World? f we think of the church as the “catholic or universal church, which is invisible, [which] consists of the whole number of the elect that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one, under Christ the head thereof” (Westminster Confession of Faith, chap. 25, sec. 1), and if we think of the world as the realm of fallen mankind, then our answer to this question must be, “No.” In these senses, the church and the world are not only different but antithetical to each other (see Eph. 1:21–23; James 4:4). God is for the church while the world is against him; he rules the church while Satan rules the world (see Eph. 2:1–2); and he is in the church

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by HYWEL R. JONES

of the Church © LESLIE NESBITT, NESBITTPHOTOGRAPHY.COM

while the world is “without” him (see Eph. 2:12).

Such stark alternatives as these bespeak the profound and permanent distinctiveness––or holiness, in the sense of separateness (see 2 Cor. 6:14–7:1)––that belongs to the church as the people of God. We must answer this first question, then, with an unequivocal, “No!” The church is never in a worse condition than the world; she has never been nor can she ever be. “God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved” (Ps. 46:5).

Her Lord Jesus Christ so builds her that “the gates of hell will not prevail against [her]” (Matt. 16:18).

The church is not of the world. In that sense she is––and will remain––holy.

Can a Church Be Worse Than the World? his is a different question. In order to answer it, we need to remember that Scripture uses the word church in more than one way. In addition to what it tells us about the church as we have noted above, it also tells us how particular local churches actually came into being as people of differing religions and nationalities believed the gospel, were baptized, and renounced the world’s ways (see Acts 2:40–41; 8:12–17; 16:13–40). These particular local churches are

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members of “the visible church … [which] consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion, together with their children … [which has] the ministry, oracles and ordinances of God” (Westminster Confession of Faith, chap. 25, sec.

2–3). Particular local churches are therefore no less sacred than the one, catholic, and apostolic body of which they are not only parts but also manifestations. But they may not be as holy as they ought to be. Particular local churches can be “more or less pure” (Westminster Confession of Faith, chap. 25, sec. 4). This is the distinction that we are emphasizing by means of the definite and indefinite articles in our two questions.

So we must think of particular churches as well as of the church, of each and every individual congregation together with the association or denomination to which those individual congregations formally belong. In this sense, our second question is deliberately phrased in order to call to mind some words of the Apostle Paul. Writing to the Corinthians, he reminded the Christians there of

something that had happened among them that was unparalleled even in the decadent environment for which first-century Corinth was notorious. He referred to immorality of “a kind that [did] not occur even among pagans” (1 Cor. 5:1). This shows that a church of which Christ is head and in which God’s Holy Spirit dwells can be worse than the world, at least in specific respects.

Holy and Yet Impure! e are limited in terms of what we can do physically and mentally. For example, looking two ways at once is not something that we are able to do––and even thinking about two things at once can be beyond us! So how can we, with our limitations and partialities, remember that the church is holy and yet deal with impurities in particular congregations and denominations?

Graciously but not surprisingly, God has not left us to puzzle this out on our own. This tension between the visible church, with all of its impuri-

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The Nature and Future of E

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hat is—or better, who comprises— Evangelicalism? An increasing number of books describe evangelical theology, record evangelical history, warn of evangelical hubris, and debate the future of Evangelicalism. But, can we even define an evangelical? Should we define Evangelicalism? Who controls the future of Evangelicalism and shapes its identity?

These questions are beginning to take on more importance as American denominational loyalty wanes and adherence to more broadly defined groups and parachurch ministries grows. Roger Olson and Michael Horton began discussing and debating these concerns in the Christian Scholars Review (Winter 2001). Over the past several months, in an extended e-mail exchange, they developed further reflections, the first of which we are happy to publish for the first time here in the pages of Modern Reformation.

In this new series of exchanges, Olson and Horton discuss and debate the character of evangelical faith and explore the future of the movement. Their discussion is far ranging; covering the classic Calvinism versus Arminianism debates, discussing Open Theism, challenging the prospects for greater unity within

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Evangelicalism, and even discussing the power and politics of such groups as the Evangelical Theological Society. Where they agree—and disagree—may surprise you. What motivates them both—the glory of God and the sanctity of the church—will not surprise you.

You can read the rest of this important and unique exchange in an unedited and unabridged format on Modern Reformation’s website: www.modernreformation.org.

Mike, You and I have engaged in some fascinating and at times fruitful discussions about the nature and future of evangelical theology. We’re both evangelicals, although from somewhat different theological perspectives, and we love to examine the movement’s trends. It seems to me that there is a trend toward fragmentation among North American evangelicals and at the same time I think I perceive a well-intentioned attempt by some conservative evangelicals to unify the movement by emphasizing doctrine. While I have nothing against doctrine, I am concerned that a one-sided stress on theological correctness can lead to narrowness and

ties, and the invisible church, in all of her holiness, is not outside the scope of his truth. First Corinthians 5 deals with this very tension. There Paul informs the saints at Corinth both of how they ought to react when a church is not what it ought to be and also of what is to be done to maintain and manifest proper holiness. Using the analogy of leaven as a symbol of sin and as a reminder of Israel’s bondage in Egypt (see Exod.12: 8, 15–20), Paul says two things in verse 7. First, “you … are unleavened.” Second, “Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump.” Let us consider each of these things.

The Holy Church: “You … Are Unleavened” n eternity past, God chose a people for himself out of the sinful human race (see Eph. 1:3–4).

He graciously set his love upon each of them, giving them to his Son so that Jesus might redeem them by his obedient life offered up to God in an atoning death (see John 17:9, 24; 2 Cor. 5:18, 20–21; 1 John 4:9–10, 14). By his obedient life and

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sacrificial death, Jesus Christ created one body (see Eph. 4:4) and one bride (see Eph. 5:25–32) of people from Old Testament Israel and the gentile nations (see Eph. 2:11–22)––“a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Rev. 7: 9)––“one flock” (John 10:16) and “one new man” (Eph. 2:15).

This one purpose of God is presented in both the Old and the New Testaments but with slightly different emphases. In the Old Testament, the spotlight is on the larger entity of the theocratic nation, with passing notice given to the faithful remnant within it. The New Testament focuses on particular churches, with reference made in passing (but in some detail) to the larger catholic whole.

Drawing a straight line between the two testaments, we can see continuity between the Old Testament remnant and the new covenant church.

So on the subject of the church, as on so much else, there is a real and deep harmony between Scripture’s two Testaments. Sketched out, that harmony looks like this.

Evangelicalism: A Dialogue exclusion of people who have much to contribute.

Evangelicalism has always been somewhat doctrinally diverse; I hope the movement can have identity and unity while preserving that diversity. For example, there have always been monergist evangelicals and synergist evangelicals; both groups of theologians have always been somewhat suspicious of each other’s doctrinal approaches to salvation. Monergists emphasize the “God alone” aspect of our salvation: God decides who will be saved and imparts the gift of salvation without any cooperation on the part of the persons being saved. Synergists emphasize the initiative of God in salvation, but also stress the cooperation of the human person. Of course, much more needs to be said about this complex subject, but that might be enough to get us started. What do you think about evangelical diversity? Can the movement include both monergists and synergists? What concerns do you have about the identity of Evangelicalism?

I look forward to your reply and wish you all the best as you continue your teaching, writing, and editing work.

Roger

Roger, It seems to me that there are two issues involved in this question. First, there is the political question: who’s in, who’s out. I don’t use the term “political” pejoratively here. Every group has its boundaries as well as centers, regardless of rhetorical flourishes to the contrary. I have Mormon friends who are offended that I cannot consider them fellow Christians according to their profession, but I suppose that “heresy” or even “blasphemy” is possible even for them, such as denying the prophetic authority of Joseph Smith. I could not be a Mormon and affirm the Nicene Creed, but they can apparently deny the catholic articles and consider themselves “Christian.” I don’t know what “Christian” means if it includes those who deny the Trinitarian Faith, the two natures of Christ in one person, salvation by grace alone, and a host of kindred convictions. None of this means that we should reduce piety to right doctrine, but it does mean that if there is too little specificity to one’s claim to belong to the Christian church or that one’s convictions are actually contrary to the key Christian claims, it is hardly a matter of intolerance to suggest that one does not truly belong to that group so defined.

All of this gets trickier, of course, when we are talking about

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In the Old Testament, the book of Exodus gives us the account of how God formed the tribes of Jacob into the nation of Israel as his own covenant people. God did this because of his covenant with Abraham. Having delivered the Israelites from bondage in Egypt, he “bore [them] on eagles’ wings and brought [them] to [himself]” (19:4). At Mount Sinai he called them to be his own treasured possession and set before them his law, telling them that if they would indeed obey his voice and keep his covenant, then he would make them “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (19:6). These Israelites possessed “the very words of God” (Rom. 3:2 [NIV]) as well as all of the signs and seals of his favor. They were meant to be a kind of special kingdom among all the peoples and nations of the world––a theocracy or a churchstate (indeed, the only church-state ever appointed

by God), serving him in cultic and civic affairs.

During the Exodus, Israel was “holy to the Lord” (Jer. 2:3), although this calling soon became more honored in the breach than in the observance.

Indeed, on the very mountain where God’s covenant with his people was sealed, they proved treacherous and disloyal by worshiping a golden calf (see Exod. 24 and 32).

Yet God remained faithful to his pledge.

Although he justly chastised generations of his

differences among those who do affirm together the definitive articles of the Christian faith. Not all disagreements are at the same level. This is why Evangelicalism has found it possible to accommodate a rather wide variety of soteriological interpretations, ranging from Arminian (synergistic) to Calvinist and Lutheran (monergistic). Originally adopted as a label by followers of the Protestant reformers, especially in France and Germany, the term evangelical widened to embrace John Wesley. In fact, even Charles Finney is generally regarded as not only a tolerable figure in evangelical history, but as a hero, although it is indisputable that Finney went far beyond Wesley’s Arminianism to embrace something close to Pelagianism. So every group has boundaries. Every group has various ways of policing those boundaries. Nevertheless, Evangelicalism has traditionally had pretty wide boundaries. All of the major mainline Protestant denominations in the United States were self-consciously “evangelical” before the modernist-fundamentalist controversy, although many of the leading intellectual authorities for the neoevangelical movement tended more toward a moderate

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people by subjugating them to alien powers and even by expelling them from his land, he graciously preserved a faithful remnant. And so Stephen reminds the Sanhedrin that God’s angel was present with “the congregation”––that is, the church (ekklesia)––“in the wilderness” in spite of its waywardness (Acts 7:38), and the Apostle Paul places covenantal privilege and disobedience together in 1 Corinthians 10:1–12 (cf. Rom. 9:1–8). God’s unique relationship to Israel explains her continued survival in the Old Testament, as is no less true with the church of the new covenant. If Israel had had no place in God’s purpose, then she would have been like Sodom and Gomorrah (see Isa. 1:9).

But God’s Messiah was to come from his old covenant people.

Much of the New Testament is made up of letters to churches in a given locality or region. It is therefore striking that Peter, John, and Paul––the three major writing apostles––spoke to particular local congregations about the larger catholic church of which they were members or parts. In the Apocalypse, John not only addresses each of the seven churches in Asia Minor with a message peculiar to its need but also (and by using Old Testament imagery) with a message about the security and triumph of “the holy city, new Jerusalem” (21:2) that they all needed.

Calvinism. It is an empirical fact that Charles Finney was an evangelical. He would most certainly not have been countenanced in the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) of today. Is that illegitimate? It would seem to me that this depends not merely on what has historically been tolerated by evangelicals, but what any given body of evangelicals now living (in this case, the ETS) regards as “beyond the pale.” This is not an ultimate jurisdiction, because the real polis that counts is the one founded

by Christ, the institutional church.

If one aspect is political, what is the other way of approaching this matter? It is, I would argue, the normative-theological. It is one thing to say, for example, that Charles Finney was an evangelical (a historical fact) and another to say that he was sufficiently evangelical in his theology. He was also a Presbyterian, but he vehemently rejected the Presbyterian confession. I would argue this same distinction in connection with Clark Pinnock and other representatives of “open theism.” It is a profound waste of time to fight over one’s right to a label. (Even if the ETS “voted” them out of the evangelical theological guild, they could still con-

Similarly, Peter, in addressing Christians gathered in congregations in “Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia” (1 Pet. 1:1), uses the very words of Exodus 19 to remind them of their identity in Christ. He describes them as “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession” (1 Pet. 2:9), adding some words from the prophet Hosea that speak of the extension of God’s mercy to the gentiles (see 1 Pet. 2:10 with Hos. 1:6, 9; 2:1, 23 and Rom. 9:24–26). Though many of Peter’s addressees were not Jews, they all were part of the Israel of God because there is now but “one body” in Christ (see Eph. 2:11–22).

Paul also did not hesitate to apply descriptions of the whole church to particular congregations, addressing individual congregations as “the church” and thus using the very same term that he uses for the company of the elect, the whole covenant people of God (see, for example, 1 Cor. 1:2 with 12:28). He also does this with those striking metaphors by which he describes the church in its most exalted character; namely, as “the body of Christ” (see Eph. 1:23 and 4:14 with 1 Cor. 12:12–27) and “the temple of God” (see 2 Cor. 6:16–18 with 1 Cor. 3:16–17).

So we must keep this larger reality of the church in mind whenever we are dealing with particular

churches, whether single or several, and neither allow “our own parish or patch” to set illegitimate boundaries for our concern or activity, nor should we conduct ourselves within those particular churches in ways that do not consider the impact of our decisions or actions on that larger whole.

The Unholy Church: “Cleanse Out the Old Leaven That You May Be a New Lump” ust as God determined to redeem a people to be his own and bring them to glory, so he appointed certain means by which that purpose should be accomplished. Based on the death, resurrection, and enthronement of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit is commissioned “to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad” (John 11:52). This is accomplished through the preaching of the gospel and as people are given the grace to repent and believe. The book of Acts is full of accounts of churches coming into being in various parts of the Roman empire and we have letters sent to many of those churches in the remainder of the New Testament.

“The church of God that is in Corinth” (1 Cor. 1:2) was one of these churches and Acts 18:1–18 contains the account of its early days. It was made up of those who had professed faith in Christ, repenting and responding to the call to holiness

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tinue to call themselves evangelical and who is going to stop them?) What is important, it seems to me, is attempting some sort of understanding about our consensus concerning what makes evangelical theology evangelical. To be sure, this is a spectrum. I don’t think that Arminianism is as evangelical as it should be (theologically), but it’s a good deal more so than, say, Unitarianism. I have Roman Catholic friends whom I regard without hesitation to be my brothers and sisters, but I do not regard the ecclesiastical institution to which they are attached as an evangelical body. Similarly, “open theism,” to my mind, is out of bounds of historic Christian commitment, but that in no way indicates what I think about the destiny of its adherents. I do not believe that the questions at issue involve a direct denial of any essential article, but several indirect and implicit denials that cannot but end up undermining essential articles.

If it is a historical fact that certain theologies verging on Pelagianism have been tolerated in evangelical circles, it is just as much a historical fact that the particular theology being espoused under the rubric “open theism” has never been regarded as ortho-

dox. The doctrines that “open theism” challenges have been considered essential Christian convictions across the otherwise immensely diverse evangelical theological spectrum. Proposals have consequences. The rules of academic freedom that guide the university fruitfully cannot be legitimately adopted by the church, for which body theologians are but hired help. Although I’m not inclined to be one of the folks thinking about where the line in the sand happens to be, I do want to argue the case for a robust evangelical theology, in relation to which “open theism” can only be regarded as a rival school.

Mike

The rest of the dialogue, in its unabridged and unedited form, can be found at www.modernreformation.org.

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FYI

Theocracy—The idea goes back to the Old Testament where the

invisible church’s holiness while ignoring or underestilaw of the king recognizes the ultimate control of the Lord God. mating obvious impurities in visible congregations or Although the political sense is essential, a broader meaning is usu- denominations.

The fact that the church is ally implied, to include every sphere and relationship of life as governed in Old Testament holy does not imply that each congregation and times by the contemporaneous and continuing special revelation of God. (Evangelical Dictionary denomination is so. Much less does it mean that the sins of Theology, 1083) of an individual congregation or a whole denomination are (see 1 Cor. 1:2 and 6:11). Yet as a result of reports of little account. Indeed, the fact that they are sins he received from others and the questions that the of local and particular manifestations of the church Corinthians themselves put to him, Paul indicates makes them more, and not less, serious. They outthat it was a church that was––to put it mild- rage and bring just censure upon her from the ly––among the “less pure.” Plagued by the blatant- world, and they expose her to the just chastisement ly immoral (see chap. 5), the openly uncharitable of God. They grieve his Holy Spirit and obstruct (chap. 6), the idolatrous (chaps. 8–10), the sacrile- the spread of the gospel. The triune God is altogious (chap. 11), the divisive and disorderly (chaps. gether and always holy, and sin in any church is 12–14), and the seriously heretical (chap. 15), it always reprehensible in his sight. was a church full of persons who seemed unworthy So in thinking about the holiness of the church, to be called “saints.” All that Paul wrote in 1 we must focus our attention on its local and visible Corinthians is therefore to be understood as a manifestations in the light of its catholic and invisstrenuous attempt to deal with that church’s impu- ible reality. We must focus on the present in the rities while not forgetting its greater holiness as light of the eternal, the “already” in the light of the part of the church. “not yet.” The visible and the invisible are not sepIn the case of incest that he addresses in chap- arate realities; they are in some sense one and the ter 5, the apostle urges that the offender be excom- same. Because this is so, we can attest to the largmunicated.

He presses this because the er, heavenly reality by calling attention to its smallCorinthians are shamefully unconcerned and con- er, earthly parts. In short, we must seek to make sequently slow to address the matter––yet the pur- our local congregations true colonies of the heavpose for which Christ died is being contradicted in enly Jerusalem. ■ practice; the church’s survival is being jeopardized; and God’s chastisement is being incurred. And each of these things can also be said about all of the Hywel R. Jones (Ph.D., Greenwich University School of other grievous failures of this particular church.

Theology) is professor of practical theology at Westminster This teaches us that sometimes we must act in Theological Seminary in California (Escondido, California). order both to stop the rot and to purge specific An ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church of Wales, churches so that they might become again lumps Dr. Jones’s most recent book is Let’s Study Hebrews (The of dough without the leaven of blatant sin, that is, Banner of Truth Trust, 2002). churches worthy of their name.

Our Sacred Duty f course, it is important to review church history on this score (as on all others) in order to glean both positive and negative lessons. Yet our interest in the past must never be used to evade the current call of sacred duty. We are responsible for seeing that the church of today––the church to which we belong in its local and denominational manifestations––exhibits as much holiness as possible. Just as no one can bask in the halcyon days of the past without sinning (did those days ever exist to the degree that we like to imagine?), so we cannot concentrate on the

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@ MR RECOMMENDS…

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WE BELIEVE IN ONE, HOLY, CATHOLIC, AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH

Truly Catholic:

The Impossible Dream? nitially, we probably don’t recognize remarkable similarities between Harold Camping, founder and president of Family Radio Network, and George Barna, founder and president of Barna Research Group. But they both have been in the news recently for similar reasons. Both believe that the visible, institutional church has failed miserably in our day and both suggest that their own organizations may be alternative means through which God may work. Commenting on a recent Christianity Today cover story on his efforts, Barna adds,

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There are a number of high profile pastors who have been saying that the local church is the only hope for the future. As emotionally comforting as that may feel, it’s just wrong. Jesus Christ is the only hope for the future; the local church is a human institution that God may or may not work through.

In the near future we will inevitably see new models of the local church that don’t look or behave at all like the congregational church we have historically fostered.

Barna offers his daylong seminars, his mentoring programs for “emerging players” in “industries of influence,” and other high-energy schemes as necessary substitutes for the institutional church.

As the Christianity Today article reported, Barna targets “sources of significant influence,” which means “movies, television, the Internet, books, music, public policy and law, and family.” The Barna Research Group response to Christianity Today’s article adds, “The Christian church, his research shows, is not among the top dozen influences these days.”

Harold Camping argues similarly, although he would probably see George Barna’s pragmatic approach to truth as part of the problem. The church, Camping believes, is not only ineffective (damning criticism as far as Barna is concerned) but

not for the most part doing well in fulfilling its commission; and, secondly, contemporary evangelicals hold a lower doctrine of the church than almost any generation of Christians in any part of the world.

Sometimes, I must confess, when I am reciting the Nicene Creed in worship my belief in “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church” is almost theoretical. Unlike the Creed’s other affirmations, this one can strike me as being abstract––or, at least, as one of the most “not-yet-realized” aspects of the kingdom and salvation of our God. How do we reconcile our confession of faith in one holy and universal and biblically faithful church with the churches we find advertised in the telephone book’s Yellow Pages?

Invisible and Visible? ne way to do this is to embrace Augustine’s distinction between an invisible and a visible church. The invisible church consists of all the elect of all ages, whereas the visible church consists of all professing believers and their children. Regarding the church, Augustine observed that “there are wolves within and sheep without.” That is why we can expect to see some in heaven who did not belong to a historic Christian body while some of the visible church’s most illustrious members and clergy will be forbidden entrance. Our Protestant confessions pick How do we reconcile our confession of faith in one holy and universal and up Augustine’s distinction.

And reference to the invisible church can be very useful in biblically faithful church with the churches we find advertised in the telephone confessing our faith in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic book's Yellow Pages? church even as we experience the visible church in all also adulterous. Both Barna and Camping fixate on of its worldliness, division, and untruth.

We live with the paradox that we are simultanethe state of moral decline as well as on the lack of Christian cultural influence as key indicators of the ously justified in Christ and yet still sinful in ourchurch’s failure, and both think that their own selves. This seems to be something like the invisimodels and methods are superior to the institu- ble/visible distinction. And, of course, there are tional church’s ministry. In Barna’s case, the institu- parallels. God’s strength is hidden in human weaktional church is a merely human invention––a ness. God’s triumph at the cross was, in purely thought that any mainstream Christian in any cen- empirical terms, a defeat. Apart from faith—that is, tury would have regarded as heretical. In apart from a proper reading of the Old Testament Camping’s case, the church was divinely instituted promises of redemption through the Suffering but, like the old covenant’s temple or synagogue- Servant (see Isa. 52:13–53:12 with 1 Pet. 2:21–25; worship, is no longer divinely sanctioned. It seems Acts 8:30–35; Luke 22:37)––who would ever think somewhat convenient, however, that the official of Jesus’ public execution as a victory? Likewise, demise of the church as a divinely ordained institu- my Christian experience does not match the vertion happens to coincide with what are said to be dict that God has already pronounced over me. divinely given visions for their own organizations Empirically, I cannot be called “holy, just, righteous, and acceptable to God.” Expressed in corpopicking up the slack.

Two things are clear to me. First, the church is rate terms––“But you are a chosen race, a royal

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priesthood, holy nation, a people for God’s own possession” (1 Pet. 2:9)––the same paradox arises every time we confess faith in one holy, catholic, and apostolic church. Over-realized eschatologies don’t do justice to the fact that we are still on this side of glorification. Just as we are not perfectly sanctified, so the church is not sifted. Wheat and weeds still grow together, as Christ commanded (see Matt. 13:24–30). The fish caught in the dragnet have yet to be separated (see Matt. 13:47–49).

The imperfect visible church is not yet identical to the perfect invisible church. The church militant is not yet the church triumphant. Yet in spite of the empirical divisions we see, we can confess faith in there being one catholic (or universal) church for the same reason that we can confess faith in our being justified sinners, that is, because of God’s eschatological promise, which is neither wholly unrealized nor perfectly realized right now.

This paradox also accompanies the other qualifiers concerning the church. The church is one, not in the sense of being visibly united, but in the sense of the faithful––in spite of appearances to the contrary––being the one people of God. It is holy, yet in a definitive and progressive––and not an empirically perfect––sense. It is apostolic not because it is directly led by the apostles themselves, but because it is guided, whenever and wherever it qualifies as “the church,” by the apostolic proclamation and pattern.

Yet such appeals to the invisible/visible distinction can also be used, like the biblically sanctioned distinction between justification and sanctification, to justify a kind of lazy irresponsibility regarding the concrete state of the visible church. The “already” of justification and the “not yet” of complete sanctification can easily be used to underwrite a practical antinomianism. Just as we can disregard our duty to grow in knowledge and obedience on the mistaken assumption that there is no radical transformation of sinners in this life (that is, there is no new birth), we can easily fall into the trap of viewing the church’s visible state as relatively unimportant as long as we affirm the invisible church’s purity and catholicity.

In the New Testament, it is part of the good news of the kingdom that “the age to come” has dawned in the person and work of Christ and in the sending of the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead. The blind receive their sight, the deaf hear, the poor have the gospel preached to them, captives are set free, and those “dead in trespasses and sins” are made alive in Christ (see Matt. 11:2–5; Luke 4:18–19; Eph. 2:1–10). This must transform our expectations for the catholicity of the church in this age. To be sure, full experience of this univer-

Glossary Eschatology — Traditionally defined as the doctrine of the “last things,” in relation to human individuals (comprising death, resurrection, judgment, and the afterlife) or to the world. Eschatology denotes the consummation of God’s purpose whether it coincides with the end of the world (or of history) or not. (Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 362) Antinomianism — The doctrine that it is not necessary for Christians to preach and/or obey the moral law of the Old Testament. Some have taught that once persons are justified by faith in Christ, they no longer have any obligation toward the moral law because Jesus freed them from it. The Gnostics, in the first centuries of the Christian era, on the other hand, discounted the moral law because they felt it came from the Demiurge, not the true God. (Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 57) Schism and Heresy — Two different terms which cannot be used interchangeably. Schism is opposed to charity and is not doctrinal at heart. Heresy is, at its base, doctrine, and is opposed to the Christian faith itself. While some have called Reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin guilty of schism, from the Roman Catholic perception, they were heretics because their objections had to do with doctrine. (Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 979) Gnosticism — The Gnostics believed that they were privy to a secret knowledge about the divine. They differentiated the evil god of the world (who is identified with the god of the Old Testament) from a higher more abstract good revealed by Jesus Christ. Gnosticism is considered a religion that regards this world as the creation of powers who wish to keep the human soul trapped in the evil physical body.

Simul justus et peccator — Luther’s term for the normal Christian life: “at the same time justified and yet sinful.”

Adiaphora — Refers to matters not regarded as essential to faith, which might therefore be allowed in the church. (Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 12) Nicene Creed — The Nicene Creed, which came out of the first ecumenical council convened by the church (325), affirmed the unity of God. The Son is said to be “true God from true God.” Although confessing that the Son is begotten, the creed adds the words, “from the Father” and “not made.” It is positively asserted that he is “from the being of the Father” and “of one substance with the Father.” (Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 774)

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In Print March/April Book Recommendations The Communion of Saints: Living in Fellowship with the People of God Philip Ryken Can the church strengthen our relationship with God? Ryken explains how a personal connection to a local church is not only a biblical mandate, but a tool for our growth in Christ.

B-RYKE-7, $12.99 The Church Edmund Clowney Clowney addresses a variety of contemporary concerns: worship, mission, church and culture, church and state, the ministry of women, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, tongues and prophecy, signs and wonders. He draws on decades of thinking and teaching about the church as well as from committed leadership and ministry within the church.

B-CLO-3, $18.00 Where in the World is the Church?

Michael Horton Being a “worldy Christian” may sound like an oxymoron, but Horton argues that this is the proper role for followers of Christ. In other words, Christians should be fully engaged in the culture around them, while holding fast to the foundations of faith.

B-HO-18, $12.99 Ministry, Word, and Sacrament Martin Chemnitz This book, originally written for pastors, uses a question and answer format to explain the work and mission of the church.

B-CHEM-1, $23.99 Warnings to the Church J. C. Ryle The church’s doctrine and practice are in constant danger of being corrupted from their original divinely-given character. Compelled by his love for the church, Ryle implores pastors and church leaders to return to the roots of sound doctrine and faithful practice.

B-RYL-5, $5.99 Outgrowing the Ingrown Church C. John Miller In the author’s own discovery of the power and presence of God he discovered the tendency of the church to live by its own power and resources. This is a book written to help change churches by changing the individuals who read it.

B-MLRC-1, $12.99 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).

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On Tape From the Alliance Archives Church Matters THE WHITE HORSE Why are there so many different Christian INN churches? Are the differences between us really that great? Join the hosts of the White Horse Inn Ken Jones, Michael Horton, Kim Riddlebarger, and Rod Rosenbladt as they discuss why the church matters even in our modern age.

C-CM-S, 2 TAPES IN AN ALBUM, $13.00 THE Unity in the Church WHITE HORSE INN How should modern Christians think about and strive for unity? What is the basis for unity among different kinds of Christians? In this four tape White Horse Inn series, Michael Horton, Ken Jones, Kim Riddlebarger, and Rod Rosenbladt help answer these and other questions as they teach us about the proper relationships between unity and doctrine.

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Marks of the Church HE The church today has many problems. We all BIBLE know that it is not quite what it should be, but STUDY what characteristics should the Christian HOUR church have? In this insightful series from James Boice you’ll see what Jesus Christ intended his church to be. You’ll feel confident about knowing what the church should consist of and be motivated to examine your own church situation and move towards improvement.

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The Church: God’s New Society PCRT 1984 This series looks as the doctrine of the church as God’s new society, asking what it is and how it is meant to function in this world. Topics addressed include the nature, marks, and unity of the church, as well as the very critical need for reformation in the church. Speakers include John de Witt, James Boice, J. I. Packer, and Eric Alexander.

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The Alliance Resource Catalog In each issue of Modern Reformation the editors suggest tape and book resources relevant to the topic. For more selections of tapes, videos, books, and booklets (some of which are only available through the Alliance) please visit the Alliance website at: www.AllianceNet.org or call 215-5463696 to request a copy of the resource catalog.

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sality only awaits us in glory, as the invisible and visible churches become one. Nevertheless, the one Lord, one faith, one baptism characteristic that defines the true church everywhere and always, gives us reason to say with the reformers that “wherever the Word is rightly preached and the Sacraments are rightly administered, there, it is not to be doubted, is a true church of God.” Just as the holiness of the future glorification of believers has been brought into the present in both the announcement of justification and the commencement of sanctification, so the catholicity of the church that awaits the elect is to be anticipated and gratefully received even in the present by a sinful church on the basis of the Word preached in the power of the Spirit. Just as the Spirit is given to each believer as a deposit guaranteeing final redemption (Eph. 1:14), so the same Spirit is given to the visible church here and now to witness to and even to begin experiencing, however imperfectly,

the unbroken unity of the glorified saints in heaven.

Perhaps, then, we should at least supplement (if not supplant) the invisible/visible distinction with a more eschatological (and more biblical) “already/not yet” distinction. There is no ideal church existing somewhere in an eternal, spiritual realm of pure theory with a church of mere “appearances” here below. There is an age to come that is breaking in on this present evil age although it has not yet fully enveloped it. The church will finally enter her Sabbath rest when Christ returns in glory, after the Great Commission has been fulfilled and God has gathered his elect from the four corners of the earth. Until then, Romans 6 to 8 is as true of the church as it is of individual believers: we are baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection unto new life (Rom. 6), while nevertheless constantly struggling with indwelling sin (Rom. 7). Yet we receive joy and strength as we turn our gaze ever anew to the Savior in whom and through

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ince the Reformation, the Christian world has splintered exponentially. The 2001 edition of the World Christian Encyclopedia records 33,830 distinct Christian denominations across the world. One of the largest categories of Christians––in fact, second only to Roman Catholicism––is “Independent.” The 386 million self-described Independent Christians outnumber Protestants by more than 40 million adherents.

The rise of such independency, which embraces a “postdenominational” model of ministry, reflects a growing appreciation for the Anabaptist wing of the Reformation, commonly called the Radical Reformation to distinguish it from both the Lutheran and Calvinist Magisterial Reformation and the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation. Anabaptists reject both Catholic and Reformation institutional hierarchies, attempt to recover the socalled pure worship of the early church, and grant to individuals the kind of spiritual authority usually reserved for the institutional church. In America, this trend is most noticeable in the strength of parachurch organizations that often operate beyond denominational bounds under only the oversight of self-appointed boards.

The assessment of independency generally and of parachurch ministries in particular hinges upon important questions of ecclesiastical authority and responsibility. There may be good reasons to favor the work of a particular parachurch organization or to

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engage in ministry that the organized church is either unable or unwilling to pursue. Yet the danger of unchecked authority––especially if it resides in a charismatic leader––and the lack of churchly oversight often leads to abuses of power, false theology, and a general disdain for the visible institutional church.

Some churches have been able to construct relationships with independent parachurch organizations as a way to provide accountability to the organization’s staff while they are working with a particular church. But those situations are rare. It is far more common for parachurch organizations to operate outside the visible church. What, then, is the relationship between the visible institutional church—as it is expressed in the actions of the church and her officers—and these independent parachurch organizations that are part of the invisible church although they have no organizational ties to the visible church?

These questions may seem quite abstract but they take on a more concrete aspect when a parachurch organization is accused of financial malfeasance, doctrinal error, or other sin. One example is the controversy surrounding the Institute for Basic Life Principles (IBLP) founded and led by popular evangelical teacher Bill Gothard. Gothard and the IBLP have been the subject of intense scrutiny for the past five years by Midwest Christian Outreach (MCO), an apologetics and counter cult organization.

Don Veinot, the president of MCO, and Ron Henzel, its director

whom there is therefore no condemnation, even as we, by the Spirit, are crying out “Abba, Father,” to him who promises to make everything thoroughly new one day, including our bodies and the whole groaning creation (Rom. 8).

So just as we earnestly seek our sanctification (see Phil. 2:12; 1 Tim. 1:7–10; Heb. 12:14) because of an already inherited verdict (our justification: see Rom. 3:24; 5:9; Tit. 3:4–7), an already experienced renewal (the new birth: see John 3:3; Col. 3:5–10), and a firmly expected destiny (our glorification: see Rom. 8:17–18; 1 Cor. 15:42–58; 1 John 3:2), we also seek to embrace the universality of the visible church because it is already holy in Christ, indwelled by the Spirit, and will one day be unveiled as the completed temple of God’s presence in his new heavens and earth (see Rev. 21:1–3 [NAS or ESV margin]). The church’s catholicity, then, like salvation more generally, is a gift to be received. And even when––not if, unfortunate-

ly––we squander that gift, Christ by his Word and Spirit continually gives it, again and again. “Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more” (see Rom. 5:20). That’s good news for us who want to be proper stewards of this gift of catholicity and yet recognize with dreadful regularity our own role in compromising its security, in small and large ways, at the most local and sometimes also at the broadest levels.

If all of this is correct, then what is necessary is a view of the church’s universality that neither identifies the invisible church with a particular visible church (an over-realized eschatology) nor disregards the visible church’s tangible unity (an under-realized eschatology). On one end of the spectrum are Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and specific Protestant bodies that often claim simply to be the catholic church without remainder. On the other end are most evangelical and pentecostal groups that, in their “nondenomi-

or the Church? of research, have published A Matter of Basic Principles (Twenty-first Century Press, 2002), which details their concerns about Gothard’s theology, organizational leadership, and ethics. (In a phone call subsequent to the meeting, Bill Gothard stated that a book refuting MCO’s claims was currently being edited for publication.)

On August 20, 2002, Bill Gothard and several of his associates met with Don Veinot and Ron Henzel to discuss eleven points of concern drawn up by MCO. These points detail what MCO believes are significant errors in IBLP’s teaching. The meeting, held at a suburban Chicago hotel, was moderated by Norman Geisler, who is president of Southern Evangelical Seminary and a noted Christian apologist. Modern Reformation was invited to observe and report on the proceedings.

The eleven points of concern constituted the basic agenda for the meeting. They are: 1. Is there a biblical basis for Gothard’s teachings on “umbrellas” of authority?

2. Is there a scriptural foundation for Gothard’s teaching on “the iniquities of the father”?

3. Is there a biblical basis for Gothard’s teaching on the order of the worship service?

4. Is the purpose of the Gospel account of the centurion (see

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Matt. 8:5-13; Luke 7:1-10) given to teach Gothard’s view on authority or to teach who Jesus is and the importance of faith in him?

Do Cabbage Patch dolls prevent the birth of children?

Does Gothard’s teaching on authority imply that Jesus is a sinner?

Does the phrase “one interpretation, many applications” allow us to have Scriptural applications that are not based on or that are even contrary to the one true interpretation of a given passage of Scripture?

Is it proper to impose Levitical ceremonial restrictions on sexual intercourse within Christian marriage?

Is it proper to impose circumcision as a biblical mandate for Christians today?

If a Christian leader changes a significant teaching because it was shown to be unbiblical, should he not make a public retraction of that teaching to his followers?

Is it biblically proper to say that grace is earned?

The meeting began with each of the Gothard associates reading prepared position statements in response to MCO’s eleven points. The representatives of MCO were then given approxi-

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national” denominationalism, understand the church as simply the sum total of individuals who are truly born again. The ecumenical movement tended to confuse the unity for which Christ prayed in John 17 with the greater coordination and eventual merger of bureaucracies. Yet movement-oriented evangelicals tend toward a seriously deficient evaluation of the visible church and its tangible (i.e., interdenominational ecumenical) unity.

Churches of the Reformation, however, divided for a variety of reasons today, reflect a somewhat mediating position. On one hand, the gospel creates the church and therefore “wherever the Word is rightly preached and the Sacraments rightly administered, there is undoubtedly a true church.”

Therefore, any church may lose its status as a true church if it abandons faithful preaching and right administration of the Sacraments. On the other hand, faithful preaching and right administration of the Sacraments are visible and, as the Belgic Confession puts it, “obvious” marks that objectively distinguish the true church from false churches. It is not up to individuals to decide for themselves simply that churches are “true” or “false”––and, specifically, they are not to do so on the basis of purely subjective standards concerning the condition of various churches.

mately one hour to make a statement and respond to the IBLP statements. These initial presentations were followed by counter-responses from each organization.

The participants quickly realized that hermeneutics––that is, how one interprets Scripture––was foundational to their disagreement. MCO complained that Gothard’s stated practice is to apply one passage of Scripture to many different circumstances (“many applications, one interpretation”); and some of these applications, MCO believes, do not take into account the original purpose or context of the passage.

This concern was especially related to the ninth question posed to IBLP, “Is it proper to impose circumcision as a biblical mandate for Christians today?” Gothard’s position is that physical circumcision has health benefits both for New Testament believers and for men today. He supports this position by appealing to Scriptures such as Col. 2:11 and Rom. 3:1-2. In a published Basic Care Bulletin entitled, “How to Make a Wise Decision on Circumcision,” IBLP states that physical circumcision is “strongly commanded and reinforced in Scripture” and that by circumcising their sons on the eighth day, contemporary parents are fulfilling their calling “to follow in the footsteps of Christ.” But the pas-

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The Two Chief Threats to Catholicity he Litany of the Book of Common Prayer beseeches, “From heresy and schism, good Lord, deliver us.” Similarly, a line from “The Church’s One Foundation” laments, “From schism rent asunder, from heresy distressed.” It is reasonable to couple these sins together, because they are usually two sides of the same coin. Schism is regarded by reformational churches as no less sinful than heresy.

Does this surprise you? After all, didn’t the Reformation result from believing that separation from the Catholic Church didn’t matter as much as sound doctrine? This view of the Reformation ignores the historical facts of the case. Many conferences were held throughout the sixteenth century and even on into the early seventeenth century in order to reconcile the factions. The reformers valued the church’s visible unity as much as any of their detractors. But they believed that the apostolic faith––and not the Roman Catholic presumption of an apostolic succession of bishops––was what constitutes true universality, true catholicity.

They believed that to be schismatic––to leave this truly catholic church, grounded in the apostles’ witness as found in the Scriptures––is to leave Christ himself (see 1 John 2:19). We should not expect to have a personal relationship with Christ

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sages Gothard uses to defend this position actually assert, in their proper contexts (see Rom. 2:25-3:31 and Col. 2:6-23), that circumcision has no value apart from the saving work of Christ.

God did not command Abraham to circumcise his male children and servants for health reasons. And Paul, in Colossians 2:11 states that the only circumcision that is of any benefit to the believers is a “circumcision made without hands.”

Gothard denies that circumcision is required of believers for salvation; but he does say that the “Old Testament law––as interpreted by Jesus’ command to love God and neighbor—compels us to practice circumcision.” By trying to proof text his position from Scripture Gothard actually raises concerns about his own orthodoxy. By employing his own hermeneutic of “principial application,” Gothard confuses law and gospel, calling into question his understanding of the relationship of Christ and the church to the Levitical laws.

Concerns about Gothard’s understanding of grace are aggravated when reading his “Definition of Grace,” published in 2000,

by IBLP. There he states that Old Testament saints like Noah, Moses, and Gideon “found grace” from God because they “possessed qualities that merited God’s favor.” Gothard also says that

apart from incorporation into Christ’s visible body (see Acts 2:41–42; 1 John 1:3–7). Yet no church should be considered to be part of Christ’s visible body if it does not faithfully preach God’s Word and rightly administer his Sacraments. Significant deviation here constitutes heresy. And heresy must be avoided as much as schism. So there are two equally deplorable errors: heresy and schism.

Today, schism is taken to go hand-in-hand with ferocious zeal for orthodoxy. Yet although mainline liberals have always been especially eager to paint the orthodox as schismatic, it was aggressive heresy in the mainline that created the deepest divisions among the visible churches of the twentieth century. Consequently, as mainline Lutheran theologian Carl Braaten observes, the ecumenical movement of mainline twentieth-century churches has not yet reached its goal; Christianity is still badly divided. However, the deepest divisions are no longer denominational, say, between Catholics and Protestants, Lutherans and Reformed, Evangelical and mainline churches, and so on, although such divisions lamentably still exist and we should not pretend that the ecumenical movement has swept them all away. The deepest fault line appears where faith and unbelief meet

within the churches, among their theologians, bishops, and pastors. Nowhere is this more evident than in the matter of the resurrection.

For all intents and purposes, the ecumenical movement that grew initially out of the missionary conferences of the nineteenth century is now at an end. No doubt, when theologians, pastors, and ecclesiastical bureaucrats meet in solemn assembly to reunite a divided Christendom, a vast array of unforeseen factors on the ground encourage slicing the pieces of the Christian pie in significantly different ways. Yet the remedy for this is not, as many think, to jettison what each church takes to be its biblically based denominational distinctives. In fact, this leads to exactly the wrong place: after each church has surrendered just about anything of doctrinal interest it may have to say, nothing can bind them all together apart from passing political and ideological fads.

Unlike the liberals, evangelicals today at least profess Christian orthodoxy, and so it would seem that the energy has shifted to the evangelicals.

And yet the unchurchly enterprise of modern Evangelicalism has introduced its own host of new schisms. No longer are the divisions between Roman Catholics and Protestants, Lutherans and

“unmerited favor” is a faulty definition of grace because (among other reasons) it is too general; it is more applicable to mercy than to grace; it is not a true definition in all cases (here he cites Genesis 6:29 and Numbers 12:3, explaining that both Noah and Moses received favor from the Lord based on their own righteousness), and so on. Gothard has revised that paper at least two times in response to questions posed to him by Veinot and MCO. The most recent revision now uses the word “unmerited” to describe grace and no longer refers to various Old Testament saints as earning grace based on their own righteousness. But in this latest revision (which represents, Gothard says, what he has taught for the past thirty-nine years) as well as in a companion paper entitled, “The Dynamic of Grace,” he continues to confuse the issue by calling grace a works-enabling substance, namely a “power that God gives to do his will.”

This same confusion is also at the heart of another accusation against Bill Gothard––that he is legalistic. For example, the eighth point of concern asks, “Is it proper to impose Levitical ceremonial restrictions on sexual intercourse within Christian marriages?” Gothard answered with a vigorous “No.” But disagreement surfaced when copies of a Basic Care Bulletin, published in

1991 by Gothard’s Medical Training Institute of America, were circulated at the August 2002 meeting. In that pamphlet, Gothard’s organization argues that Christians violate Hebrews 13:4––“Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled; for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous”––when they do not practice periodic abstinence in marriage as outlined by Leviticus 15:19, 25; and 12:2-5. The pamphlet goes on to state that such violations can lead to “physical, mental, emotional and spiritual difficulties experienced by both men and women.” A promise, in the guise of a warning, is given at the end of the pamphlet, that “those who keep His Word”––that is, those who do not violate this Levitical commandment––will not suffer the diseases with which the Lord plagued the Egyptians (see Exod. 15:26). The Christian’s failure to keep the Levitical commands will result in punishment akin to the diseases with which the Lord punished Egypt, according to Gothard.

In spite of both parties’ best intentions, the August 2002 meeting ended without any resolution. MCO was hoping for a retraction from Gothard; but they didn’t get one. On the other hand, Gothard was hoping to quiet his critics’ concerns about what he

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Reformed, Calvinists and Arminians, Paedobaptists and Credobaptists, charismatics and noncharismatics, among others. Today, each of these traditions is internally and increasingly divided along lines dictated by the invisible and supposedly benevolent (or at least neutral) hand of the market. Now “demographicalism,” rather than denominationalism, threatens the catholicity of Christ’s body across centuries and continents. Contextualization is one fancy word for the new sectarianism. The real threat to catholicity over the long haul may be not so much our typical and tragic theological divisions, but the separate traditional and contemporary services, youth groups, and the seemingly endless proliferation of special-interest small groups. “We no longer regard each other in a worldly way,” Paul said, thinking of the familiar secular divisions that are sinfully adopted in the supposedly countercultural “new society” that God is forming in Christ by his Spirit. Perhaps we should add to Paul’s list in Galatians: In Christ there is neither young nor old, rich nor poor, black nor white, urban nor suburban, traditional nor contemporary, Boomer, Buster, X-er, nor Y-er, but all are one in Christ.

The adoption of secular methodologies has gone a long way toward undermining the catholic faith and practice that has united the generations

asserts are fairly minor details of his teaching; but he failed to convince them that he was interpreting Scripture in an orthodox manner. The more important questions that this meeting raised were, Who speaks for the church? Who holds leaders of parachurch organizations accountable for their teachings? The entire conversation was, in some respects, an exercise in futility. Except for appealing to the other party to do the right thing, neither side could claim either implicit or explicit authority over the other.

Don Veinot could appeal to Bill Gothard as a brother, but because neither of their organizations is part of the visible institutional church, no form of church discipline could be undertaken or enforced. Neither man, in spite of each man’s love for the Body of Christ, could claim to be operating as part of that Body. And that left both men in essentially the same position: ministering on behalf of the church while yet beyond any oversight by or accountability to the visible church.

This is not to say that there was no merit in the discussion.

Any time questions of legalism and the meaning of grace, among other items, are raised Christians should hasten to clarify their views in accordance with Scripture. Bill Gothard, in spite of his obvious passion for Christians to think and act rightly, has con-

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across diverse times and places. And once again, it is not those who recklessly untie these catholic cords who are being judged schismatic but those who would offer a rebuttal. In our new situation, we must wake up to the reality that the church’s catholicity can be denied not only by explicit heresy and doctrinal apostasy but also by a certain kind of cultural captivity masquerading as “mission” and “evangelism.”

Some Realism he sad reality is that heresy and schism have plagued the church from the very beginning. Besides Old Testament examples (culminating in the divided kingdom), the New Testament churches were, on the whole, quite disappointing. The Corinthian church was a cesspool of immorality, selfishness, disorder, division, and error. The Galatian church was on the verge of being anathematized by the Apostle Paul.

There, heresy in the form of works-righteousness and schism in the form of excluding the gentiles went hand-in-hand. The church of Colossae was being threatened by an early version of Jewish gnosticism involving the worship of angels and extreme asceticism. Need we rehearse the failings of the churches in the Apocalypse? There, the

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fused serious theological issues. His teachings are characterized by an interpretation of Scripture that no other Christian organization shares. His changing or modifying teachings that he still refuses explicitly to recant does not mollify his critics. Some of Don Veinot’s criticisms concentrate on relatively minor matters, but there are significant points of confusion and error in Gothard’s teaching.

Don Veinot shares with Bill Gothard a commitment to the same model of independent parachurch ministry. This leaves him vulnerable to some of the same kinds of errors that he believes Gothard has embraced. MCO, like IBLP, operates outside the visible institutional church; and so Veinot runs under the same temptation to amass unchecked power in his own organization and illegitimately to assume that he is able to exercise some sort of legitimate authority in the wider church.

In some respects, this problem is shared by all parachurch organizations, including the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, which publishes Modern Reformation magazine. For although the staff, council, board, and supporters of the Alliance are members in the visible institutional church, the Alliance itself, as an independent organization, answers only to its own council and board.

church of Ephesus is enduring persecution and yet has abandoned her first love, while Pergamum and Thyatira stand under the Lord’s solemn threat of judgment for their tolerance of false teaching, and the church of Sardis is dead and Laodicea is lukewarm and wishy-washy.

Those who claim descent from the churches of the New Testament and those who pine for the reestablishment of “apostolic churches” ought to recall the actual, empirical character of these churches. They were hardly infallible organs of divine truth; and their worship and daily practice demonstrated that the church was rent asunder by schism and distressed by heresy even while the apostles were still living. How could any church today claim greater fidelity than the churches planted and supervised by the apostles themselves?

The church has never been the good news. It was not then; and it is not now. The church at its best can only be the witness to the good news of what God has done in Jesus Christ for sinners like us.

Schism is often in the eyes of the beholder.

One person’s schism can be another person’s fidelity. “That the whole cause of schism lies in sin I do not hold to be certain,” C. S. Lewis wrote in one of his letters. To be sure, Rome’s Tetzel and England’s Henry VIII were lost men, but what about the likes

of Thomas More and William Tyndale? How can we read either and come away thinking that their disagreement was founded on some bitter disposition or some other vice? On the contrary, their disagreement seems to me to spring not from their vices nor from their ignorance but rather from their virtues and the depths of their faith, so that the more they were at their best the more they were at variance. I believe the judgement of God on their dissension is more profoundly hidden than it appears to you to be: for His judgements are indeed an abyss.

That is not to say that schism is never the result of vicious personalities. Of the situation in Ireland, Lewis said, “They take lack of charity for zeal and mutual ignorance for orthodoxy.”

Those who weigh the debate over the nature of the gospel lightly will tend to view the Reformation as a mistake—as schism––even if they place the blame at the feet of both parties. Those, on the other hand, who believe that Rome officially denied the gospel at the Council of Trent will see in the Reformation a remarkable example of God’s mercy toward his church in saving a remnant to

Should we, then, as an independent organization be allowed to assume the task of calling for repentance and confession of false doctrine from others or is that exclusively the task of the visible institutional church? We have tried to mitigate this tension by operating as a Christian organization that produces resources for pastors and churches to do the work of the ministry rather than as a parachurch ministry that itself does the work of the church.

But the dangers are still there for the Alliance, just as they are for Midwest Christian Outreach or the Institute for Basic Life Principles.

The ongoing dialogue between Don Veinot and Bill Gothard is indicative of the continuing problems of evangelical parachurch ministries. There are reasons for favoring a parachurch approach to ministry. When we wish to circumvent a moribund church bureaucracy, or take advantage of skills and people not associated with our own denomination, or provide a service that the institutional church is unable or unwilling to provide, a parachurch organization will often succeed where the church falters.

But if the church’s work is supplanted by parachurch organizations, then the church’s authority can no longer be relied upon.

Then, when faced with persecution, accusation, or condemna-

tion, parachurch organizations often have no ecclesiastical recourse. There are no courts of appeal for those doing the work of the church beyond the church’s authority and responsibility.

The trend toward such ministry models is primarily born out of American individualism and pragmatism and has little in common with the theology of the church as confessed by both Luther and Calvin. For purity in doctrine and practice to take root in the broader church, Evangelicalism needs to embrace a healthy Reformational doctrine of the church that grants only to the institutional church that Christ established the power and authority that too many evangelicals want to take to themselves.

Eric Landry (M.Div. [cand.], Westminster Theological Seminary in California) is managing editor of Modern Reformation magazine.

@ MR RECOMMENDS…

MR invited the participants of the August 20, 2002, meeting to provide responses to this article. You can find their replies online at www.modernreformation.org. For further information on Bill Gothard and Don Veinot, visit their websites at www.billgothard.org and www.midwestoutreach.org.

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continue the church’s truly catholic legacy.

Sectarianism is the splinter that is so easily detected in someone else’s eye. The Christian Reformed Church (CRC) calls the United Reformed Churches “sectarian,” although the CRC itself is the result of a split; Roman Catholicism calls Protestantism sectarian, although she herself anathematized the East in the eleventh century; and so on. Liberal Protestants regard their orthodox counterparts who have separated from the mainline denominations as schismatic for maintaining the very doctrines that the constitutions of those very mainline denominations historically insisted upon. And the ironies just don’t seem to end, especially when independent, self-educated, and self-appointed charismatic personalities describe creedal and confessional churches as schismatic and sectarian.

Yet we who belong to creedal and confessional churches should not be self-satisfied. While we may escape the clutches of the Roman Catholic, liberal, “progressive,” or independent-charismatic critique, who can doubt that we bear our own enormous burden for division? To be sure, many of

Reformed/Presbyterian American circles today there is the unique challenge of independent evangelicals adopting specific Reformed distinctives and then launching new denominations, often with idiosyncrasies shaped by their leaders’ personalities. It is not now enough to be known as “Reformed;” you must be identified as belonging to one of the proliferating tribes with clear antitheses.

In these cases, American Fundamentalism and neoEvangelicalism have clearly exercised as much influence as any confession or catechism.

Why aren’t our ecumenical committees more aggressive to reach full organic union of confessional Reformed/Presbyterian denominations into one body in North America? Are the differences merely historical? Ethnic? Cultural-linguistic? Are there differences of emphasis at certain points? Of course there are. But should they divide Christ’s body? In my humble estimation, we are falling prey to the mainline charge of being sectarian or perhaps even schismatic when we cannot muster the energy to consolidate virtually like-minded denominations. A church––or group of churches––that seeks to be orthodox without being catholic is in danger of being neither. The doctrine of the church is not just a matter of American Fundamentalism and neo-Evangelicalism have clearly exercised as much adiaphora; it is something we confess as part of “our influence as any confession or catechism. undoubted catholic faith.”

Having said all this, the history of human nature in such matters must be taken our divisions result from geography, ethnicity, and into account. The ecumenical movement has not language. Several denominations that emerged reduced the number of mainline denominations in early on in North America resulted from migration the slightest, although attempts at such major from various parts of Europe and had little to do unions have not been lacking. Furthermore, in with doctrine. But even when these cases are set nearly every union of historic Protestant bodies, aside, the number of sets and subsets within the new divisions occur by dissenters from the plan. family of Reformation churches is astounding. As So what if we were able to unite all of the confesa Reformed minister, I think of those within our sional Reformed and Presbyterian denominations? own clan. I hope that my own parochial rumina- There would, no doubt, be great advantages. And tions will suggest parallels for those outside the yet, the very act of such a union would, practically Reformed tradition. speaking, entail new divisions, as sections of at least Perhaps the separation from Rome and perhaps some of the merging denominations might well even the separation between Lutheran and resist such a plan. The Confessing Churches of, Reformed traditions during the Reformation can be say, the Presbyterian Church (USA)—if they justified. And there were strenuous efforts at reuni- should leave the denomination to which they now fication in both cases early on. But what is the war- belong, would not be likely to join the Orthodox rant for the situation that gives rise to the reference Presbyterian Church, the Presbyterian Church in to Presbyterians as “the split ‘p’s”? About the Dutch America, or even the Evangelical Presbyterian Reformed there is this joke: “If you have one Church (EPC)—even though the EPC is in princiGerman, you have a philosopher; a Dutchman, a ple acceptable to many of them. The EPC’s low theologian; two Germans, an army; two number of ordained women would be intolerable to Dutchmen, a church; three Germans, a war; three them. Once we enter the ecumenical business, the Dutchmen, a divided church.” In conservative danger of proliferating divisions is always real.

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This is not an argument against ecumenism but a caution against naively believing that there are simple solutions to our visible disunity. Sectarianism takes many forms and it is simply not the case that only conservatives are guilty of it. But conservatives are guilty of some of it. To our impulse toward conserving the faith we need desperately a more liberal spirit, a catholic spirit that—like the reformers themselves––is not afraid of what it does not understand but seeks to take the best of the whole Christian consensus throughout the centuries, measured by the evangelical confession, and refuses to raise the idiosyncrasies of a gifted individual and his circle of friends to the level of “true Reformed orthodoxy.”

The Scandal to Evangelism mong the tragic consequences of schism is the weight it gives to the belief in the minds of many that a religion so internally divided cannot possibly serve as a reliable guide.

How do we respond to this? First, it is important to acknowledge the seriousness of this charge. It makes sense on a certain level and we must recognize that fact. It is a scandal.

Second, we must explain how Christian faith already contains within itself the seeds for a response to this scandal. That response begins with an explanation that goes something like this. The church consists of sinners and has no promise anywhere in Scripture of being so guided by the Spirit that it can ever claim infallibility. It is not the case, then, that multiple churches claim infallibility. If that were so, then it would stand to reason that the average person would be paralyzed in the face of so many options. The actual situation is that the church’s fallible officers are trying, as best they can, to come to grips with the main teaching of the only infallible rule of faith and practice––Scripture. Our different confessions are all based on the Scriptures and are not really mutually exclusive. They share wide areas of convergence. The Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Reformational churches all affirm the ecumenical creeds in common as “the undoubted catholic faith.”

Many outside and even inside our churches today speak of the Lutheran religion or the Baptist religion. Yet the more they learn where difference and agreement really exists, the greater their sense will be that these are different Christian traditions rather than different religions. This is very important, apologetically. C. S. Lewis said that Christians should not talk about their differences in non-Christian company. In such situations, they should stress their agreements. We have plenty of time to talk about our disagreements among our-

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selves; but I hope that my Reformed, Lutheran, and Baptist friends all would rather that someone become a Christian even in a different confessional tradition than reject Christianity entirely.

So Christianity already has the seeds of response to this scandal sown within it. We are not infallible, it tells us. We are proclaiming God’s Word as true, not ourselves as true. The church is not the gospel but a witness to the gospel. Often it is easier to understand Plato by reading Plato than by reading a commentary on Plato, Lewis reminds us. The same is true of Scripture. Our different confessions represent different commentaries on Scripture. The need for scholars is not eliminated in either case, but nonprofessionals can understand at least the basic lines of biblical teaching on the most essential points. Furthermore, Scripture tells us that our divisions are consistent with its claims about our sinful nature and yet that these divisions will nevertheless be overcome, with all the rest of our sin, by God’s grace. Even if we do not see this now, we will see it fully realized in the age to come.

Third, we should remind our non-Christian friends that if they reject Christianity on the basis of significant and sometimes loud and competing differences of interpretation among Christians, then they should also follow this logic elsewhere in their lives. They would then, for instance, reject medical treatment, because—in spite of enormous gains in modern medicine—strongly diverse opinions and controversies abound about the treatment of a variety of ailments. In fact, the fiercest controversies seem to arise over the most significant diseases. Where the most is perceived to be at stake, the greatest controversy ensues. Should we expect it to be any different with competing religious claims, where the gravest matters are at stake? Science more generally, though popularly regarded as perhaps the least contentious field of inquiry today, is riot with competing claims and schools of thought. And yet nearly everyone, both scientist and layperson, continues believing in a real world as well as in the possibility of achieving greater clarity and knowledge about reality. So the visible unity or disunity of Christian confession is not in itself evidence for or against the truth of Christian claims. It is just evidence that Christian claims are significant and interesting enough to provoke widespread attention and strong reaction through the centuries Does the Church’s Catholicity Have a Prayer? ill Christ’s prayer in John 17 ever be answered? Yes. In fact, it already has been. The visible church is rightly

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called a mixed assembly––elect and nonelect, sheep and goats, wheat and weeds––waiting to be separated by the Lord of the church on the last day.

And yet it is to begin even now embodying before the world the fact that, by having raised Jesus from the dead and filling his visible church, the Holy Spirit is forming a “holy nation and a royal priesthood” to anticipate the renewal of all things. To give up on true catholicity––a principled ecu-

wondering whether this article of the creed addresses them. Although we have been speaking in pretty grand terms, the church’s catholicity concerns all Christians, not just those who serve on ecumenicity committees. It is at the level of the local churches that catholicity is actually made most visible. Maintaining the bond of peace, as Paul exhorted, is the charge of every believer.

Wherever the unity of a church around the gospel of Christ is threatened, even by sincere motives, wherever Our goal, then, is not to achieve the visible unity of the church but to accept, the main things are subverted by an obsession with secondnourish, cherish, and steward that unity that we already possess in union with ary, even if important, things, there believers must struggle Christ. to keep the peace. We must learn to hold our tongues, to keep from blemishing each menism based on agreement about what consti- other’s reputations, to refrain from seeking our own tutes the apostolic faith––is to give up on the visi- praise or serving our own ambitions. Beyond prayble church in a gnostic flight from the body. It is ing for the fruit of the Spirit, much applauded in like giving up on sanctification simply because we the New Testament, we can and must pray for the do not yet experience it perfectly. And just as we peace of Jerusalem—and not in some general, profess faith in “the resurrection of the body and vague manner but in concrete terms plead with the life of the world to come,” so we profess the God for greater visible unity of his churches. In “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church” in visible that prayer, we join our hearts to the heart of the form. These two articles of the Nicene Creed are King of the church who promised that the gates of related. The wasting away of the “outer man,” as hell—and even the hellish, sinful hearts and Paul calls it, does not permit us to denigrate the tongues of Christians themselves—will never be body that will be raised in favor of the “inner man” able finally to withstand his gracious advance. ■ who is already alive in Christ. Analogously, the external disunity of the body of Christ must be both acknowledged (simil justus et peccator) and Michael Horton (Ph.D., Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and the University of Coventry) is associate professor of apologetics repented of in the present.

We already live by the Spirit from the future and historical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary glorification, although we are still sinful. Christ’s in California (Escondido, California), and chairs the Council prayer is answered in the absolute unity and com- of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. Dr. Horton’s munion of the elect of all ages, which is a comfort newest books are A Better Way (Baker, 2002) and to us in our distress about our divisions. Yet that Covenant and Eschatology (Westminster/John Knox, prayer remains to be answered in its fullness, just as 2002). our bodies long for final redemption. Jesus Christ is already permanently united to his elect body as In this article, Professor Horton quotes from its living head. Or, to change metaphors, the branches are already living precisely because of “Barna Responds to Christianity Today Article,” their union with the vine. And yet, in the visible Barna Research Online, September 17, 2002, p. 3; church, dead branches are broken off to make Carl Braaten’s “The Reality of the Resurrection,” room for others. Christ’s prayer was answered at Nicene Christianity (Brazos, 2002), p. 107. the cross and in his resurrection and ascension, as well as in the current ministry of the Spirit whom he has sent. Our goal, then, is not to achieve the visible unity of the church but to accept, nourish, cherish, and steward that unity that we already possess in union with Christ. We do this by giving equal weight to the preservation of the gospel (the only source of unity) and the peace of Zion.

A final word needs to be said to those who are

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WE BELIEVE IN ONE, HOLY, CATHOLIC, AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH

Being and Remaining: The Apostolicity of the Church in Lutheran Perspective n one of the New Testament’s shortest letters, Jude states that, while he had been eager to write to his readers about the salvation that he shared with them, he has found it necessary instead to urge them “to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). This plea has always been at the front of Protestant minds when we confess our belief in “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.” It has always played a central role in our answering the question, What is the apostolic church and what is implied in our confessing faith in it? For Lutherans, answering this question raises issues about the nature of the church and its unity and about what it means for the church to abide in the apostolic faith “once for all delivered to the saints.”

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These issues were crucial in the reformers’ time and they remain crucial today. For example, right now in the more liberal Evangelical Lutheran Church in America a controversy is raging over whether the church can remain faithful to its apostolic tradition if it blesses gay marriages and ordains noncelibate homosexuals. In the more conservative Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, a battle is being fought over whether that denomination’s New York–area district president, David Benke, should have participated in the public, interfaith event that was held in Yankee Stadium following the September 11 terrorist attacks.

There Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, and others met together to pray about the world’s perilous state. This raised the issue of whether Christians can stand clearly for the apostolic truth

that there is “no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12) when they are at the same time seen praying in the company of others who hold to very different faiths. So it should be obvious that a lot rides on our answer to the question, What is this apostolic church in which we confess belief, and what is implied in our confessing belief in it?

The Church and the Apostolic Faith n spite of past and current controversies, Lutherans have always enjoyed fundamental agreement regarding the doctrine of the church and its apostolicity. Lutheran agreement about these doctrines appears as early as 1530 in the Augsburg Confession that nearly all Lutherans affirm. This confession, consisting of twenty-one articles on doc-

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Should I Stay o Staying in the Mainline Presbyterian I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and so that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought. … Is Christ divided?

1 Corinthians 1:10ff

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onathan Franzen’s witty and often heartbreaking 2001 best-seller, The Corrections, is animated by a mother’s desire to gather her dysfunctional children together for an important family celebration. I think of that novel often when I consider the upcoming milestone of the 300th birthday of American Presbyterianism in 2006. Gathering John Calvin’s fractured family together at the table––either literally or metaphorically––will be no easy task. What seems crystal clear, however, is that, when family members are estranged, rumors circulate, bad motives are attributed, and good will often sours. The greater Presbyterian family’s members in America today––both on the conservative and liberal sides––usually talk past each other.

Neither side regularly listens to the other side.

During more than twenty years in Presbyterian circles––from membership in both the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) to working at the Presbyterian Church U.S.A.’s (PC(USA)) Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia––I have heard gross generalizations hurled from both sides of the debate that rages between them. In short,

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the positions can be expressed this way. From the mainline: “It’s the culture, stupid.” And from the “sidelines”: “It’s the theology, stupid.” Each side accuses the other of being tone deaf to either cultural or theological issues. These accusations thread through the history of Presbyterian conflicts.

The history of Presbyterianism has been a contentious and splintered one. The experiences of three representative pastors from mainline and “sideline” Presbyterian denominations may shed light on the major issues and minor peccadilloes that divide the Presbyterian church.

A Young Man’s Unplanned Journey to the PCA Rev. David Coffin is senior pastor of New Hope Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Fairfax, Virginia. An avid observer of all things Presbyterian, Coffin was a seminarian under Dr. John Gerstner at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in the early 1970s. Rev. Coffin admits to being virtually clueless as a younger man about denominationalism. Although he grew up in a mainline Presbyterian church in suburban Washington, D.C., he said he cannot remember ever hearing mention of the Westminster Confession of Faith or the distinctive tenets of Calvinism. (He is quick to add that he may not have been listening very carefully, either!)

After attending Wake Forest University briefly on a football scholarship, the young student dropped out, headed home, and experienced friction with his parents while working as a bartender by day and an art student by night. A wise mainline Presbyterian

trine and seven articles on church reform, was penned by Philip Melanchthon in response to the attempt of Roman Catholic theologian John Eck to identify Lutheranism with all sorts of heresies. In it and more especially in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession (first published in 1531), Melanchthon labored to establish Lutheranism’s orthodoxy and catholicity from the Scriptures, as the epigraph that heads the confession’s preface portends: “I will also speak of your testimonies before kings and shall not be put to shame” (Ps. 119:46).

The first article of the Augsburg Confession sets the stage for all of its remaining articles by opening with the words: “The churches among us teach with complete unanimity that….” Article VII opens by declaring that these Lutheran churches teach “that at all times there must be and remain

one holy, Christian church” that is “the assembly of all believers among whom the gospel is purely preached and the holy Sacraments are administered according to the gospel.” This is what the first Lutherans confessed as their faith––and all who claim confessional fidelity to the evangelical Lutheran church continue to believe, teach, and confess it today.

Lutherans hold that the church is not, as one might otherwise imagine, an invisible spiritual community known and apparent only by faith.

Instead, the “one, holy Christian church” is radically empirical. It is a decidedly this-worldly “assembly” (that is, ekklesia) of believers, a living communion of the faithful created and established by the all-powerful Word of the triune God. Indeed, the church is, in the Latin shorthand of the sixteenth

or Should I Go? n Church or Forced to the Sidelines minister, Glen Knecht, offered to run interference with Coffin’s parents if the young man promised to read two books: Francis Schaeffer’s The God Who Is There and Edith Schaeffer’s L’Abri, a book about Francis and Edith Schaeffer’s theological community for young people in the Swiss Alps. That, as they say, made all the difference. Shortly thereafter, Coffin traveled to Switzerland and lived in the L’Abri community, reading voraciously in the Reformed faith until his third visa application was denied to him.

The L’Abri experience, he remarks, “turned my life around.”

Coffin then moved to Ligonier Ministries in Pennsylvania and studied under the Rev. R. C. Sproul, who “had a high view of the church.” Those were turbulent theological times for the mainline and Coffin joined the Concerned United Presbyterians, a group encouraging the broadening mainline denomination to tolerate ministers who, on Scriptural grounds, could not justify ordaining women. Back at the church of his youth, Wallace Memorial Presbyterian Church, PC(USA), Coffin served as a ruling elder along with journalist Ken Myers. A watershed moment for the church, Coffin recalls, was when the National Capitol Union Presbytery in Washington D.C. ordained a man who allegedly denied the deity of Christ at his ordination examination. Far more crucial than any debate on women’s ordination, Coffin says, this issue galvanized many conservative Presbyterians to rethink their membership in the mainline.

Coffin adds that he never actually renounced the mainline.

Rather, when he returned to Wallace after a time away, the church eventually had joined the more conservative Presbyterian Church in America. He sought a letter of dismissal from the PC(USA), which was granted. Now in the new denomination, he proceeded to rifle through the annual minutes of all the General Assemblies from the denomination’s formation in 1972. “I didn’t want to join the conversation midstream,” he explains.

In discussing the PCA’s formation, Rev. Coffin outlines three major concerns the denomination’s founders expressed in opposition to the mainline. First, there was a concern about Scripture.

“The PC(USA) began to adopt other sources of ultimate authority––culture and science, for instance,” he recalls. “Second, the Reformed confessions were deemphasized. And, third, the spiritual mission of the church was under question. The church’s mission was becoming politicized, adopting unbiblical means,” Coffin says.

Rev. Coffin says that he was heartened, while examining the documents on the PCA’s formation, to read that some of its founders hoped to see transformation in the mainline denomination that they felt compelled to leave. Their attitude was, “May you come to a genuine church awakening, where positions are reexamined,” Coffin says. He wishes that such humility had characterized all of the PCA’s founders then, as well as its being the prevailing sentiment in all of the “sideline” denominations today.

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century, a creatura verbi divini, a “creature of the Word.” In this divinely created assembly, believers hear and receive the spoken word of the gospel as the very power of God unto salvation (see Rom. 1:16–17; 1 Thess. 1:4–5; 1 Pet. 1:25). In the washing with water of holy baptism they are raised by God the Father to new life (see Col. 2:12–13), united to Christ the Son (see Rom. 6:3–11), sealed by the Holy Spirit (see Eph. 4:30) and “marked with the cross of Christ forever.” In the holy absolution spoken by their priest or pastor, they are continuously reconciled to God and to one another through confession and the forgiveness of sins.

And at the Lord’s Table they are offered by the hand of the minister and receive with their bodily mouths (!) Christ’s true body and blood in, with, and under the bread and wine.

If the Augsburg Confession’s affirmation of the church, which “must be and remain” can be taken as the classic Lutheran definition of the church, then it is hard not to notice that this definition presupposes that the apostolic church is a community of people at work. Believers assemble and busy themselves with all the tasks we associate with Sunday morning services: preaching and hearing, baptizing and confirming, absolving and communing, and so forth. They rise and sit, kneel to confess, close and open their eyes, bow their heads, speak and sing, pray inwardly and process forward in faith to receive the Sacrament at the altar––and

Rev. Coffin adds that his seminary mentor, John Gerstner, longdelayed leaving the mainline because he believed “that you should not leave a church unless it requires you to do something sinful, if they abandon some central element of Christianity, or if they put you out.” Yet Gerstner, according to Coffin, saw some of his “best and brightest” seminarians fail to be ordained in the Pittsburgh presbytery because of their conservative convictions. But “he kept a consistent position with these men,” Coffin notes, “urging them to go into other professions and to serve the church in other ways.”

From Mainline to OPC: Philadelphia to Santa Barbara Douglas Harley, a minister at El Camino Orthodox Presbyterian Church, outside Santa Barbara, California, has traveled a circuitous route to the approximately 30,000-member denomination founded in 1936 by New Testament professor J. Gresham Machen while he was at Princeton Theological Seminary. Reared in both the Assemblies of God and the Free Methodist Church, Harley chose Princeton Theological Seminary for his theological education after joining the mainline

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much more. This “liturgy” (in the Greek, leitourgia)––or “work of the people”––the confession takes for granted; indeed, it assumes it as the empirical context where the church happens. Wherever the faithful are gathered around the gospel and the Sacraments, they join in the orthodox praise of God. And there the church is and remains. There, by means of the visible marks that were identified above, we find the true church of Jesus Christ, the church that is not only “one, holy, [and] catholic” but that is also apostolic.

Apostolicity and Continuity ut when we affirm that the “one, holy Christian church” found in this assembly of believers is apostolic, exactly what do we mean? Among other things, we mean that the faith of the apostles is constitutive for the church––that is, this faith, and no other, constitutes the church as church. The church identified in the Lutheran confessions thus stands in historic and confessional continuity with the church of apostolic times. Their faith is our faith, for “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8). We devote ourselves unreservedly “to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). The faith believed and practiced in the church is the one faith, given in “the pattern of the sound words” (2 Tim. 1:13) by which the apostles witnessed to Christ the Savior. The

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Presbyterian church. After serving as an associate pastor in a large PC(USA) church in the Detroit suburbs, Harley accepted the call to another mainline work, Olivet-Covenant Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia’s Art Museum district.

“This was an extremely evangelical church. They rarely took exception to any of my sermons and were eager to hear more about the Reformed faith,” Harley says. He adds, “The session had been hesitant to discipline anyone, however. Predecessors failed to discipline parishioners to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings.”

When asked if he left the mainline Presbyterian church because they didn’t properly exhibit the marks of the church––preaching of the Word, administering the Sacraments, and executing church discipline, Harley balked. “Every church is full of error,” he said.

Although Harley thinks the mainline today is a big tent that shelters too many theological and cultural agendas, he sees glimmers of hope in the Confessing Church Movement (CCM) of the PC(USA). Formed in 2001, the movement has approximately 422,000 members to date––about the size of the PCA and the

Word proclaimed and administered by the apostles unites us and makes us their successors.

Our devotion to the truth of the apostolic faith does not stand alone, however, but is complemented by a commitment to reject false doctrine (see Acts 20:27–31; 1 Tim. 6:20; 2 Tim. 1:14; 1 John 4:1). Lutherans from the beginning adopted critical principles according to which flawed Christian faith or practice should be reformed in a manner consistent with the apostolic witness as we have it in Holy Scripture. As reformers such as Luther and Melanchthon saw the matter—and as is generally conceded today, both by Lutheran and by Roman Catholic scholars—the church’s faith and practice in the later Middle Ages were flawed and needed reformation. In response, Lutherans called for a return to the sources of the faith. In order that the apostolic faith should be rightly taught and handed on to coming generations, they strove to bring Christian proclamation and practice into conformity with Scripture. At the very least, they argued, what we believe and do must not contradict the apostolic witness. Once again, what is crucial is that the apostolic faith—the evangel—should be clearly preached and the Sacraments faithfully administered. The apostolicity of the church today consists in our holding to the teaching and practice of the apostles, Christ’s first and faithful witnesses, as they are preserved for us in God’s holy Scriptures.

In itself, the claim that the church should be

reformed based on the apostolic witness in Holy Scripture was neither new nor particularly threatening, even in Luther’s day. Church-dividing differences arose only when the Lutherans—whose representatives were mostly secular princes, pastors, and university professors—came into conflict with the church’s established leaders: the Roman Catholic bishops. Yet even this conflict was by no means necessary. Early Lutherans were willing to concede a lot to the structure and authority of the church’s ordered ministry as it had existed since at least the times of the early church fathers.

The church’s ministry of service to the whole people of God had long been structured and apportioned according to a threefold order: deacons were responsible for the church’s caring ministry to the poor and needy (see Acts 6:1–4); priests administered the Sacraments and tended the local congregations (see 1 Cor. 11:23–26; Eph. 4:11; 1 Tim. 4:11–16; 2 Tim. 4:1–5); and bishops held the “ministry of oversight” (episkopé: see Acts 20:28; 1 Tim. 3:1; Tit. 1:7 [ESV margin]), attending to the unity of the local congregations in the apostolic faith. At Augsburg, Lutherans recognized and affirmed the bishops’ leading role in the church, and they freely admitted that Christ had entrusted to them the “power and command of God to preach the gospel, to forgive or retain sin, and to administer and distribute the sacraments” (Augsburg Confession, Article XXVIII).

Christ had established, in other words, the church’s

OPC combined. On their website, CCM members ask their fellow mainliners, “About to Give Up on the Mainline Churches?

God Hasn’t!” Instead, their goals are clear: “Confessing the Faith; Reclaiming Historic Faith and Teaching for the 21st Century.”

When they are asked why they have formed the Confessing Church Movement, representatives of the movement answer, “Although our denomination has a wonderful Book of Confessions, many people give mere lip service to the foundational beliefs it contains. For example, denominations’ funds are used for events, conferences and even seminary training that deny Christ’s sole saving work, the integrity of Scripture, and God’s call for leaders to be holy. As a result many people are confused about what Presbyterian churches actually believe and teach.”

As the OPC and PCA members look on from the sidelines, it is tempting to criticize the mainline church for straying from its theological moorings. However, Harley warns against a “theological oppressiveness” that can exist within conservative denominations. This attitude can foster an unwillingness to stay in dialogue with those with whom we disagree. He wants, instead, to

be characterized by an “ecumenical orthodoxy” that takes seriously the Ecumenical creeds of the church when differences arise “this side of heaven.”

A Conservative Mainliner Makes a Case to Stay Rev. James Rauch gives a warm welcome at his office at Westminster Presbyterian Church, PC(USA), in Escondido, California. “I was reared in the mainline Presbyterian Church in Southern California just a little north of here,” Rauch says. “My parents brought our family to church every week.” His father was an IBM executive and his mother was mayor of her hometown. “I came to a serious faith in eleventh grade,” the forty-something senior pastor says. After graduating from the University of California at San Diego, Rauch deliberately chose Princeton Theological Seminary for his theological training. “I wanted to go to ‘the heart of the beast’ and get my credentials for the mainline. At Princeton I met some very liberal people. However, I also found seminarians who had a deeper commitment to Christ and the Scripture than I did.”

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ordered ministry and charged it with the duty and responsibility of publicly ministering to the faithful through preaching and the administration of the Sacraments. As loyal sons of the church, the Lutherans vigorously asserted their willingness to be obedient to their bishops, provided only that the bishops would allow the preaching of that faith.

When the bishops refused to do so, what had been a protest became a revolt, a rejection of ecclesiastical tyranny in defense of the apostolic faith.

Still, the Lutherans were not opposed to the church per se. In fact, the vital connection they saw between salvation and the church is made clear in the progression from the fourth to the fifth articles of the Augsburg Confession. According to Article IV, justification is a gift given by grace alone for Christ’s sake alone through faith alone. But if faith is the medium of salvation, then there should be means through which it is given and effected in the Christian. The Holy Spirit works faith in us through the “external Word” present in the gospel and the Sacraments. Therefore, the church must have a ministry. So, “To obtain such faith, God instituted the office of preaching, giving the gospel and the Sacraments” (Augsburg Confession, Article V).

The office of the ministry is necessary for faith, that is, as the instrument through which the means of grace—gospel and Sacraments—are administered and applied. Thus, in the “true, holy Christian church” it is clearly possible to speak of a successio

After completing his studies at Princeton, Rauch pastored for ten years at a mainline church in Chula Vista, California, before accepting the call to Westminster Presbyterian Church. He says that “for a conservative, the Presbytery of San Diego is like ‘dying and going to heaven,’” adding that, in the last fifteen years, the presbytery has become much more conservative theologically.

When I asked him several of the same questions that I posed to David Coffin and Douglas Harley, Rauch said, “I feel ‘called’ to work for transformation within the mainline denomination.” He admits it can be very frustrating at times because the national church is far more liberal than, he believes, the average parishioner in the pew. “We’re trying to build a faith community here,” he says. “And sometimes it feels that the denominational leadership is jack-hammering at our foundation.” He adds, “You know, J. Gresham Machen, in Christianity and Liberalism, hit the nail on the head. Liberalism is an entirely different religion.”

Rauch says much of the problem originates in the national church’s commitment to accommodate itself to modern culture.

In the process, it often forsakes the truths of Scripture. Rauch res-

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apostolica, a succession of the apostolic faith down through the generations. Likewise, we can also affirm a succession in the church and its ministry, for if there is a historical continuity in saving faith, then there must also be continuity in the ministry of the gospel and Sacraments through which saving faith is given and imparted.

Consequently, the Lutheran doctrine of the church cannot be understood as in any way antiinstitutional, as if saving faith could somehow “liberate” us from dependence on the church and its ministry. To the contrary, Lutherans teach that God has instituted the office of the holy ministry and that this ministry is essential to the matter of salvation by grace through faith alone. Lutherans never even imagine Christians without a church.

Nor do they expect a church where there are not rightly called and ordained servants of the Word carrying out the divinely appointed tasks of preaching the gospel and administering the Sacraments. The church is a tangible institutional reality and it will always remain so, for the “gates of Hades will not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18).

Lutherans have long been wary, however, of any move that would seem to make the gospel the servant of the church, rather than the church the servant of the gospel. Classically, this wariness is perhaps most powerfully expressed in Lutheran opposition to the notion that what is called “apostolic succession” can be reduced to the merely tactile—

onates far more with the sentiments of Will Willimon who argues that, rather than trying to “close the gap with culture,” we should “accentuate the gap.” Rauch says Willimon’s point is that “we need to lead newcomers by introducing them to an ‘alien vocabulary’ of faith.” He continues: “People need to learn about salvation, regeneration, predestination, soteriology, eschatology, etc.

It’s a different world.”

Rev. Rauch is very thankful for where his congregation stands theologically today. He says that the church has aligned itself with the Confessing Church Movement with its emphasis upon the authority of Scripture, the Lordship of Christ, and biblically-based sexual ethics.

“As a movement, we are trying to hold the denomination accountable to the Word of God, as well as to the Confessions of Faith.”

While acknowledging that his denomination is a big tent for many beliefs, Rauch feels called to fight for “a narrower way.” Yet he says that there is a place at the table for unorthodox Presbyterians like writers Frederick Beuchner and Ann LaMott. “I love them, but I disagree with them,” Rauch says with a smile.

“But they’re part of my family; they’re my relatives,” he adds.

that is, as consisting in a continuous series of episcopal ordinations stretching back to the apostolic age. Lutherans, along with many others, have often spoken derisively of this understanding of apostolic succession. In its crassest form, this “pipeline theory” would make the implausible claim that a bishop’s tactile relation to the apostles by means of the continuous historical application of the rite of the laying on of hands in episcopal consecration guarantees the apostolicity of the church’s faith. Against this theory Lutherans have argued that a bishop’s actual fidelity (or infidelity) to the apostolically delivered faith trumps any claim based solely on historic episcopal succession. In the sixteenth century, there were any number of rightly ordered bishops standing in historic succession who the Lutherans thought were unfaithful to the apostolic gospel and who, therefore, could not be understood as the apostles’ successors. For Lutherans, when there is a conflict between the gospel and established authorities in the church, the gospel wins every time. The necessity of the church as an institution can never be pitted against the Word that the church was instituted to serve.

Apostolicity and Historical Episcopal Succession s nervous as Lutherans tend to get when the talk turns to apostolic succession understood in strictly episcopal terms, we

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nevertheless believe firmly in a tangible church and ministry that are historically continuous over time.

There have always been faithful pastors preaching the gospel and administering the Sacraments to faithful people. In fact, in classical Lutheran thought continuity in the apostolic faith extends back not only to the time of the apostles, but through the days of the prophets and patriarchs right back to the household of Adam and Eve. The promise made to the first fallen human beings in Genesis 3:15 (the so-called protoevangelium) is the very promise fulfilled in Christ. The Old Testament faithful looked ahead to his coming, while we, with the apostles, look back on it as an accomplished fact. Yet the faith of us all is the same (see Rom. 4:11, 16–25; Gal. 3:7–9). Thus, we privilege the apostles’ witness to the gospel, but we do not separate their faith from our own. The communion in Christ given in the Word and the Sacraments brings us into fellowship with the apostles and all the saints in the “true holy, Christian church” (see 1 John 1:3).

Therefore, in Christ we stand united both with the living who share the apostolic faith, and with the dead who kept and still keep it (see Rev. 6:9–10). To be sure, this fellowship is spiritual. But because it is realized preeminently in the assembly of the faithful around Word and Sacraments, this fellowship leaves tangible external signs. For example, it leaves church buildings that witness

Once again, he expresses his alliance with the mainline––warts and all. “A key encouragement for my calling is found in the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament. The prophets were continually oppressed and despised by the leaders of the covenant people. Yet they were faithful to the Word of God and were free to proclaim the Word even while being persecuted on account of the Word.” What would prod him to leave the PC(USA)? “If the mainline were to declare that ministers shall not proclaim Jesus as the only name under heaven by which we must be saved, I could not continue with integrity to stay …. If that time comes, I will renounce jurisdiction and, perhaps, knock on the door of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church or the PCA. I don’t know if they would have me, but where else would I go?”

Is Simply Listening the Answer?

These three pastors share common commitments to historic Presbyterian faith and practice. Yet their common commitments have led to their serving God’s people in different Presbyterian denominations. What is interesting is how careful each of them

is not to adopt an attitude of self-righteousness towards those Presbyterians who, they are deeply convinced, are straying from “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 2).

Certainly, as the Confessing Church Movement says, there is “a sad division” within the mainline church––a division so wide, as Rauch reminds us, that Machen characterized it as the difference between two entirely different religions. Perhaps it is up to theological conservatives within the mainline and on the “sidelines” to be praying earnestly that those on “the other side” of this mostcrucial division will come, by God’s grace, to embrace true Christian faith. And perhaps it is up to us also to be willing to stay in conversation with our straying brothers and sisters so that we might be occasions for such grace.

Could there be anything more appropriate for us to do as we anticipate celebrating American Presbyterianism’s 300th birthday?

Ann Henderson Hart (MA, Temple University) is assistant editor of Modern Reformation. She is also a freelance writer and editor living in Escondido, California.

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FYI

Philip Melancthon — A German reformer, theologian, and educator who lived from 1497-1560. At the Marburg Colloquy in 1529, Melanchton was strongly opposed by Zwingli, particularly over the issue of the real presence in the Lord’s Supper. His contributions to the Lutheran movement, to Protestantism, and to the German nation are considered monumental. (Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 702)

heroic testimony to “the faith that was once for all delivered,” including Augustine of Hippo, Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria, and Gregory the Great.

We Lutherans make the history of the church our Johann Eck — While perhaps surpassing Martin Luther in pure scholarship, Eck (1486- own and claim its apostolic 1543) hardly compares to him in theological perception. He was a detractor of Luther’s Ninety- heritage not only, of course, five Theses, and he attempted his own version after Luther’s Bible appeared. Today, he is little by means of this particular remembered except as an opponent of Luther. (Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, 340) element of historical continuity. Our form of public worProtoevangelium —Gen. 3:15, the first announcement of gospel hope to Adam and Eve ship, hymnody, and cateafter the Fall. chetical traditions likewise celebrate the faith of our patristic, medieval, and powerfully to the continuity of the apostolic faith Reformation ancestors. We honor them on saints’ over time even when those buildings have long days, and in the recognition of blessed Mary as the since fallen into disuse. Who could fail to be true mother of God. Our faith that the church of impressed by the faith of the Christian people who the apostles must “be and remain” means that it has built the churches and monasteries in the Holy not been invisible, so we eagerly take our own hisLand? Granted, the archeological remains of tory captive in service to the church and its abiding church buildings are insufficient to demonstrate apostolicity. ■ that their builders or users kept the apostolic faith.

But we know that the apostolic faith has been kept, at least by a few, and that people of faith build Mickey L. Mattox (Ph.D., Duke University) is research profeschurches. The ruins––and in many places the con- sor at the Institute for Ecumenical Research, Strasbourg, France. tinuing vitality––of ancient Christian churches speak powerfully, if not necessarily, of the faith of generations gone by.

Enduring Christian institutions can also be tan- Open Exchange gible signs of apostolic faith; and as long as we do [ C O N T I N U E D F R O M PA G E 4 ] not look to them to supply us with what can only be found in the means of grace themselves, unbelievers went from being “lost” to “seekers” (and Lutherans are free to affirm and accept them. The consequently, how evangelism went from being Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has done active to passive.) We need to soberly assess the this in its recent adoption of the historic episcopa- Kingdom impact we might expect from an evancy. The fact that there have been Christian bish- gelistic approach based on faulty doctrine. Indeed, ops exercising a ministry of oversight in particular we would do well to model our evangelism after places for centuries or millennia testifies powerful- the example of Jesus—the One who came to seek ly to the church’s continuity over time. and to save the lost.

Archbishops have exercised their ministry as “Primate of All England,” for example, since St. Ken Aldrich is Associate Pastor for Outreach & Assimilation Augustine of Canterbury in the late sixth century. at Covenant Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Harrisonburg, Of course, this does not demonstrate the apos- Virginia. tolicity of the faith believed and confessed by Augustine’s current successor. But the fact that Augustine’s successors have included great Christians such as St. Anselm should suffice to impress even the more skeptical that an impressive tradition of faith is embodied in the institution itself. Examples like this could be multiplied. It was, after all, the episcopally ordered church that bequeathed us the canon of Scripture and the great ecumenical creeds; and many bishops have given

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We Confess…

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nd I believe one holy catholic and apostolic church.

I acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins; And I look for the resurrection of the dead, And the life of the world to come.

Amen.

Nicene Creed, 325

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hat do you believe concerning the “holy catholic church”? I believe that the Son of God through his Spirit and Word out of the entire human race, from the beginning of the world to its end, gathers, protects, and preserves for himself a community chosen for eternal life and united in true faith. And of this community I am and always will be a living member.

Heidelberg Catechism, 1563

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he visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same. As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandra, and Antioch, have erred, so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of Ceremonies, but also in matters of faith.

Book of Common Prayer, 1562

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he catholic or universal Church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one, under Christ the Head thereof; and is the spouse, the body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. The visible Church, which is also catholic or universal under the Gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children: and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. Unto this catholic visible Church Christ hath given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God, for the gathering and perfecting of the saints, in this life, to the end of the world: and doth, by His own presence and Spirit, according to His promise, make them effectual thereunto.

Westminster Confession of Faith, 1642

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An Interview with Frederica Mathews-Green

The Church—A View From the East The author of numerous books, most recently, The Illumined Heart, Frederica Mathews-Green is a commentator on NPR’s Morning Edition, a book reviewer for the Los Angeles Times and a columnist for Beliefnet.com. Her book, Facing East, charts her movement from being an evangelical Episcopalian to her embrace of Eastern Orthodoxy. Among other things, we asked Frederica to help us understand why a number of evangelicals are attracted to Orthodoxy.

MR: Can you tell us a little about your spiritual pilgrimage?

FREDERICA MATHEWS-GREEN

Author

FMG: I was raised nominal Roman Catholic and abandoned Christian faith as a young teen. More than abandoned it, I emphatically rejected it as something embarrassing. I spent my high school and college years exploring various alternative religions, though I praise God that I was protected from becoming deeply involved in any of them. By the time I was a college senior I’d settled on Hinduism as the “grooviest” of all faiths. When my husband and I were married, out in the woods in 1974, I read a Hindu prayer at the ceremony.

But he, an erstwhile atheist, had read a Gospel as a philosophy class assignment, and was moved by the authority of Jesus: “If Jesus says there is a god, there has to be one.” This fell far short of Christian faith, but he nevertheless arranged to enter Episcopal seminary in the fall—not intending to be a pastor, but wanting only to continue to study theology. At the time he was most attracted to the German deconstructionists and Bultmann. I was wary of all this and firmly anti-Christian, but willing to tolerate his odd hobby.

We spent that summer hitchhiking in Europe.

On June 20, 1974, we arrived in Dublin and went out sightseeing. We went into a church, and I wandered around evaluating the architecture and sculpture. Near the altar I saw a statue of Jesus and stood looking at it. The next thing I knew I was on my knees. I could hear a voice within speaking to me, saying, “I am your life.”

It was a galvanizing experience. I didn’t know

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what to make of it, and I still was alienated from Christianity, but I did feel from that moment on an irresistible pull toward Jesus. I bought a Bible and began reading the Gospels, and didn’t like them. Yet that heart-pull kept dragging me forward, against my stubborn mind. In the fall, when my husband started seminary, I enrolled as well. It wasn’t until December when a friend asked whether we’d ever given our lives to Christ that we actually knelt down and made that faith commitment. God was very patient with us, and led us continually into deeper faith.

When we graduated my husband was ordained, and I decided to wait to be ordained later; the Episcopal church had just approved women’s ordination, and it was still hard for women to get jobs.

After a few years, when I saw how hard a pastor’s job is, I decided that it wasn’t my calling. We had babies, I taught natural childbirth classes, and we were generally very happy pastoring Episcopal churches that were in the “renewal movement.”

But gradually we noticed that the main body of the church was moving away from us, with approval of theological and moral innovations that we couldn’t support. The turning point came at the General Convention of 1991, when the House of Bishops voted on a resolution stating, “Clergy should abstain from sex outside of marriage.” The resolution was defeated. We realized that something cataclysmic was happening in our church, and for the sake of our faith and our children we would have to leave. We felt that this would have to mean returning to the roots of the faith, since we had seen firsthand what can happen in a church that is swayed by the times. We considered joining

a breakaway “continuing” Anglican church, but that felt like going further out from the limb to a twig. We then presumed that Roman Catholicism was our destiny, but as we read its theology we felt that it had altered the faith (they would say “developed”) that was held by the earliest Christians.

MR: What brought you to Eastern Orthodoxy?

FMG: We probably would not have known about Eastern Orthodoxy on our own; it didn’t seem like a church you could join, but like something you had to be born into. However a Lutheran pastor contacted us saying that he was inviting a number of pastors to his home to hear Fr. Peter Gillquist speak. My husband went and asked some hard questions, very suspicious that Orthodoxy taught mistaken doctrines or works-righteousness. Fr. Peter later said that he thought of all the group my husband would be the least likely to convert. But my husband was impressed by Fr. Peter’s answers, and particularly that he didn’t give his own answers but referred my husband to sources in the church fathers that supported Scripture.

It was attending an Orthodox vespers service that really sealed it for my husband, however. The worship just overwhelmed him, and he felt that this combination of awe, gratitude, submission, and love was how Christians were supposed to be before God. I remained concerned that we were supposed to “stay and fight” in the Episcopal church, and kept saying to him, “God needed chaplains on the Titanic. Even if this ship is going down, maybe we’re supposed to stay with it to the end.” My husband responded, “God needed lifeboats on the Titanic. We know where the ship is that isn’t going down, and the best thing we can do is get people over there.”

We were chrismated in January 1993, ten years ago now. We left a very comfortable living in the Episcopal church—my husband was on his second chief pastorate—to start all over at the very bottom with only five other families. Holy Cross Church has been a wonderful success, and our only regret is that we didn’t do it sooner. All three of our now-grown children are active in church and see their dad as a hero who risked everything to do what he knew was right.

MR: What does “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church” mean to an Orthodox person?

FMG: Orthodox people have a lively sense of living in the church of the early centuries—not merely keeping alive the memory of early church practices and teachings, as in a scrapbook, but of being in one living timeless church that arches over the

centuries. So this phrase from the Nicene Creed would mean what it did in the fourth century. In the face of multiple heresies (particularly Arianism, at that point), the Church is one, is united. It is one because the Holy Spirit keeps eliciting the same faith all over the world and through all cultures and in all times (at that time, meaning, of course, the known world, Africa, Asia, and Europe). So we mean the “one” faith of that era, not the lowestcommon-denominator faith you’d arrive at if you added up the beliefs of everyone who call themselves a Christian today. It is the faith held by all true Christians of that era, which arises from the grass roots and directs us in the Holy Spirit, which is what discloses the “one” church.

Holy—we believe that Jesus intended to found a visible church on earth, a recognizable Body. “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church;” we may disagree about what he meant by “this rock,” but there’s no such doubt about “my church.”

Insofar as the visible church lives up to its calling, it is Holy, but of course in practice it strays from its calling due to fallenness of its leaders and members.

Weed and wheat grow up together till the last day.

Nevertheless, there is a real field with recognizable borders; the field isn’t theoretical or invisible.

Catholic—Roman Catholics interpret this term as meaning “universal,” so that each individual parish is just a little piece of the whole. For Orthodox the term means “whole, complete,” and each parish is the entire Church; all the parishes added together are also the entire Church. Where the faith is, there is the one, holy, and Catholic church, in entirety.

Apostolic—continues the meaning above. It is apostolic if it continues in the faith of the apostles, teaching unchanged the faith of the Scriptures and early church. I say both Scripture and unwritten teachings transmitted from one believer to another, because some things, of course, were not written down. This was either because of the difficulty of circulating books, or because of the danger of books falling into the wrong hands. Some elements of the faith were transmitted only by word of mouth during the centuries of persecution. A person who was trained to follow in the footsteps of the apostles and entrusted with teaching the faith would be carefully examined and commissioned by the laying on of hands, as St. Paul mentions. This laying on of hands didn’t magically transmit authority, but it recognized and sealed it, in a worthy person. So when we say “apostolic” we’re not primarily talking about the laying on of hands, as if that magically transmits authority. We’re talking about the preservation of the faith accurately from generation to generation, and this was confirmed and sealed by the laying on of hands.

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MR: Most Protestants believe that the Scriptures teach that the “gospel” (specifically, the “forgiveness of sins and resurrection of the body”) creates the church, not vice versa. What’s the relation of gospel and church in Orthodoxy?

FMG: Orthodox would agree that it is the Gospel that creates the Church. Jesus’ saving acts, followed by the sending of the Holy Spirit, permits us to be reconciled with God and instructs and leads us in the faith. So you might say that the Gospel (meaning, the events of the Gospel), or the Holy Spirit, or the faith, create the Church—all would be true.

On the other hand, the Scriptures are something that welled up within the Church, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The Church was obliged to discern which writings were worthy of being read in worship and which were not; which went into the Gospel book kept on the altar, and which into the Apostolos book kept elsewhere.

There was as you know heated debate about some of the books. By the end of the fourth century it was pretty well decided; the Church had arrived at a reliable list of books for both Gospel and Apostolos. Those Scriptures were then the Church’s main authority and guide; the Church had given birth to its teacher.

MR: Does the church ever change in the Orthodox understanding? For instance, the debate over icons: at one point Orthodoxy banished icons, but then accepted them.

FMG: Change is a word that requires a backdrop.

I once had an Orthodox priest insist to me that the Church does change, because we have now added to St. John Chrysostom’s prayer “for those who travel by land or sea” the words “or air.” The entire last ten years of the Episcopal Church flashed before my eyes, and I thought, “Ignorance is bliss.”

A good analogy might be to whether a family’s Christmas traditions change. If the family ceased going to worship on Christmas, that would be a cataclysmic change! If they decided to open two gifts, not just one, on Christmas Eve, that would be a minor change. Likewise, one who enters the Orthodox “family” gradually comes to see what it means when it says, “We don’t change.”

Here’s an example. The general rule for fasting is to abstain from meat, fish, and dairy products on Wednesdays and Fridays, and during the four major fasts. Already in the second century Church fathers are speaking of these fasts. Some Orthodox today follow these guidelines closely, and others mostly disregard them; furthermore, under the individual spiritual direction of your pastor you might increase or decrease these fasts to suit your health, ability, and spiritual maturity. (The fasts, by

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the way, are meant to strengthen self-control generally; they are like exercises, and not ever seen as penances or ways of paying for past sin.) Ways of keeping the fast can vary, from person to person and even community to community. This is why St. Ambrose told St. Monica, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do,” and don’t worry about keeping the Saturday fast that we do in Milan.

However, the rule for receiving communion at the Eucharist is to fast from all food and drink from the time you get up that morning. Nobody would think of changing that fast (except for serious health reasons). Preparation for the Eucharist is taken very seriously in Orthodoxy, and this fast is one thing that cannot change.

Now, you wouldn’t necessarily know that until you had been “in the family” for awhile. Some things change, some things don’t.

The tumult over icons is not quite the same thing. Iconoclasm was instituted by the state and resisted by the church; many faithful Christians died because they refused to trample on pictures of Jesus, whom they loved so much. The sixth and seventh ecumenical councils vindicated the use of icons and established safeguards so that icons are not worshiped or treated idolatrously. No ecumenical council rejected icons.

MR: As an Orthodox person, how do you respond to the obsession in contemporary culture with relevance, being “postmodern,” etc.?

FMG: I think it’s entirely misguided. Even two old boomers like my husband and myself knew ten years ago that we didn’t want to join any church that prioritized being relevant. The Gospel is already relevant, because it’s timeless; hitching it to time-bound fashion only trivializes it. I think this insight is the wave of the future, ironically; I think that we will increasingly see it become fashionable to disdain passing fashion, a situation that makes Orthodox heads spin. For example, a friend recently told me that her Southern Baptist church has established a Celtic service, complete with chant, candles, and incense (at least until those with allergies complained). She said that boomers mostly go to the 9:30 “contemporary” service, where they can have all those middle-aged things like rock music and humor and skits. “But the older people wanted an earlier service, and the young people, of course, wanted something more traditional.” Those words keep echoing in my mind: “The young people, of course, wanted something more traditional.” If the church of the future wants to be up-to-the-minute, hip, and relevant, it had better look into tradition.

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BOOK | The Doctrine of God

A Big Book for a Big Topic

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his is a good, big book. The second volume of John Frame’s Theology of Lordship

Frame’s and other material.

One might wonder at the Series is firmly Reformed, outspoken, and diffident by turn, fresh in approach, rich- ordering of some of this; how can one sensibly discuss the ly biblical, mostly clear. It is the sort of book that informs and provokes thought. acts of the Lord before learning who God is? Or miracles before providence and creation? And why discuss In this short review I shall endeavor to problem areas before much of the material that sketch the approach and the outline of generates these problems has been addressed? But the book, draw attention to some of its systematic theology has been plagued if not strengths, and then offer a couple of com- obsessed with questions of methodology and so it ments in what is (I hope) the same con- would be unwise, in my view, to press such points. structive vein in which Frame writes.

As the author himself says more than once, “Ya In Part One, Frame begins by setting gotta start somewhere.” out the Lordship motif which stamps the Frame’s choice of the ordering of the material, book; who the Lord is, and what his particularly the boldness of Part One, does reflect attributes are: Control, Authority, and his Van Tilian, presuppositionalist stance. There is Covenant Presence. (Frame is fond of tri- no conscious dependence on natural theology to ads.) For him the doctrine of God is very provide elements of a doctrine of God, though the much the doctrine of the living God. author does rely on pagan ideas of treaty-making Parts Two and Three form a sort of philosophical to illuminate the biblical idea of covenant lordship interruption or excursus on problems which the (31) and appeals to the abstract idea of perfection The Doctrine of Lordship attributes raise, namely, human responsi- to illuminate the biblical idea of God’s goodness God bility and freedom, the problem of evil, ethics, (402–403). Part of the freshness of the approach of

by John M. Frame epistemology, and metaphysics. Early on in the the book is due to Frame’s use of different voices; a book the author goes out of his way (it seems to less oracular style than that of his mentor Van Til, Presbyterian and Reformed me) to distance himself from scholastic theology, the ability to distinguish a big issue from somePublishing, 2002 864 pages (paperback), including scholastic Reformed theology. I do not thing smaller, to recognize his own ignorance, and $39.99, think that this disclaimer amounts to much in a to offer views with differing degrees of conviction. work that is so obviously indebted to such theolo- In this connection I particularly enjoyed his section gy (for example in its treatment of middle knowl- on creation and evolution. At one point he disedge). But the book would nevertheless have ben- armingly confesses that on this issue he tends to be efited from additional shots of it. Part Four offers persuaded by the last person he’s heard (302). Join an account of the acts of the Lord, in miracles, the club! providence, creation, and his decrees. Part Five, by Frame’s boldness is nowhere better seen than in far the longest of the parts, offers “biblical descrip- his treatment of the issue of divine sovereignty and tions” of God. An account of the Triune nature of human responsibility. He has no truck with any God completes the book, apart from a set of nine form of libertarian freedom, overt or covert. Nor appendices consisting of reprints of reviews of does he have much patience with the project of

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reconciling divine sovereignty and human responsibility. He occupies the territory of Romans 9, and of Calvin’s Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, and in his outspokenness goes beyond both the Princeton tradition and his immediate predecessors at Westminster Theological Seminary.

What he says here is also connected with his discussion of the reach of God’s knowledge, in which he deals very effectively with the current “openness” craze, showing how far it strays from Scripture and how much it coincides with historic Socinianism.

The freshness of approach is also seen in Frame’s willingness to go his own way. This comes out particularly strikingly in the treatment of miracles, and of God and space and time (of which more shortly). One consequence of this that I found a bit surprising is that the book has a distinctly ahistorical flavor. Frame frequently acknowledges his tradition; Calvin, the Westminster Confession, the Reformed Scholastics, the Princeton theologians, and Bavinck, but there is little at length interaction with it (except in the discussion of miracles). There’s no mention of Puritan treatments of the doctrine of God (e.g., Stephen Charnock), hardly anything on Jonathan Edwards.

Frame’s discussion of the Trinity is excellent, I think. He avoids the hyper-Trinitarianism of much Barth-inspired theology, and is cautiously Trinitarian in the style of Augustine, Hilary of Poitiers, and Calvin. Frame writes, “God has given us, in Scripture, a glimpse of his inner life, but only a glimpse. The Trinity is not an irrational doctrine, but it is highly mysterious. It is not contradictory, but we do not always see clearly how apparent contradictions can be resolved” (705). Amen to that! Frame warmly endorses the work of Robert Reymond, but he does not go so far as to adopt Reymond’s rejection of the Nicene doctrine of eternal begottenness of the Son. Frame does have wise things to say about the difficulty of using the language of causation (and therefore, presumably, the language of generation) about the identity of the Son. His remarks here are very much in the spirit of B. B. Warfield and of John Murray.

Space allows for only a couple of comments of a more critical kind. The first concerns Frame’s prominent use of the idea of the Lord’s covenant presence. Covenant is, of course, a central Reformed motif, and no doubt the phrase “covenant presence” is meant to signal strongly the location of the book in that tradition. But what exactly is covenant presence? Frame says that God acts on and in the creation and evaluates all

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that happens (94), and so is present everywhere, covenantally so. At times this seems simply to be equivalent to the idea of divine immanence. At other times the author is clearly referring to what some have called the covenant of works and also (of course) to the covenant of grace. But then if God’s covenant presence, the same covenant presence, is manifested in the creation and in its sustenance (102), clearly the idea becomes somewhat diluted. One is tempted to say, if every immanent act of God is covenantal, then no act is. In what sense does God covenant with inanimate creation?

Are there not biblical uses of covenant language which are metaphorical?

This disquiet connects with another. If covenant presence is another way of referring to divine immanence, then Frame also avers that besides transcending time and space God is “fully present,” covenantally present in them, and so immanently temporal and spatial, presumably (496–497). God experiences change, temporal (and spatial?) transition, though being himself changeless. But if God learns new things, even if such language is “anthropomorphic, but not merely anthropomorphic” (497), how can he be omniscient? And if he experiences spatial presence and transition, does this mean, as it seems to, that he occupies space?

In my judgment, at such points Frame comes uncomfortably and unnecessarily close to affirming a self-contradiction, and would have been well advised to make greater use than he does of the Calvinian idea of divine accommodation, and to have employed the scholastic distinction between willing a change and changing a will. I have not checked up, but I suspect that in all those biblical passages where God is said to change his mind he is in pedagogical dialogue with his people, accommodating himself to their space and time-bound existence. As Calvin typically expresses it, God stirs us from our torpor by representing himself to us now one way, now another, as exemplified in his dialogues with such as Moses and Jonah. (See, in this connection, Calvin’s brilliant treatment of the death of Hezekiah in his Commentary on Isaiah.)

Wondering aloud, it may be that Frame has difficulties in this entire area of divine presence because he thinks of it in physical terms, like an atmosphere or as luminosity. He characterizes God’s omnipresence as being “present everywhere in the world he has made” and God’s presence as capable of being localized (580–581).

Some years ago, John Frame was kind enough to write, in a review of my book The Providence of God (which he reprints as one of the appendices of his book), that it has a few weaknesses but that it is in general very good. It pleases me that in

the providence of God I can now return that compliment about The Doctrine of God! Dr. Paul Helm Regent College Vancouver, B.C.

SHORT NOTICES Evangelicalism: The Next Generation

by James M. Penning and Corwin E. Smidt Baker, 2002 208 pages (cloth), $21.99 If James Hunter’s 1987 book, Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation, was not a bomb on the happy playground of American evangelicals, it was at least a powerful grenade. In that book, as well as his 1983 work, American Evangelicalism: Conservative Religion and the Quandary of Modernity, Hunter set out to demonstrate that the theological and moral boundaries of American Evangelicalism were rapidly shifting, less from corporate reflection on faith and practice than from the movement’s accommodation to modernity through its various carriers (such as rationalization and cultural pluralism).

Particularly telling for Hunter were the signals emanating from the evangelical colleges and seminaries he surveyed, which comprised the source, he hypothesized, of the coming generation of evangelical thought and practice.

Coming barely a decade after the celebrated “year of the Evangelical,” this was disturbing news.

At the time, American evangelicals were fairly giddy over their ascent out of the fundamentalist ghetto and into the White House, an achievement that was tarnished if it owed more to cognitive bargaining than cultural transformation.

But was the sobering news accurate? Fifteen years later, two Calvin College political scientists have challenged Hunter’s claims. In their book, Evangelicalism: The Next Generation, James M. Penning and Corwin E. Smidt argue that little has changed on Christian college campuses since Hunter’s work.

(Conveniently, they ignore a comparison of tuition rates.) Conducting surveys similar to Hunter’s, Penning and Smidt reassure us that evangelical orthodoxy remains robust, certainty has not waned, and moral boundaries are still being observed. They concede that there is a “degree of

support” among some of Hunter’s claims, especially the movement toward androgyny in evangelical family life and the shift from self-denial to self-fulfillment in conceptions of the Christian life. But on the whole, reports of Evangelicalism’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Beyond the number crunching (and there is a lot of it), this is a debate over competing theories on the sociology of Evangelicalism. Hunter, a student of Peter Berger, subscribes to the “sheltered enclave” theory: Evangelicalism, like any other cognitive minority, must protect itself from the contamination of modernity by its maintenance of sturdy plausibility structures. Penning and Smidt, however, find more compelling the “subculture identity theory” of Christian Smith. This alternative argues that those movements thrive under the intense pluralism of modernity that engages in vigorous “boundary maintenance,” and Evangelicalism has proven equal to that task. So even the apparent loosening of some moral taboos (for example, regarding smoking and drinking) might point to greater resilience and stability in Evangelicalism, because they indicate clearer boundary-building between Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism.

Both theories share the assumption that Evangelicalism is a movement that antedates, or at least is distinct from, modernity. Perhaps, then, the debate over whether or not Evangelicalism has the resources to resist modernity begs the larger question: Is American Evangelicalism itself a product of modernity? This appears most evident in ecclesiology, which unhappily falls to the margins of these studies of evangelical thought and practice.

Penning and Smidt acknowledge that today’s evangelical college students are profoundly dissatisfied with the institutional church and that their piety is of a decidedly nonchurchly form. Of course, in these convictions they hardly differ from previous generations. So what is at stake may be little more than different interpretations of religious individualism, which suggests that it is possible both to argue for continuity between the next generation and its forebears and still remain pessimistic regarding Evangelicalism’s future.

John Muether Reformed Theological Seminary Orlando, Florida

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BOOK NOTES Love Taking Shape: Sermons on the Christian Life

by Gilbert Meilaender Eerdmans, 2002 143 pages, (paperback), $15.00 Those familiar with the writings of Gilbert Meilaender will not need much persuasion to read this book. Over the last two decades he has proven himself to be one of the most thoughtful Christian ethicists working today, producing a range of books on medical ethics, love, friendship, and marriage that demonstrate as much moral fiber as they do spiritual discernment. Meilaender’s books are keepers, and this collection of sermons offers an opportunity to see his approach to the teachings of Scripture behind the pulpit rather than his normal position behind the lectern or at his desk.

Others unfamiliar with Meilaender may find this short collection of sermons (twenty-four in all) a valuable introduction to his work. Although he holds the Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg Chair of Christian Ethics at Valparaiso University, Meilaender is also a minister in the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, thus explaining why a distinguished professor would preach in so many different settings, from a series during Lent to a funeral service for a fellow church member.

As he writes in the preface, these sermons are not models for other preachers but instead are reflections of how he preaches about what he also teaches. Because love of God and love of neighbor are at the heart of Christian ethics, love is the theme that unites these sermons.

But as Meilaender has argued so effectively in his other books, Christian love is not an abstraction or a warm emotion. It is much more concrete and practical. At the same time, the ordinariness of Christian love cannot lose sight of its eternal dimension. “Unless we remember that all our loves must finally be directed to God, we are unlikely to love—here and now—as we ought,” Meilaender writes. “We will ask of our finite loves more than they are meant to give—and in the process destroy them, if they do not destroy us.” Love Taking Shape is a wonderful and prudent exposition of the duties of Christian love.

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Christian Existence Today: Essays on the Church, World and Living in Between

by Stanley Hauerwas Brazos Press, 2001 266 pages (paperback), $19.99 Publishers are not supposed to like collections of essays. Books comprised of such material are difficult to sell, acquisition editors tell us, especially if the essays have been previously published. Yet publishers continue to bring out the essays of Stanley Hauerwas. The reason may be that he is one of the most provocative Christian thinkers of our time.

Christian Existence Today, previously published by Labyrinth Press, is one of the earliest collections of Hauerwas’s essays. It includes previously published articles from journals as different as Soundings and The Cresset. They fall into three sections: “The Practice of the Church’s Story,” “The Ministry of the Church,” and “Serving in the World.” Trying to summarize this book briefly is like trying to put the proverbial genie back into the bottle. What makes such a summary difficult is that Hauerwas’s work, by his own admission, is a “strange mix of philosophy, literature, a few historical asides, theology, and ethics.” But one theme that stands out here and in his other writings is the importance of the visible church for understanding and maintaining Christian convictions or, in other words, the inextricable union between belief and practice. Some of Hauerwas’s critics accuse him of so emphasizing the alien character of Christian practices as to be guilty of sectarianism. His response is that calling him “sectarian” does not prove he is wrong about God, Jesus, the limitations of liberalism, the character of virtue, or the doctrine of the church. In fact, Christian Existence Today shows that Hauerwas is more often right than not.

History for a Pilgrim People: The Historical Writings of Charles G. Dennison edited by Danny E. Olinger and David K. Thompson Committee for the Historian of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 2002 270 pages (cloth), $17.00

Denominational history is out of favor with the historical profession. In fact, one of the ironies of recent scholarship on American religion is that at precisely the same time when books and articles on Evangelicalism are increasing, scholars have less and less time for church history. This is an unfortunate development in part because denominational history, when done well, can be as informative as it is edifying. Like biography, it is one of the genres of history that most readers find accessible and useful.

For the last two decades of his life in his capacity as historian for the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC), Charles G. Dennison, a pastor in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, tirelessly promoted the work of denominational history. Although he labored for a tiny denomination he brought to fruition close to ten books, a remarkable output even for a church ten times as large. His aim was to help his church remember their historical roots and learn about God’s provision for them until their Lord’s return.

Most of Dennison’s labors were as editor and publisher, but he seldom refused an invitation to lecture on the history of his denomination. Those lectures and other pieces of his writings have been collected in this volume, which is a tribute to his service tragically cut short by death. For Presbyterians the book has obvious appeal by offering provocative interpretations of Geerhardus Vos, J. Gresham Machen, Cornelius Van Til, and Ned B. Stonehouse. For other readers the book features careful reflection on the importance of church history for the believer’s understanding of life this side of glory. Dennison is especially critical of a genre of church history that is little more than boosterism. In one of his reports to the OPC’s General Assembly he wrote that denominational history cannot become “an exercise in propaganda, the main purpose of which is an uncritical promotion of the denomination.” He added that “[t]he Bible does not sanitize its history, and neither can we. The Christian historian has a responsibility before Christ and his church to record what, in fact, has happened, to offer an analysis, and to suggest with Christian grace what we might learn from our past” (240). That aim is part of what makes History for a Pilgrim People a worthwhile read.

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even if it means dying to save you. It did not happen that day, it turns out, not by drowning in the Sea of Galilee. But eventually it did happen, on a cross, outside Jerusalem, on Calvary, for you. Jesus is quite willing to be pulled under by the weight of your sin and mine, even if it kills him. That is how much he wants to have you as his own disciple, so that at the end of the day you, too, can say, “Truly you are the Son of God.” So what do we do? Do we get our socks wet or not? That depends; it depends on whether you are taking a walk in the way of the Law or the way of the gospel.

Whenever Peter the sinner was trying to tell the Lord how to run his boats and his boys through a storm, that was sin and it must be killed. And the same is true for you. Whenever you are sitting in that tortured boat you call your life, knowing that Jesus has given you the Ten Commandments, but you are looking for number eleven so you can have it your way, that is sin and it must be killed.

But whenever Peter was a saint with eyes drawn to Christ, with you sitting beside him in that tortured boat, and all you want to do is be a disciple, take heart. When all you want to do is put one foot faithfully in front of the other, even if that means you have suddenly pitched yourself over the side, into the storm then you should remember that the same Jesus who bids you “Come!” will always be there. He will be there to grab you, pull you up, save you, and give you something to believe in: the great I AM. That is the gospel.

It is Good News that Jesus is here fixin’ things again today. He has come near. He is present, right here, right now, in word, water, body, and blood, for you—killing your sinner side, strengthening your saint side, and sending you out of here to be his disciple.

It is dangerous to go beyond the text, and a pastor should rarely do it, but I can imagine a time just a bit later, as the sun was rising over that calm sea in Galilee, but before they got to shore, when Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Hey, you want to go for a walk?” And Peter said, “You first—I’ll follow.” That is discipleship. That is your life. That is gospel. Joy!

Scott Bruzek (Ph.D., Princeton Theological Seminary) is senior minister of St. John Lutheran Church in Wheaton, Illinois.

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Rosemary Jensen

Let’s Talk About Ministries of Mercy “The water went out the other day, and when I bucked water up to the girls’ bathroom to flush, the fecal matter in the toilet consisted mostly of what appeared to be digested grass. Is the food we feed them the only food they are receiving? This was a heart-wrenching discovery.”

passionately ministered to the helpless and hopeless.

Recently, I had occasion to ask pastors from different recently received this somewhat indelicate, but poignant communication from a Rafiki denominations what obstacles they faced in involving Foundation overseas staffperson in Mzuzu, Malawi, where we have just started a new girl- their congregations in overseas missions. Their answers s’ center to teach the Bible, English, and vocational skills to teenage girls who otherwise were disturbing. They mentioned lack of interest in miswould have no opportunity for education. Our sions and even outright resistance to “far-off” minthree-year program, which is available in eleven istries. It seems that these obstacles come from undeveloped countries, is free and also includes a several sources. First, we have been misled to think daily meal for the girls who are there from 8 a.m. that “foreign” ministries of mercy are no longer to 4 p.m. To me, this comment captures a valuable needed. For a generation, we were told to plant truth: the needs out there are exponentially greater churches and then take our hands off, leaving the than the number of dedicated and willing workers. national church to minister to its people's needs.

The church’s mission to the world is twofold: to But they cannot. They have the desire and the preach the gospel which includes planting church- zeal, but they do not have the resources. In counROSEMARY es, evangelism, and Bible studies, and to help the tries where more than 10 percent of the population JENSEN comprise orphans and where unemployment nears helpless by conducting ministries of mercy.

This second part of the church’s mission is most 70 percent, it is impossible to meet the real needs General Director needed and most neglected today, and yet it is min- of the congregation, let alone the rest of the comof Rafiki Foundation istries of mercy that often open the door to present munity. Second, we are afraid that it will cost too San Antonio, TX the gospel. When young girls must eat grass to sti- much. We want to spend money on our own fle their hunger pains, how do you think they needs, not on the needs of those far away. Yet respond to Christians who lovingly come along- Rafiki can educate an orphan in Africa for $600 a side them and offer them not only a warm meal, year and give him or her a daily breakfast and but also practical help and the comfort of knowing lunch! Third, we have few committed missionary our Lord and Savior? role models. People in the pew need to see sacrifiGod’s grace has given me the privilege of travel- cial lives given to the cause of Christ in the world ing to developing countries in order to establish min- and be challenged to deny self for the sake of othistries of mercy through the Rafiki Foundation. As I ers. travel to Africa, I see an unbelievable number of What, then, shall we do? “Fatten ourselves in orphans whose parents have died of AIDS and I ask the day of slaughter” (while others eat grass) or ask myself the question, Why isn’t the church in America the Lord what he wants us personally to do to doing more to save the lives of these children and to bring physical aid to a helpless child? Could we raise them for Christ while we are evangelizing and look up from our churches to the fields that are ripe planting churches? After all, we have clear motiva- for harvest and pray to the Lord of the harvest that tion for doing ministries of mercy—God has told us he bring forth more laborers? Please, let’s talk to, and Jesus showed us by example when he com- about ministries of mercy.

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