Church & Community in a Fragmented World

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Church & Community in a Fragmented World

CALL FOR LETTERS. Since Modern Reformation appreciates a full theological conversation, we’d like to hear your thoughts about what you’re reading in the magazine. So please write to us at letters@modernreformation.org. Due to limited space, please keep your letter under 400 words (letters may be edited for length and clarity). Letters will be published two issues later, so send yours by September 25, 2021, to appear in the January/February 2022 issue. We look forward to hearing from you!

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FEATURES 28

Living as Whole People in a Fragmented World A N I N T E RV I E W W I T H G R E G G R . A L L I S O N

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God the Preacher: The “Living and Active” Word

BY MICHAEL HORTON

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In the Church: Finding Common Ground across Denominations

BY ANN HENDERSON HART

COVER ILLUSTRATION BY ANDREA WAN

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DEPARTMENTS

18 R E F O R M AT I O N RESOURCES

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“The Modest Theologian” (Part 2)

by Herman Witsius T R A N S L AT E D B Y

B I B L E S T U DY

JOSEPH A. TIPTON

Tough Love for Soft People

BY ALLEN C. GUELZO

Things Unseen: A Systematic Introduction to the Christian Faith and Reformed Theology

By J. Gresham Machen REVIEWED BY STEPHEN ROBERTS

Theology Is for Preaching: Biblical Foundations, Method, and Practice Edited by Chase R. Kuhn and Paul Grimmond REVIEWED BY

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The Holy Spirit, Sanctification, and South Asia

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64 B A C K PA G E

The Divine Wisdom of the Word Preached

BY MICHAEL HORTON

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LETTER from the EDITOR

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n the aftermath of World War I, and during the 1918–19 Spanish flu pandemic, William Butler Yeats wrote the now nearly ubiquitous line,

Things fall apart the center cannot hold.

Borrowing imagery from Christian apocalyptic writings, Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming” conveys the sense of overwhelming disaster.

Things are not just different. They are disintegrating. Of course, the world did not end in 1919. And yet, in each subsequent generation of twentieth century, artists have appropriated some portion of that poem, feeling that in their own time the center was not holding, that things were certainly falling apart. This experience of fragmentation seems to be an every-human experience. It certainly is our experience in these days.

At a time when our self-understanding of what it means to be human is being pulled asunder—fractured—we may well wonder how the pieces can be put back together. For this issue, I talked with Gregg Allison about his latest book, Embodied, which takes on the big questions related to humans and embodiment.

At a time when the isolating individualism of our modern world is wreaking havoc on community life, even our churches may seem more like a coincidental aggregation of individuals

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than a fellowship of saints. Michael Horton, however, reminds us that the preached word is an inherently socializing medium. Church community is not brought about by gimmicks or human manipulation. It is created by the Word and spoken by God’s ambassadors in the power of the Spirit.

At a time when Protestant evangelicalism— long beleaguered by what Alister McGrath calls cancer-like mutations and multiplications—is now finding ever more reasons for division, it may seem that evangelicalism has reached terminal stage IV. Yet, as Ann Henderson Hart encourages us in her classic article “In the Church: Finding Common Ground across Denominations,” we are to walk by faith and act in hope as we pursue the purity and peace of the church.

At such a time as this—fragmented, disjointed, cracked—we may feel despairing. But the gospel does not permit despair. In this fallen world, there is certainly much for us to lament.

Yet because God is, tragedy for the Christian is not. Indeed, the center cannot give way. For the One in whom all things hold together is also the One who is immovably the same yesterday, today, and forever—the same One in whom God from eternity planned to unite all things in heaven and on earth.

And so, we hope and pray that as you read through this issue, you will be reminded that the Christian faith is precisely for such a time as this.

JOSHUA SCHENDEL exec utive editor

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PART FIVE OF A FIVE-PART SERIES

Tough Love for Soft People

by Allen C. Guelzo

How do you solve a problem like Maria?

How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? scar Hammerstein wrote these words to introduce the character of Maria in The Sound of Music.

It’s actually a song of frustration, sung by three nuns in the abbey where Maria is a postulant, because her behavior is so un-monastically free-spirited. And their complaints sound very similar to what a lot of us say about talented pupils, eccentric employees, or gifted neighbors who are square pegs to life’s round holes. At our best, we try to be as patient and indulgent as the character of the

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Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music, who calms down her irritated subordinates. But in the immediate circumstance, what we normally feel is exasperation and maybe a little disappointment that having been given an inch such folks blithely take a yard, over and over again.

Up to this point in his letter, Jude has been sounding very much like the nuns in The Sound of Music, not the abbess, and we might be inclined to wonder if he, too, has not been a little one-dimensional in his attitude. That is, until we consider the people he’s complaining about, who are not just yodelers on mountaintops. They are a good deal more malevolent: they are (as he has described them) creepers-in, impious, ungodly

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types, and have been doing a lot worse than teaching the locals how to do-re-mi. They’ve been a genuinely disruptive element, and the church to whom Jude is writing has been trying very hard to behave like the abbess, being toler­­ ant, and understanding—only to find out that these creepers-in don’t respond by going merrily off to become singing governesses.

REMEMBER THE APOSTOLIC INSTRUCTION But now, in the final stretch of his letter, Jude stops as if to take a breath—the sort you take after a long and sustained speech, full of dependent clauses and dangling participles: But you, beloved friends, should remember the words spoken to you early on about the Lord Jesus Christ by the apostles, because they told you that toward the end of time there would be mockers and hedonists, people who set up divisions, worldly-minded people who don’t have the Holy Spirit. (Jude 17–19) This is so close to what Peter says—“Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires” (2 Pet. 3:3)—that it’s tempting to think that the apostles Jude alludes to must 1 have included Peter.

At the same time, though, there’s a real mental pause here. Having done some serious fingerwagging and reproof, Jude now settles down

and tells them that this kind of situation is not entirely unusual or unexpected. It’s like going to the doctor, being told you have a disease with sixteen frightening syllables to it, and then being informed that, by the way, everyone else has got it too, so no need to worry.

Yes, there are mockers among you: jokesters, tricksters, smart-alecks. Yes, there are even peace-wreckers (these are the people “who set up divisions”; Jude calls them apodiopizontes, which is the only time the word is used in the New Testament and is the same term Aristotle uses in his Politics, describing how demagogues corrupt democracies by flattering the people and using that flattery to gain power for 2 themselves). Yes, they are unspiritual (Jude uses the word psychikoi, or “worldly minded,” 3 which almost sounds like “psychotic”).

Everything they say and do comes from the human level. But the truth is, Jude says, that you knew all of this already. You heard it from the apostles (and perhaps directly from them, if this is a church founded by the preaching of one of the apostles) and maybe (he hints) you should have remembered that and taken more 4 precautions. But it’s neither the first time nor the last that this happens.

REBUILD OUR CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE It’s not the same thing, though, as telling them to let up, rest easy, and go about their business as though the problem will cure itself. It’s a rule in seamanship: everything is easy until you relax.

Everything they say and do comes from the human level.

But the truth is, Jude says, that you knew all of this already.

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In full-canvas sailing, there is always something to do, something to be attended to, something to watch for. And in Christian life, too, there is something to be done—in fact, two things.

The first is in verse 20: “But you, friends, get to work building up yourselves in holiness and faith.” The best medicine for your church, says Jude, begins with you. No one can play doctor to others if they’re sick and weak themselves. In fact, he’s implying that a good deal of the trouble they’ve been experiencing rose from precisely the lack of such building up. If they had, then they wouldn’t have been so clueless about the motives and activities of the creepers-in. The first task is, so to speak, architecture: Build yourselves up in holiness and faith “as stones in the spiritual temple of which Christ is the 5 cornerstone.”

To do that, Jude provides what we might call a three-step recovery plan for Christians who haven’t been paying sufficient attention to the architecture of their souls. Begin, he says, by “praying in the spirit” (v. 20). Not just prayer that rattles off requests, but prayer as though your life depends on it—which it does, spiritually speaking. As one commentator put it, “Watching sights the enemy; praying fights the 6 enemy.” No healthy spiritual growth ever takes place in a church without prayer, whether corporate and liturgical or private and conversational.

This is because prayer is the communication system that penetrates the wilderness of this world. If you think of this world as an occupied country (which it is), then prayer becomes like those clandestine radio receivers by which the Resistance stayed in touch with the Allied high command in World War II, or the Radio Free Europe by which people in the old Soviet bloc got their news. Of course, we tend to turn on the news, or access news websites, more often than we pray (which is odd when you reflect on it, since the contact we’re making in prayer is more important). But maybe that’s a good gauge of the frequency with which we ought to be praying (certainly, every time we access the news, we usually hear something that makes us pray).

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No healthy spiritual growth ever takes place in a church without prayer, whether corporate and liturgical or private and conversational.

Unhappily, prayer is not a natural or automatic function, except for a sainted few. There is something in our limited attention spans, our scream-out-loud culture, and the wiles of Satan that always seek to pull us away from prayer, to be distracted, as C. S. Lewis puts it, by “a newsboy shouting the midday paper, and a No. 73 bus 7 going past.” It is all to the devil’s advantage if he can alienate our minds from prayer, or make it seem puerile and fruitless, if only because (as the poet William Cowper writes): Restraining prayer, we cease to fight; Prayer makes the Christian’s armor bright: Satan trembles when he sees The weakest saint upon his knees.

That distractedness is compounded by (1) a lack of real instruction and practice in prayer and (2) by self-consciousness, if we are in a position of praying out loud. But there is nothing

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in prayer that requires you to be an Olympian in order to begin praying. In fact, some of the most pungent and health-giving prayers are the short ones that we can time to regular intervals in the day: Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me. . . . Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. . . . Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief. . . . O Lord our Lord, how excellent is your name in all the earth. . . . O Lord, convert the world and begin with me.

Don’t hesitate to use helps and aids. Small books of prayers (like John Gilling and Madeleine Evans’s When You Pray, Arthur Bennett’s The Valley of Vision, or John Pritchard’s The Intercessions Handbook) can be a helpful assist, like having a personal trainer.

But however you build a life of prayer, bear in mind that short and frequent is better than long and sporadic, just as specific and personal is better than vague and platitudinous.

As King Solomon wrote, Guard your steps when you go to the house of God; to draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools: for they do not know that they are doing evil. Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven, and you upon earth; therefore let your words be few.

(Eccles. 5:1–2) The second step in rebuilding spiritual life is to “keep yourselves in the love of God” (v. 21).

Love is not something that happens only on some enchanted evening when you see a stranger across a crowded room (that’s more Oscar Hammerstein). Although that may happen on occasion, as a rule, love is not like an attack of indigestion. Its beginnings may be unpredictable, but beyond that it’s a task you have to work at day by day, year by year, anniversary after anniversary. Persistence, perseverance, and

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However you build a life of prayer, bear in mind that short and frequent is better than long and sporadic.

loyalty are its fundamental materials, and on this score, consistency really is a virtue. This is why Jude’s prescription is in the form of an imperative: “Keep yourselves in the love of God.” Don’t think that loving and being loved by God is only a matter of emotional tsunamis. It’s more like a steady, dependable plateau, and you need to be careful about not falling off the edges. It’s a love fed by Bible study, fellowship, and time concentrating on worship and adoring God’s attributes (which, when you think about it, is the way we keep all our other loves alive, too).

The third way we rebuild our Christian architecture is “waiting for the mercy of the Lord” (v.

21). Jude’s word for waiting is prosdekomenoi—a mixture of welcoming and waiting, active and passive. And that mixture is worth bearing in mind as we realize that the day-to-day practice of prayer and the love of God are unnatural and sometimes dangerous things. We really are strangers in a strange land. So, don’t think you can wage this love or manage this prayer purely on your own. You will be threatened, assaulted,

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disturbed; communications will sometimes be cut off; you may be betrayed, discovered, punished. What will sustain you is a constant, throbbing undercurrent of recollection and reminder that you are doing this on borrowed power, borrowed strength—which, in the end, is the only strength any of us really have.

RECLAIM THE WANDERERS Once we are built up, however, there is a second task for us to perform in dealing with the problem of the creepers-in: If there are any who are wavering, persuade them back; others, who are getting involved with this, snatch back like you would something which falls into the fire; on others, have mercy with fear, hating the spots but holding on to the garment. (vv. 22–23) As much as their garments—and Jude here means the inner tunic, the chiton, worn by both men and women, not the looser outer 8 robe—are spotted, they can still be cleaned. In other words, from the strength you have in your own Christian architecture, reason with these people. And in some cases, hold your nose and go in and tell them they’re wrong in what they’re doing and you’re saying it because you love them and want them to come to dinner.

If we thought, from working our way through Jude’s Epistle, that he was cranking himself up to a real jihad against the creepers-in and the boasters and dividers within the church, then it will seem strange that here, at the very end, he’s not calling for their extermination but their recovery. But he does, and he does so because he’s counting on dealing with a church that has the right architecture—one that prays, that works at loving God, and that knows every day that there but for the grace of God goes the church.

In the end, Jude is not telling us that in the life of the church anything goes. There are certain behaviors and ideas that just don’t square

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with our Lord Jesus Christ and that need to be rebuffed, and the church that doesn’t do so is in danger of losing its title deeds. At the same time, he also understands that the church is not like a club, which thrives on exclusion, much less like a party where you come as you are. Rather, it is like a hospital, where the sick and the injured come to be healed by those who know how to do the job.

Get that right, and the church will come right along with it. Which is why, after all this warning and hectoring, in the last verses (24–25) Jude knows that this church will come right, just as every church that reads his letter will. And so he can say in terms that move away from the warning, away from the instruction, to a high 9 point of joy and “a sacred and solemn doxology,” Now to him how is able to keep you from falling and to present you without blemish before the presence of his glory with rejoicing, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

ALLEN C. GUELZO is senior research scholar in the Coun-

cil of the Humanities and director of the Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship in the James Madison Program at Prince­ton University.

1. Richard C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of I and II Epistles of Peter, the Three Epistles of John, and the Epistle of Jude (1948; Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2008), 643.

2. Peter H. Davids, The Letters of 2 Peter and Jude, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 89.

3. John Phillips, Exploring the Epistle of Jude: An Expository Commentary, The John Phillips Commentary Series (Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2004), 86.

4. Michael Green, The Second Epistle General of Peter and the General Epistle of Jude: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), 195.

5. Joseph B. Mayor, The Epistle of St. Jude and the Second Epistle of St. Peter, Classic Reprint Series (1907; repr., London: Forgotten Books, 2017), 78.

6. Phillips, Exploring the Epistle of Jude, 89.

7. C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters and Screwtape Proposes a Toast (New York: Harper Collins 1961), 13.

8. Lenski, Interpretation, 649.

9. William Jenkyn, An Exposition upon the Epistle of Jude (Minneapolis: James & Klock, 1976), 357.

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The Holy Spirit, Sanctification, and South Asia

by Aruthuckal Varughese John

ust as the work of Christ is predicated on human incapacity to earn our redemption, the work of the Spirit is predicated on human incapacity for holy living and spiritual formation. The nature of Christian ethics is that the demands it makes on the Christian are more than what one can fulfill in one’s own strength. Christian thinkers have recognized this, John Hare writes, as “the gap between the moral demand on us and our natu1 ral capacities to live by it.” Even Kant, who had argued that “when the moral law commands that

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we ought now to be better men, it follows inevitably that we must be able to be better men,” and that “each must do as much as lies in his power to become a better man,” also admitted that when one’s utmost had been done, one can “hope that what is not within his power will be supplied 2 through cooperation from above.”

Not only individuals but societies as well often do not live by their highest known ethic. This is also true of Christian societies. Throughout the history of the church, Christian influence on culture has not been by way of determining everyone’s choices in favor of a higher ethic. Rather,

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its influence has been moreso in the manner it plagued Christians to practice an impossible ethic, which in a strange way is also the lure of Christianity! David Bentley Hart remarks, It is the sheer “impracticality” of Christianity itself that interests me: its extraordinary claims, its peculiar understandings of love and service, which down the centuries have not so much dominated Western civilization as haunted it, at times like a particularly engrossing dream, at others like an especially 3 forlorn specter.

That the ethical standards of Christianity are so high that they are humanly impractical entails a certain course at least along two tracks: a theological track and a cultural track that move in quite opposite directions. Theologically, the recognition of the impracticality of Christian ethics relocates moral agency to the Holy Spirit.

Particularly important is the Johannine focus on the “I am” sayings of Jesus, which explicates Christian living as enabled by Jesus—the Spiritbaptizer, who empowers a believer to live a Spirit-filled life rather than a life led by the flesh.

Similarly, Pauline explications of Torah/Spirit antithesis and flesh/spirit antithesis indicate that the ethical life of a believer is a consequence of the Spirit’s function. In short, as Craig Keener says, “Just as Paul depends on Christ for being righted, he depends on God’s Spirit for being able to appropriate the cognitive moral charac4 ter consonant with one who is righted.” Ethical life in this Christian theological frame would be understood as a form of divine enablement and not as a human accomplishment.

Culture tends to deal with an impractical ethical requirement by redefining the requirement to more attainable levels by lowering the moral bar to the realm of human possibilities. This is instanced especially within secular culture.

Strangely, secular culture (and sometimes the church as well) tends to lower the moral bar to fit human capacities as an act of grace in that it tries to free people from a sense of guilt.

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However, a culture that tries to free itself from guilt does so by simultaneously abolishing sin and consequently also abolishing grace. After all, grace can be compensatively appropriated only in proportion to our guilt. Thus lowering the moral bar effectively abolishes grace.

ETHICAL REQUIREMENT IN INDIAN PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITIONS Indian philosophical schools have used the categories of guṇas (the popular meaning of which is virtue or merit; the philosophical meaning is strand, quality, attribute, or property). The Bhagavad Gita (BG 14:5) speaks of three guṇas: 1. Sattva. Purity: characterized by goodness, kindness, generosity 2. Rajas. Activity: characterized by vigor, passion, ambition 3. Tamas. Darkness: characterized by ignorance, laziness, hatred, resentment

These guṇ as (properties) are seen as con‑ s­tituent of the prakriti (nature/matter). We are to think of these properties or qualities as firmly attached to the object—akin to George Berkeley’s idea of primary qualities, as in the shape of an object, and not as secondary qualities, as in the color the object. Therefore, guṇas are to the substance what strands are to the rope.

The gu ṇ as are essentially a way we understand an individual’s temperament, depending on which of the three guṇas prevails over the others. According to one commentator, These three guṇas are present in the material energy, and our mind is made from the same energy. Hence, all the three guṇ as are present in our mind as well. They can be compared to three wrestlers competing with each other. Each keeps throwing the others down, and so, sometimes the first is on top, sometimes the second, and sometimes the third. In the same manner, the three guṇas keep gaining dominance

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over the individual’s temperament, which oscillates amongst the three modes.

Depending upon the external environment, the internal contemplation, and the sanskārs (tendencies) of past lives, one or the other guṇa begins to dominate.

There is no rule for how long it stays— one gu ṇ a may dominate the mind and intellect for as short as a moment or for as 5 long as an hour.

In his discourse with Arjun, Krishna says, When all the gates of the body are illumined by knowledge, know it to be a manifestation of the mode of goodness. When the mode of passion predominates, O Arjun, the symptoms of greed, exertion for worldly gain, restlessness, and craving develop. O Arjun, nescience, inertia, negligence, and delusion—these are the dominant signs of the mode of ignorance. (BG 14:11–13) Just as the ideals of the ancient Greek world informed its followers of the virtues toward which they should strive, the Bhagavad Gita informs Hindus what is noble and what is ignoble. It encourages them to struggle with the

three guṇas through Sādhanā and strive toward the higher guṇas, moving toward sattvic qualities. Thus the commentator argues, Sādhanā means to fight with the flow of the three gu ṇ as in the mind, and force it to maintain the devotional feelings toward God and Guru. If our consciousness remained at the highest consciousness all day, there would be no need for sādhanā.

Though the mind’s natural sentiments may be inclined toward the world, yet with the intellect, we have to force it into the spiritual realm. Initially, this may seem difficult, but with practice it becomes easy. This is just as driving a car is difficult initially, but 6 with practice it becomes natural.

Sādhanā here may be understood as righteous acts that are pursued for the goal of earning one’s salvation. While the knowledge about sattva, rajas, and tamas belongs to a world where the fuller moral revelation of Mosaic law within the Pauline scheme is absent, the Hindu Sādhanā as the way of action, especially as articulated within the karma yoga, resembles the Mosaic law (taken in a literal sense) as a way to salvation through works.

The Hindu Sādhanā as the way of action, especially as articulated within the karma yoga, resembles the Mosaic law . . . as a way to salvation through works.

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In fact, like the Mosaic law found in the Hebrew Bible, the karma mārga also contains a large number of ritual prescriptions along with its universal ethical injunctions.

The Bhagavad Gita teaches that if an individual dies (or leaves the body) primarily in the state of sattva, then that person attains moksa, or heaven (BG 14:14). Whereas, if a person dies primarily in the rajas state, then he will be reborn into a difficult condition of worldly attachment and physical labor (BG 14:15).

However, if a person dies primarily in the tamas state, then such a person will be reborn as an animal, which is below the level of humans (BG 14:15). As the commentator observes, People wonder whether having once attained the human form, it is possible to slip back into the lower species. This verse reveals that the human form does not remain permanently reserved for the soul. Those who do not put it to good use are subject to the terrible danger of moving downward into the animal forms again.

Thus, all the paths are open at all times.

The soul can climb upward in its spiritual evolution, remain at the same level, or even slide down, based upon the intensity and 7 frequency of the guṇas it adopts.

Similarly, the Gita further elaborates, It is said the fruit of actions performed in the mode of goodness bestow pure results.

Actions done in the mode of passion result in pain, while those performed in the mode of ignorance result in darkness. (BG 14:16) Also, “From the mode of goodness arises knowledge, from the mode of passion arises greed, and from the mode of ignorance arise negligence and delusion” (BG 14:17).

While Sādhanā is highlighted in other Hindu scriptures, in this section, Krishna interestingly elaborates that in human actions there are no real agents except the three guṇas and that the

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The Bhagavad Gita teaches that if an individual dies (or leaves the body) primarily in the state of sattva, then that person attains moksa, or heaven.

divine transcends the three guṇas (BG 14:19).

Yet in the following verse, Krishna teaches that those who transcend the three guṇas are not affected by any of the three (BG 14:23).

Thus, on the one hand, human will/agency is ineffective against the three guṇ as because guṇas tend to determine what is willed, making human actions amoral. After all, an action may be deemed moral only if the actor has a moral agency to choose freely those actions that are judged to be moral or immoral. Yet, on the other, Krishna suggests that one could transcend the three guṇas.

In a sense, the Gita seems to lead the faithful Hindu to an aporia, where the combination of the three guṇas determines one’s moral frame and one is helpless against it, yet one is required to overcome it. One may find here a struggle similar to the redemption from the enslaving nature

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of the fallen flesh in the New Testament. Flesh, in the Pauline sense, is embedded with ignoble guṇas and requires the external agency of the Holy Spirit for transformed living.

Having considered the three guṇas explicated in the Bhagavad Gita, let me now turn to the notion of prapatti yoga within the discussion of mārgas (paths to salvation). I have elsewhere explored the understanding within Ramānujā’s Viśiṣṭādvaitic tradition of the limitation of the 8 three mārgas: 1. Karma mārga: The path of works that fulfills duties and ethical injunctions and ritual prescriptions.

2. Jñānā mārga: The way of knowledge and contemplation that considers sin primarily in terms of ignorance.

3. Bhakti mārga: The path of devotion that focuses on the direct experience of God (anubhava).

The problem with the normal practice of bhakti is that it essentially requires a discipline of established means (sādhanā) that has to be mastered in order to attain salvation—something

that imposes a difficult, if not impossible, task on all seekers. There is, however, a fourth way called the prapatti yoga—a way of surrender.

By centering on prapatti, a seeker without exceptional capacities can simply transfer the weight of their burden (bhara-samarpana; submission of weight or burden) to God, and thereby seek refuge under God’s feet (saranagati, which literally means “to prostrate”). In the words of a leader within the Viśiṣṭādvaitic tradition, the prayer of a penitent seeker might be: “Lord, I, who am nothing, conform to your will and desist being contrary to it, and with faith and prayer, submit to you the burden of 9 saving my soul.” Such a prayer is a total submission of the will, intellect, and body to the mercy of God. A Christian reader can hardly help but recall the contrast that Jesus drew between the prayer of the Pharisee and that of the tax collector in Luke 18:13.

Within the Hindu context, we thus find conceptual categories that capture the struggle between spirit and flesh, albeit with limitations.

In the light of the above discussion, I shall highlight a few proposals for Christian engagement in the Hindu context.

A FEW PROPOSALS FOR CHRISTIAN ENGAGEMENT IN SOUTH ASIA Bridge Concepts in the Hindu Context

“Lord, I, who am nothing, conform to your will and desist being contrary to it, and with faith and prayer, submit to you the burden of saving my soul.”

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While the concepts of the three guṇas of the Gita and prapatti yoga of Ramānujā’s Viśiṣṭādvaita may not sit tightly as one properly argued philosophical system, it nevertheless provides a glimpse of the conceptual categories that may be useful as bridge concepts in articulating Christianity in the Hindu context. In so doing, the three guṇas present a hierarchy of virtues within the Hindu mind. This enables us to list the catalogue sattvic guṇas as “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal. 5:22–23). Tamasic guṇas likewise are evident in “sexual immorality,

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The antidote to the calculus of karma that insists on meritorious efforts (sādhanā) is the recognition that the Holy Spirit is promised to enable a believer to obedience.

impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these” (Gal. 5:19–21).

therefore arrive at an existential aporia—a human condition that necessitates (if not anticipates) divine intervention in the promise of the Holy Spirit.

Existential Aporia as a Segue for the Work of the Holy Spirit

Spirit as the Provider of the Truth and the Condition for Truth

The antidote to the calculus of karma that insists on meritorious efforts (sādhanā) is the recognition that the Holy Spirit is promised to enable a believer to obedience. The shift from John 14:15, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” to 14:16, “And I will ask the Father and he will give you another Counselor,” is not so much a shift but rather a flow, which indicates that we cannot keep the commandments without the Holy Spirit’s help. Rather than insisting on a rigorous way of keeping his commandments, Jesus promises the Holy Spirit.

For all the emphasis on striving (sādhanā), there is also the helplessness indicated in the Bhagavad Gita about the working of the three guṇas (BG 14:19). The New Testament teaches that the items on the catalogue of sattvic guṇas are not achievable by merely willing it. Thus one finds oneself at a point of complete helplessness (like in Romans 7) where the only human response is to prostrate (saranagati) before God as in the prapatti yoga. Individuals

While the self-revelation of the Trinitarian God begins with the Father in the work of creation, followed by the Son in his incarnation, which is followed by the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, human encounter of God follows the inverse order, in that it is the Holy Spirit who first encounters individuals and leads them to Jesus Christ: “No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3), and it is in Jesus Christ we see the Father (John 14:7– 9). It helps to remember that the Holy Spirit meets individuals not after their redemption 10 but before and for it.

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To Belong, Believe, and Become: Ordering in the Likeness of the Trinity Missionally speaking, the terms “believe,” “become,” and “belong” may be understood as corresponding to a specific member of the Trinity. The call to belong to the family of faith

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flows from the person and work of God the Father. By virtue of both his work (as Creator) and name (as Father), the entire creation belongs to him: “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it” (Ps. 24:1). Although the complete appropriation of our identity as God’s children is for the redeemed, “Behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us, that we should be called the children of God” (1 John 3:1), Paul in Romans 5:8 propels the church to love every sinner because “God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”

Similarly, the call to believe flows from the person and work of Jesus Christ. He is the One who invites us to believe and the One in whom we believe; he is the messenger and the message; he is the chief priest and the sacrifice. True belonging to the family of God in the new covenant rests on the redemptive work of Christ on the cross and is appropriated by grace through faith in him.

Finally, Christian becoming is by the enabling work of the Holy Spirit. As the indwelling Spirit, he is both the counselor and the advocate who sanctifies individuals caught within their distinct needs and oddities. In this sense, the Spirit’s coming is not as a generic human teacher but as a personal trainer of individuals situated in unique conditions. As the Spirit of

Truth, he forms our inner being, by convicting both individuals and communities and leading us into truth and freedom.

To belong, believe, and become (unlike believe, become, and only then belong) is a useful rearrangement of sequence—a corrective to the overprotective tendencies within the church that hinder the mission of God. Yet, it is pivotal to understand that the rearrangement is not an order that illustrates an “essential” priority or a hierarchy of importance. Rather, the sequence illustrates a Trinitarian order that begins with the love of the Father (to whom we belong), who issues the Son (in whom we believe), who together (at least in the Western tradition) issue the Spirit (by whom we become).

SANCTIFICATION AS A CORPORATE EXERCISE With reference particularly to the South Asian context, we may here highlight the corporate nature of sanctification. Strangely, while social arrangements in South Asia are more interconnected in the form of communities, the pursuit of holiness remains fundamentally an individual affair. Thus, after the first three stages of life in the Hindu philosophy—Brahmacharya (student), Grihastha (householder), and

The call to believe flows from the person and work of Jesus Christ. He is the One who invites us to believe and the One in whom we believe.

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Vanaprastha (retirement)—the fourth stage of Sannyasa (renunciation) is undertaken individually by forsaking family, community, and other such worldly cares of life. The pursuit of God and holy living therefore draws people away from society toward an individualistic meditative contemplation.

Whatever the social arrangement, the work of sanctification involves both the individual and the corporate dimensions. From the individual dimension, we understand the Holy Spirit in us (John 14:17) as being the personal trainer for each individual. As the one who “searches our hearts” (Rom. 8:27), he knows each person’s deepest anxieties or personal struggles and works from within us to convict us and transform our dispositions, inclinations, attitudes, and our frames of mind (Rom. 8:5), regenerating and transforming it to become the “mind of the Spirit” (Rom. 8:27) and the “mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16).

However, sanctification also involves a corporate dimension where the focus is on Christian unity and fellowship enabled by the Holy Spirit.

The summarization of the entire law into two commandments—to love God (Deut. 6:5) and neighbor (Lev. 19:9–18, esp. 18) and the “new commandment” (John 13:34–35)—is given so that “all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

When we think of the fellowship of the believers, the nature in which South Asian communities are arranged may seem to be an advantage over against the more individualized Western cultures. Community, however, does not entail communion and South Asia comes with its own set of challenges that leave much to be desired in its communities. South Asian communities that are based on caste/tribal/language identities can often become oppressive and need to be transformed into the “mind of Christ” by the Spirit just as the autonomously arranged individuals in the West.

The presence of the Holy Spirit in South Asian communities means corporately learning to love across barriers to create a true

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communion of the Spirit. Sanctification is a learning together by “provoking one another to love and good works” (Heb. 10:24). True communion in South Asia would mean that: (1) those traditionally excluded from the communitarian calculus have to become part of Christian communities, and (2) the bond that holds communities together is not their tribal/ caste identity but the actual presence of the Holy Spirit, who provides a vision of the kingdom of God revealed in Jesus Christ and in the Scriptures. In the Christian tradition, the Holy Spirit is considered the bond of love between the Father and Son within the Trinity. So also in his mission, the Spirit is the bond of love among the members of the local body sanctifying the church in the image of the Trinity.

ARUTHUCKAL VARUGHESE JOHN (PhD) is professor and

head of the Department of Theology and History and the student dean at the South Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies in Bangalore, India. He is married to Mary, and they have three children.

1. John E. Hare, The Moral Gap: Kantian Ethics, Human Limits, and God’s Assistance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 1.

2. Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans.

Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson (New York: Harper and Row, 1960), 46–47.

3. David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 222.

4. Craig S. Keener, The Mind of the Spirit: Paul’s Approach to Transformed Thinking (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016), 115.

5. Swami Mukundananda, Bhagavad Gita: The Song of God. Translations from https://www.holy-bhagavad-gita.org.

6. Swami Mukundananda, https://www.holy-bhagavad-gita.org.

7. Swami Mukundananda, https://www.holy-bhagavad-gita.org.

8. See my article, “Being in the truth: Climacus’ devout idolater from within Ramānujā’s Visiśtādvaitic Tradition,” Kierkegaard East and West 5, Acta Kierkegaardiana, ed. Andrew Burgess et al. (Toronto: Kierkegaard Circle, Trinity College, 2011).

9. Vedanta Deśika, “Nyāsadaśaka” (poem), second stanza, cited in Raghavachar, “Spiritual Vision of Ramānujā,” Hindu Spirituality: Vedas through Vedanta, ed. Krishna Sivaraman (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 273.

10. For further discussion, see my “Third Article Theology and Apologetics,” The Holy Spirit and Christian Mission in a Pluralistic Context, ed. Roji T. George (Bangalore: SAIACS Press, 2017).

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“The Modest Theologian” (Part 2)

by Herman Witsius translated by Joseph A. Tipton

The following is part 2 of a translation of a portion of De Theologo Modesto, an inaugural address delivered by Herman Witsius (1636–1708) to the students and faculty of Leiden University (part 1 was published in the July/August 2021 issue of Modern Reformation). Witsius held positions at Franeker (1675–80) and Utrecht (1680–98) before receiving the invitation to join the faculty at Leiden, the most prestigious university in the Netherlands. The original text of this translation comes from Hermanni Witsii Miscellaneorum Sacrorum, tomus alter (Leiden, 1736). Because the original length of the address far exceeds the limits of this column, a portion of the address is being presented in two parts.

At the end of part 1, Witsius had made the point that the modest theologian learns much from others and appropriately attributes his learning to those from whom he learned. He continues:

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t the same time, we must not think that the laws of modesty have been broken if someone who has spent a great deal of time and

effort in studying the holy writings finds something in them that others, for all he knows, have not noticed, and then shares it openly with his brothers for their mutual edification. It would

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be sad indeed if the minds of well-bred men were prohibited from forging ahead and were not allowed to publish anything they could not cite some other previous authority for. Theology would be in quite a pitiful state if our theological predecessors had lived under the same constraint. How many wonderful ideas would we be without, ideas that we now treasure as gems of sacred learning! The goldmines of Holy Scripture have not yet been so depleted that there are no treasures left over for those who examine them closely, or a prize well worth the effort. To reject the commendation that follows upon a new discovery presented to the world is not a sign of a modest character, but an indolent one, just as begrudging others the same commendation is the mark of a spiteful spirit. In the same vein, I would not consider it modesty to think that once you have found a mentor for your studies either by chance or have purposely chosen one, you have to follow him unconditionally and not depart even an inch from his teaching. I recall how Galen relates an admirable statement made by Posidonius, who said “he preferred to abandon the group over abandoning the truth.”

And yet today we see a good number of people with this very mindset. Without any examination beforehand, refusing to admit any better explanation, they pledge allegiance to their teacher’s pronouncements and stubbornly defend beliefs that they have unthinkingly subscribed to. They do battle over these beliefs as though they fought for hearth and home and, because they cannot fight with weapons that will decide the matter, they use wooden swords and boxing gloves. They consider the full breadth and width of wisdom to be found in these teachings alone, and look down on whoever does not pay them the same homage as they do as though they were subhuman ignoramuses; or, what is no better, they slander and vilify them as though they were suspected of some newfangled abomination. This is not modesty. This is factionalism, unless we have completely lost all sense of what the real names for things are.

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Besides the handling of the actual material, I would like this modesty in teaching to be just as apparent in a straightforward, gentle, and even-tempered comportment in presentation.

One must treat the holy pronouncements of God winsomely, with faithful reverence and complete honesty, without any bias, with a pure spirit and in honorable language. We must not dishonor them with the trifling interpolations of human learning. We must not disfigure them with the confusing racket of insipid, barbarian expressions, nor conversely go beyond what decency dictates and dress them up in the cosmetics of oratory. The simpler and more straightforward all speech concerning things divine is, the better. And I also add: The gentler it is, the better. For one’s language most easily works its way into the minds of the audience, when it comes by way of a gentle and winsome demonstration of truth and expression of brotherly love.

One must treat the holy pronouncements of God winsomely, with faithful reverence and complete honesty, without any bias, with a pure spirit and in honorable language.

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Of course, I realize that sometimes there are occasions when men of God must take a stand on the frontlines and discharge their weapons on all sides against the sworn enemies of truth and godliness. At such times, one cannot use kid gloves. At such times, the tender dove of Christ, his gentle bride, whose lips otherwise taste of the honeycomb and whose tongue conceals milk and honey, becomes as fearsome as a many-bannered host [cf. Song of Songs 6:10]. She is like the tower of David built as an armory, from which hang a thousand shields, all bucklers of mighty men [cf. Song of Songs 4:4].

At such times, we must fight a valiant battle.

At such times, we must defend the faith once delivered to the saints [cf. Jude 3], and must not be so unacquainted with war that we allow it to be corrupted in even a syllable or pen stroke.

At such times messengers of peace become knights in full armor, formidable pancratiasts [ancient Greek wrestlers or boxers], no different than those sixty mighty men who stood around Solomon’s bed, all with swords drawn and skilled 1 in the wars of Jehovah [cf. Song of Songs 3:7–8].

However, in these selfsame battles a spirit of Christian gentleness must shine through no less than a spirit of Christian fortitude, so that it is clear we are waging war against sin and error rather than against the people in error. This righteous combat must aim at securing their salvation. I never have been able to bring myself to

give unqualified praise to the unrestrained savagery that theologians, ancient or modern, often exhibit when responding to their opponents.

They insult them with name-calling, dubbing them dogs, swine, idiots, and other such things, and rain down upon them a hailstorm of abusive language. I grant that Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil, Jerome, and others behaved in such a way. They openly criticized and slandered in biting and humiliating invectives the ones who challenged what they taught, though the latter were men who otherwise abounded in virtue and sometimes deserved respect for the imperial status they held. And I grant that those great heroes in our fathers’ generation whose names shall live forever, whom God was pleased to use to scatter the dense, thick fog of ignorance and superstition, behaved in such a way. Yet for my part, gentlemen, I prefer to attribute this use of abusive language to the errors of the age and the character of those men (after all, however holy they might have been, they were still men) and pardon them for it in light of their other resplendent virtues rather than use the example of the prophets and apostles, and even Christ himself, to exonerate them and hold them up as models to emulate. The criterion given to us by the apostle and brother of our Lord Jesus Christ will always carry more weight with me. Thanks to him we have these wonderful words: “Who is wise and endowed with learning

In these selfsame battles a spirit of Christian gentleness must shine through no less than a spirit of Christian fortitude, so that it is clear we are waging war against sin and error rather than against the people in error.

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among you? Let him show it in a good manner of living, his works being done with wise meekness” [James 3:13]. And elsewhere he says, “The wisdom that is from above is first and foremost self-controlled. Secondly, it seeks to make peace, to be fair, to give in. It is full of mercy and good fruit. It does not discriminate. It is in no way fake” [James 3:17].

And it makes the kind of theologian we are discussing the same way, not only in his learning, but in the overall way he lives his life.

Wherever this heavenly wisdom enters deep into one’s heart and rightly claims it as its own, vitriol, envy, quarrelsomeness, troublesomeness, and every sort of bad behavior will be notified to vacate the premises. Meekness, gentleness, patiently bearing wrongs done to you and a spirit of peace—a precious thing—will there assume a blessed and happy command along with an abundance of everything good. Satyrus, the brother of Ambrose, shall there come back to life, a man who was “easy to apologize to, imper2 vious to ambition, committed to innocence.”

For such is the way Ambrose characterizes him. No one shall hear an absurd vaunting of undeserved praise, especially when it pertains to oneself, that is coupled with the berating of others who may very well be by far their betters, and more learned. The shameless scheming and 3 interfering in business not their own by brash men who strive to wrest control of everything, despite the fact that Peter execrated such behavior, shall not throw the interests of the Church or Academy into confusion. Content with whatever bone it is one’s lot to chew on, each man shall give his attention to his own business and keep his nose out of that of others. Factions shall not arise. Debates shall not be drawn out in endless 4 Tuscan counter-questions. Brother will not fight brother in disputes that will end in victory for neither party. The dark cloud of envy shall not hang over anyone’s learning and virtue. The undeserving man shall not win advancement because he supports a party, while the most deserving shall not be blocked because he happens to disagree on a few minor points.

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Wherever this heavenly wisdom enters deep into one’s heart and rightly claims it as its own, vitriol, envy, quarrelsomeness, troublesomeness, and every sort of bad behavior will be notified to vacate the premises.

Finally, one cannot put into words how many blessings a spirit of modesty shall bring to the republic of letters and religion. What shall render a person’s spirit teachable and submissive to the utterances of God? Modesty. What shall keep and deter one from a foolhardy profanation of awe-inspiring mysteries? Modesty.

What shall convince lovers of the truth through a quickening flood into the heart that the teachings of our most holy religion are true? The modesty of those who expound it. What shall either keep lamentable disputes from happening or settle them if they do? What shall resolve controversies which, though destructive, are often prosecuted with great energy? Modesty.

When it is absolutely impossible to avoid fighting for the cause of God, what shall secure

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victory more easily and honorably? A spirit of modesty in the fighter. What shall drive out the senseless desire for introducing new ideas?

What shall drive out partisanship and destructive factionalism that plague the Church and Academy? Modesty. What shall unite hearts and hands and produce sacred pacts of lasting peace and friendship? Again, a spirit of modesty.

O holy, blessed Modesty, you who ward off all these terrible afflictions and produce such great blessings, where on earth do you flee? Why do you remove yourself from our sight and cruelly abandon those who waste away yearning for you? Stay your course! Grant us your favor and return! Occupy our hearts and establish in them the throne of your gentle and peaceful sway. Own this university, this chair devoted to your rites. Even as Envy protests, even as Discord rails, even as Ambition gnashes her teeth, let all of Hell’s evils be trampled underfoot, whatever opposes lasting tranquility be sent into exile, and bless us eternally with your protection and gifts!

Forgive me, gentlemen, for speaking as one divinely seized. You might have thought I had been overcome by my ardent love and longing for sacred modesty and, all but transported elsewhere, had forgotten both myself and you. Best rest assured I do not forget us when I attempt to win for us the favor of Modesty, the Queen of the Virtues, and invite her in earnest prayer to make here an everlasting home for herself.

CONCLUDING PRAYER Thou, bounteous God, everlasting fount of all grace and wisdom, assist our efforts and inspire those who teach as well as those who learn with 5 reverence for Thy name and power. Preserve this university, this country, this Church, and enrich them with the wealth of thy grace.

Preserve the Most Serene King of England, the stay of the Academy, the liberator of his country, the defender of the Church, and lavish upon him health and life stretching over years to come.

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Preserve and bestow all manner of blessings upon the eminent and most noble governors not only of this institution of higher learning, but of the entire republic as well, guardians in the true sense of the word. Under their governance, “may Unity and Virtue return, and may Godliness stride together with Faith with heads 6 held high.” In thy mercy keep far from us the evils we have deserved, and in thy kindness bestow upon us the blessings we have not. Last of all, favor us thyself with thy good gifts and grant that our good fortune be an everlasting one.

This concludes my speech.

JOSEPH A. TIPTON is a researcher in the field of early mod-

ern literature. His primary focus is on the Reformers’ use of classical Greek and Latin literature to represent and forward their own project of reform. He has published on the German neo-Latin poets Petrus Lotichius and Simon Stenius. Also active as a translator of Greek and Latin texts, Dr. Tipton has translated books two and three of Peter Martyr Vermigli’s Commonplaces for the Davenant Institute and is currently working on Samuel Rutherford’s Dictates on the Doctrine of Scripture for Reformation Heritage. Dr. Tipton lives in Orlando, Florida, where he teaches Greek and Latin at The Geneva School.

1. Many translations have taken “bed” to be a carriage or litter.

The mention of Jehovah is an addition made by Witsius.

2. Ambrose, On the Death of Satyrus, 1.51.

3. Witsius uses a Greek word, πολυπραγμοσύνη, to express the idea of meddling in business that has nothing to do with oneself.

4. By “Tuscan counter-questions” (Tusca iurgia), Witsius appears to mean simply arguments that are prolonged interminably. Justus Lipsius uses the phrase in a similarly general way (Epistle 79). It originates with Augustine, who evidently used it in a stricter sense; namely, the strategy of not directly answering a question posed to one, but instead trying to suggest its resolution by asking a pointed counter-question (Contra Academicos 3.4.9). Yet one can easily see how such a strategy would give rise to interminable debates.

5. Witsius employs yet another pun in this sentence. The word for assist is adspirare, while the word for inspire is inspirare. Through this wordplay, Witsius is evidently underscoring the need for God’s Spirit in all human endeavors.

6. This quotation seems to be a slight modification of Claudian, In Rufinum 1.55–56: en proles antiqua redit. Concordia, Virtus / Cumque Fide Pietas alta cervice vagantur. Interestingly, the modification does not appear to originate with Witsius, but rather with Justus Lipsius who nearly a century before ended the dedicatory letter of his antiquarian work on the cult of Vesta with this very line as quoted by Witsius. Justus Lipsius, De Vesta et Vestalibus Syntagma (Antwerp: Plantin, 1603), 3.

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MODERN REFORMATION WEEKEND

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Join Michael Horton and the Modern Reformation team for a special weekend experience as we delve deeply into the topic of justification.

JUS T IFIC AT ION Registered participants will receive materials to read and prepare in advance. Our guests will spend the weekend listening to stimulating lectures and engaging in lively conversation, challenging them to grow in their understanding of the doctrine of justification, and encouraging them to live in the light of what God has done for them in Christ.

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FEATURES

WHEN ONE MOVES BEYOND THE FEW STEREOTYPICAL DOCTRINES AND THE SOLAS OF REFORMATION THEOLOGY INTO ITS RICHES AND DEPTH, THERE CAN BE MANY SURPRISES AND DISCOVERIES, EVEN ON POINTS WE AS EVANGELICAL PROTESTANTS THOUGHT WE KNEW AND UNDERSTOOD.”

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LIVING AS WHOLE PEOPLE IN A FRAGMENTED WORLD

GOD THE PREACHER: THE “LIVING AND ACTIVE” WORD

IN THE CHURCH: FINDING COMMON GROUND ACROSS DENOMINATIONS

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AN IN T ERVIE W WI T H G R EG G

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ANDREA WAN

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odern Reformation’s executive editor, Joshua Schendel, recently interviewed Dr. Gregg R. Allison regarding his latest book Embodied: Living as Whole People in a Fragmented World (Baker, 2021). Dr. Allison (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is a professor of Christian theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

Dr. Allison is also the secretary of the Evangelical Theological Society and the book review editor of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. In addition, he serves as pastor of Sojourn Church East.

MR: In the introduction to your new book, you

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say it has been a long time in coming. Could you give us a brief synopsis of what the book is about?

Was there a particular impetus to publish it now?

GA: Briefly, the thesis of my book is that the proper state of human existence is embodiment; that is, God created human beings to be embodied image bearers. This biblical and theological affirmation contradicts the wrong and dangerous worldviews of Gnosticism and neoGnosticism, philosophies that claim that the immaterial aspect of human beings (the soul and/or spirit) is good while the material aspect (the body) is inherently evil. This perspective is not supported by Scripture; indeed, it is inimical to the biblical viewpoint.

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MR: In terms of topics and scope, this is a really

ambitious project. You discuss issues such as the relation of soul and body, human nature and individuality, human sexuality and gender, and suffering and death. Rather than being simply a collection of your thoughts on various big issues, however, there’s a distinctly theological organization of material. Why do you approach these topics theologically, and what do you think a theological analysis brings to the wider cultural conversation of these various topics?

GA: There are a number of us currently writing about these cultural topics—body image, gender confusion, transgenderism, and more—from a theological foundation. Interestingly and independently of one another, we all affirm that the right way to address these issues is to develop a theologically robust, biblically grounded theology of human embodiment. Beginning with Genesis 1, we find Scripture itself narrating God’s creation of us as embodied image bearers (vv. 26–27). Furthermore, Genesis emphasizes that we are created as either male image bearers or female image bearers, a fact that is specifically recounted in the narratives of Adam’s creation and Eve’s creation (Gen. 2:7, 18–25). Moreover, we note that God creates each person as a particular gendered embodied image bearer (Ps. 139:13–16). Add to this the fact of human sociality and sexuality and my book presents a fully orbed theological approach to the issues of our day. For example, I address the blessed and disciplined body, the sanctified body, the worshiping body, the clothed body, the suffering and healed body, the dead body, and the future of the body.

I face the most controversial trends of today from that theologically grounded framework: body image, gender confusion and transgenderism, lust, pornography, masturbation, same-sex attraction and homosexuality, polyamory and polygamy, gluttony, sloth, and more.

MR: As already said, you cover much ground in

this book. Since I can’t ask about everything in it, let’s focus the remaining few questions on a claim you make early on. You argue from the Creation account in Genesis that God created humans as embodied creatures for two purposes: procreation

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and vocation. First, then, why do you think that having a body is essential for the completion of these two God-given purposes?

GA: Following his creation of embodied image bearers, who are either male or female (Gen. 1:26–27), God blessed them and gave them the responsibility to build society for human flourishing (Gen. 1:28). This responsibility consists of two purposes: the expansion of the human race through procreation (“be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth”) and the prosperity of humanity through work, which is engagement in vocation (“and subdue it and exercise dominion”). Clearly, gendered embodiment—being men and women—is essential for the fulfillment of the first purpose: procreation. The same complementarity is essential for the fulfillment of the second purpose: vocation. In contrast, angels, whom God created as immaterial beings, do not multiply to expand the angelic realm, nor do angels engage in the physical work of building human society. By God’s design, their proper state of existence is immaterial. Human beings, because of their embodiment, are also emplaced (located bodily in a particular space); they require a body to fulfill their God-given purposes in a physical world. By God’s design, the proper state of human existence is embodiment.

MR: You argue in chapter 5 that human sexuality

is part of God’s design for the expression of human sociality in the context of marriage. Sex in marriage is for procreation as well as for pleasure. What do you make of the claim of some other theologians, who have argued that sex and sexuality are not only about the human-to-human horizontal plane, but also about the human-to-God vertical plane?

Sexuality, in other words, is indicative of the fundamental human desire: desire for union with God?

GA: While I know some theologians who maintain this position, I disagree with their choice of terminology; that is, their use of “sexuality” as indicative of the human desire for a relationship with God. The term itself is so associated with genitals, intercourse, lust, flirtation, eroticism, and more that it becomes a stumbling block to most people to use it in relation to union with God. Originally, I liked and even used the word

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sexuality in this way, but scores of students in my courses on a theology of human embodiment dissented from this term—some even rightly scolded me for using it! I had to abandon its use.

In its place I use the term “sociality,” which I define as the universal human condition of desiring, expressing, and receiving human relationships. God has designed his gendered embodied image bearers for friendship, community, and bonding; that is, for sociality.

God also designed them for a personal relationship with him, but I distance myself from calling this “sexuality.” I reserve that term for the physical activity in which married people properly engage.

MR: You’ve written helpfully about some practical ways that churches can think through and engage the current rise in gender dysphoria. Can you explain the distinction between gender and sex as it is currently used (for those of us not up on the literature)? And do you think this crisis— if we can call it that—provides churches with a unique opportunity for witness and care, both to those inside and outside its walls?

GA: The new vocabulary is quite complex and ever changing! Here is a basic orientation: “Sex” refers to “the physical, biological, and anatomical dimensions of being male or female (including chromosomes, gonads, sexual anat1 omy, and secondary sex characteristics).” “Sex” is the assigned biological label written on one’s birth certificate. Genetically, men are composed of XY chromosomes and women of XX chromosomes. For clarity’s sake, some people use the expression “biological sex” or “natal male” and “natal female.” Sex is a matter of human DNA and anatomy.

“Gender,” which is now a complex term, can still refer to sex but more commonly refers to gender expression or gender identity. Generally speaking, gender refers to the “psychological, social, and cultural aspects of being male and 2 female.” More specifically, “gender expression” is the set of attitudes and behaviors conveyed by people, significantly influenced by their society’s expectations for (generally speaking, male and female) persons. “Gender identity”

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concerns how people perceive or feel about their sexual identity. The term “cisgender” refers to people whose sex and gender identity match: a biological male identifies as a man, and a natal female identifies as a woman. The term “gender dysphoria” refers to people whose sex and gender identity don’t correspond: a person whose sex assigned at birth is male doesn’t perceive himself as a man but feels like a woman.

I definitely believe that the crisis of transgenderism (the current popular term is “trans”) provides a unique but challenging opportunity to minister to people both inside and outside of the church. Imagine young teenage girls who find themselves outliers in their schools, socially awkward with few friends and crises of identity. They discover that when they declare themselves to be trans, their popularity skyrockets, especially on social media, and they are applauded for their heroic stand. If they are prepubescent, then they take puberty blockers and may even go so far as to undergo sex reassignment surgery. While some may find temporary relief, many end up as or more confused about their identity than before they went from girl to boy. When they turn twenty-four-years old and are exhausted from their struggles, they request to return to their former selves. Their lives are essentially wrecked. Who will be there to love them, welcome them with compassion and commitment to walk with them through thick and thin, and communicate the gospel of Jesus Christ to them? This is the loving work of the church!

MR: As a culture, we may be ostensibly preoccu-

pied with issues of sexuality, and so you address the deadly sin of lust as it relates to the sanctification of our bodies. You also, though, address two other deadly sins that relate to the body: gluttony and sloth. Why have these been considered “deadly” sins and should we really consider them in the same category as lust?

GA: Historically, the church has highlighted seven sins as “deadly” sins: pride, greed, envy, anger, lust, gluttony, and sloth. These are particularly grave sins, for several reasons as revealed in other names for the seven. They are called

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“cardinal” sins because they are foundational or essential sins. They are called “capital” sins from the Latin word caput or head: as the head directs one’s body, so these capital sins drive one to commit other sins. So, these sins are “deadly” in the sense that they lead (in a negative way) to other sins; they are the cause of other sins. For example, sloth results in poverty (Prov. 6:9–11), which may propel the sluggard to robbery to rectify his situation. Gluttony may become such that the glutton falls into idolatry, making food their god (Phil. 3:19).

MR: When Christians think of sanctification, they usually think first (and perhaps only) of growth in certain characteristics generally associated with the soul: faith, hope, love, and other fruits of the Spirit. But you write that “God’s design for his embodied image bearers is that we live physically blessed and disciplined lives in areas such as proper nutrition, regular exercise, fasting, and feasting” (166). Why should we think about sanctification and embodiment together?

GA: Here’s how I put it together:

• If the proper state of human existence is embodiment, and • If an essential given of human life is embodiment, and • If God designed us as his image bearers to be embodied, and • If the Triune God dwells in our embodied selves by means of the Holy Spirit, whose temple we are, and • If, at the return of Christ, the Holy Spirit will reembody us with our glorified, resurrected body, • Then we would expect that it is proper for us to live as disciplined embodied Christians, caring for and treating rightly our body.

Such theological reflection flows from biblical passages such as the following: 1. In the conclusion to one of his letters, Paul prays for our sanctification to be holistic: “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. 5:23).

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WE “SAVE SOULS” AND ENGAGE IN “SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES” WHILE COMPLETELY NEGLECTING, EVEN DISPARAGING, CARE FOR OUR EMBODIED SELVES.

2. The apostle specifically underscores the importance of the body in the divine plan of redemption. In his discussion of sexual sin, he explains that “the body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body” (1 Cor. 6:13). How is “the Lord for the body”? Paul answers: “God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power” (1 Cor. 6:14).

That is, as the proper state of earthly human existence is embodiment, so the proper state of the eternal existence of Christians is embodiment or, more specifically, re-embodiment with glorified, resurrected bodies.

3. While Paul does emphasize spiritual disciplines (just as we would expect) for Christians—we should “train ourselves for godliness” (1 Tim. 4:7)—he also addresses the importance of physical discipline: “bodily training is of some value” during our present, earthly pilgrimage (1 Tim. 4:8).

I think it’s revealing if we ask ourselves the following questions: When was the last time I heard a sermon on the sins of lust, gluttony, or sloth? When was the last time I sat in a Sunday school class about regular exercise, good nutrition, or resting and sleeping well? Ouch! Our all-too-common reply of never highlights the fact that gnostic/neo-gnostic philosophy has infiltrated our churches, such that we “save souls” and engage in “spiritual disciplines” while completely neglecting, even disparaging, care for our embodied selves.

MR: In chapter 4, you write about how humans

were created for human relationships, what you call “sociality,” and that “sociality in the church prompts us to know, love, respect, cherish, encourage, and care for one another as siblings” (77).

Especially after more than a year of living with the effects of COVID-19, can you speak to the significance of embodied presence for this kind of sociality? Put another way, can this God-given sociality be fully expressed via virtual gatherings and communities?

G A : You’ve uncovered further support for my idea of sociality: the universal human condition of desiring, expressing, and receiving human relationships! God created us to flourish together in community through friendships and bonds of love. The worldwide lockdown due

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to COVID-19 has prevented us from expressing our sociality, at least from expressing it in an embodied manner. We have been viewing and listening to one another through masks, and this veiling of our faces is not natural. We’ve been conducting meetings and teaching classes via Zoom and, while this platform has enabled us to connect, we’ve found it difficult to fully embrace (pun intended) one another in an embodied way.

We’ve reached out to one another via Skype and, while it’s allowed us to continue our relationships, they’ve seemed less personal because they lack personal presence.

Accordingly, our God-given sociality cannot be fully expressed in virtual gatherings and communities. Take church worship services as an example. My church live-streamed and recorded its services for several months, so I participated in them virtually. Yes, there was worship through singing, responsive readings, and praying. Yes, there was worship through confession of sin, the assurance of forgiveness, reading Scripture, and preaching. But what about baptism? And what of the Lord’s Supper? My church decided not to celebrate these ordinances because, in our estimation, they couldn’t be done virtually. And what about fellowship and community both before and after the worship service? It did not, because it could not, take place.

Churches face a tough decision once the pandemic and its associated lockdown are over: Do they continue to offer virtual worship services, reaching scores, hundreds, even thousands of people who have grown accustomed to staying at home either out of convenience or because they have been burned by churches in the past and can’t bring themselves to actually participate in church? Sociality would answer that question in the negative, or at least prompt thoughtful reflection on how to engage these people in some actual rather than virtual ways.

WE’VE REACHED OUT TO ONE ANOTHER VIA SKYPE AND, WHILE IT’S ALLOWED US TO CONTINUE OUR RELATIONSHIPS, THEY’VE SEEMED LESS PERSONAL BECAUSE THEY LACK PERSONAL PRESENCE.

MR: You claim that the big idea of your book is that God has designed humanity for an embodied existence and you say, “Then I invite you to adopt it as a new perspective on the world” (259). What do you mean by that? And, if you could sum up in

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a sentence or two, how do you think that acknowledging “I am my body” can transform the way we think about, well, our whole selves: “Your createdness, your genderedness, your particularity, your sociality, your sexuality, your sanctification, your blessedness and discipline, your worship, your clothes, your suffering and healing, your death, and your eternal future” (260)?

GA: The new perspective to which Embodied invites its readers stands in opposition to the far too frequent negative view of embodied existence promoted by Gnosticism and neoGnosticism. More specifically, however, it is the retrieval and refreshment of an old perspective, because Scripture indicates that the divine design for his image bearers is embodiment. This perspective, sadly and tragically, has been muffled or even dismissed because of the gnostic demeaning or even disparaging of material things—including the human body. Christians and churches have accepted, in many cases unknowingly, this antibiblical worldview. Embodied is intended as a kind of wake-up call. Moreover, by offering a theologically robust, biblically grounded theology of human embodiment, the book positions itself to address the many perplexing moral and social issues of our day.

“I am my body.” Do I agree or disagree? As you would expect, I agree. By this affirmation, I do not mean that I am only my body; that’s not how I framed the provocative sentence. With the historical view of the church, I affirm that we human beings are complex, consisting of both a material aspect and an immaterial aspect. And I affirm that, at death, believers will continue their disembodied existence in heaven with the Lord. Still, they will wait longingly for the completion of their salvation, the return of Christ, and the accompanying resurrection of their body—a return to the proper state of human existence: embodiment.

If, then, “I am my body” is true, that perspective impacts everything about us. It prompts thanksgiving to God for his creation of us as embodied image bearers. It engenders gratitude to God for his creation of us as either a man or a woman. It helps us embrace our

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particularity, the way God has designed us as individuals with our unique identities in terms of our ethnicity, kinship and family, temporality, spatiality, context, and story. It encourages us to express our sociality in God-honoring, self-valuing, and others-respecting ways. If we are married, it encourages us to express our sexuality in God-honoring, self-valuing, and spouse-respecting ways.

This perspective indicates how we should progress in holistic sanctification. It prompts us to design a personal program of bodily discipline that we consistently follow. It causes us to ensure that our physical posture and bodily activity during worship express what is transpiring in our heart and mind. It calls us to thoughtfulness with respect to the clothes we choose to wear. It challenges us to consider how we should face suffering and how we should seek healing. It urges us to think about how we should properly face death. And it stimulates us to contemplate how our future resurrection (with eternal physical life) confirms the affirmation “I am my body,” the thesis that embodiment is the proper state of human existence.

1. Craig L. Frisby and William T. O’Donohue, eds., Cultural Competence in Applied Psychology (New York: Springer, 2018), 578.

2. Mark Yarhouse, Understanding Gender Dysphoria: Navigating Transgender Issues in a Changing Culture (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015), 16–17.

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BY

MICHAEL HORTON

G O D

T HE

P RE A C HER

THE “LIVING AND ACTIVE” WO R D

I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y

ANDREA WAN

W

hen one moves beyond the few stereotypical doctrines and the solas of Reformation theology into its riches and depth, there can be many surprises and discoveries, even on points we as evangelical Protestants thought we knew and understood. A good example is the word of God as it is proclaimed, which Lutheran and Reformed traditions call the “sacramental word”—the word as a means of grace.

We tend to view the word of God first and foremost as the Bible, and only secondarily as preaching. But for the Reformers, it was the opposite. Scripture alone is inspired and inerrant and thus the norm for what is preached.

When faithful to Scripture, preaching is illumined and fallible and yet the primary means of grace. Luther and other Reformers translated the Bible into the vernacular, and they were heartily committed to the regular reading of the Scriptures at home. Large Bibles were even ordered to be chained to the bar in every tavern so that people could read them in public.

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Nevertheless, Luther said that “the church is not a pen-house but a mouth-house.” 1 He also famously declared, For if you ask a Christian what the work is by which he becomes worthy of the name “Christian,” he will be able to give absolutely no other answer than that it is the hearing of the Word of God, that is, faith. Therefore, the ears alone are the organs of a Christian man, for he is justified and declared to be a Christian, not because of the works of any 2 member but because of faith.

AS OTTO WEBER PUTS IT, ECHOING LUTHER, “MAN CANNOT SAY GOD’S WORD TO HIMSELF; IN RELATIONSHIP TO THE WORD, MAN IS ALWAYS THE HEARER.”

Not only does justification come through faith alone; faith itself comes through hearing. 3 As Otto Weber puts it, echoing Luther, “Man cannot say God’s Word to himself; in relation4 ship to the Word, man is always the hearer.”

We discover the same emphasis on the preached word in the Reformed confessions; as John H. Leith observes, “The justification for preaching is not in its effectiveness for education or reform. . . . The preacher, Calvin dared 5 to say, was the mouth of God.” It was God’s intention and action that made it effective. The minister’s words, like the physical elements of the sacraments, were united to the substance: Christ and all of his benefits. Therefore, the word not only describes salvation but also conveys it. “Calvin’s sacramental doctrine,” Leith writes, “of preaching enabled him both to understand preaching as a very human work 6 and to understand it as the work of God.” The Westminster Larger Catechism adds, The Spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching of the Word, an effectual means of enlightening, convincing, and humbling sinners, of driving them out of themselves, and drawing them unto Christ, of conforming them to his image, and subduing them to his will; of strengthening them against temptations and corruptions; of building them up in grace, and establishing their hearts in holiness and comfort through faith 7 unto salvation.

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Why is that point even necessary? It’s the word of God regardless, whether someone reads John’s Gospel in prison or hears it read and preached in church. This is true. Christ, who is the Word of God incarnate and of the same essence as God, is qualitatively different from that of Scripture or preaching. He is the treasure in the Scriptures and in the preaching of them. And so, whatever the medium through which we receive Christ, we are saved precisely because we have received Christ, not because of the medium.

Scripture is life-giving only because it is Christ-giving. The same is true of preaching. In both, God accomplishes all sorts of good things.

He instructs us in his moral will and in doctrine, admonishes and encourages, warns and comforts, and so on. But the saving speech of God in his word is the gospel concerning Christ, and it is meant to be announced by someone commissioned to bring it in Christ’s name. In this case, the medium is inseparable from the message.

This is not a minor point. There is an ontology at work here that goes all the way back to Creation. By ontology, I mean what stuff is made of. Everything in reality exists in a particular manner not because of invisible and inaudible “forms,” whether transcendent (Plato) or immanent (Aristotle), but because of the specific “wording” it has been given by the Father, in the Son, through the Spirit.

“HEAR, O ISRAEL ... ” In Scripture, even visual metaphors are ways of hearing. We are worded creatures. We came into existence, along with the rest of creation, as products of God’s speech. It is by the same word that all things are upheld. It is also by this speech that we are judged and justified and finally glorified together with Christ. It is the preached word that makes baptism and the Supper effectual means of grace. And the creation answers back in response: The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

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Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.

The psalmist doesn’t think that trees and skies actually talk, of course.

There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.

[Yet] their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.

(Ps. 19:1–4; italics mine) This is not a contradiction but the characteristically biblical subordination of vision-metaphors to hearing-metaphors. Even when it testifies visibly to God’s handiwork, creation is speaking, as it were. This relationship of effective speech and the created responding, “Here I am, just as you ‘worded’ me,” is intrinsic to the covenantal relationship of creatures to God. The gods of the heathen nations manifested themselves visibly, especially in statues made by human imagination and craftsmanship. Yet in Israel, God’s face is never seen; his word is heard. “Here I am” is a regular idiom in the Old Testament (see, e.g., Exod. 3:4 and Isa. 6:8).

It comes from the language of the royal court, where the summoned subjects place themselves at the king’s disposal.

By contrast, when we claim that we “see,” we’re assuming we’re the ones in the driver’s seat. Ever since the fall, humanity has refused to walk by hearing-with-faith, demanding only what is a delight to the eyes and desirable to make one wise. Much like Eastern thought, our Western grammar for “knowing” is bound up with seeing, an intellectual vision more than the observation of realities available to physical sight. “Theory” is derived from thea (“a view”) + oraō (to “see”/”look”). Speculation comes from the Latin specere (“to look” or “watch over”), intuition comes from the Latin intueri (“to gaze upon”), and contemplation comes from the Latin contemplari (“to gaze attentively”). The list of visual metaphors for “knowing” seems practically endless. When we understand something, we exclaim, “I see!” We speak of views,

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worldviews, outlooks, and inspection. In this way, knowledge is an act of a subject seizing, grasping, comprehending, mastering, and possessing its object.

In the biblical narratives, hearing has the priority. As noted Jewish scholar Jon Levenson states concerning the contrast between idols that are seen and Yahweh’s voice that is heard, It is sometimes asserted that whereas the Greeks thought with the eye, the Hebrews thought with the ear. To be sure, there is considerable truth in the generalization. The Homeric epics are filled with acute visual description. In the Hebrew Bible, visual description is usually of little account: we do not know, for example, even the color of Abraham’s hair or Moses’ height. This is because in Israel, the focus is upon the word of God, not the appearance 8 of man and his world (1 Sam 16:7).

To be sure, the other senses are involved: “Still,” Levenson writes, “the dominance of ear over eye does seem to be characteristic of ancient 9 Israelite sensibility.”

As in the Old Testament, so also in the New, there is a contrast and temporal priority: we hear promises; we see their fulfillment. The disciples could only recount their eyewitness testimony to the arrival of God in the flesh in the most vivid terms, as the reality that they saw, heard, and touched with their hands (1 John 1:1–4). Nevertheless, we have not seen, but we believe through the testimony of those who did. God still ratifies his covenant through his visible word: baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

Yet until Christ returns, “we wait eagerly.” “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Rom. 8:23–25).

So, there is no abstract contradiction in the Bible between hearing and seeing; there is always a time and place for both.

Seeing is not believing; it is possessing. The day will come when there will be no faith or hope and therefore no preaching or sacraments—because we will see what we possess

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(1 Cor. 13:8–13). For us now, though, hearing is believing. God’s reign will be everywhere visible and only love will remain. For now, however, “we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7). And it by hearing the promise that a garden blooms in the desert of this fading age.

In the biblical outlook, therefore, knowing is not a matter of introspection. We do not begin with a truth buried somewhere deep within us, but with an external word. And it is a word that comes to many, not just to an individual.

Levenson explains further, In the words of the rabbinic Passover liturgy (Haggadah), “Each man is obligated to see himself as if he came out of Egypt.” ...It is significant for our understanding of the nature of the religion of Israel among the religions of the world that meaning for her is derived not from introspection, but from a consideration of the public testimony to God. The present generation makes history their story, but it is first history. They do not determine who they are by looking within, by plumbing the depths of the individual soul, by seeking a mystical light in the innermost reaches of the self. Rather, the direction is the opposite. What is public is made private.

History is not only rendered contemporary; it is internalized. One’s people’s history becomes one’s personal history.

One looks out from the self to find out who one is meant to be. One does not discover one’s identity, and one certainly does not forge it oneself. He appropriates an identity that is a matter of public knowledge.

Israel affirms the given. The given that is affirmed in the covenant ceremony is not a principle; it is not an idea or an aphorism or an ideal. Instead, it is the consequence of what are presented as the acts of God. . . . Israel began to infer and to affirm her 10 identity by telling a story.

The covenant is a story that has to be told, a series of events over which the covenant community did not have control and did not create

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but must receive and embrace as its identification in the present. The public is made private, not vice versa. Even if prophets first hear this word, it is not for their own benefit; it is given so that they would communicate it in God’s name to his people.

This is why the war on the idols had to be merciless, notes Paul Ricoeur, contrasting the pagan “hermeneutics of manifestation” and 11 the biblical “hermeneutics of proclamation.”

It is not that the sacred is driven out of the world (as Roman Catholic polemics accuse the Reformation of doing). On the contrary, the “sacred” focuses specifically on where God promises to speak and confirm his promises: the word and the sacraments. And the icons of God are our fellow-hearers of the word of creation (including unbelievers) and the word of saving grace (communicant members).

However, Ricoeur (unlike some, including Barth) does not stop at a simple contrast between the sacred and the word. Rather, he goes on to say that the word has priority over the sacred. The word now becomes the locus for the sacred:

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There would be no hermeneutic if there were not proclamation. But there would be no proclamation if the word were not powerful; that is, if it did not have the power to set forth the new being it proclaims. A word that is addressed to us rather than our speaking it, a word that constitutes us rather than our articulating it—a word that speaks—does not such a word reaffirm the 12 sacred just as much as abolish it?

In this light, even the sacraments themselves derive their efficacy from the word they ratify.

Abolishing the idolatrous “sacred” in the name of the word, the word reintroduces a genuine sacredness or holiness that permeates the new creation.

The human being’s true essence is the soul, Plato believed. Aristotle called humanity a “political animal” and Descartes “a thing that thinks.” Of them all, Aristotle came closest, but Luther nailed it: humanity is “the speaking

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animal.” Language is the skeleton and speech the sinews, whether in creation or in redemption. We are not autonomous selves who then might choose to enter into relationships with God and other people. On the contrary, we are in our very essence “worded” to be who and what we are, and we share this in common with all other human beings. “Let there be human!” says God, and the human replies, “Here I am, Lord, human.” Address-and-response is not a relationship we enter into at some point; it is the constitution of our being.

So it is with the preached word. Christ himself is present in his word, the Holy Spirit creating faith in our hearts through this very speech. This is why the Reformed as well as the Lutherans call preaching the “sacramental word,” the word specifically as means of grace along with baptism and the Supper. Through preaching, Christ comes to us and “rewords” us by his gospel, from the domain of sin and death to the domain of justification and new life.

THROUGH PREACHING, CHRIST COMES TO US AND “REWORDS” US BY HIS GOSPEL, FROM THE DOMAIN OF SIN AND DEATH TO THE DOMAIN OF JUSTIFICATION AND NEW LIFE.

A SOCIALIZING WORD The preached word is an inherently socializ13 ing medium. If I am watching a movie on the life of Jesus, aside from whether the content is accurate, the medium itself is individualizing.

It is easy, especially in our social media culture, to come to church to have an individual experi14 ence together. The Reformers took with utmost seriousness Paul’s teaching that “faith comes by hearing the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17). They asserted that faithful, meditative, and prayerful reading of Scripture in private or family devotions was subordinate to the public ministry of the word in the common life of the church. If I read the Bible only by myself, then I become my own church of one, but the preaching of Christ gathers a communion. Just as the word creates the community, it must be heard, received, and followed in the concrete covenantal exchanges within that community.

The church is not the coming together of various individuals who choose to form a religious association and then do certain things

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like preaching, baptizing, administering Communion and enjoying fellowship with one another. It is not like the chess club or a political party, with its activities and agendas. Rather, the fellowship is created by the event of hearing good news. Throughout the book of Acts, the writer describes the growth of the church by announcing, “And the word of God spread.” Of course, this did not mean that there were more Bibles published, since the New Testament was just being formed. It referred to the spread of the audible word of Christ.

Greek culture was formed by families and townspeople reading and singing Homer’s epic around the campfire. Analogously, Paul calls for not only the public reading and expounding of Scripture but also for singing and praying the Scriptures. The word that comes to us all from outside of ourselves nevertheless comes to indwell us, both individually and corporately: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Col. 3:16). Even singing in church is therefore a corporate ministry of the word rather than mere individual self-expression.

As creation itself came into being through God’s free speech, so also its renewal—preached into life by the sovereign God. A particular church, then, does not come into being because some individuals decide to form it; rather, it is formed into a community by the socializing word in the power of the Holy Spirit. The church does not first exist and then do certain things like preaching and sacraments; it is the community that always exists, if at all, by faithful preaching and administration of the sacraments. The word of God creates the church. This is one of the most important doctrines of the Reformation and, more importantly,of Scripture.

Just as we cannot set the Spirit against the word, we cannot set the word against the church.

Because the Spirit works through creaturely means, rather than directly and immediately, a creaturely community arises. Faith does not arise spontaneously in one’s soul, but in the

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covenantal gathering of fellow-hearers. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, If there were an unmediated work of the Spirit, then the idea of the church would be individualistically dissolved from the outset. But in the word the most profound social nexus is established from the beginning. The word is social in character, not only in its origin but also in its aim. Tying the Spirit to the word means that the Spirit aims at a plurality of hearers and establishes a visible sign by which the actualization is to take place. The word, however, is qualified by being the very word of Christ; it is effectively brought to the 15 heart of the hearers by the Spirit.

In public proclamation, distinct even from reading Scripture ourselves, Bonhoeffer writes, “it is another who speaks, and this becomes an 16 incomparable assurance for me.”

Total strangers proclaim God’s grace and forgiveness to me, not as their own experience, but as God’s will. It is in the others that I can grasp in concrete form the church-community and its Lord as the guarantors of my confidence in God’s grace. The fact that others assure me of God’s grace makes the church-community real for me; it rules out any danger or hope that I might have fallen prey to an illusion. The confidence of faith arises not only out of solitude, 17 but also out of the assembly.

Therefore, the church is the community created by the gospel, not just entrusted with it.

Baptism and the Supper are inextricably linked to preaching and catechesis: the church 18 always remains a “creation of the word.”

“THAT WORD ABOVE ALL EARTHLY POW’RS” John Calvin complained of being assailed by “two sects”—“the Pope and the Anabaptists”— which, though quite different from each other,

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“boast extravagantly of the Spirit” in order to distort or distract from the word of God.19 Both render the transcendent word of God as the immanent word of man. The error of Rome and of high church theologies is to assimilate the external word to the subjective decisions of the church; the error of the “Anabaptists” is to assimilate the external word to the subjective decisions of the individual. In William Placher’s fine expression, it is the “domestica20 tion of transcendence.”

Seeking to preserve ourselves from the destabilizing impact of any external authority, we confuse God with either the church or the individual. But this means there is no word that can come to us, outside of ourselves, to judge and to save. It is the latter, “enthusiast” direction that most characterizes modernity. Whereas God’s word calls us out of ourselves to hear the divine summons, the search for enlightenment calls us deeper into ourselves, to see the vision of light and glory we can autonomously determine and possess. Rationalism is just the other side of mysticism, protecting the supposedly divine inner self from the assault of an external word that might disorient and dethrone her.

This is precisely what the Reformers had in mind when they targeted radical Protestant sectarianism as “enthusiastic” (en-theos, Godwithin). The root of all “enthusiasm” is hostility to a God outside of us, in whose hands the judgment and redemption of our lives are placed.

To barricade ourselves from this assault, we try to make the “divine” an echo of ourselves and our communities: the very sort of motive that the prophets ridiculed in their polemics against the idols—and Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud in their description of religion generally.

Central to modernity is autonomy: the idea that as individuals we establish ourselves, craft ourselves, and determine our own identity; that what we experience directly within ourselves is more reliable to us than what we are told by someone else.

As sociologists of religion have documented thoroughly, today’s generations are more subjective, individualistic, and mystical than ever before. They are all the founders of their

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religion, a vague spirituality summarized as 21 “moralistic, therapeutic deism.” If we ask them why they believe such barely articulated and unexamined opinions, their response is usually something like, “I just feel it. You may not have the same experience, and that’s fine for you, but I find it useful and empowering.” We are all “enthusiasts” now, unless we have been liberated from our captivity to our inner-whatever to that “Word above all earthly pow’rs.”

Reflecting on the counterintuitive logic of the gospel, William Willimon (former homiletics professor at Duke Divinity School and now a bishop in the United Methodist Church) points out that it is not the homiletical gap between speaker and listener, but “the space between us 22 and the gospel” that is most decisive. He perceives that much of contemporary preaching, whether mainline or evangelical, assumes that conversion is something we generate through our own words and sacraments. Willimon continues, “In this respect we are heirs of Charles G. Finney,” who thought that conversion was not a miracle but a “‘purely philosophical [i.e., scientific] result 23 of the right use of the constituted means.’”

We have forgotten that there was once a time when evangelists were forced to defend their “new measures” for revivals, that there was once a time when preachers had to defend their preoccupation with listener response to their Calvinist detractors who thought that the gospel was more important than its listeners. I am here arguing that revivals are miraculous, that the gospel is so odd, so against the grain of our natural inclinations and the infatuations of our culture, that nothing less than a miracle is required in order for there to be true hearing. My position is therefore closer to that of the Calvinist Jonathan Edwards 24 than to the position of Finney.

Nevertheless, Willimon continues, “The homiletical future, alas, lay with Finney rather than Edwards,” leading to the evangelical church marketing guru, George Barna, who writes, “Jesus Christ was a communications specialist.

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WE DO NOT BRING CHRIST DOWN BY OUR CLEVER EFFORTS AT TRANSLATION AND RELEVANCE; CHRIST COMES DOWN TO US AND CREATES HIS OWN ATMOSPHERE: CONFRONTING AS WELL AS COMFORTING US.

He communicated His message in diverse ways, and with results that would be a credit to modern 25 advertising and marketing agencies.” The question that naturally arises in the face of such remarks is whether it is possible to say that Jesus made anything new.

Offering a fresh definition of what it means for the church to be a creature of the word, Willimon proposes, Church is the human experience evoked by the gospel. . . . Preaching means to engender experience we would never have had without the gospel. . . . The gospel is an intrusion among us, not something arising out of us.

Easter is the ultimate intrusion of God. The gap between our alliance with death and the God of life as revealed on Easter is the ultimate gap with which gospel preaching must contend. Easter is an embarrassment the church can’t get around. Yet this embarrassment is the engine that drives our preaching. . . . If God did not triumph over Caesar and all the legions of death on Easter, then God will never triumph on Sunday in my church over The Wall Street 26 Journal and Leo Buscaglia.

We do not bring Christ down by our clever efforts at translation and relevance; Christ comes down to us and creates his own atmosphere: confronting as well as comforting us.

“Alas,” adds Willimon, “most ‘evangelistic’ preaching I know about is an effort to drag people even deeper into their subjectivity rather than an attempt to rescue them from it.” This is why 27 we need “an external word.” “So in a sense, we don’t discover the gospel, it discovers us. ‘You did 28 not choose me but I chose you’ (John 15:16).”

We need a word outside of ourselves, because we need a salvation from outside of ourselves.

Willimon surmises, “Self-salvation is the goal of 29 much of our preaching.” By contrast, Scripture repeatedly underscores the point that the gospel is new news, not merely a new awareness.

To be a Christian is to be part of the community, the countercultural community, formed

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by thinking with a peculiar story. The story is euangelion, good news, because it is about grace. Yet it is also news because it is not common knowledge, not what nine out of ten average Americans already know. Gospel 30 doesn’t come naturally. It comes as Jesus.

This external word works against all of our attempts to ascend ladders of mysticism, moralism, and speculation to receive God’s gift wrapped in the ignominy of swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.

Without discounting the significance of the ways in which we marginalize human others, the greatest tragedy in our day is that even in our churches it is God whose voice we are marginalizing. As Gerhard Sauter contends, The final court of appeal for Christians on earth is not what Christians think or feel about God, nor their inner voice, which may have direct access to God. It is also not the church as God’s earthly representative, as a spokesperson for Jesus Christ and the embodiment of God’s Spirit. Thus sola scriptura proves to be an alternative to a final appeal to the church (sola ecclesia), or to one’s own conscience (sola conscientia), or to reason (sola ratio), and especially 31 to one’s own good feeling (solus affectus).

Sauter summarizes, Searching in Scripture is not just looking up quotes to reinforce opinions and prior knowledge, or using it as a book of oracles.

Whoever really searches in Scripture hopes that, in the process of searching, God will 32 become audible.

Our own inner voice, or that of our various communities, may be revealing, but it is not the revelation of God’s good news for the whole world. Not only in preaching but also in the wider service of the word in catechesis and liturgy, we have so filled ecclesial space with our own voices that we cannot hear God speak. Paul saw singing in church even as a form of proclamation (Col.

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3:16; cf. Eph. 5:19), while we seem to think of it largely as self-expression. The accent here is on immanence rather than God’s transcendent presence, as Stephen Webb observes: The soothing rhythms of praise music now set the tone for worship services more than the sermon does. As a result, the spoken word seems to accompany the music, rather than the other way around. How can the Word be preached with authority today if we have lost the ability to listen to it? . . .

Ministers frequently respond to this dire situation by supplementing their sermons with visual aids, which only reinforces the 33 idea that the spoken word does not matter.

Many of our services seem to give credence to Marx’s charge that religion is “the opiate of the masses.” Can anything—or anyone—get to us from outside of this self-enclosed world we create in order to immunize ourselves against the reality of death?

Bonhoeffer argued that the attempt to make the church’s preaching and practice more relevant to its cultured despisers “assumes that we have in ourselves (whether in reason, or culture, or Volk) ‘the Archimedean point by which 34 Scripture and proclamation are to be judged.’”

However, “that word is not as it were waiting on the fringes of the human present, hoping somehow to be made real; it announces itself in its 35 own proper communicative vigour.” According to Bonhoeffer, We are uprooted from our own existence and are taken back to the holy history of God on earth. There God has dealt with us, with our needs and our sins, by means of the divine wrath and grace. What is important is not that God is a spectator and participant in our life today, but that we are attentive listeners and participants in God’s action in the sacred story, the story of Christ on earth.

God is with us today only as long as we are there. Our salvation is “from outside ourselves” (extra nos). I find salvation, not in my life story, but only in the story of Jesus

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Christ. . . . What we call our life, our troubles, and our guilt is by no means the whole of reality; our life, our need, our guilt, and 36 our deliverance are there in the Scriptures.

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

Not only to preach faithfully but also to hear in faith, we need to repent of other words we find more interesting and other communities or news sources we find more relevant than the “little flock” to whom Jesus said, “Do not fear, for it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you a kingdom” (Luke 12:32). To preach any other word— whether it is right-wing or left-wing politics, pop psychology, business principles, or other hobbyhorses—is to be the medium for generating

MICHAEL HORTON is editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation and the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido.

1. Martin Luther, Church Postil of 1522, quoted in Stephen H. Webb, The Divine Voice: Christian Proclamation and the Theology of Sound (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2012), 143.

ed. Joachim von Soosten; English ed., ed. Clifford J. Green, trans.

Reinhard Krauss and Nancy Lukens (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 158 (italics mine).

2. Martin Luther, Lectures on Titus, Philemon, and Hebrews, vol. 29, Luther’s Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Louis: Concordia, 1968), 224, quoted in Webb, 144.

3. This comparison between hearing and seeing is not meant to suggest that there is some magical quality to hearing or that God is bound by this medium. Rather, it is to say that God has bound himself to the spoken word as the ordinary method of self-communication. Like Augustine, many Christians refer to their reading of Scripture as a moment of conversion. Furthermore, physical disabilities such as deafness are no obstacle to God’s grace. Stephen H. Webb offers a well-informed treatment of this issue in Webb, 51–55.

4. Otto Weber, Foundations of Dogmatics, trans. Darrell L. Guder (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), 180.

5. John H. Leith, “Doctrine of the Proclamation of the Word,” John Calvin and the Church: A Prism of Reform, ed. Timothy George (Louisville: WJK, 1990), 212.

6. Leith, 210–11.

7. The Westminster Larger Catechism, Q. 155, Book of Confessions (PCUSA) (italics mine).

8. John Levenson, Sinai and Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1987), 147.

9. Levenson, 147–48.

10. Levenson, 39.

11. Paul Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred, ed. Mark I. Wallace, trans. David Pellauer (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 49–50.

16. Bonhoeffer, 229–30.

17. Bonhoeffer, 230.

18. Bonhoeffer, 247.

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

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

21. Christian Smith with Melinda Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

22. William H. Willimon, The Intrusive Word: Preaching to the Unbaptized (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 15 (italics mine).

23. Willimon, 18–19.

24. Willimon, 20.

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

26. Willimon, 23, 25.

27. Willimon, 38.

28. Willimon, 43.

29. Willimon, 53.

12. Ricouer, 66.

30. Willimon, 52 (italics mine).

13. This is a point Walter Ong has made perhaps more clearly than any author I have read on the subject. See especially Walter Ong, S.J., The Presence of the Word (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970).

Although I do not quote Ong often in this article, his influence is everywhere evident.

31. Gerhard Sauter, Gateway to Dogmatics: Reasoning Theologically for the Life of the Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 217.

32. Sauter, 220 (italics mine).

33. Webb, 26.

14. On the secular side of this phenomenon, see Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (New York: Basic Books, 2012).

34. John Webster, Word and Church: Essays in Christian Dogmatics (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), 81.

15. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, vol. 1, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works,

36. Dietrich Bonhoeffer quoted from Life Together (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 62, in Webster, 83.

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35. Webster, 82.

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ANN HENDERSON HART

IN THE CHURCH

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C OMMON GROUND AC R O S S D E N O M I N AT I O N S

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ANDREA WAN

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laywright Eugene O’Neill, who was reared on the road by actor/parents who were performing in various cities, lamented of his unstable life: “I was born in a hotel room and God-damn, I’ll die in a hotel room.” While O’Neill turned his tortured experience into great art, including the memorable Long Day’s Journey into Night, he suffered greatly throughout with alcohol, broken marriages, and a suicide attempt.

Sadly, his words proved prophetic; he died alone in Boston’s Shelton Hotel in 1953.

Admittedly, most of us will not lead O’Neill’s highly volatile life, but we all will face personal suffering. Who of us will be exempt from cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, the loss of a spouse or child? Our fallen world is brutally defective because of sin, and we endure the consequences every day. Sometimes they are as subtle as a new wrinkle on our face, a first white hair; at other times, they are as dramatic as the pains of childbirth or the sudden death of a friend.

Yet those of us who call ourselves Christians, bearing Christ’s name, do not despair. We see ourselves as pilgrims in this world and the church as a place of comfort and nurture. God has promised to meet us there in a unique way, and he gives special grace through the preaching of his word and the administering of the sacraments.

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OUR FRACTURED COMMON GROUND If we worship in denominations that are selfconscious about the importance of the church, then we recognize some profound scriptural truths: The church is divinely instituted, the gates of hell will not prevail against it, Christ gave himself for it, and we are to grow up in it with Christ as the head. The more we understand these truths, the more we should feel compelled to be in conversation with Christians of “like precious faith”—whether they are in our own denomination or not. How can we live in isolation when every Sunday many of us recite the Apostles’ Creed and repeat the phrase, “I believe in one holy catholic church”?

Too often we can attend our denominational church, its camps, and other functions and never discover the broader “catholic church.”

A narrow mentality creeps in where we view different denominations as “the other kind.” My dear Christian mother, for instance, cried bitterly when the young “Camelot” president John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. A life of great promise was cut down so violently. I have a vivid memory of her saying through her tears of the yet unidentified assassin, “Let’s just hope he’s not a Baptist.” To my youthful ears, the subtext seemed to be, “Better if he’s Presbyterian or Lutheran; at least he would not be one of us.”

We are most at peace in our ecclesiastical comfort zones. And we relish our internal shorthand about others, although it can be incredibly unloving and dismissive. How do we move beyond our comfortable but often biased denominational assumptions to embrace the wider Christian church?

C.S. LEWIS: COMPASSIONATE, CHRISTIAN ECUMENIST In a New York Times editorial marking the fortieth anniversary of C. S. Lewis’s death, writer Joe Laconte made some interesting observations about the English professor’s ability to relate to people of varying religious beliefs. He mused that perhaps because Lewis was an atheist who

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A NARROW MENTALITY CREEPS IN WHERE WE VIEW DIFFERENT DENOMINATIONS AS “THE OTHER KIND.”

converted to Christianity as an adult, he was able to ask the hard questions and avoid selfrighteous zealotry.

In his popular book Mere Christianity, Lewis offers some cautionary remarks on making too many concessions in relating to the wider church.

He writes that a “mere Christianity,” where only those doctrines are discussed that we all accept, is an incomplete Christianity. He likens this kind of lowest-common-denominator Christianity with living perpetually in the hallway of a house rather than entering one of its rooms, “where living is meant to be done.” Even though we may have to go through a hallway to get to a room, Lewis argues, it is the room that is our destination, not the corridor. Thus he encourages Christians to accept and embrace that set of particular doctrines we find to be true upon investigation.

Yet I suspect many of this magazine’s readers would be much more comfortable in the rooms off Lewis’s great hallway. In fact, to build on Lewis’s image, I would love to see all of us who consider ourselves part of “the holy catholic church” to stay in this hallway for an evening and talk about what we have in common. Ideally, champagne would be flowing and appetizers in abundance on silver trays. Okay, there could even be Martinelli’s sparkling cider for the hardcore teetotalers! But one rule would be enforced: You would have to mingle, circulate, and get

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beyond your own denominational experience.

The Sabbatarians couldn’t stay in one corner and the theonomists in another. Christians in the mainline denominations would have to mix with “aliens and strangers” from some of the most conservative denominations—like, arguably, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church or the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Church. A string quartet would offer an evening’s worth of music including great hymns, psalms, and even some praise songs. Undoubtedly, there would be music to upset everyone! And the uncomfortable would gravitate inevitably toward their familiar rooms.

But they would be surprised. For this one night, the doors to their rooms, their comfort zones, would be locked.

“Back on planet earth,” as Woody Allen would say, this will never happen in our lifetimes. Yet at the end of history, will the Marriage Supper of the Lamb be that different? There, we won’t sit assorted by denominations. We won’t control the catering for that event or the placement of each table’s name cards.

THE DISCIPLES’ BAGGAGE . . .

AND OURS Like Christ’s first disciples, we have a tendency to argue among ourselves and make self-aggrandizing comparisons. “Who will be the greatest?” “Who will sit at Christ’s right hand in heaven?” “Others may deny you, Lord, but not me!” All these statements sound so pathetic and yet so familiar to our own experience.

In Christ’s profoundly moving high priestly prayer, recorded in John 17, he was thinking not only about his immediate disciples but also about his disciples of today and every other age.

In this prayer, he asks his Father that his followers be characterized by unity: I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy

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Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. (vv. 9–11) Matthew L. Becker, a member of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS), refers to this prayer when he challenges his own denomination toward greater unity in a paper called “Beyond the Open Door”: [As] pilgrims, we can’t afford to be isolated from our fellow pilgrims as together we live in exile. Jesus prays in his high priestly prayer for the unity of all those who call upon him and confess him before others.

The LCMS is part of a much larger pilgrim band. We cannot forget this, especially so that we can comfort our fellow pilgrims, pray for one another, strategize with one another, take joy in one another, act with one another. But even in all of these actions, our focus is not upon ourselves; our focus is upon our common Christian mission and our common gospel witness to the world that does not yet know God in Jesus Christ.

God has opened the door of His grace for us, and so now he wants to call others through us 1 into that same marvelous light of His grace.

MUST THE “HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH” MEAN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH? Some Protestants have found denominationalism a major stumbling block and the lack of authority deeply unsettling. Author and professor Thomas Howard spoke for a segment of Christendom when writing about his personal faith journey from evangelicalism to the Catholic Church. Although Howard wrote with deep affection of his evangelical parents and Christian upbringing, he was still haunted by the lack of unity and authority in the Protestant church: My happy Evangelical view of the church’s unity as being nothing more than the worldwide clutter that we have under our general

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umbrella was, for good or ill, not what the ancient Church had understood as the word unity. As an Evangelical, I could pick which source of things appealed most to me: Dallas Seminary; Fuller Seminary; John Wimber; Azusa Street; the Peninsula Bible Church; Hudson Taylor; the deeper life as taught at Keswick; Virginia Mollenkott; John Stott; or Sam Shoemaker. . . . It is disastrous if I invest any of the above with the authority that belongs alone to the Church. But then 2 who shall guide my choices?

The question of church authority is a haunting one. But for those of us who consider ourselves children of the Protestant Reformation, we still see problems in the Catholic Church that have not been overcome. Instead, we embrace a confessional tradition—whether Reformed, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Reformed Baptist, or another—and are grateful for a fully orbed, rigorous expression of the Christian faith that sustains us and gives us profound truths through all of life’s challenges. But do we need to feel guilty for working out our salvation in “different rooms,” in Lewis’s words, or can we defend denominationalism?

DO DENOMINATIONS THREATEN THE CHURCH? Theologian H. Richard Niebuhr famously considered the disunity of Protestant denominations a stain on Christendom. He wrote, “Denominationalism . . . thus represents the moral failure of Christianity. . . . Before the church can hope to overcome its fatal division, it must learn to recognize and to acknowledge the 3 secular character of its denominationalism.”

While Niebuhr’s critical words plagued several generations of Christians, Hartford Seminary professor Nancy T. Ammerman offers a different analysis. She participated in a national study through The Hartford Institute for Religion Research, with funding from the Lilly Endowment. In 1997 and 1998, researchers conducted extensive interviews in 549 congregations

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with particular attention to eight denominations.

These denominations ranged from the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches to the Assemblies of God and Vineyard churches. The researchers found that virtually half of those interviewed said they no longer take their tradition for granted.

The denomination they identify with is “no longer a matter of enclave and birth, but now a matter of faith and practice.” The study continues, “These congregations see their theological heritage as a gift, intentionally teach newcomers about the faith, and celebrate their own unique worship traditions.” In conclusion, Ammerman writes, Perhaps we need to reopen our dialogue with Niebuhr. These congregations in which distinct identities are being chosen and nurtured do not seem to be worse for it. . . . Unlike the denominationalism Niebuhr feared, they are building distinctions based more on ritual and doctrine than on social 4 divisions.

BUILDING BRIDGES OF UNITY ACROSS DENOMINATIONS Looking to the future, we should make every effort to live in unity with Christians from other faith traditions. We are not the ones who have to discern the “invisible” from the “visible” church.

Instead, we must be willing to give a defense of

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the hope within us. We can also try to be characterized by three attributes to build the Christian community: curiosity, humor, and humility.

First, we should have a healthy curiosity about people from other faith traditions. Most of us are time-starved and have to make tough choices about what we read and listen to. I think it is essential, however, to develop listening skills and a curiosity about how others express their faith. In this YouTube and podcast age, there are many opportunities to listen to other faith traditions. Discernment is always called for, but not fear. This stretching should also characterize our reading habits. While we read Modern Reformation, we should also be skimming the pages of Christian Century, Christianity Today, First Things, and other publications to see what others are saying about their faith.

Second, we should be able to laugh at ourselves. This doesn’t mean we are making fun of the great doctrines of the faith. Rather, we can laugh about how God uses us jars of clay to hold his mysteries. Perhaps the greatest example of one who could make fun of a faith tradition is Garrison Keillor’s take on Lutheranism.

For almost thirty years, his radio program, Prairie Home Companion, told tales of his fictional boyhood home, Lake Wobegon, and the predominantly Lutheran community there.

In a National Post article titled “Can Garrison Keillor Make Lutherans Funny?” Robert Fulford wrote of some of Keillor’s affectionate Lutheran bashing: To Keillor [Lutherans] are the people for whom the word repressed was invented.

Their life goals are modest. A sign outside a Lutheran church announces the topic of that week’s sermon: “It could be worse.”

Keillor says that Lutherans who go to psychotherapists for help are told to pull 5 themselves together.

In another story, Keillor says, “Mother was a true Lutheran, and taught me to ‘cheer up, make yourself useful, mind your manners and, above all, don’t feel sorry for yourself. Nobody is meant to be a star.’”

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Dr. Ammerman agrees about Keillor’s appeal.

“No one has described that old denominational world better than Garrison Keillor,” she wrote in the Christian Century. She also can’t help quoting him: I was raised in Iowa, went to Concordia, Swedish, I’m proud to say. Got a job at Lutheran Brotherhood, and I never was sick one day. We sit in the pew where we always sit, and we do not shout Amen. And if anyone yells or waves their hands, they’re 6 not invited back again.

Finally, a word about humility as a tool to building common ground with other believers. We see God reveal himself in creation and in special revelation in his word. We are commanded to “work out [our] salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12). We can learn from church historians, the church divines, and systematic theologians. But there are mysteries we will never fathom. “God’s ways are not our ways.”

We are just pilgrims in this world. But the place God commands us to worship him and to learn more about him is the church. It is there that we see him for who he really is and we see ourselves for who we really are.

In a turn of Eugene O’Neill’s haunting opening line, I hope we can all say, “Born or baptized into the church, and God willing, I’ll die in the church.”

This article originally appeared Modern Reformation vol. 13, issue 3 (May/June 2004) by Ann Henderson Hart.

1. Matthew L Becker, “Beyond the Open Door: Twenty-First Century Trends and Issues,” God Opens Doors: A Centennial Celebration of the Northwest District of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, ed.

Hans Spalteholz, Matthew L Becker, and Dwaine Charles Brandt (Portland, OR: Northwest District of the LCMS, 2000).

2. Thomas Howard, “Recognizing the Church: A Personal Pilgrimage and the Discovery of Five Marks of the Church,” Ancient and Postmodern Christianity: Paleo-Orthodoxy in the 21st Century: Essays in Honor of Thomas C. Oden, ed. Kenneth Tanner and Christopher A. Hall (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2004), 136.

3. H. Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism (New York: H. Holt and Company, 1929).

4. Nancy T. Ammerman’s article may be found at: http://hirr.hartsem. edu/bookshelf/ammerman_article3.html.

5. This article can be found at: http://www.robertfulford.com/ GarrisonKeillor.html.

6. https://www.christiancentury.org/article/new-life-denominationalism.

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Book Reviews 56

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To Think Christianly: A History of L’Abri, Regent College, and the Christian Study Center Movement

Things Unseen: A Systematic Introduction to the Christian Faith and Reformed Theology

Theology Is for Preaching: Biblical Foundations, Method, and Practice

by Charles Cotherman

by J. Gresham Machen

Edited by Chase R. Kuhn and Paul Grimmond

REVIEWED BY

REVIEWED BY

REVIEWED BY

Justin McGeary

Stephen Roberts

Andrew J. Miller

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To Think Christianly: A History of L’Abri, Regent College, and the Christian Study Center Movement

By Charles Cotherman IVP Academic, 2020 320 pages (hardcover), $35.00 vangelicals are familiar with wellbranded campus ministries such as Cru (Campus Crusade for Christ), InterVarsity, Navigators, and Veritas Forum that have played significant roles in shaping evangelical youth during their college years. Evangelicals are also familiar with names such as Francis Schaeffer, Os Guinness, R. C. Sproul, or David Gill.

I suspect that fewer are aware of the Christian study center movement, what is now a network of over thirty-plus campus ministries scattered throughout North America at such notable universities as Yale, MIT, Cornell, Duke, University of Virginia, and more. However, the publicity is changing.

Charles Cotherman’s book To Think Christianly helps put the movement on the map as he tells this story of this network—the figures, connections, visions, and happenings that gave rise to it. As he does, he provides another angle from which to examine evangelicalism in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Cotherman unfolds the history in three parts: innovation, replication, and multiplication. During the 1960s as American evangelicals were heading off to college in droves (with other baby boomers), two innova t ive and fo unda t io nal ministries for the movement emerged—L’Abri and Regent College—and the wider society

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shifted culturally. It was their innovations that contributed to the foundation of the later twentieth-century study center movement.

In Huemoz, Switzerland, Francis and Edith Schaeffer developed a ministry that uniquely met the counterculture of the 1960s with “a robust and holistic appreciation for the intellect, culture, and Christian spirituality not within the context of” a revival or seminary but “in a community built around home-based hospitality and rhythms of everyday life” (17). It was radical hospitality and community with an expansive, culturally engaged Christian thinking about all of life from a Reformed, Kuyperian stance.

In Vancouver, BC, as a group of Brethren businessmen watched their children head off to university, they began considering Christian ventures in higher education (49). They, with Oxford academic Jim Houston, established Regent College (50). Unlike L’Abri, however, Regent aimed to form a Christian educational institute that provided formal theological education for laypersons. Rather than the more isolated and monastic L’Abri model, Regent aimed to establish a reputable theological school attached to a university.

The innovations of Regent were theological education for laity (62–63), something of a Kuyperian theology (59) though less Reformed and more ecumenical (71, 81), more of a “mere Christianity” (87) following C. S. Lewis (60) that “avoided polemics” (82).

Houston, like the Schaeffers, emphasized relationality and identity in Christ (61) contrary to the professionalism (as expression of secularization) of the university (62).

Both institutions formed significant networks (57–59); in fact, “L’Abri functioned as the unofficial hub of American evangelical

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influence throughout much of the 1970s” (45).

And both inspired their guests and students to replicate their efforts. Houston saw Regent’s vision as a small, relational institution as one to be replicated and multiplied, not numerically expanded (93).

Throughout this second section of the book, Cotherman takes careful note of the roles played

by Schaeffer and Houston in these replication efforts. He follows only four different efforts and their visionaries: The C. S. Lewis Institute (John Hiskey) near Washington, DC (chapter 3); the Ligonier Valley Study Center (R. C. Sproul) from Stahlstown, Pennsylvania, to Orlando, Florida (chapter 4); New College Berkeley (David Gill, chapter 5); and the Center for Christian Study (Drew Trotter) at University of Virginia (chapter 6). Both Houston and Schaeffer helped those interested in replication, though Houston was especially active in helping to build other likeminded institutions, such as the C. S. Lewis Institute or New College, often providing vision or organizational help.

Cotherman tracks these institutions with the various ups and downs of opportunity, funding, experiments, failures, vision, and connections. None had an easy route forward as they all attempted with varying degrees to implement or imitate components of L’Abri or Regent (sometimes both) amid a shifting American and evangelical cultural landscape.

One important shift was the conservative swing of the late 1970s and ʼ80s, which unexpectedly and negatively impacted these fledgling centers that had emerged from the counterculture (182, 198). Each of the centers would in various ways draw on the vision, organization, and networks of L’Abri and Regent to launch.

Of the four, Ligonier began like L’Abri with a rural location, communal living, lay theological education, and Reformed theological vision (128–29, 135), but in the end pursued spreading the teaching through mass media, not place (142). In some ways, not unlike the fame and mass media into which Schaeffer himself tapped, Sproul and his team experienced the

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The study center movement not only provided access and training but also teaching opportunities not found in many evangelical institutions.

frustration of locale and technological reach, the tension between fame and relationality, between depth and consumer demand.

Of the four, it was the Christian study center at UVA under Drew Trotter in tandem with Trinity Presbyterian Church (PCA) that became the flagship model institution for the wider study center movement. Drawing on both L’Abri and Regent, it maintained cultural engagement, theological education for laity, and hospitality committed to a university and its community (224).

Throughout these chapters, Cotherman also gives attention to the role of gender. He notes that access to formal theological education via seminary was not easy for women in mid-twentieth-century evangelicalism (77–81).

However, the study center movement not only provided access and training but also teaching opportunities not found in many evangelical institutions (132–35).

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In the final section on multiplication, Cotherman pulls the whole narrative together.

Here, he remains focused on UVA and Trotter, though as already noted, by that time there were many other centers. Yet, he is true to the subtitle and shows how the movement came together both in its ethos and in institutional form, the Consortium. Like L’Abri and Regent, they emphasized relationality and hospitality, as well as engagement with the goal of “thinking Christianly” in a way not disconnected from life. Study centers and their Consortium approached campus ministry “with an emphasis on constructive engagement with the community” that was marked more by “the theological concept of common grace” rather than “culture wars,” as they were “convinced that the path forward was more a matter of faithful presence through deeply rooted, engaged, and hospitable relationships and institutions than it was about the apologetics or cultural bluster” (252). This institutional connection to the university and avoidance of polemics especially reflects Houston and Regent, and the wide engagement with

Cotherman’s narrative is masterfully written by continually showing the thematic and institutional development and connections of a little-known slice of evangelicalism.

hospitality reflects Schaeffer and L’Abri. In the end, Cotherman sees the study center movement as a model of James Davison Hunter’s “faithful presence”: an approach that the study center movement explicitly embraces as it aims to walk the line between “syncretism and isolationism” (251), even while universities are not always ready to befriend historic Christianity (256–57).

Cotherman’s narrative is masterfully written by continually showing the thematic and institutional development and connections of a little-known slice of evangelicalism. While reading the book, those familiar with James Davison Hunter’s To Change the World and his idea of “faithful presence” may wonder how much this shaped Cotherman’s story and whether it might skew it a bit. In the conclusion, Cotherman speculates about the future of the study center movement, with high regard for its faithful presence strategy, and that it might be the wave of the future for evangelical campus ministry, for its positive engagement with higher education and especially in light of religious liberty controversies and “antibias regulations” coming from the university.

Overall, the portrait is well balanced, capturing both the forest and the trees. In many ways it’s groundbreaking, opening up a number of avenues for further exploration and raising a number of questions. The narrative is largely not one of ideas (or theology specifically), but more about visionary leaders, networks, and institution building. However, this book certainly calls forth an exploration of the relationship and tension in the study center movement, and in American evangelicalism more broadly, between Reformed theology and “mere Christianity.” The perennial questions “What is evangelicalism?” or “What unifies evangelicalism?” rises once again as Cotherman paints a picture with lots of texture, though he does not himself answer these questions. His book certainly fills a gap and opens up old questions with some new vistas.

JUSTIN MCGEARY is assistant professor of Christian studies

at John Witherspoon College in Rapid City, South Dakota.

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Things Unseen: A Systematic Introduction to the Christian Faith and Reformed Theology

By J. Gresham Machen Westminster Seminary Press, 2020 486 pages (hardcover), $49.99 Gresham Machen (1881–1937) is well known in conser vative Presbyterian circles, faintly known in some broader Reformed circles, and hardly known at all in the broader Christian church. This is a shame. His influence might be compared to a minor earthquake under the sea: not visible on the horizon until the waves come crashing down on the shore.

For those readers who aren’t familiar with him, Machen was a New Testament professor at Old Princeton Seminary and the successor to some of the greatest theologians in American history—most notably, B. B. Warfield. Machen watched with dismay as the liberal theology of Germany that had assailed his own faith now began a hostile takeover of denominations throughout America—including his beloved Presbyterian Church (USA). Although he didn’t desire the mantle of “D o ctor Fundamentalis” (a label given to him), he assumed it in order to defend the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

When Old Princeton began to capitulate to liberalism, Machen founded Westminster Seminary. When the PC(USA) missions board began supporting non-Christian missionaries, Machen started a missions board of his own and was promptly suspended from the ministry. So, he started the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

While very few followed Machen to Westminster

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or the OPC, a seed was planted that would grow into the robust and growing Reformed movement today. The OPC kept the torch aloft in the North as Southern Presbyterianism fought its own fight and eventually became the Presbyterian Church in America. The OPC also aided conservatives in the Christian Reformed Church, until many felt led to start the United Reformed Church. These denominations along with several others formed NAPARC (the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council), which has provided the backbone to the growing Reformed body across denominations in America and abroad.

His Christianity and Liberalism, which clearly draws a line between true Christianity and counterfeits, is a product of his own wrestling with the liberal theology of that period. But because it speaks of timeless truths, it is still relevant in our own day. For those for whom Christianity and Liberalism has been so influential, this new complete collection of Machen’s radio talks is a real treat. Things Unseen contains the transcriptions of radio addresses Machen gave over the final couple years of his life (1935– 37). Until now, only portions of these talks have been published, as publication ceased after Machen died.

That fact casts a sobering hue over this richly edifying work. Underneath Machen’s introduction to the second year’s addresses, we find a note from his fellow professors saying that he did not live to see its publication, so they saw it through themselves as a labor of love (149). Indeed, as we read these pages of clear biblical truth, packaged in pastoral wisdom with incredible humility, gentleness, and empathy, we see why his colleagues, students, and even opponents tended to love him.

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What we notice first in this collection is Machen’s warm, pastoral tone. Due to his role as a leader of American Reformed Christianity in his day, Machen has been maligned over the past century as a curmudgeon and polemicist.

Although some of our heroes of the faith were too combative, this volume clearly shows that Machen is not among them. For example, he keeps referring to these addresses as his “little” talks, and he frequently appeals to doubters as one who has also doubted. He concludes each address with a pastoral plea for his listeners to come to know Jesus. Dare I say that joy permeates his words as he speaks to his unseen audience? Take this excerpt: Here we are, sitting down together quietly.

Cannot we at least be friends? Cannot we at least try to understand each other, whether we can agree with each other or not? I do not think that I should be doing my part toward that mutual understanding if I concealed from you the real basis of what I am going to say. (26) We next notice what Machen was and is most known for: his remarkable clarity. I binged on Herman Bavinck about six months ago, and he is a leading light and a must-read in his own regard. But it is easy to get lost in Bavinck’s lofty writing, something readers rarely suffer with

Today, we often find loftiness without lucidity and lucidity without loftiness; in Machen, we find both lucidity and loftiness.

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Machen. He feels more like a teacher who dabbles in theology than a theologian who dabbles in teaching. He lays bare complex truths, clever deceptions, and the heart of controversies with remarkable lucidity. As Machen himself says, “I am subordinating all other ambitions in the little talks to the one ambition of being plain” (27).

Today, we often find loftiness without lucidity and lucidity without loftiness; in Machen, we find both lucidity and loftiness. His gift for clarity turns high-minded concepts into notable one-liners: Here is a rule for you, my friends: no facts, no good news; no good news, no hope. The Bible is quite useless unless it is a record of facts. (40) If the Jesus of the Gospels was a purely natural and not a supernatural person . . . everybody would believe. But then there would be one drawback. It would be this: the thing that everybody would believe would not be worth believing. (116) One note of unsubstantial criticism is that the subtitle for this book is a bit of a buzzkill: A Systematic Introduction to the Christian Faith and Reformed Theology. Sometimes, precision serves to deter rather than allure. How about Reflections on the Things That Matter Most or Truth for Everyday Life? If a criticism is to be made of the talks themselves, it’s that some of the theological discussions do get a bit tedious.

There are several chapters that are informative but not inspiring. That said, the advantage of the format of this book is that chapters are less than ten pages each, so the sections that drag are also brief.

Machen died abruptly doing what he did best: raising the alarm about counterfeit gospels to the far corners of the church. Dying from pneumonia in North Dakota, he dictated the final lines to be sent by telegraph to fellow professor John Murray: “So thankful for active obedience of Christ. No hope without it.”

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This was the topic of his second-to-last “little talk” and second-to-last chapter of this book.

There is a reason why people always mention these final words when they talk of Machen. He bore God’s word from the classroom to the radio to his deathbed in North Dakota. That same Word of Life brought him through the portals of death into eternity with his Savior, Jesus.

Machen was not a culture warrior. He wanted others to see what he saw about Jesus—what he now sees with eternal bliss and with every tear wiped away.

“Theology informs our reading, but our reading constantly shapes and refines our theology.”

STEPHEN ROBERTS is a US Army chaplain and has written for Modern Reformation, The Washington Times, and The Federalist.

Theology Is for Preaching: Biblical Foundations, Method, and Practice Edited by Chase R. Kuhn and Paul Grimmond Lexham Press, 2021 416 pages (paperback), $29.99 oes theological acumen enable better reading and proclaiming of Scripture? If it does, then preaching has a theological element. A visit to an art museum with my artist mother teaches me far more than a visit by myself. I can point out content in artwork that seems interesting or appealing, but I cannot identify exquisite technique. My mother, because of her experience in the craft, sees far more in a painting than I do. She knows which impressions were difficult to create and why certain brushstrokes look the way they do. She can “read” a painting better.

In a similar way, preaching sometimes reveals the meaning of a biblical text that was not immediately obvious and yet cannot be denied when pointed out. It cannot be “unseen” once revealed. Sinclair Ferguson call this “deep 1 exegesis.” Chase Kuhn, one of the editors of

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Theology Is for Preaching, points out in his initial essay that “the more sophisticated our Christology is, the better we will recognize Christological themes and developments in a passage” (12). Theological acumen enables one to have a “thicker reading” of the biblical text, to see what others might not see at first.

A deep understanding of sound doctrine can therefore provide another context for biblical hermeneutics, like a blacklight applied to invisible ink or a cipher applied to code. When I struggle with knowing how to proclaim the gospel from a particular biblical text, I know the problem is not the text; it is with my poor readership. I need better eyes to see what is already there. Theology provides a lens to help illuminate biblical texts and, in turn, the text shapes our theology. A reciprocal relationship exists: “Theology informs our reading, but our reading constantly shapes and refines our theology” (11).

We are all theologians, in the sense that everyone has beliefs about God and that theology shapes all of life—including preaching.

The preface to Theology Is for Preaching goes so far as to say that “preaching without theology is irresponsible” (xx). This work calls for reading in context: “Understanding a passage requires placing a text in its canonical context (biblical theology), as well as understanding the

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teaching of a passage in the broader doctrinal context of the canon (systematic theology)” (xx). The theology that informs exegesis (ruled reading) is not an imperious master that overthrows what is there, but the readers’ way of submitting their reading to other Scripture passages and the church’s previous hearing and collation of them (12). This is a reminder that the Bible does not contradict itself. The doctrinal implications of one passage will not undermine the doctrine of another verse.

A recent installment i n L e x h a m’s S t u d i e s i n Historical and Systematic Theology series (SHST), this collection of essays draws on the modern “Theological Interpretation of Scripture” 2 movement or “TIS.” While Theology Is for Preaching mentions TIS only in passing (just on pages 11–12 and 86–87, as far as I can tell), “theological proclamation of Scripture” might have been a fitting and provocative title for the book.

Editors Kuhn and Grimmond both mi­nister in Australia, and Moore Theological College in Sidney is well represented among the authors in this collection. While Theology Is for Preaching has an Anglican flair (e.g., a chapter on lectionary), anyone who appreciates biblical exposition can benefit from this work. Furthermore, Theology Is for Preaching is refreshingly pra ctical. For example, one of the chapters provides a useful reminder that liturgy and preaching go hand in hand and should be coordinated so that hymns and rea dings f it with the theme of the sermon text. Likewise, in the chapter titled “Now Is the Time to Preach: Preaching in Eschatological Context,” Peter F. Jensen points out that faithful preaching always situates a text in terms of redemptive history. Preaching

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orients believers in the already/not-yet, having experienced grace and looking with hope to what lies ahead.

Many chapters provide food for thought about preaching’s content, nature, and methods. For example, in “The Declarative God: Toward a Theological Description of Preaching,” Mark D. Thompson argues that “the communicative activity of God . . . is the theological anchor of the practice of preaching” (31–32). Because God speaks, the church speaks. This theme continues in chapter 4 titled “Preaching and Revelation: Is the Sermon the Word of God?”

by Timothy Ward. Here, Ward examines a topic that pleads for greater engagement: Is “the preaching of the word of God . . . the word of God” as the Second Helvetic Confession says it is?

If so, then how? Instead of dwelling on the debate over whether Paul in Romans 10:14 says that in preaching we hear “from Christ” or “of Christ,” Ward opens with Peter’s statement of belie­vers being “born again . . . through the living and enduring word of God. . . . And this is the word that was preached to you” (1 Pet. 1:23–25). Ward concludes by saying that though this may sound strange, “It is, however, a rather mainstream notion in Reformation and post-Reformation thought, grounded in rich biblical understanding of the nature of Christ’s work in and for his church” (65).

Theology Is for Preaching engages important and even controversial topics. For example, chapter 8 by Daniel Y. Wu wades into a topic of recent controversy, “Christocentric or Christotelic Sermons?” Even where a reader might disagree with a particular writer’s take, it is evident that each author engages with Scripture thoughtfully.

Likewise, “New Testament Clarity: The Presence of Christ in the Proclamation of the

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Word” by Peter Orr builds on Ward’s earlier chapter on God speaking through preaching.

Orr’s chapter engages how this takes place, explicating Paul’s powerful statement in 2 Corinthians 3:18 that believers are transformed as they behold Christ. His conclusion should motivate us to give heed to preaching, whether as hearers or preachers: Preachers should be encouraged that as they preach the word, making an open statement of the truth, they can anticipate nothing less than Christ to be powerfully present by the Spirit working for the conversion of sinners, the transformation of believers from one degree of glory to another and the edification of the church! (140) As an intern at a local church while in seminary, I remember feeling conflicted when one of the elders prayed for my upcoming preaching during the pastoral prayer. He asked something along the lines of “May today’s preacher put himself aside and give us only the Word as he preaches.” On the one hand, I agreed with him: I wanted to proclaim only “thus says the Lord” and not my own “wisdom.” On the other hand, I did not know how to proclaim the word of God apart from being me. Just as James wrote and spoke differently than John, but both proclaimed God’s word, so preachers also have distinct personalities. We are not robotic repeaters, but particular preachers who personally know God’s grace and seek to apply God’s word in today’s particular settings. In “The Preacher as Person: Personality and Relationships in the Pulpit,” Graham Beynon addresses this, helpfully explaining how “we must not conceive of the preacher as a conduit through whom the word flows with as little contact as possible” (192).

Likewise, in “Sanctified by Word & Spirit: A Theology of Application,” Andrew M. Leslie addresses another controversial theological issue: Is sanctification monergistic or synergistic? Although this may not be the best way to frame the question (Phil. 2:12–13), Leslie

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This work accessibly introduces readers to important topics for preachers.

addresses this topic in a way that affirms that God is the one who sanctifies and that this does not diminish our human involvement and responsibility. A theology of sanctification affects preaching, and Leslie urges “a constant dependence” on Christ (218–19).

My criticisms are few. As can be expected in a collection of essays, some chapters are more engaging than others and the flow of the book is not wholly clear. Transitions explaining how each chapter contributed to the overarching project of the book would provide a welcome guide. I felt at times that the thread of integrating theology into preaching was lost and that I was simply reading a book on preaching—albeit an interesting one!

This sampling of chapters should whet your appetite to read this helpful work. While some of the essays are more academic, this work accessibly introduces readers to important topics for preachers and should be required reading in seminary preaching courses.

ANDREW J. MILLER is the pastor of Bethel Reformed Pres-

byterian Church (OPC) in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

1. Sinclair B. Ferguson, “Exegesis,” in Samuel T. Logan, ed. The Preacher and Preaching (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1986), 200–1.

2. See my review of Derek Taylor’s Reading Scripture as the Church: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Hermeneutic of Discipleship at Modern Reformation, https://modernreformation.org/resource-library/ web-exclusive-articles/reading-scripture-as-the-church-dietrichbonhoeffers-hermeneutic-of-discipleship-by-derek-taylor/.

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The Divine Wisdom of the Word Preached

by Michael Horton

understand evangelicals when they wonder why we can’t communicate the gospel through methods more in tune with our culture. Preaching can seem boring or too formal and hardly able to compete with the entertainment we can so easily access.

This, however, is not about novelty versus tradition. There is something much deeper in this notion that “the word of God is living and active” (Heb. 4:12).

Speech itself is an action we do in order to perform some other action. Someone cries “Fire!” in a crowded theater in order to warn people but also to persuade them to vacate the building. In a wedding ceremony, we’re not just expressing our inner wishes or emotions. When we say “I do,” we’re making a promise that actually constitutes a marriage.

God also acts with words. The Father speaks in the Son and by his Spirit. By saying “Let there be light!” or “Let the earth bring forth fruit-bearing plants,” he accomplished certain things. God wasn’t expressing his inner thoughts, nor was he teaching (who would have been his pupils?). He wasn’t providing information or moral instruction or describing a certain state of affairs. Rather, by these words, he created a completely new state of affairs out of nothing.

God also acts with words through his prophets and apostles (Isa. 55:11). We are “born again . . . through the living and abiding word of God,” which is “the good news that was preached to

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you” (1 Pet. 1:23, 25). James calls us to “humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you” (James 1:21). Indeed, the gospel “is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16). In the preaching of the gospel, Christ himself addresses us personally through the lips of a fellow sinner.

For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?

And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? . . .

So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. (Rom. 10:13–17) Although it may sound strange to our ears, a better rendering reads, “How then will they call on him whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe him whom they have never heard?” It is from the mouth of the faithful preacher that Christ addresses us.

Although preaching may seem like foolishness in our modern day of high-tech multimedia, it still pleases God to save through the foolishness of the gospel preached those who believe (1 Cor. 1:21).

MICHAEL HORTON is editor-in-chief of Modern Reforma-

tion and the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido.

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THOSE OF US WHO CALL OURSELVES CHRISTIANS, BEARING CHRIST’S NAME, DO NOT DESPAIR. WE SEE OURSELVES AS PILGRIMS IN THIS WORLD AND THE CHURCH AS A PLACE OF COMFORT AND NURTURE. GOD HAS PROMISED TO MEET US THERE IN A UNIQUE WAY. ANN HENDERSON HART