The heavens declare the glory of God,…Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.
Psalm 19:1–3
FROM THE PRESIDENT
What makes something beautiful? Beauty is something we almost instantly recognize but find hard to put into words. Beauty integrates goodness, truth, symmetry, majesty, delight, love, and the list could go on and on.
But behind and beneath beauty is the truth that it is the expression of our invisible God and his glory as he manifests himself through his creation. Exodus 15:11 speaks of the majesty of God in union with his holiness. Holiness is glorious in the sight of God, because holiness is the realm where God dwells, apart from the ugliness of human sin and unfaithfulness.
And so it is appropriate for us to join the psalmist who declares in Psalm 96, “Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. . . . worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness, tremble before him all the earth! Say among the nations, the LORD reigns!”
Westminster Seminary remains committed to the classic opening answer of the Westminster Shorter Catechism Question 1, “What is the chief end of man?” “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” Bringing glory to God through our thinking, actions, and relationships forms the goal of our ethics. And “enjoying him forever” unites to this goal the sphere of aesthetics, of beauty itself.
In this issue of Westminster Magazine, it is our joy to engage the topic of beauty, ranging from words to music, from relationships to ministry. Thank you so much for being a reader of Westminster Magazine. Thank you for supporting our ministry. Join with us in praising the Lord as you read and think more deeply about the privilege of worshiping our God, who is always holy and beautiful.
In Christ’s service,
Peter A. Lillback, President
P.S. Later this year, we will remember the extraordinary anniversaries of Nicaea and Tyndale’s English Bible. Do not miss the Fall 2025 issue!
Volume 5 | Issue 2 | Spring 2025
Editor–in–Chief
Peter A. Lillback
Executive Editor
Jerry Timmis
Managing Editor
Nathan Nocchi
Senior Writer
Pierce Taylor Hibbs
Associate Editor
Anna Sylvestre
Archival Editor
B.McClean Smith
Design
Ethan Greb Interior
Angela Messinger
WestminsterMagazineis published twice annually by Westminster Theological Seminary, 2960 Church Road, Glenside, Pennsylvania 19038. No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations.
Printed and bound in the United States of America
Cover Artwork: Peter Heinrich Happel (1813–1854), View of Are Castle on the Ahr. Design by Ethan Greb. Interior cover: excerpts from Thomas Bradshaw (b. 1767), A Sketchbook (ca. 1810s).
List of artwork in sequential order: George Inness (1825–1894), Lake Nemi (1872); 'Astronomy and Geometry' from Pseudo-Callisthenes, La Vraye Histoire du Bon Roy Alixandre (15th century, France); Alphonse Legros (1837–1911), Repos du voyageur; August Rumm (1888–1950), Beginnende Sonnenfinsternis (1912); Jusepe de Ribera (1591–1652), The poet, standing crowned with laurel (ca. 1620–1); John Mulcaster Carrick (1833–1896), Magdalen Bridge and College, Oxford (1859); Harald Slott-Møller (1864–1937), Sankt Hans aften ved Vejle Fjord (1904); Thomas Creswick (1811–1869), View from Mr. Southey's House, Keswick (c. 1838); Robert W. Weir (1803–1889), Study for "War and Peace" (c. 1836); Nicolas-Didier Boguet (1755–1839), Vallée du Tibre, campagne romaine (ca. 1801–1850); Emil Orlík (1870–1932), Max Slevogt an der Staffelei im Garten (1917); Pierre Duval Le Camus (1790–1854), The Drawing Lesson (ca. 1826); Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot (1796–1875), Orphée ramenant Eurydice des enfers (1861); Jan van der Vaart (1653–1721), Portrait of a Violin; Johann Peter Krafft (1780–1856), Orpheus am Grabe der Eurydike (1805); Étienne-Louis Boullée (1728–1799), Cénotaphe de Newton (1784); Plate with The Building of the Tower of Babel (ca. 1550–1560); Willem Goeree and Jan Lyken, Voor-bereidselen tot de bybelsche wysheid, en gebruik der heilige en kerklijke historien (1690); Isidore Pils (1813/15–1875), Study for Soldiers Distributing Bread to the Poor (1851); Isidre Nonell (1872–1911), Two Poor Sleeping Men (1897); Attr. Giovanni Francesco Bezzi (1500–1571), Kneeling Bearded Old Man; Jacob Weyer (1623–1670), Schlachtenszene: Kampf zwischen Reitern und Fußvolk; Philippe Rousseau (1816–1887), Still Life with Telescope; Giuseppe Bottani (1717–1784), Athena appearing to Odysseus to reveal the Island of Ithaca. Geography Plate. CCXI (UBC Library); Advertisement for Roessle Brewing Company (Boston Library).
MARK A. GARCIA
Lamentation for a Riven World
Iinvite you to join me alongside a man who stands in the midst of chaos. He is not Everyman. He belongs to one of those rare times when the world tilts, when the cracks of immense pressure start to appear, when things change in apparently unrecoverable ways. The world he once knew is falling apart around him, all in pieces, and this provokes a lamentation:
Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone, All just supply, and all relation; Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot, For every man alone thinks he hath got To be a phoenix, and that then can be None of that kind, of which he is, but he. This is the world’s condition now, and now She that should all parts to reunion bow, She that had all magnetic force alone, To draw, and fasten sund’red parts in one; She whom wise nature had invented then When she observ’d that every sort of men Did in their voyage in this world’s sea stray, And needed a new compass for their way; She that was best and first original Of all fair copies, and the general Steward to fate; she whose rich eyes and breast Gilt the West Indies, and perfum’d the East; Whose having breath’d in this world, did bestow Spice on those Isles, and bade them still smell so, And that rich India which doth gold inter, Is but as single money, coin’d from her; She to whom this world must it self refer, As suburbs or the microcosm of her, She, she is dead; she’s dead: when thou know’st this, Thou know’st how lame a cripple this world is.
The rupture our man sees is as deep as it is wide, attacking everything and that which makes everything meaningful. The tissue, the sinews, the tendons that hold reality together, that provide its coherence? Gone. All those ordered relations which make human life meaningful—parenthood, siblings, citizenry and its leaders, man and woman? Abandoned. In favor of what? That fictitious liberty of self-determination in which everyone believes in his own utter uniqueness. That singularity, that individual authenticity, must be protected—no,
promoted—and allowed to rise up in all its phoenix-like glory from the mire of the quotidian and the conventional.
This is how things are now, he says, mournfully. He is resigned to bearing witness to the end of the world as he knew it, the world that once made some sense. Why is it all falling apart? Because, he says, that one reality to which all things must bow in their ordered, meaning-inducing relations, that one gravitational center of the splendid many-ness of a world lush with life, that original of which all beautifully ordered things are but copies, that one referent of all created things—Wisdom? Dead. Wisdom no longer orders the world we inhabit. She is dead. Drink that in, he insists. Reckon with that soberly and honestly, for only then will you know just how “crippled” this world truly is.
A Crippled and Disrupted Order
Few words can rival these for solemnity and pathos and, sadly, for familiarity. While each line sounds like it is lifted from today’s news in which children stand before judges to be emancipated from their parents and men seek to become women, and women men, in fact these words echo into our time from a generation long before our own. Writing in the early decades of the seventeenth century, John Donne’s era was one of upheaval comparable to few in recorded history. In religion, politics, education, economics—just about everything— long standing assumptions about the way and order of things were being upturned at a pace that could not help but alarm observant inhabitants of the early modern world.
Donne penned these words in 1611 as an elegy for Elizabeth Drury, the daughter of his sometime patron, and in her death he perceived a moving figure for the death of the way of things. That she was a girl who died too young signified the “frailty and the decay of this whole World” and the “fragmentary rubbidge” of the earth, which led Donne to reflect on the bitter convergence of two tragedies of modern life: beautiful youth wasted, and the abandonment of Wisdom, traditionally a feminine figure. She? She is dead, Donne says, in arresting resignation.
The fulcrum of Donne’s vision is his traditional assumption that there is an intimate relationship between the order of the cosmos (of everything, maximally
defined) and the ordering of human relations (our most intimate connection with reality). His lament, “’Tis all in pieces…” is thus immediately preceded by mention of the cosmos:
And freely men confess that this world’s spent, When in the planets and the firmament
They seek so many new; they see that this Is crumbled out again to his atomies.
By 1621, three astronomical discoveries would disrupt longtime conventional assumptions about the skies. Tycho Brahe had demonstrated the emergence of a new star in Cassiopeia, Kepler had shown that the planets move at irregular speeds and not on circular but elliptical orbits, and Galileo used a telescope to prove that the moon is an imperfect sphere with contours and features. The public was being forced into a new way of thinking about everything they thought they knew, not only in the natural skies but also in the moral, political, and religious realms of life they believed to be microcosms of the cosmos. Disruption of confidence in one tied intricately and necessarily to disruption in all of them. The world, in every sense, was truly falling apart.
grace, grace which re-orders us, by the Spirit, to reality as it is given to us in Jesus. And this work of Scripture, I suggest, provides a singular opportunity for the church to bring the gospel to the world as it has become and is becoming.
What is the world as it is? Many of us can sympathize with Donne’s alarm. So much of what we only recently took for granted, and thought beyond question, is being reconsidered, redefined, and rejected in our short lifetimes. In general, it is difficult to avoid the impression that, for many of our neighbors and friends, the familiar ties that bind bind no longer. Of course, many books have been written to describe and analyze the contemporary human condition, and many others seek to connect Scripture to the ills of modern life. In what follows, I hope only to add a few modest remarks to this rich and important discussion, and to suggest certain basic features of how the word of God is (or should be) the world the church inhabits in Christ
Inhabiting the World of Holy Scripture
It may be more conventional to speak of the Christian faith as things believed and confessed rather than a world inhabited. But Scripture itself pressures us to connect the two. The Lord of the word and of the world summons us from Genesis to Revelation to avoid thinking of Christian faith and life as merely doctrinal, an apple-skin surface of right affirmations bearing no relationship to the core and substance of things, to how things really are. Not only does Scripture point the way, however; in its faithful proclamation it is a means of
and which the unbelieving world needs. We will do so in three movements. Firstly, we will consider briefly that there is such a thing as the world of the word of God which the church is called to inhabit, and that Jesus Christ is given in that world. Secondly, we will reckon with the (to many, curious and off-putting) book of Leviticus and its special place in that world. And lastly, we will return home with an example of how the world of God’s word connects with the impoverished conditions of contemporary life in a way that creates a rich opportunity for sharing the gospel: our relationship to time.
The World of the Word of God
We begin, of Christian necessity, with the relation of all things to God, the Creator, rather than the relation of things to other things. He is the triune God who is already “there,”
in self-sufficient bountiful life, and who freely and lovingly “made the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). At the heart of the Christian doctrine of creation is our confession that all that is not God exists by the word of his power, not of necessity but for God’s pleasure and glory, and in relation to the special identity and purpose of the Son of God. From the perspective of the end of all things, especially as described in the closing movements of Revelation, creation exists at all because the Father loves the Son in the Spirit and determined to form a Bridal-Body-City for the Son that would be his glory. This end is disclosed already in our origins, including especially the formation of Eve fashioned from the side of, and after, Adam, and as his glory (Gen. 2:21–23; 1 Cor. 11:7). The church is the body and glory of the Son formed in and through history, and she too is formed from the side of, and after, the second and last Adam, so that our glorious end unveils our original reason for existing at all (John 19:34; Eph. 5:25–32; Rev. 19:6–10; 21–22).
Sin is a kind of rebellious resistance to the order of reality.
Thus the Maker of all things has, in his creative and providential works, ordered all things, from the divisions and harmonies we read about in Genesis 1 (heaven/earth, light/darkness, water/land, creatures and their kinds, and so on) to the climactic distinction-in-harmony of manand-then-woman. But sin has entered this world as the sinister principle of disorder, seeking to unravel all that the wise Creator has lovingly and meaningfully woven together. A more conspicuously Christian rendering of Donne’s image of disorder might therefore speak of the unraveling not merely of cosmic and natural relations but of all which God has bound together in his works of creation and providence. Sin is a kind of rebellious resistance to the order of reality.
But can we say more of this order of reality, biblically considered? And how does this relate to what God is doing in the church to reorder things? Recalling our brief mention of the special place of the Son of God may help us here. In his letter to the Colossians, the Apostle
Paul points to Jesus Christ at the very deepest levels of how the church begins any serious reflection on whether and how reality is ordered:
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church.
He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross (Col. 1:15–20).
Paul’s affirmations are direct and all-encompassing. All that exists, he insists, is what it is only as Jesus Christ is “before” it, as he is creator of it, and—in powerful response to Donne’s panicked fear—as “all things hold together” in him. The harmonious order of reality is ultimately personal, not metaphysical or natural or theoretical or scientific. It is theological, and specifically Christological. Christ is to be imagined, suggests the Apostle, with arms outstretched holding together the strands of reality which sin seeks to wrest from his faithful hands, but which it cannot.
But this also means that to resist the peace and life gifted to us in his ordering of things is to resist him, just as the Apostle describes his glorious work of re-concilia-tion (re-peace-ing the deeply disturbed and disrupted world of disorder) carried out by his climactic self-offering at the cross as nothing less than the permanent re-weaving of those very things that sin would unravel.
Leviticus and the Son’s Body and World
That much is clear enough, but how does the word of God relate to the world of God? All of Holy Scripture orders the reality within which we live, but the Book of Leviticus has a special role in God’s ordering work.
This special role is due to two closely related truths. Firstly, as the centrally positioned book of the Torah preoccupied with matters of sacrifice and holiness in God’s
presence, Leviticus, as ancient readers perceived, is a kind of catechism of reality. The Lord gave Leviticus, among other reasons, to catechize his people in how to interpret and inhabit his world, and to do so in polemical contrast to the competing visions of reality current among Israel’s ancient Near Eastern neighbors. This catechism of reality commends to Israel a vision of the real world according to three distinct but closely related facets: time (the sacred festivals of Leviticus 23), space (Lev. 1–17), and vocation (Lev. 18–22). These three facets are followed by discussions of how these matters of vertical harmony (God-humanity) find expression in horizontal life (humanity in relationship with one another) (Lev. 24–25), and how the sanctity of people and objects is established or disrupted within and across various lines of distinction (Lev. 26–27). Inhabiting God’s world as his covenant people, by means of the word he has given to faithfully describe and commend that real world, is a matter, at least, of being properly configured to what he says about real time, real space, and real human relations—three distinct but related commitments fiercely contested by the unbelieving world’s view of reality. On Scriptural terms, faithful apologetical engagement with the world of unbelief includes accounting for these three contested dimensions of God’s created reality.
Secondly, Leviticus serves God’s people in this way not apart from but precisely because of its relationship to Jesus Christ. We are familiar, I suspect, with the truth that Leviticus “points forward” to the life and work of Christ. But we may not be as familiar with the other (and more fundamental) side of this truth, namely, that the time-space-vocation world depicted in Leviticus derives its form from the form of the Son of God. With Paul in Colossians 1, we confess that the world is the way it is because of the Son, is made through and by the Son, and for the Son. And with Hebrews 1, we confess that this same Son sustains all things by his powerful word. From the outset, then, and not as a mere happy afterthought,
Leviticus is spoken in and with a view to the Son, just as the coming of the Son in (later) history also recalls and fills-full Leviticus.
The book of Hebrews helps us further here. In the sacred, intra-trinitarian “conversation” between the eternal Father and the eternal Son described in Hebrews 10:5, the Son says to the Father, “A body you have prepared for me,” itself a use of David’s words in Psalm 40. It is the Son who speaks these words to the Father, and for that reason David—a figure of the Son—speaks them in the psalm. That “body” the Father lovingly and wisely forms for his Son is, yes, the body of the unique incarnation. But that incarnate body—the Son who is Lord Jesus Christ in his person and work—is adumbrated in and traced out by the time-space-vocation contours and content of Leviticus. The realities of divine ordering of which Leviticus speaks derive their form from their original, from their archetype, the eternal Son. Hebrews, the one New Testament book with substantial interest in the text of Leviticus, teaches that the realities of Leviticus are found in the body of Jesus Christ. Leviticus is, to be sure, rightly interpreted by Jesus. But it is also true, even in a prior way, as Ephraim Radner says, that “Jesus is rightly interpreted by Leviticus, so that the actual meaning of what he does, what he teaches, and who he is is informed even by the details of, for example, the laws on bodily fluids, sexual relations, genealogy, and planting.”
Ah, but there is where we may suddenly feel lost: the
fluids, the insects, the blood, the many peculiarities of Leviticus that challenge us at its front door. How do we discern the meaning of things for a distressed and unraveling world from a word so strange, so preoccupied with apparent arbitrariness, even absurdities? And how could this possibly relate not only to how things are but to how we must be, to matters of moral conformity to God’s word and ways? This is not unimportant; in fact, it touches on the very nature of how Christians think about what is right, which is to relate the moral words of Scripture to the world of Scripture, to the way things in fact are. The solution cannot be the one advanced by the old liberal critics of Scripture, to rip off the “husk” of Scripture’s particularities in favor of some eternal “truths” gleaned (away) from them. To exfoliate the world Leviticus commends, of its strange or offensive oddities in favor of disembodied ideas and doctrines, is to push the real world out of the body of Jesus given for and to us according to Hebrews, and puts us at great distance from that real world. The principal task of Christian ethics is to discern the moral universe within which Scripture’s ethical statements are located. In my years of teaching on this relationship of God’s world and his ethical words, I’ve yet to find a more succinct and useful point of departure—especially when it comes to strange Leviticus!— than these remarks by Richard Bauckham:
That biblical commands are not arbitrary decrees but correspond to the way the world is and will be is fully appreciable only as we inhabit the Bible’s narrative and appropriate its perspective on how the world is and will be. The point is important because it will by no means necessarily be evident within the worldviews of our society that biblical commands correspond to the way the world is. Theories of natural law that attempt to demonstrate this independently of the biblical narrative have a certain value, but they are never completely successful, and in a postmodern society are unlikely to carry much conviction at all. Recognizing the importance of the biblical metanarrative enables us to see that inhabiting it is learning to see the world significantly differently (though not of course in every respect differently) from the way the cultural tradition of our context sees it. Biblical laws that “make no sense” in relation to the world as those traditions portray it may do so in relation to the
world as the biblical story portrays it…Neither what the Bible obliges us to believe nor what the Bible obliges us to do can be known from isolated texts, but requires their total context in the biblical metanarrative.
Biblical ethics is faith-and-life conformity to how God in his word portrays the real world to the eyes of faith. It is not accessible to people without faith, at least not in the life-bearing and life-saving ways that God gives in Scripture and of which Bauckham speaks here. There is no way to defend, explain, or commend the real world of Scripture as life and peace using the standards of what the world outside the word regards as sensible, compelling, and reasonable. The world of Scripture that Christians by faith joyfully inhabit is “explainable” only on its own terms in its relationship to Christ, of whom the Scriptures everywhere speak. He alone explains the reality of the Scriptural world, for he accounts for the world in the first place. He alone is the reason why there are no arbitrary commands, which is not to say we understand them all perfectly or any of them exhaustively. Without the Christ whose body accounts for the form of his words, the words cannot be made sense of. They cannot be properly heard or received.
Faithful Reading and Living as Attention
However, returning now to our interest in our present cultural conditions, we must now admit that we are ill-equipped to inhabit that world in part because it requires a mode of attention and perception that does not fit the mode of modern life. This difference in modes of life belongs to the truly good news we can proclaim to the world, but it is a difference we must first know (and enjoy) ourselves. The ethical world of Scripture assumes we are pilgrims, travelers, “walkers” (recall how often the Bible describes our lives metaphorically as our “walk”), but while we travel great distances today, we no longer know what it is to journey there.
The famous adventurer, James Holman (1786–1857), known as the Blind Traveler, circumnavigated the world—among many other remarkable accomplishments—though he was sightless and solitary. Dependent on other senses, he felt, listened, tasted, smelled his way up and down hills, through streams and fields, over rocks
and foliage, attentive to his environment not as he looked across the land but as the wind rushed over his face. Reflecting later in his life on his journeys, he once confessed that certain moments left him feeling more mute than blind, so overwhelming was the beauty and power of what he could discern of the world.
Reading about Holman recently, I could not help but notice the similarities to the greatest of all travel writers, Patrick Leigh Fermor, whose genius was his perception and attention along the way, his effortlessly linked insights on this or that encountered city, countryside, bridge, building, or stranger. The modes of life captured by Holman’s sightless “perception” and Fermor’s “habitation”—or your dog’s experience of the walk around the block, in contrast to your own experience of the same walk—captivate us because they put on display a truth most travelers know, a truth fundamental to the human condition as the Scriptures reveal it, namely, that we are made by our Creator to be “sensory-rich.” Attention and perception along the way of life yields a rich grasp of the meaning of things, including ourselves, and thus—to put it in clearly anti-modern terms—journeys are less a matter of conquering distance than they are of conquering our habitual inattention.
This image helps us, I suggest, understand our difficulties with the odd particularity of Scripture, especially Leviticus, and also clarifies the work involved in hearing and receiving Scripture well. We are inclined to rush to the Christ-destination, without noticing how Christ is in fact given to us in all the biblical things we impatiently ignored along the way, especially perhaps the Levitical way. Holy Scripture requires a mode of life that is different, and sometimes flatly rejected, by the haste, the urgency, the inattention, of our lives today. Holy Scripture calls us to inhabit an ordered world of creation and providence that is sensory rich, but we suffer what we may regard as spiritual sensory deprivation. And the more we discover the depth, scope, and lush richness of the divinely ordered real world, the more we discover the impoverishment of the modern condition.
An Example: Time and the Gospel
Imagine, now, the apologetic and edification value of inhabiting the real world of Holy Scripture by singling out one of those three facets of reality according to Leviticus: time.
Again, we begin with the critically important basics. The church confesses, based upon Scripture, that time is not eternal. Time is not coexistent with God, a metaphysical reality that has always been “there” alongside the eternal God. No, all that is not God is created by God and has its meaning only in relation to God. Time belongs to creation as a created thing, and from the very beginning, when God installed the luminaries in the skies for times and for seasons and for years, time has served God’s end or purpose of creation by supplying a historical structure for it.
Journeys are less a matter of conquering distance than they are of conquering our habitual inattention.
In Scripture we encounter time references in at least two distinct but related forms. Some time references are “external” markers in which Scripture relates one event or person to other events or persons from the general world, from outside the specific interests of covenant history and revelation. For example, “in the days of Herod the king,” or “in the days of Uzziah, king of Judah,” and so on. These external time markers confirm that Scripture is speaking in space-time-historical terms, in terms of real events in “journalistic” history, so to speak. These external time markers have thus proven immensely valuable for the church in response to critical views of the Bible that deny that such biblical references enjoy journalistic historicity. This was a special, legitimate concern of the last few generations of Christian apologists when the objective historicity of the Bible was often under attack.
But Scripture also uses “internal” time markers by which one event, memorial, or rite is connected, theologically and usually liturgically, to another covenant-historical word or work of God. The purpose of these markers is not journalistic in the usual sense, but to forge a special relationship between events or memorials. “Internal” markers are of course not in conflict with the “external,”
more journalistic time-markers, and in fact the external markers are certainly never empty of theological significance. But the internal markers primarily serve not to relate God’s people to the world and history in a general sense but to structure the church’s self-consciousness in terms of the words and works of God. The Festal Calendar of Leviticus 23 (and elsewhere) is the central example of how the times of observance for the various feasts of Israel were configured precisely to the specific features of God’s works of creation, the flood, and the Exodus as recorded in Genesis and Exodus. The configuration is so exact that it suggests that these historical accounts are given not only for our information regarding what happened but to order Israel’s relationship to daily, weekly, monthly, and annual time in terms of God’s own structuring of time through his word and works. In his exhaustive analysis of all such time-markers in the Pentateuch, Michael LeFebvre has argued that “dates are added to certain events for their liturgical remembrance, not as journalistic details... [but] to aid the needful worshiper...”
We cannot document all the examples of this in Scripture here, but we may move directly to the relationship of such internal time markers to Jesus Christ and his church. Scholars have demonstrated quite persuasively that the Gospel of John features a proclamation of Christ that is, yes, related to external historical realities, but is especially focused on internal markers, namely,
Israel’s festal calendar. John’s Gospel, which in various ways authoritatively orders the worship of early Christian churches (among other purposes), preaches Christ not by leaving the festal annual calendar behind as a Levitical relic but by tracing the story of the life and work of Christ precisely as the story first (and still) told in the festal calendar. The form of the Son accounts for the form of the festal year, and to belong to the Son by faith is to belong to his time-fullness. As a guide to the church’s special relationship to time, our “believing in Jesus” (a central concern of John) would therefore seem to include relating to time (in this case the church’s year) the way God has long catechized his people to do so, namely, according to the (internal) markers which are the biographical contours of his Son, and not only in terms of cultural or historical (external) markers.
Sabbath as Resistance and Alternative
We ought to consider especially the focal point of the church’s relationship to time, which is also, without coincidence, the leading feast in Leviticus 23: the weekly sabbath day and its observance. Scripture’s internal time markers may answer compellingly to the current apologetic work of the church just as external markers have served that work in other contexts. The sabbath and its observance is likely the most compelling example of this promising possibility.
To say so, however, is perhaps already to lose those who feared a sinister aim in my interest in divine ordering and our conformity to it. The sabbath has unfortunate associations with a misunderstood Puritanism, legalism, moralism, and a range of life-rejecting practices. The way some well-intentioned Christians treat sabbath observance calls to mind Thackery’s satirical excoriation of his snobbish friend who cut his peas with a knife (leaving the horrified Thackery no choice but, as he put it perfectly, “to cut his acquaintance”). Worse, to be called a sabbatarian is ... well, in the words of George
Santayana on what it means to call someone a snob, “a very vague description but a very clear insult.”
How far removed this is from the sabbath idea in the biblical world! And how impoverished, even oppressive, a life is without it. And how timely it is for us to recall this truth. For complex reasons including changing technologies and technological habits, the nature of work, and the frenetic pace of everyday existence, our families, friends, and neighbors belong to what one writer has called “the anxious generation.” Keeping sabbath is an act of resistance against the anxiety-cultivating conditions of contemporary life, and this is something we can be sure of from the pages of Scripture itself.
When Israel received the Sabbath command in Exodus 20, they had arrived at Mount Sinai after having departed not only the land of Pharaoh’s Egypt but particularly its exploitative mode of life. We must remember exactly what cry the God of Israel had heard and to which he responded with his great acts of miraculous deliverance. He brought them out of the land of Egypt, which he called “the house of slavery” (Exod. 20:2). The world of Egypt was indeed a world of bondage. Hebrew slavery took the form of Pharaoh’s heavy-handed demands, fueled in part by his own anxiety about food production. Insatiable quotas, worsening bricks-fromstraw work conditions, and, most importantly for our purposes, the inhumanity of a no-rest culture of work all combined to crush the children of Abraham. “Why are you taking the people away from their work? Get to your labors!” (Exod. 5:4). “You want them to stop working!” (Exod. 5:5). “Let heavier work be laid on them; then they will labor at it and pay no attention to deceptive words [about rest]” (Exod. 5:9). “You are lazy; that is why you say ‘Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord.’ Go now, and work...” (Exod. 5:17–19). The rhetoric is as relentless as the work is: no rest, all work, and you are lazy if you don’t work constantly.
Now, that is awful enough. But there is more. What happens in a workaholic culture like Pharaoh’s? Everyone around you is necessarily a competitor, working to secure his own value in an economy which requires taking it from you. Survival of the workiest. What can you not have under such conditions? A neighbor, one who is not your competitor. Nor can you have festivity, at least not without guilt. And with neither a neighbor nor festivity, there can be no hospitality. The economy of ancient Egypt is eerily similar to what is increasingly true of our
own time: life is work, you are a worker, and the other is your competitor. Life is a zero-sum game in which you have to get yours, and that must mean others do not get theirs.
Into such a world, into such an economy, comes God’s gift of sabbath, which interrupts the workflow of a week with a divine intrusion of rest and of worship. Because we may not work on his day, we are reminded that we have neighbors and not only competitors. Indeed, observing his sabbath gift, as the great act of resistance against any Pharaonic world order, creates the very possibility of a neighbor. And of hospitality. And of a meaning to my life beyond my work, by which I am reminded that I am more than my work, without becoming less than my work.
Holy Scripture calls us to inhabit an ordered world of creation and providence that is sensory rich, but we suffer what we may regard as spiritual sensory deprivation.
This is a part of the gospel our exhausted and exhausting world needs. It has apologetic value. But it also has value for us, who are called to the life conformed to Christ that inhabits his times and not this world’s times. In the church’s pulpit proclamation but also in her Sabbatarian mode of life, the world needs to hear the liberating words, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28–30).
All of which returns us to our earlier claim, namely, that the Christian witness to Christ in the world such as it is includes not only our clear affirmation, defense, and commendation of the doctrinal truths of the gospel of
Jesus Christ, but also faithful dexterity in navigating our lives in this world as we live from within another world, the world given us in Christ. That dexterity, which the Scriptures call wisdom, includes our “by faith and not by sight” embrace of how the Lord of the word orders our relationships to time, space, and to one another. As the Holy Spirit carries out this work in the body of the Son (the church), the new city, the new creation, is being carved out of this anxious, frustrated, angry, and rebellious world as a microcosm, not of a universe seen at the end of a powerful telescope, but of the new creation which the incarnate Jesus Christ is in his righteousness, wisdom, and love.
Christ is to be imagined with arms outstretched holding together the strands of reality which sin seeks to wrest from his faithful hands, but which it cannot.
A daily morning and evening, a daily rhythm of labor and rest, a weekly Lord’s Day of worship and fellowship, and a year of fasting and festivity which traces the contours of the life, ministry, death, resurrection, ascension, Pentecostal generosity, and abiding care of Lord Jesus Christ—this is the fullness of our times as the overflow of our union with the One in whom the fullness of time has come. This is life at “Godspeed,” a word rooted in the Old English expression “God Spede,” meaning “God flourish you.” Life at Godspeed is an act of resistance to a world order driven by the commodification of our time, relationships, and personal meaning, and the openhanded offer to others of a glorious alternative.
In our day, it is easy to confuse the “speed” in “Godspeed” with haste. Two popular words (recently added to the Oxford Dictionary)—FOMO (fear of missing out, added in 2015) and YOLO (you only live once, added in 2016)—reflect the exhausting urgency of contemporary
life, which holds out a counterfeit rest (of not “missing out,” of living once maximally). But this way of life is utterly unsustainable, and our neighbors, friends, and family members are predictably worn down in Pharaoh’s world. The church—if she is herself reordered to the biblical world as the real world, “sensory-rich” to the way of Christ—bears witness to the better way found only in the gospel. Within the biblical world, which we embrace by faith as a gift of our generous Maker, the fear of the Lord (including in our relationship to time, space, and vocation) rather than “missing out” is true life, and our present life in Christ is a foretaste of eternal life in a mode of endless bounty, rather than the “only once” life unbelievers live.
Centuries ago, Donne lamented the unraveling of the ordered world. Shakespeare’s Hamlet, too, famously complained that “the time is out of joint.” To be sure, sin seeks to unravel God’s beautiful tapestry of properly ordered time, space, and vocation. But God has acted in his Son Jesus Christ to reorder that which seems so splintered, and in his church he puts the alternative world on display: a community ordered to Christ in time, space, and vocation. The early church of the first centuries grew rapidly in part because they exerted a magnetic draw upon the watching world. That magnetic draw, that gravitational pull, was the church’s “otherness” in a world of economic and political anxiety. In the midst of rare chaos, she stood still, quietly confident in Christ, preoccupied with the worship of God at his appointed days and times, and with service to one another. In our time, conforming to the word’s revelation of the true order of things in Jesus Christ may be just what the world doesn’t know it’s looking for. And if we are accustomed to thinking of the Christian faith only as a matter of right ideas and occasional practices rather than as a new life ordered in Christ by the Spirit to matters of time, space, and vocation, it may also prove to be what we didn’t know we were looking for.
Mark A. Garcia (PhD, Edinburgh University) is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Westminster. He is also the founding President and Fellow in Scripture and Theology at Greystone Theological Institute.
Dear Friends,
It is with great enthusiasm that I share the news of the generosity of a new ministry partner who desires to provide necessary scholarships for the training of our students. Westminster Theological Seminary has received a $350,000 matching grant to commence our fundraising efforts for the next class of students. This generous partner firmly believes that the “Holy Bible is the inspired and infallible Word of God…and the only infallible rule for faith and conduct.” God’s people are to hold fast to their confession of faith and commitment to the authority of the word of God. For it is God’s authority that grounds all of life. The Word that upholds the world is the Word for the world.
Since 1929, Westminster has been ardently devoted to the word of God; indeed, it has been the center of Westminster’s rich theological and pastoral legacy to train specialists in the Bible. Westminster’s historic and founding faculty have articulated this point throughout Westminster’s existence. Our God, wrote Paul Woolley, is “the sovereign of the whole universe, so his Word has meaning throughout that universe.” It is, therefore, vital that “every area of life and thought would more fully and constantly recognize and take into account the final authority that rightly belongs to Holy Scripture,” as founding faculty member Ned B. Stonehouse once said. The very preaching of the word is “heightened” only, Edmund P. Clowney states, when the preacher of God “stands behind the Book.” This is why Westminster continues to stand for the gospel truth that the word of God is the only infallible rule for faith and conduct. And this is not simply a matter of fidelity today, but also in the future. As E. J. Young wrote, the teaching from “the lecture desks…finally make[s] its way into the pulpits of the lands and influences the lives of men and women.”
And so, will you join us to stand, as John Murray once proclaimed, “for the whole counsel of God, for unswerving fidelity to that permanent and unchanging deposit of truth embodied in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments…”? Would you help us maximize this $350,000 matching gift by donating toward our general scholarship fund? Your generosity, along with this grant, will support the next generation of pastors, counselors, missionaries, and theologians.
Our stewardship team would be glad to connect with you via email or over the phone. You can connect with us by writing to stewardship@wts.edu, calling 215-572-3830, or visiting wts.edu/donate.
For Christ and his word,
Jerry Timmis Vice President of Stewardship Westminster Theological Seminary
Design by Ethan Greb
We should become aware of what we are doing when we speak, of the ancient, fragile, and (well used) immensely potent instruments that words are.
—C. S. Lewis, Studies in Words
Where Words Rest for Meaning
On a shelf among my New Testament commentaries, I have a rock. It’s no ordinary rock. I keep it in the Book of Acts section. It was a gift given to me by someone who visited Mars Hill in Athens. I rub it from time to time, hoping it will increase my chances of actually going there someday. Well, that’s not entirely true. I’m a Calvinist. Chance doesn’t exist; Jesus does. But I do sincerely hope to someday set foot upon that outcropping of rock, upon which the Apostle Paul challenged the Mars Hill Philosophy Club by quoting their own poet philosophers in Acts 17:28, Epimenides of Crete and Aratus. Contrary to the way this text is often preached, Paul was not telling them that they, following their poets, had things half right about the true God, as it were. Just the opposite: fragments and lines from these poets pointed to truth but needed the proper covenantal context of Christianity for that truth to be realized. As longtime Professor of Apologetics and Systematic Theology, K. Scott Oliphint writes in The Battle Belongs to the Lord:
When Epimenides says that “in him” we live and move and exist, he does not have the true God in mind at all. He is writing about a god of his own creation, a false god. When Aratus says that we are “his” offspring, he is not referring to the true God, but to Zeus. And it simply is not true that we are the offspring of Zeus. These twisted truths have become foolish exchanges of the truth of God for a lie. But, when taken back to their rightful place, to the context of Christianity, these are glorious truths. So Paul takes them back. The Greeks had used these ideas to suppress the true knowledge of God. Paul takes them back to communicate the truth about the true Creator and Lord. In that sense Paul is saying, “Your ideas and concepts can only be true if they refer to the true God.”
Once placed in their proper context, these ideas of the Greek philosophers come back to their
rightful place as absolute truths about the Christian God. That is Paul’s point, which he offers as a point of persuasion in his defense of Christianity.
Paul knew that words fitly spoken are like apples of gold in a setting of silver (Prov. 25:11–13). He knew that words communicated the good, the true, and the beautiful purposes of our covenant God in this world. Paul knew that words—poetic, beautiful words, in their proper context—are persuasive of the only worldview that can account for the objectivity in predication, which makes words mean something true. As we know, only a biblical principia (first things) will allow for persuasion of truth. Only our principium essendi (starting point of being) as the triune God of the Bible, and our principium cognoscendi externum (starting point for knowing external to us) as the Bible of the triune God can account for the requisites of intelligibility and reality as we experience it. Only this Reformed, covenantal approach to apologetics can account for inductive reasoning upon which science depends, deductive reasoning upon which math depends, the regularity of nature upon which science depends, objectivity in predication, morality, personhood, universals, etc.
My two primary maxims for my seminary students and ministerial candidates are as follows: (1) Pride will beat you out of the ministry, or the ministry will beat the pride out of you; (2) Ministry is hard . . . really hard. You need traveling partners! And I have many. For me, Cornelius Van Til (1895–1987) makes it intellectually untenable that I can ever seriously doubt the Christian worldview. Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) gives me an example of how to preach the Christian worldview. C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) makes me want to believe the Christian worldview. I want to hone in on the second maxim: that we need traveling partners.
This past summer, while lecturing in London with other Westminster professors, I managed to spend a couple of days in Oxford. A dream-come-true for me was to tour the Kilns, the home of C. S. Lewis. My wife,
Diane, and daughter, Lydia, made the trip across the Atlantic with me. One of the things I most wanted to do was to record a video of me reading two of my favorite passages from Lewis’s corpus. I stood in front of the lions at Trafalgar Square in London, as Lydia captured video of me reading the story of Jill Pole, whose misbehavior resulted in her friend, Eustace Scrubb, falling off a cliff. She awakens in a strange, mystifying world, only to find herself dying of thirst. No spoilers, here! Go read for yourself The Silver Chair, which magically transports you into the world of Narnia. There’s a lion Lewis likens to the lions at Trafalgar Square. That’s why we just had to go there. The words Lewis employs draw you right in between the two forepaws of Aslan.
The second passage I read was videoed in the flower garden of Lewis’s house, where he and his wife, Joy Davidman (1915–1960), spent countless hours just being together… until they weren’t. You see, I had a deep desire to read the opening passage of A Grief Observed This book, written in the wake of Joy’s death, was, on the one hand, like a stream of consciousness journaling session, as Lewis processed his paralyzing grief. On the other hand, some have observed these hot, searing, agonizing words as Lewis at his poetic best. Alice H. Cook explains, “Ironically, it is in the midst of his soulconsuming crisis that he loses himself so completely in his subject that his poetic impulses are the least stifled and most flowing… Lewis’s grief at the time of writing, this unstructured format would allow his most lucid, most authentic prose to come forth.”
So, I took my tattered old trade paperback edition of A Grief Observed, sat in Jack and Joy’s flower garden, and read aloud:
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.
At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.
There are moments, most unexpectedly, when something inside me tries to assure me that I don’t
really mind so much, not so very much, after all. Love is not the whole of a man’s life. I was happy before I ever met H. I’ve plenty of what are called “resources.” People get over these things. Come, I shan’t do so badly. One is ashamed to listen to this voice but it seems for a little to be making out a good case. Then comes a sudden jab of red-hot memory and all this “common-sense” vanishes like an ant in the mouth of a furnace.
Why would I want to read that in that quiet flower garden? Why would this book and these words, somewhere between free verse and fearful vexation, mean so much to me? Well, in the summer of 2015, when the doctor told us there was nothing more he could do for my mom’s pancreatic cancer, I wearily wandered into my study and almost mindlessly grabbed this ragged little book, and found my world painted to the very corners—lyrics for the minor key my heart was hearing. Lewis was my traveling partner.
The power of words to connect to one’s world, especially in seasons of soul-hollowing grief, should come as no real surprise. For it was the power of words through the agency of the Word (John 1:1) by which the world was created to begin with (Gen. 1:1). Was not the Apostle Paul poetic, as he relayed the reality of his suffering to the believers in Corinth?
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. So then death worketh in us, but life in you. (2 Cor. 4:8–12 KJV)
The Power of Words for Lewis and His Companions
Lewis, as is widely known, was part of a literary club, the Inklings. Yes, I tried to get into their old haunt, Eagle and Child, or “Bird and Baby,” as
they affectionately dubbed it. Alas, it was closed for renovations. So, we did what the Inklings would do when the Eagle and Child would run out of beer—bolted across St. Giles Street to The White Horse. The famous friendships that breathed life into one another for this heady group of Oxford writers are legendary. I ordered a beer at The White Horse while wearing my C. S. Lewis t-shirt. I had my picture made at the very bar where philologist J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) would have ordered countless pints of English ale throughout the years of their comradery. I was clearly the tourist in that quaint little pub.
Along with visiting the Kilns, there was one thing that mattered most to me. Strolling the streets of Oxford, we made our way down High Street to Magdalen College, where Lewis was a don. I will never get over entering the beautiful iron gates near the Magdalen Bridge and taking the walk—the same walk that Lewis (32 years old), Tolkien (39 years old), and Hugo Dyson (35 years old) took on the mile-long path encircling a little island in the middle of River Cherwell, a tributary of the Thames. “Addison’s Walk” changed everything for Lewis, the evening of September 19, 1931. I just had to walk in their steps. Even as I write this little reflection, I have sprigs of red clover I snatched from alongside the path pressed in a journal on my desk.
dinner in Lewis’s room at Magdalen. They also loved stories, myths, tales that ushered readers into another world, new and yet vaguely familiar. Tolkien was a philologist and the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College, Oxford. His passion for old Norse mythology and verse would eventually fuel his creation of whole languages, the tongues of which would require a world for their expression. Middle Earth was in its embryonic form. Dyson was Professor of English at Reading College and a Shakespeare scholar. Lewis, who would go on to become, perhaps, the most beloved children’s author and apologist, on the evening of their stroll, was Professor of English Literature at Magdalen College, Oxford, and had theretofore fancied becoming a poet.
Their September saunter was a meandering on metaphor and myth. Tolkien and Dyson were committed Christians.
They had a glorious agenda to lead their friend to credenda. Lewis loved the mythical Norse tales of the dying god. He was captivated by the beauty of their poetic words, but he was not convicted. In the end, myths, with all their poetic powers, said Lewis, are, “lies and therefore worthless, even though breathed through silver.” Lewis was clinging to his rationalism and materialism.
These Oxford professors had been drawn to one another because of their love, not only of English stouts, but of words, the lyrics to the music of the good, the true, and the lovely. They loved Edmund Spenser’s (1552/53–1599) The Faerie Queen and were indebted to the unknown author of the fourteenth century’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. They loved good beer, delicious food, and their pipes. In fact, their discussion of poetry and Christianity began that evening over
Tolkien pressed in. He did not advocate the fables/ myths ( μύθοις ) of Titus 1:14, which were likely protognostic tales that utterly countered the truths of Scripture. The things that appealed to Lewis in poems and myths pointed to truths that only the context of Christianity could make sense of. Christianity, Tolkien insisted, was not mere myth, certainly not less than myth; it was the myth that actually happened in time-space-history. In saying this, Tolkien was not
reducing Christianity to a level of the ancient myths but was suggesting that the gospel story works on us in a similar way. Yet, this story with its dying and rising God is more than beautiful words; it accounts for the beauty of words. More than iambic pentameter, it is inescapably proven; more than meter, it is the meaning of everything; more than a sonnet, it is salvation; more than verse, it is verity. Indeed, outside the context of Christianity, these myths are aimless and untethered to truth.
Taking leave of the footpath around 3:00 a.m., Tolkien left Dyson and Lewis to continue on Addison’s Walk until 4:00 a.m. He went home and began to write a poem in honor of his objection to Lewis’s charge of silvery ruse, which would become known as Mythopoeia It was an appeal from Philomythus (Myth-Lover) to Misomythus (Myth-Hater). He wrote the piece in Chaucerian heroic couplets, as this was the typical meter of British Enlightenment poets, as if Tolkien were flaunting their (and Lewis’s) skepticism and materialist commitments with their own cadence. At the outset, Tolkien calls his friend to consider beyond, we might even say, transcendentally, sense experience:
Philomythus to Misomythus aka Mythopoeia
To one who said that myths were lies and therefore worthless, even though ‘breathed through silver.’ You look at trees and label them just so, (for trees are ‘trees’, and growing is ‘to grow’); you walk the earth and tread with solemn pace one of the many minor globes of Space: a star’s a star, some matter in a ball compelled to courses mathematical amid the regimented, cold, inane, where destined atoms are each moment slain.
He eventually turns Lewis’s words back against his straining skepticism:
He sees no stars who does not see them first of living silver made that sudden burst to flame like flowers beneath an ancient song, whose very echo after-music long has since pursued. There is no firmament, only a void, unless a jewelled tent myth-woven and elf-patterned; and no earth, unless the mother’s womb whence all have birth.
The heart of Man is not compound of lies, but draws some wisdom from the only Wise, and still recalls him. Though now long estranged, Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed. Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned, and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned, his world-dominion by creative act: not his to worship the great Artefact, Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light through whom is splintered from a single White to many hues, and endlessly combined in living shapes that move from mind to mind. Though all the crannies of the world we filled with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build Gods and their houses out of dark and light, and sowed the seed of dragons, ’twas our right (used or misused). The right has not decayed. We make still by the law in which we’re made.
Space does not permit the whole of the poem here. But Tolkien’s indictment of a naturalistic anthropology is powerful:
I will not walk with your progressive apes, erect and sapient. Before them gapes the dark abyss to which their progress tends if by God’s mercy progress ever ends, and does not ceaselessly revolve the same unfruitful course with changing of a name.
I will not treat your dusty path and flat, denoting this and that by this and that, your world immutable wherein no part the little maker has with maker’s art.
I bow not yet before the Iron Crown, nor cast my own small golden sceptre down.
The nighttime conversation, and apologetic connection over words and friendship, that led him to write this poem were not for naught. Three days later (September 22, 1931), Lewis recounts for his friend, Arthur Greeves, the evening and how it affected him:
We began on metaphor and myth—interrupted by a rush of wind which came so suddenly on the still, warm evening and sent so many leaves pattering down that we thought it was raining. We all held our breath, the other two appreciating the ecstasy
of such a thing almost as you would. We continued (in my room) on Christianity: a good long satisfying talk in which I learned a lot: then discussed the difference between love and friendship—then finally drifted back to poetry and books.
The impact of that evening is made clearer in a follow-up letter to Greeves, dated October 1, 1931: “How deep I am just now beginning to see: for I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ— in Christianity. I will try to explain this another time. My long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a good deal to do with it.” We might rightly surmise Lewis spent the rest of his life trying to explain it.
Just as that evening sparked poetry from the fire of Tolkien’s passion for his friend’s conversion, it would several years later (1937/38?) cause the held breath of Lewis to release in a poem that is engraved on a brass plaque along the footpath of Addison’s Walk to this day:
I heard in Addison’s Walk a bird sing clear:
This year the summer will come true. This year. This year. Winds will not strip the blossom from the apple trees This year, nor want of rain destroy the peas.
This year time’s nature will no more defeat you, Nor all the promised moments in their passing cheat you. This time they will not lead you round and back To Autumn, one year older, by the well-worn track.
This year, this year, as all these flowers foretell, We shall escape the circle and undo the spell.
Often deceived, yet open once again your heart, Quick, quick, quick, quick!—the gates are drawn apart.
My love for the writing of Tolkien and Lewis is not trussed to a naïve denial of the significant theological differences I have with the former’s Romanism, or the latter’s doctrinal anomalies, here and there. There is, after all, more than plenty of Plato in Lewis. Yet, that Lewis was as evangelically oriented as he was in the context of a spreading liberalism and skepticism of the
last century is significant. I am profoundly thankful for both Van Til and Lewis. I do not look to the latter as my paragon of systematic theology. I do look to him, however, grateful that he looked at his brother Warnie’s biscuit tin moss garden as a little boy, and there was born the tiniest of sparks that would one day flash across his expanding mind, a world that once had something inside the stable that was bigger than the whole world. Read The Last Battle. Or visit the aforementioned story of Jill at the stream in The Silver Chair, and you may wonder if Lewis was slipping into something close to a doctrine of irresistible grace. Whatever the case, though prose, it feel poetic and strikes a Van Tilian chord when he writes:
I was taught at school, when I had done a sum, to “prove my answer.” The proof or verification of my Christian answer to the cosmic sum is this. When I accept Theology I may find difficulties, at this point or that, in harmonizing it with some particular truths which are imbedded in the mythical cosmology derived from science. But I can get in, or allow for, science as a whole. Granted that Reason is prior to matter and that the light of the primal Reason illuminates finite minds, I can understand how men should come by observation and inference, to know a lot about the universe they live in. If, on the other hand, I swallow the scientific cosmology as a whole, then not only can I not fit in Christianity,
but I cannot even fit in science. If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on bio-chemistry, and bio-chemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees. And this is to me the final test. This is how I distinguish dreaming and waking.
When I am awake I can, in some degree, account for and study my dream. The dragon that pursued me last night can be fitted into my waking world. I know that there are such things as dreams: I know that I had eaten an indigestible dinner: I know that a man of my reading might be expected to dream of dragons. But while in the night mare I could not have fitted in my waking experience. The waking world is judged more real because it can thus contain the dreaming world: the dreaming world is judged less real because it cannot contain the waking one. For the same reason I am certain that in passing from the scientific point of view to the theological, I have passed from dream to waking. Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religions. The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself. I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else [Emphasis mine]
The Worth of Words for Pastor-Theologians
Iactually think we are sitting on a golden opportunity in the training of candidates for various forms of ministry. By golden, I mean with reference to Proverbs 25:11–13. That our words in the church would be apples of gold in settings of silver is a far cry from lies breathed through silver. This biblical, covenantal, Reformed way of looking at the nature of languages, of words, is a full-front assault on the Nietzschean notion that truth is:
A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory
to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.
Indeed, there must be objectivity in predication, not only for the affectional power of words, but for anything to be said of predication, whatsoever. Even Jean-François Lyotard’s (1924–1998) denial of le grand récit in La condition postmoderne: rapport sur le savior, depends on the very objectivity in predication it seeks to avoid. Ministers today are thrust into the vacuous spaces of our cultural moment, in which we almost unavoidably, it would seem, breathe the air of Jaques Derrida (1930–2004):
Every sign, linguistic or nonlinguistic, spoken or written (in the usual sense of this opposition), as a small or large unity, can be cited, put between quotation marks; thereby it can break with every given context, and engender infinitely new contexts in an absolutely nonsaturable fashion. This does not suppose that the mark is valid outside its context, but on the contrary that there are only contexts without any center of absolute anchoring. This citationality, duplication, or duplicity, this iterability of the mark is not an accident or anomaly, but is that (normal/abnormal) without which a mark could no longer even have a so-called “normal” functioning. What would a mark be that one could not cite? And whose origin could not be lost on the way.
Vern Poythress counters with an utterly Godcentered, trinitarian, and tri-perspectival approach to language:
Meaning is related to the fact that God knows everything (God’s “omniscience”). Control expresses the fact that God has boundless power and rules over everything (God’s “omnipotence”). Presence says that God is present everywhere—his “omnipresence.” Using these three aspects, we can trace the implications of the character of God for thinking about language.
This leads me to three theses I’d like to offer for consideration.
1. By the power of the Word, the truth stands on the power of words. The Person of the Logos, the eternal Word of the Father, is the proof of objectivity in predication, which speaks of truth, beauty, and goodness. The opportunity of which I speak for pastor-theologians is to recognize that words create worlds. Jesus is proof. The Word is the Creator of the world (John 1:3; Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:2). We, his vice-regents, participate in the creation of worlds, as it were, that declare, demonstrate, defend, and delight in truth, beauty, and goodness. We are his word-wielding creatures.
Their September saunter was a meandering on metaphor and myth.
2. Bearing God’s image means we are word workers. That man is created Imago Dei is why he cannot but be a purveyor and recipient of words. Calvin’s doctrine of the sensus divinitatis explains why we with words frame and understand the pieces of the worldview puzzle—theology, anthropology, epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics, all of which flow into and out of our experience and explication of truth, beauty, and goodness. Because we are not merely accidental bags of biology, words matter. They have power. William Blake (1757–1827) lamented the power of classic poetry, such as Homer’s Iliad, “The classics, the classics! …that desolate Europe with wars!” Yet, as Robert Fagles (1933–2008) insists, we see also compassion in Homer’s metrics. The very students of Homer’s epic about war, pettiness, competition, and the human condition were among those engaged by the Apostle Paul on Mars Hill, who himself recognized the power of words for men created in God’s image.
3. We are invited to the end of all words. This conversation about words, with words, means that, in a certain sense, every expression of the good, the true, and the beautiful resonates with our longing for home, where we will hear the most beautiful of all words in the New Heaven and New Earth:
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people,
and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:3–4).
In light of the above theses, the opportunity before us could be to introduce a study of poetics in ministerial training. To expose pastor-theologians to the power of prose and poetry would fill a lacuna. What if pastortheologians had on their desks, at the ready, when studying and preparing sermons and lectures, a copy of The Oxford Book of English Verse?
Should we become students of words—beautiful words? Well, as students of the Word, there is a poet whose lyric suggests a world where the good, the true, and the beautiful are set before our baptized imaginations, as Lewis describes his experience of reading George MacDonald (1824–1905). Lewis in the very last days of his life wanted only to turn his attention to translating Virgil’s Aeneid, yet his little book Reflections on the Psalms calls our attention to the hymnal of the Old Testament people of God. And in that songbook, a poet turns our eyes to the Poet, who alone can satisfy the human heart—Yahweh, of whom it is so beautifully said:
I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live: I will sing praise to my God while I have my being.
My meditation of him shall be sweet: I will be glad in the Lord
Let the sinners be consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more. Bless thou the Lord, O my soul. Praise ye the Lord. (Psalm 104:33–35 KJV)
David O. Filson serves as the President’s Professor of Apologetics and Systematic Theology. He is the Interim Senior Pastor at Christ Presbyterian Church (PCA) and Head of Spiritual Life for Christ Presbyterian Academy in Nashville, TN. His PhD dissertation (WTS) focused on post-Princetonian developments in theological epistemology, with a special emphasis on the thought of Cornelius Van Til and J. Oliver Buswell.
Beauty Always Beckons
PIERCE TAYLOR HIBBS
Come back. Come in. Come ever onward. The world’s a spinning coin of glory: To each the sound, to each the story, To each the color, breath, and byword. Beauty bleeds through days and seconds, A holy honey in the land of living. We taste and see the good of giving By a God who bends and beckons.
Beauty always beckons. It calls to us from an unseen depth. I believe the Irish poet John O’Donohue shared the conviction:
When we experience beauty, we feel called. The Beautiful stirs passion and urgency in us and calls us forth from aloneness into the warmth and wonder of an eternal embrace. It unites us again with the neglected and forgotten grandeur of life. The call of beauty is not a cold call into the dark or the unknown; in some instinctive way we know that beauty is no stranger. We respond with joy to the call of beauty because in an instant we awaken under the layers of the heart a forgotten brightness.
Charles Taylor draws attention to our “forgotten brightness” in Cosmic Connections, where he explores the beauty that poets have chased after, especially in nature. In reflecting on their work, he says, “We need a relation to the world, the universe, to things, forests, fields, mountains, seas, analogous to that we have to human beings we love and works of art; where we feel ourselves addressed, and called upon to answer.” We seek a conversation through beauty, a holy dialogue. Beauty addresses us, and we answer back. There’s always a call and response.
In worship of the beckoning God, I aim to do three things in this article: (1) provide a God-centered definition of beauty; (2) suggest the role that beauty plays in Christian apologetics as an indirect method; and (3) present examples of how beauty “beckons” us in the realm of poetry.
What Is Beauty?
It’s best to start with definitions. But you would be surprised how many writers avoid this with “beauty.” The concept is like Mt. Everest, so grand that its
peak pierces the cloudline and stays out of view. Writers often prefer to talk about how beauty affects us rather than what it is. Roger Scruton, for instance, says, “We call something beautiful when we gain pleasure from contemplating it as an individual object, for its own sake, and in its presented form.” This is true, but what is beauty?
At the outset of Beauty: A Very Short Introduction, Scruton offers a series of platitudes we might use to determine whether or not something is beautiful— for instance, whether it “pleases us” and whether we appreciate it “as a thing in itself” and not merely something to be used to achieve another end. We call a rose “beautiful,” for example, not because we want to use it to get something else but because it draws us to itself. “My pleasure in beauty,” he writes, “is therefore like a gift offered to the object, which is in turn a gift offered to me.” This gift-giving and receiving is all well and good. But again, what is beauty?
I’m not content only to call it an “experience” or a “category,” but we do need to have some sense of definition. For starters, when we define words, all we’re really doing is relating what we don’t know to what we do know. Definitions are about relationships. And so in trying to define beauty, we’re attempting to relate it to something else we know. The psalmist actually does that for us in Psalm 27:4, “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.” To gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to “inquire in his temple” is to be with God, in his house. More specifically, to gaze upon the beauty of God is to gaze upon his presence. Thus, for the psalmist, beauty is God’s personal presence. It captivates. It enraptures. It overwhelms. And it satisfies our deepest longing. As Vern Poythress puts it, “in seeking communion with God, the psalmist is also seeking the beauty of God.” Beauty is unimpeded divine presence, or at least what glimmers we perceive on this side of paradise.
The poet David Whyte once described beauty in similar terms:
Beauty especially occurs in the meeting of time with the timeless; the passing moment framed by what has happened and what is about to occur, the scattering of the first spring apple blossom, the turning,
spiraling flight of a curled leaf in the falling light; the smoothing of white sun-filled sheets by careful hands setting them to air on the line, the broad expanse of cotton filled by the breeze only for a moment, the sheets sailing on into dryness, billowing toward a future that is always beckoning, always just beyond us. Beauty is the harvest of presence.
Perhaps Whyte is talking about the harvest of time— where somehow the past, present, and future all seem to meet and mingle for a rare moment. What was gathers to what is and whispers of what will be. But even there, isn’t it striking how God describes himself in Revelation with the same trinity of terms: the one who was and is and is to come (Rev. 4:8)? Beauty is the unimpeded presence of the one who holds the past, wields the present, and directs the future. But this glorious rabbit hole runs deeper still, to the trinitarian nature of God. The Trinity, it turns out, has everything to do with beauty. As Vern Poythress wrote recently, “The harmony among the persons of the Trinity is the ultimate beauty.”
Trinitarian Beauty
Start with the truth that God is his own community: Father, Son, and Spirit. Community, relationship, and love are central to who he is. All acts of love we’ve experienced have emerged from the threshold of God’s holy and timeless self-giving fellowship.
In the eternal fellowship of Father, Son, and Spirit, there is ceaseless love and boundless personal knowledge. Love entails self-giving (as we can infer from John 3:16), so the Father, Son, and Spirit are constantly giving themselves to each other as unreserved and beautiful gifts. Every moment, the divine persons are opening the wonder of each other. It’s eternally Christmas in the Godhead. But with that self-giving is the complete and exhaustive knowledge of each other, which they all share as the one God. We’re told that the Spirit searches the deepest fathoms of the Father, setting the treasures before the Son (1 Cor. 2:10–11). In fact, Paul says a few verses later that the Spirit we receive helps us interpret spiritual truths. But if truth is what the Spirit gathers in the fathoms of the Father, then he’s ultimately gathering the Son, who is the truth (John 14:6)!
In short, deeply personal love and knowledge burn
in the center of God. There is nothing held back in the Godhead’s giving, nothing unknown, and nothing impersonal. As Cornelius Van Til put it, “within the Trinity there is completely personal relationship without residue.”
For the psalmist, beauty is God’s
personal presence.
Thus, living in relation to the God who knows and loves himself perfectly also means living in relation to beauty. We defined beauty as the presence of God. That’s what the psalmist pined after. But in many ways we’ve lost this pining in the modern West. Ironically, we still pine for something given the name of beauty. After all, whom do you know who would not want to behold beauty—through a person, a song, a landscape, a picture, a story? Beauty will always draw us. It will always beckon us. The problem is that many people have detached beauty from its deeply personal trinitarian roots. They pick flower heads and gaze at petals while leaving the animating life in the ground. Charles Taylor would say this is what happens in a secular world when impersonal law and order rule the day and the personal God is forgotten. There has been in the West what he calls an “anthropocentric shift.”
Things have become so human-centered in the West that God seems like an old myth we only tell children until they come of age and see for themselves how void the world is of God’s presence. That is a terrifying tragedy, and it’s false. The world is and always will be God-centered. There’s nothing we can do to change that. And so beauty, no matter how hard we try, can’t ever be fully torn from the Trinity. In fact, that’s why beauty is powerful in the first place: it’s an echo of the overwhelming presence of God. Beauty is not just a beckoning; it’s a beckoning by the Trinity
More to Beauty
Perhaps this definition of beauty as divine presence seems vague and abstract. Let’s put more detail into the definition.
First, beauty is gratuitous, reflecting the eternal gratuity and self-giving of the Trinity.
Second, beauty is objective; it’s “really there,” just as God is. Beauty isn’t so much “in the eye of the beholder” as it is “before the eyes of the beholder.” It’s there, and we’re forced to respond to it. Scruton said, “beauty demands to be noticed; it speaks to us directly like the voice of an intimate friend. If there are people who are indifferent to beauty, then it is surely because they do not perceive it.”
Third, beauty is expressed in difference and distance. As Poythress has written in Making Sense of the World , “Beauty always involves both unity (the commonality in harmony) and diversity (the distinction between two or more things between which the harmony exists).” The diversity and difference in the
world depend on and reflect the unity and diversity of God. This component of beauty may strike us as strange at first glance. We think of difference and distance as negatives, but distance and difference are actually good things. And they are good things because of who God is.
Think of it in simple terms. Isn’t it good, isn’t it beautiful, that you and I are different from each other? And in the Godhead, isn’t it beautiful that the Father is not the Son but is distinct from him (though they share the same essence)? Or that the Spirit is not the Father or the Son? Difference, distinction, and distance aren’t negatives; they help us distinguish one thing or person from another. And that is good. It’s this very difference, distinction, and distance (rooted in God himself) that makes way for creation: a realm different and distant
from God, and yet God dwells with it. What’s more, difference and distance lay the foundation for presence and communion. Without difference or distinction, there could be no communion because there wouldn’t be different beings, different persons. All would be one essential blob.
Fourth, beauty is desirable, but not in a possessive way. We desire to share in what is beautiful without trying to control or take possession of it.
Fifth, beauty goes across boundaries. Beauty doesn’t “stay in one lane.” It goes across the barriers of tribe, tongue, and nation; it breaks through the borders of one culture’s preference and spills into others.
So, adding to the root definition of beauty as “the presence of God,” we might add these notions of gratuity, objectivity, difference, desire, and boundary-crossing.
When we say that something is “beautiful,” we’re actually saying that it somehow reflects the presence and character of the Trinity.
Jonathan King in The Beauty of the Lord argues in addition that beauty is “an intrinsic quality of things which, when perceived, pleases the mind by displaying a certain kind of fittingness.” That last word is key: fittingness. By this he means that “beauty is discerned via objective properties such as proportion, unity, variety, symmetry, harmony, intricacy, delicacy, simplicity, or suggestiveness.” Something beautiful is fitting or appropriate in some way. So, we could add “fitting” to our definition.
David Covington, on the other hand, questions whether beauty is the best term to use in our discussions, since it “as a premise, overlooks the ugly, the degraded, the repugnant.” That’s a problem for Christians since “Scripture wraps its chief aesthetic statement in mystery; the repulsive crucifixion stands as the centerpiece.” John Piper would seem to concur: “At every point, Christ
proves superior, and at the most important moment in history, the beauty of Christ shines most brightly as the ugliest being is undone by the greatest act of beauty.” That greatest act of beauty is the cross. If this is true, then our understanding of beauty needs to not only capture what draws us in, but what might repulse us and yet still be supremely valuable. If the cross is the centerpiece of a biblical account of beauty, then we need to include the spiritual purpose of things when assessing their beauty. In that sense, the cross may appear hideous, but it carries the most beautiful purpose in history: to bring people back into communion with God.
Now it seems I’ve complicated our nice, simple definition of beauty as the presence of God. But I’m not so sure. If I say “beauty is the presence of God,” then we need to keep in mind who God is as the Trinity. And isn’t the triune God all of these things?
• Gratuitous: The Father gratuitously gives himself to the Son and Spirit in love. The Son does likewise to the Father and Spirit; as does the Spirit to the Father and the Son. God is always giving himself to himself, but he’s also constantly giving himself to his creatures in the countless blessings and beauties of creation and redemption. The Trinity is gratuitous in the highest sense.
• Objective: The Father, Son, and Spirit are the objective, personal reality that stands behind and upholds creation at every moment. Without the triune God, we have no objectivity, since all things would be lost in a swirl of chance—what Van Til would call “pure contingency,” a place where anything and everything happens “just because.” That would violate the existence and meaning of everything. Van Til wrote, “As the absolute and independent existence of God determines the derivative existence of the universe, so the absolute meaning that God has for himself implies that the meaning of every fact in the universe must be related to God.” Exhaustively objective truth lives in the Trinity.
• Different: Even the concept of difference comes from the Trinity, as already noted. The three divine persons share one essence. God can only create using the resources he has in himself. That does not mean creation is divine in any sense, but that the good things given in creation are never detached from the Giver. If there is to be difference
in his creation, that difference or distinction must somehow be inside him, but on a Creator’s level (rather than a creaturely level). The Trinity is where difference originates. Distinction within God is the archetype for ectypal differences in creation.
• Desirable: Of course, the Trinity is the greatest object of desire because we are “disposed for communion” with God in every sphere of life, as Geerhardus Vos put it. But this God is the God who communes with himself in three persons. We desire to commune with the God of communion. And this situates all holy desire in the context of personal relationships—not merely as impulsive longings we strive to satisfy. The Trinity is the house of desire. It’s where our desires are born, and where they go to live.
• Boundary-crossing: The Trinity is the one who crossed boundaries to create—the Father uttering the Word in the power of the Spirit. But even before that, the personal “boundaries” distinguishing the Father, Son, and Spirit don’t keep the other divine persons out. The Father, though distinct, is in the Son, who is in the Spirit. In the Trinity, personal boundaries are crossed without those boundaries being violated. In fallen creation, God crosses the boundaries we put up in calling to himself one people of every tribe, tongue, and nation (Rev. 7:9).
• Fitting: The Trinity is fitting both internally and externally. Internally, it is fitting or appropriate for the Father to be “eternally unbegotten,” for the Son to be “eternally begotten,” and for the Spirit to “eternally proceed” from the Father and the Son. This grounds the work of God in history, such that it is fitting for the Father to plan redemption, the Son to be sent for our salvation, and the Spirit to proceed from him and the Father so that God might dwell in his people.
• Purposeful: The Trinity is the purpose-giver. The Father, Son, and Spirit have a comprehensive purpose with reference to themselves (to love and glorify one another for eternity) and to creation. And, as Van Til said, “without a comprehensive purpose, every act of purpose on the part of man would be set in a void.” Every purpose in existence, from a stone in a stream to the Son on a cross, emerges from the Trinity.
In short, we can still say that beauty is the beckoning presence of the triune God. We just need to understand how rich the phrase “triune God” is. When we say that something is “beautiful,” we’re actually saying that it somehow reflects the presence and character of the Trinity. This aligns with the conclusion of my friend and former teacher William Edgar, who says beauty “means being conformed to all that is involved in a living, grace-filled, covenant relation to God the creator and redeemer.” God’s presence is a call to conformity. It is a beckoning. It requires our response in relationship to him. Where that call, that beckoning, is not present, neither is beauty. For beauty always beckons.
The Place of Beauty in Reformed Apologetics
Now that we have some sense of what beauty is— the beckoning presence of the triune God—we come to the question of its use in apologetics. Where does beauty fit amidst the feuds of logic and the clamour over worldview coherence? I ask this as someone committed to a Van Tilian approach.
In his lecture “Van Til Goes Pop,” Daniel Strange asks, “How are we doing in broadening the ‘bandwidth’ of apologetics in the Van Tilian tradition to deal with late modern culture and in particular ‘popular culture’?” As a student of Van Tilian apologetics, I learned the importance of “the transcendental method” and how to find logical inconsistencies in the arguments of those who oppose the Christian faith. I learned how to interpret, deconstruct, and reconstruct arguments. I learned how to articulate the Christian faith as the only logically defensible position. And I learned how my values and behavior should align with my deeper convictions. All of this is wonderfully helpful and biblically mandated if we are to present a reason for the hope that is in us (1 Peter 3:15).
But here’s the problem from late modern and popular culture: What if someone isn’t moved by logic and argumentation? What if someone huffs at the idea that his behaviors should match his deeper convictions? What if, in response to the sensitive and brilliant transcendental approach to godly life and faith, someone offers the dreaded three-word response: “I don’t care”? What then?
We may want to say, “Well, good luck and good riddance! We tried.” While it’s true that people are always fully responsible for their sin, this approach doesn’t exude empathy and love. We need to do more. But does Van Til’s apologetic have anything to offer people who aren’t overtly focused on the logical coherence of their worldview? As Daniel Strange put it, “How can those in the Van Tilian tradition communicate effectively and get apologetic traction in a late modern culture that does not lead with the intellect, but with emotion, desire, and imagination?” I aim to answer that question by applying Van Til’s method to beauty. The key is using the transcendental method with emotions and experience instead of logic. I focus particularly on our encounters with beauty.
Van Til must have seen this as a possibility. He once wrote that God was “the source and criterion of truth, goodness and beauty.” And he noted that poets and artists rely on the Logos of creation and redemption to harness the powers of symbolism. “Without a revelational foundation,” he said, “all symbolism and all art in general would fall to the ground.” If the source and criterion of beauty reside in God, and if God upholds all of the world by his word (Heb. 1:3)—the very world upon which poets and artists stand to create things of beauty—then God must be central to our discussions of beauty.
But how do we proceed from here? It would hardly do to shout at beauty enthusiasts, “You must presuppose God to love anything beautiful!” There may be truth to that, but it seems to leave out the central strength of beauty as an apologetic. If beauty always beckons, then beauty is an invitation, perhaps an indirect one, to the truth and goodness of God. We don’t shout invitations; we extend them. We offer people a way in. This is an indirect approach that may have more traction in our time than direct rational argumentation.
Beauty: Entering Into Presence
C. S. Lewis gets at this in his essay “The Weight of Glory.” He starts with a more open admission: we all carry an unspoken secret. He says, “The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and
reality, is part of our inconsolable secret.” In other words, we carry the secret that we’re outsiders. And our greatest fear is to remain outsiders,
repelled, exiled, estranged, finally and unspeakably ignored. On the other hand, we can be called in, welcomed, received, acknowledged. We walk every day on the razor edge between these two incredible possibilities. Apparently, then, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honor beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache.
Ah . . . the longing to be inside. Isn’t that often the call we experience with beauty? The psalmist longed to enter into the temple and dwell in the presence of God. When I stare at the verbal depiction of Aslan’s country in The Silver Chair, I want to go there, to be in the landscape. When I listen to the soft melodies of the Italian pianist Ludovico Einaudi, I want to inhabit them somehow, to live in the notes, to dress myself in them. I feel the same way when I look at Thomas Cole’s View on the Catskill–Early Autumn. The vanilla-blue sky at the horizon seems to run headlong into eternity. I want to get in there.
Have you felt this way when you experienced something beautiful? Lewis did. “We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.” Yes—that’s it. We want to pass into it, to fully receive it. The trouble is,
At present, we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.
Beauty is all about getting in. As an apologetic method, beauty allows us to stand and stare, or listen, or taste, or touch, or smell, and say, “God, how do I get more of this? How do I get in?”
And Christ is the key, our way in. He not only called himself “the door” (ἡ θύρα, John 10:9); he was the fully embodied presence of God among us. In Lewis’s image, Jesus is “the right side of the door” turned toward us. As the beautiful Son of God, Jesus leads us to something hideous—the cross—so that we might find the depth of beauty in the unimpeded presence of God. As David Covington wrote, “The power of beauty is the power of the cross. Repentance and faith bring us to true beauty. Beauty as an ideal does not bring us salvation; God uses his own beauty, his own truth, and his own power to bring us to himself.” In the cross, Jesus brings us back to God himself: the source of all beckoning in beauty. Through Christ, and through him alone, we get in to the beauty that surrounds us.
How, exactly? There’s no shortage of mystery here. But we can at least say that Christ as the Son of God is the embodiment of God’s beauty, God’s presence. And so if we have union with him, then we have an unbreakable, Spiritforged bond to the source and sustainer of all things beautiful. All things.
In one of my favorite poems, Gerard Manley Hopkins writes,
All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.
Every fiber and fleck of beauty we experience in this life has been fathered-forth by the one whose beauty is past change. And Christ, with his shepherd’s crook of truth, ushers us into communion with him.
It may be that we live in a world that isolates truth from beauty, that wants to experience things without being directed by things. But that’s a fantasy. As Covington wrote, “truth is powerless without beauty, and beauty is rudderless without truth.” We get both in Christ: the beauty of God and the truth of God. He is our way in. All we have to do is encourage people to “taste and see.”
Taste and See
The psalmist gave us an apologetic method for beauty when he said, “taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” (Ps. 34:8) There is great hope to offer others in that simple invitation: “Taste and see that the Lord is
good.” Let me end with two examples from the realm of poetry.
The first is a microcosm of life in four lines—slightly bitter but strangely sweet.
Many a wrong, and its curing song; Many a road, and many an inn; Room to roam, but only one home For all the world to win.
George MacDonald penned those words in his haunting work Phantastes. The words describe every human being who has ever lived or ever will live. Every life is riven with wrongs, but those wrongs, by grace, can teach and cure us. Their songs linger in the woods of the soul. As the curing songs follow us, we wander and seek rest in myriad mansions and motels—any place or person that will have us. And yet as we wander, although we have plenty of destinations, there is only one place we could ever crown with the title “home.” MacDonald later reveals that this home is a house of love, where lover and beloved stare face to face.
MacDonald’s lines, like a seine net, have caught many readers over the years. Some knew of what he spoke. Many didn’t (and still don’t). For those who want a way in to these words, we offer them the only door available: Christ. It is the grace of Christ that turns our wrongs into curing songs. It is the grace of Christ that grants us a home—a room in the heaven-house of God (John 14:2). To really get inside these words, we must walk through the threshold of Christ. And so we invite people: Taste and see.
Second, consider the delicate and prophetic lines from Jane Kenyon in her poem “Otherwise.”
I took the dog uphill to the birch wood. All morning I did the work I love.
At noon I lay down with my mate. It might have been otherwise. We ate dinner together at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed in a room with paintings on the walls, and planned another day just like this day. But one day, I know, it will be otherwise.
Kenyon’s “otherwise” was the haunting reality of her early death. She died of Leukemia in 1995. Her husband, the poet Donald Hall, would survive her by twenty-three years. She knew her otherwise was coming. But she also knew that every otherwise she enjoyed each day was a gift—what we would call grace
As the beautiful Son of God, Jesus leads us to something hideous— the cross—so that we might find the depth of beauty in the unimpeded presence of God.
How many of us are waltzing through our days in ignorance of what could be, of what losses might have met us rather than the gains we hold? How many of us are truly aware of the “otherwise”? Kenyon’s poem is a wakeup call for every reader. One day, we know, it will be otherwise. Are we ready to meet that, to enter that leveling mystery of humanity? There’s a way in—a door that goes beyond the eventual otherwise of life. And his name is Christ. It’s through him that our otherwise becomes a new story, a narrative of horizons: where earth and sky never fully meet. In Christ, our immortal journey begins. Lewis, again, saw the reality of this
because he knew the “otherwise” of death was not an ending for “ordinary” people.
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.
I never met Jane Kenyon. But if I had, I would have known that I was not meeting a mortal, hopelessly set for an otherwise of non-existence. She was destined for more. We all are. Which destiny we take up is decided by the sovereign grace of God, who controls every otherwise in the grand story he’s telling across the ages. It’s a story with Christ at the center, the Christ who, as Hopkins put it, “plays in ten thousand places.”
These are just two examples of tasting and seeing. There is no shortage of examples in our path everyday. The beauty we routinely encounter is always a beckoning: to Christ and the presence of the triune God. The way in is God’s door, the person of Jesus given for sinners so that they might stand in the beauty of the Trinity.
Conclusion: Beauty and Otherness
Let me end by noting something utterly lost on the world: the other-centered nature of beauty. Beauty is always an invitation, a call to taste and see that the Lord is good—not merely that “life is good.” As Andrew Klavan put it in The Truth and Beauty, “The meaning of Jesus’s life is the meaning of everything. His truth is truth. His right is right. His beauty is beauty.” The beauty we encounter in the world—be it literary, visual, aural, or tactile—points our lives toward the beauty of God, in every chapter, sentence, and phrase of our days. For, as Klavan reminds us, “Your soul is not a ghost in a machine; it is a story your life tells. We are just flesh, but flesh is a language, a word; it speaks of a meaning, right or wrong, good or evil, our selves, our souls.”
Our lives are speaking meanings. As we absorb and reflect the beauty around us, our response tells a story that others might be reading in us. And so our encounters with beauty are not ultimately about
ourselves. They are for others. This is the other-centered nature of beauty. Russ Ramsey wrote,
The pursuit of beauty requires the application of goodness and truth for the benefit of others. Beauty is what we make of goodness and truth. Beauty takes the pursuit of goodness past mere personal ethical conduct to the work of intentionally doing good to and for others. Beauty takes the pursuit of truth past the accumulation of knowledge to the proclamation and application of truth in the name of caring for others. Beauty draws us deeper into community. We ache to share the experience of beauty with other people, to look at someone near us and say, “Do you hear that? Do you see that?”
From an apologetic standpoint, we can also ask, “Do you want to get in there? Do you want to go deeper with me?” Our beckoning into beauty is no lonely endeavor; it is relational—just as the God of beauty is relational in himself.
Our world assumes beauty is all about us—what we encounter, what we enjoy, what we yearn for. But John O’Donohue was right: “In the light of beauty, the strategies of the ego melt like a web against a candle.” After the melting comes the true meaning: the triune God whose presence is always beckoning us into relationship with himself and into self-giving relationships with others. Beauty always beckons us away from ourselves and into the presence of the God who is building up his people one living stone at a time. In praise of all that he fathers-forth, we marvel and step toward the divine voice that beckons.
Pierce Taylor Hibbs (MAR, ThM Westminster Theological Seminary) serves as Senior Writer and Communication Specialist at Westminster Theological Seminary. He is the author of over 20 books, including the Illumination Award-winning titles Struck Down but Not Destroyed, The Book of Giving, The Great Lie, and One with God. He lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and three kids.
Living Art: The Beauty of God’s Word
EDMUND P. CLOWNEY
This piece from Edmund Clowney was originally delivered as a lecture in 1980 titled “Living Arts: Beauty and the Bible.” In it, Clowney draws out how the beauty of God’s creation is a reflection of his own beauty. Insofar as God’s creative work is revelatory of himself, it bears the marks of his character and being, including his beauty. More than that, God’s beauty is even more explicitly made known in redemption as well as creation. This is a much deeper and broader understanding of the concept of beauty when compared to that of secular aesthetics and its worldly conception of beauty, which is often arbitrary and subjective. The following article has been adapted and edited for clarity and concision.
B. McClean Smith
Iwant to talk about the matter of living art, and I would like to put it in a fairly wide perspective.
First, I want to point out that the way the word “beauty” is used in the Bible is much broader than its use in the history of aesthetics. I want to consider with you the matter of art in a somewhat deeper sense, in the sense of the heightening and the enriching of our human experience in fellowship with the living God. This is to be taken seriously because the religious root of all art is joy in God, our Creator, and the joy that we may also have in participation in his creation.
In Psalm 90, Moses writes with great power and
beauty, and he concludes with an amazing passage. Beginning with verse 13, Moses cries out,
Return, O Lord, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants. O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil. Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children. And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.
Evident in this passage is a theme that occurs throughout the Bible: the living God reveals his beauty. And we see that the living God calls us to live before him, participating in that revelation of his beauty.
Beauty in the Works of Creation
The living God reveals his beauty in his work of creation. God’s work of creation is sealed with God’s delight in that creation. In the book of Genesis, it is often repeated, “And God saw that it was good.” This speaks to us of God’s joy in his creation, God’s contemplating his creation and finding delight in the work of his hands.
We are reminded that there is visual beauty in God’s creation. In Genesis 2:9, we read, “And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden.” It’s not only good for food, but also a tree that’s good to look at. Now, a fruit bearing tree would not have to be good to look at. It would not have to be a pleasure and a delight to the eyes. But the Lord in his creation gives this aesthetic dimension to the trees. And even the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is described in these terms as being a delight to the eyes.
Later in the prophecy of Ezekiel, when he is discussing the kingdoms of this world and their glory, he compares a great kingdom to the flourishing of a tree like the beautiful trees of the Garden of Eden. This is an image that’s taken for granted by the later prophets, that God put man in a garden that was a place of beauty, that trees in that garden were trees of beauty.
Notice also the divine ordering of creation. Great emphasis is put on that in the first chapter of Genesis; God’s work in dividing: light from darkness, day from night, the waters from the waters in the creation of the firmament, the land from the sea. There is design in the structure of God’s creation. He creates the animals after their kind and prepares his creation with design. Men too are going to be designers in God’s creation, for why else would we be told that there is gold in Havilah? There are precious stones there, the same gold and precious stones that are later mentioned in connection with the making of the epaulets of the high priests’ ephod. So God stores creation with the material you see for artisanship.
Another theme in the creation account is the evidence
of abundance. There is a prolific provision for all of our needs. God creates a living, abounding, and abundant world. And in all of this, God rejoices, affirming the life he has made and pronouncing it very good. It is right for us to understand that as we are made in God’s image, we should be able to share in that vision of the satisfying beauty, wonder, and glory of the creation of God.
And God, who sealed with delight his work of creation, has also maintained it in judgment. Although man’s sin brings the curse into the world, the creation is spared. The garden itself is kept by the sword of the cherubim. The tree of life is preserved. There’s to be a new heavens and a new earth ultimately, and the creation is preserved and spared. And after the story of the flood, the earth is restored. The animals are preserved in pairs; the dove returns with the olive leaf as the sign of the new creation emerging after the judgment. A restored creation followed the flood, a renewing of life in the world.
God has charged man to be a culture maker.
Moreover, we have this theme of the restoration of God’s promise. God promises a new order of transcending glory. In the Old Testament, we observe how the prophets use the imagery of the Garden of Eden, the imagery of the glory of the original world that God has made, to describe what God will do at last. For at last, there will be the tree of life again. There will be the water of life flowing forth from the throne of God and the tree of life with the leaves for the healing of the nations. There will be a new order, all brought together in a beautiful way: a garden, a sanctuary, a city, and a wonderful unfolding and development of a fullness of a new creation.
New life abounds in the new order. The bounty of nature is described in terms of the blessings that God will at last pour out. For example, in Amos 9, we have the picture of the plowman overtaking the reaper, and those who are harvesting the grapes catching up on those who are sowing the seed, showing rapid growth there—a beautiful picture of how the Lord is the Lord of creation and how at last God’s blessing will rest upon his creation. That promise of blessing in creation is never
abstracted from God the Creator. He who made the world is the one who was going to come, and the trees of the field are the trees that clap their hands before the Lord because he comes. God’s coming is the secret of all of this glory of restoration.
Beauty in the Works of Redemption
It’s also true that we find in the Bible that God reveals his beauty not just in his work of creation but also in his work of redemption and salvation. This implies a long story of God’s calling to man and God’s covenant with man, the fact that man is put in the world as God’s image bearer, that he’s called to a personal fellowship with God, and that man, male and female, is called to corporate fellowship with God and service together in creation. And the call also comes to man after the fall. God comes seeking Adam in the garden. And to the sinner, the call of God is renewed out of God’s free grace and mercy. God spares; God restrains judgment. Especially in the line of Cain, God shows that his purposes are still being maintained: the earth is still being developed; there are those in the line of Cain who develop culture, such as Jubal, the father of all those who handle the harp and the pipe. God has charged man to be a culture maker.
Culture making is ascribed to men who develop the world that God has given them. God is sparing them with the purpose that he might bring in his great promises of salvation in order that there might unfold the great history of redemption that we have in Scripture. In his work of salvation, God calls men to himself and gives them the promise of his final and full deliverance and restoration. Psalm 90, the prayer of Moses, says, “let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us.” Now, that’s not only a beautiful prayer, but one that’s particularly striking in the setting.
Moses is writing as one who leads a generation that’s going to perish in the wilderness. And Psalm 90 presents with power that dreadful situation of Israel, how they are turned to destruction. God says to them in judgment, “Return, ye children of men.” They are turned back in order that they might be consumed in the desert. Because of God’s wrath they are troubled—as we would be, that God has set our iniquities before him, our secret sins in the light of his countenance. Moses describes this human existence in terms of brevity. Our life is like a
sigh, and it’s gone. He describes it in contrast to God’s eternity. But against this background, Moses prays for mercy. He says, “Return, oh Lord, how long?” not that men should be returned under judgment to death in the wilderness, but that God should return in grace and mercy and deliver his people. It’s there that the beauty of God might rest upon them and that the glory of God might rest upon their children. He prays, “Establish thou the work of our hands upon us.” Now, for a generation in the wilderness, what would the work of their hands mean? What cultural monuments would be left among the rocks of Sinai? How could the work of their hands be established? He prays that the work of their hands might be established by God, given eternal significance, praying that the beauty of God might crown him and his generation, that the beauty of God be given to these wilderness wanderers walking under the doom of destruction, that God’s grace will reverse the situation and give meaning and abiding beauty to these pilgrims.
Terms for Beauty
Now, many terms for beauty in the Old Testament are applied in various ways to God and his works. One class of such terms is the term for majestic beauty.
God dwells among his people in beauty. The tabernacle is constructed with beauty by skilled craftsmen, filled with the Holy Spirit and wisdom that they might make the tabernacle with skill and artistry. God, who comes to dwell in that place of beauty, is a God who descends in a cloud of glory, of majesty. One aspect of the beauty of God seen in the Old Testament is in terms of this majestic glory in Isaiah 60:19: “The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light to thee: but the Lord will be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory.” Here, that word is translated glory, but it’s sometimes translated beauty, the majestic glory, the beauty of God, like the beauty of the cloud. “In that day shall the Lord of hosts be for a crown of glory, and for a diadem of beauty, unto the residue of his people” (Isa. 28:5).
Other terms that are used in the Old Testament refer to the beauty of intelligent design, the kind of beauty that you find in the breastplate of the high priest. And this term is used for the works of the Lord in Psalm 90:16: “let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory
unto their children.” The word translated is glory. There is a word that is often associated with this beauty of design, such as in Psalm 96, “oh worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.” And that’s a difficult phrase to translate. It could be “holy array.” But it’s the idea of design, of having built together a patterning, which results in beauty. A majestic ceremonial display would sometimes be associated with this thought of the beauty of a display. The term itself has the thought of intelligent design.
The third class of terms for beauty are those which refer to the beauty of delight: that one person may find in another—a woman’s beauty, a man’s beauty, the beauty of a landscape. And we read in Psalm 27:4, “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to consider his temple.” The beauty of the Lord that’s used in this verse is this beauty of favor, grace, pleasantness, in which we find restful delight, and a thrilling perception.
So you have these terms for beauty: the beauty of majestic glory, of intelligent design, the beauty of delight and of fellowship, all used in relation to God.
The Beauty of God in Christ
Now, God dwelt with his people in the tabernacle, the God of glory, the God of the cloud, the God of the hangings woven skillfully, and the God of grace, who called his people to himself that they might bear his name. That God has come to dwell with us in Jesus Christ. He showed the beauty of his majesty in the transfiguration of Jesus Christ on the mountain. It’s that God who has shown the light of the knowledge of his glory in the face of Jesus Christ. As we come to Jesus Christ, we come to the Lord of glory. We come to the one who is filled with the light of the glory of God. And the beauty of holy array is the beauty of Jesus Christ, the priest of heaven who has all the wisdom of God. If God’s beauty, as a beauty of design, is a reflection of the divine wisdom and ordering of all things, then that comes to full manifestation in Jesus Christ, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
The beauty of grace is revealed in Jesus Christ. We’re told in Isaiah 4:2, “In that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious.” Over all, glory will be for a covering. And Jesus Christ, who is the branch, the root of David, the branch of God’s choosing, is the one who is
the branch of beauty and glory, the beauty and glory of grace. It’s this Jesus Christ of whom the prophet says he has no beauty that we should desire him, this Jesus Christ who is made so hideous in his sufferings that he seemed to be completely dehumanized on the cross, made to be a spectacle and dehumanized in his wounding. In that agony, in that suffering, he brings to us the fullness of beauty. Psalm 90 cries out, “Who knoweth the power of thine anger? Even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.”
And the answer given in the New Testament is that Jesus Christ does, upon the cross, “for he is made to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. 5:21).
And the one who is the King of beauty and grace, the one who is the fairest of 10,000 to our souls, in him, it is fulfilled: “Thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty” (Isa. 33:17). But the mystery of the Old Testament is that when we see the king in his beauty, first of all, we see him not in the beauty of resurrection glory, but we see him in his beauty as he suffers on the cross; as there his obedience is made perfect; as there his love is made perfect; as there he gives himself for his people.
I’m not speaking of that in an effort to draw general principles from it. I’m merely pointing out the fact that God, in the wonder of his glory, manifests the beauty of his grace, and the fact that Jesus Christ bears our sins in his own body on the tree. How then are we as the people of God to receive, to walk in, to perceive, and to manifest this beauty? The psalmist prays that this beauty might be upon us and that the work of our hands might be established upon us.
First we must perceive beauty. And our aesthetic experience responds, first of all, to the depth of wonder of God’s revelation. In our ethical life, we are called to love, but we are called to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. And we are called to love our neighbor as ourselves. And in our cognitive life, in our knowing, we are called to know the Lord, and then to know and to perceive, and to have wisdom in the world in which God has put us. And I would suggest that the same thing is true too in our aesthetic life. First of all, we are to rejoice in the Lord. We experience the very fountain of aesthetic delight in terms of our fellowship with God himself and the joy that we know in knowing him. There is this abounding fullness of God’s revelation. We are continually surprised by joy. There are always those extra perceptions forced in upon us from the richness and the fullness of God’s work in this world that he has created, the relation of form to function as we perceive it in the leap of a deer, the symmetry of an animal, the beauty of a flower. These things are driven home to the Christian continually as showing, layer upon layer, in a wonderful arabesque of richness—all the fullness of that which God has done. There’s always more.
As we perceive the richness, it’s not just that we see more quantitatively. We see and perceive also from new and different perspectives. There is a perception of richness that is at the same time a perception of simplicity: the multidimensional discovery that we make, as we look at God’s creation from yet another point of view, of a tremendous richness in plurality drawn together in a unity and harmony of design.
Living in the Beauty of God
And here I would like to make some observations about the meaning of living our daily life in this beauty of the Lord, a bringing to expression of this beauty in our fellowship before him.
Further, God’s beauty is reflected in creaturely creativity. Just as God works in such great abundance and with such richness of design, so he gives to us in a measure as his creatures to work richly and to work with profound implication in his creation.
And God calls us to doxological living. God calls us
to obedience with the depth of the dimension of praise. God calls us to a living of rejoicing in him. And God calls us to a rejoicing that is a rejoicing to the fullness and the richness of his creation, both the world out there, and in the sense of our own being and our new being in Jesus Christ. The fullness of our experience given to us by God becomes the medium in which we are called to be creative in God’s image.
All this reflection of beauty is part of the way in which we are enabled to serve the Lord God as Creator because of the richness of his creation. We can share this beauty with others as we work together and share it also before God, rejoicing in him. There is a heightening in producing. There is a heightening in receiving. And I don’t think that those who have written in the field of aesthetics—stressing the heightening and the intensification of experience—I don’t think that those comments are out of order. There is a certain heightening that’s involved in the aesthetic experience, a heightening involved with perceiving the richness and the depth.
I believe perceiving also that God-grounded reality in which all of this takes place, for the final allusion that delights the heart of the Christian is the allusion to God himself, to God’s presence, who is the Creator and Source from which the possibility of all our experience flows as new creatures in Christ Jesus. All experience in the world has to be derived from his creative ordinance. And then the matter of significance of vision and meaning is the way in which we apply and perceive this beauty as over against a mere formalism in art, or an approach to art that would just see a picture, a painting, for example, in terms of formal dimensions. We as Christians must see it in a broader context. We must take seriously the history of art, so that we perceive something of the meaning and understanding that people had who were creators of arts in other periods. We have to understand that we, as creatures of God, in the fullness of our experience, necessarily work in a context where there is a framework of depth of meaning.
You should consider what it means to receive from God the richness of experience in the world of his creation, the world for which God has given his word of the promise of a new creation, a world that’s given to us by Jesus Christ, our Redeemer. He calls us to serve him and to be his people. We do not make our joy, our delight in the Lord—even in its profoundest religious sense—the totality of our obedience, because the Lord God calls us to
serve him. He calls us to serve him in Christ’s kingdom. He gives us an order of priorities in the kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And in the order of priorities, we are given the marching order of our Lord and Savior in the Great Commission. And yet, while we do serve him in the Great Commission to carry the gospel to the ends of the earth, it is also true that that Great Commission, the fulfilling of all the commandments of Jesus Christ, requires of us not only that we respect priorities, not only that we seek and save that which is lost in Jesus’s name, but also that we fulfill all the fullness of God’s commandments, that we take seriously what it means to live before God in this world, returning the praise to our Creator that is his due. It isn’t just that we miss so much from life if we drop out, as it were, one dimension. It is not just that our life becomes stark and diminished. It’s that we owe to the Lord our God the fullness of a living joy before him, in which our attitude is continually one of grateful praise, blessing the name of our Creator for everything that he’s given us, delighting in it even as we go forward in his service. Moses prayed, “let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us” (Ps. 90:17). He prayed it as a blessing for life in the wilderness, and his prayer continues in Psalm 90, “establish thou the work of our hands upon us; Yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.”
My Christian friend, fill your hands with the work of the Lord, dedicate to him that which you do, whatever it is, whether it’s in words and deeds, whether it’s in paintings or words of gospel testimony, whether it’s in music or in dance—whatever you are doing, do it as unto the Lord. Do it with all your might and do it understanding that the Lord has called you to a life which, in the midst of suffering, is yet a life of joy, a life which while it proclaims the gospel to a generation dying in the wilderness can yet speak of the beauty of the Lord, a life which knows beauty not just in the God of creation, but in the suffering Savior who gave his life and rose again, that we might be brought to that last great feast in the house of God forever.
Edmund P. Clowney was President of Westminster Theological Seminary from 1966–1984. He authored numerous books, including Preaching Christ in All of Scripture, The Unfolding Mystery, and The Church
Christian Consciousness and Teaching Art to Children
NATHAN D. SHANNON
Cornelius Van Til believed that the goal of education was to “bring the growing personality . . . into the best possible relation to its environment.” And of course, whatever else we see and experience, God himself is our ultimate environment, for “in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). In Van Til’s terms, Christian education should bring the epistemological increasingly into harmony with the metaphysical. In other words, education should lead and encourage the student in the cultivation and enjoyment of mature Christian consciousness.
As we read in Confession 4.1, God created the world “for the manifestation of the glory of his eternal power, wisdom, and goodness.” And this makes sense. God is self-sufficient, glorious, and independent from all eternity. The first commandment, which prohibits having other gods before him, is simply the primary expression of this glorious independence of God into the moral life of the creature. And if all of creation insists upon recognition of God as God, how much more must the human being, a self-conscious bearer of the image of God, cultivate both himself and his world in his enjoyment and glorification of God. That is, man “was created in the image of God and he was to become more fully expressive of that image.” Van Til thus recognizes that in a special way the doxological purpose of creation is concentrated in the image-bearer. Education is implicated, and perhaps art education in particular, when we recognize the importance of consciousness in the self-realization of the human being in his doxological program. Van Til says that “man was to gather up into the prism of his self-conscious activity all the manifold manifestations of the glory of God in order to make one central self-conscious sacrifice of it all to God.”
Every component of human culture should
be the cultivation of the glory of God in the things that he has made. But the image-bearer, being self-conscious, self-aware, and will-driven, must also cultivate himself, in order to present himself as a living and spiritual sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God (Rom. 12:1). Education is the task of guiding and assisting young people in their own cultivation of the glorification and enjoyment of God, and training in the arts offers something special to this end.
Van Til hints at an example: “the flowers of the field glorified God directly and subconsciously, but also indirectly and consciously through man.” Flowers glorify God directly: that is, they glorify God without the interruption of discursive thought or the possibility of not glorifying God. They do not bother with how, when, or why to glorify God. They simply unfold according to the design of their kind and by the providence of God. As such, they declare the glory of God in a startling variety. And if providence is the bedrock of their effort, God glorifies himself in what he has made. The self-conscious creature—man—may examine these non-verbal songs of praise, and in response, exalt the Lord self-consciously. The sight of flowers will evoke in his heart a spontaneous, natural appreciation for all the creaturely elements—color, shape, dimension—and for the intentionality of the creator displayed through them. He will marvel, and to that inner aesthetic enjoyment he might add verbal expression: “How beautiful! Praise the Lord!”
The image-bearer may do something more. He may gather flowers together and arrange them. That is, he may cognize the elements and the relationships between them; he may propose various combinations, make assessments, and on purely personal, aesthetic grounds, he may judge one such product completely—artistically satisfactory, in other words. He thus converts his spontaneous aesthetic reactive glorification of God via his own self-conscious artistry into something richer, while simultaneously cultivating his own personal aesthetic potential unto the glory of the aesthetically maximal God. Tomorrow our faithful image-bearer may design another bouquet, perhaps a better one. After a few of these, he might move to a more sophisticated medium. As he refines his skill, he will distinguish the aesthetic elements from the flower, and perhaps develop pigments of his own design, made from the cultivation of other created materials. He may explore shapes and dimensions and the aesthetic potential of spatial relationships. He may decide to represent actual dimensions pictorially (to
reduce three dimensions to two), in order to manipulate them for aesthetic ends. And so the culture of aesthetic expression and experience flourishes by the exercise of joyful, self-conscious vice-dominion.
Art creation and enjoyment, and growth in aesthetic richness and sophistication, are righteous and godly callings of Edenic commission, and so also is the pedagogical perpetuation of that acquired richness, namely, art education. The blessing-commission of procreation implies the goodness of maintaining the accumulation of vice-kingly wisdom—that is, the bequeathal of cultural wealth. The design of the image-bearer, which is heralded in the cultural mandate, indicates that the individual is fulfilled in the corporate, and the corporate is expressed in the individual. That is, self-realization is as much a social goal as it is an individual one. In fact, the creation account of Genesis 1 makes no mention of individuals but only of a species, a male and female corporate organism that as a whole no less than as individuals is, displays, and exercises the image of God. Such is the balance of the individual and the corporate in Edenic anthropology; its righteous fulfillment would have tolerated “no monotonous repetition,” as Van Til notes. Instead, “there would be an inexhaustible variety.” In the society envisioned in Eden, “individuality would be at a premium,” and “no one could develop his individuality at the expense of others.” Implicit in Genesis 1 and 2, therefore, are programs for the production of art, the enjoyment of art, the building of art history and tradition, and the pedagogical celebration of a full artistic life.
In terms of curriculum, then, notice that art history and the practice of art are one. Art history is not just a story but rather the inculcation of a cumulative aesthetic culture, the primary expression of which is a twofold lived aesthetic: greater sensitivity in artistic experience and subtler artistic productivity. Clearly then if art history is the display of a corporate and cumulative aesthetic culture, it cannot be content with mere description. It requires the inculcation of aesthetics itself, in other words, training in the making and enjoyment of art.
The point here is that the beginning of the fine arts may be understood as plain and primal, but also profound and personal, affective appreciation of creation as such, as God’s handiwork. It takes Psalm 19:1–6 as its charter and undertakes to cultivate both external doxological phenomena and the internal aesthetic character of God’s image-bearer. So says Van Til:
If man was to perform this, his God-given task, he must himself be a fit instrument for this work. He was made a fit instrument for this work, but he must also make himself an ever better instrument for this work. He must will to develop his intellect in order to grasp more comprehensively the wealth of the manifestation of the glory of God in this world. . . He must will to develop his aesthetic capacity, that is his capacity for appreciation . . .
Naturally, the accumulation of this culture includes the incorporation of new members—children!—into that great stream of adoration for the glories of God in his handiwork. This incorporation includes the articulation of its content—art history—and the privilege of participation in a history of aesthetic practice and enjoyment— the creative task itself.
A positive Christian ethic and cultural vision begins from the recognition that in a manner of speaking the great commission (Matt. 28:19–20) is issued for the sake of the cultural mandate (Gen. 1:28–31). That is, the gospel celebrates not religious escape but the beginning of re-creation. Therefore, to be a Christian means “to think more of this world than anyone who is not a Christian could think of it.” Regeneration installs the mind of Christ in the new believer, and that mind sees its own virtues in the things that have been made, and says, “it is good.” However, while it is true that being a Christian activates the cultural outworking of re-creation, which is a distinctly positive program, nonetheless its first expression must be negative. There can be no resurrection without crucifixion. For this reason, while we wait for our Lord’s return, “the whole Christian church is based upon the antithesis idea.” Education must recognize that “everything is dark unless the current of God’s revelation be turned on.”
For the young person most especially, progress in art education is progress in self-understanding. The visual arts are inseparable from the development of personal taste and from the incorporation of one’s own work into a standing heritage. In the arts, things are generated by or with authorial meaning and are preserved by interpretive enjoyment. The development of individual skill is a basically personal, religious, or even spiritual undertaking, and the process of creative decision making is unquantifiable engagement with one’s self as a participant in cultural dialogue.
Art educator Susan Patton, author of Teaching Art from a Christian Perspective, says that when “a child first grasps a crayon and rubs it across the surface of a paper, he has . . . just made his first mark on the world!” The person and the personal are essential, and in an educational context which favors behaviorism, training in the visual arts is a powerful answer to the externalism of academic quantifiables, because in art more than in any other discipline, the person and the development of the person are front and center. Patton says, for example, that arriving at “conscious incompetence” is a key marker in art-learning. Art instruction, therefore, involves inculcating humility.
The Art Teacher’s Survival Guide, by H. D. Hume, opens with these encouragements: “We know why students so often look forward to their art classes: it is a change and it is fun!” “Research has shown that students who participate in the arts . . . perform better in other fields of study,” and “[a]rt is such a personal thing! If a student feels you do not approve of what he or she has made, it is almost as if you have said, ‘My, what an ugly face you have.’” How much more, we might say, will the Christian, reconciled by grace to the Creator, take joy in learning art; find personal fulfillment and growth through aesthetic development; and plumb, with the joy of the glorification of the Creator, depths of self-understanding and self-reflection otherwise difficult to reach.
East of Eden, the corporate aspect of art integration assumes that negative aspect along with the positive: “we are writing these things so that [y]our joy may be complete,” but that joy should not rest in worldly things: “do not love the world” (1 John 1:4; 2:15–17). Jacob Van Wyk puts this in practical terms with specific recommendations for a seventh and eighth grade art curriculum. He suggests that we “add more difficult and controversial works for the older kids . . . add nihilist works . . . pop/ conceptual works . . . that are more of a social critique.” That is: study overtly non-Christian art. To what end? Van Wyk says:
We want students to realize that contemporary people don’t all live among flowers and that they don’t all acknowledge God’s grace in this world. This would give teachers a chance to talk about common grace and realize that Christians and non-Christians alike produce beautiful/truthful things for us to contemplate and put in proper perspective.
Solomon requests of all things the ability to discern good from evil (1 Kings 3:1–9), and the writer of Hebrews says that “the mature” are “those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (Heb. 5:14). Isaiah characterizes evil itself as a distortion of this discernment, and even hints at an aesthetic side to it: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (Isa. 5:20). Personal growth in knowledge and holiness, no less than artistic growth, therefore, is encouraged by the art education envisioned here.
In sum, as the antithesis of atonement and the hope of resolution are allowed to mix with the original Edenic aesthetic vision, art and art education in particular can be of extraordinary value for Christian witness, Christian cultural self-understanding, and personal growth in the Lord.
Art education is, or it ought to be, training in the joy of grace and the stewardship of the inheritance of the sons of God. Indeed, a fuller participation in grace requires a fuller grasp of its contents. So says Louis Berkhof in his reflections on the significance of the covenant of grace for Christian education:
If the promises of God, which constitute the true riches of all the children of God, are to promote the real happiness and blessedness of their recipients, these must learn to understand the wide bearing of these promises and to know what treasures they include. Let us remember that, subjectively, we are no richer than our comprehension of what we possess, and that it is the true appreciation of our wealth which determines the measure of enjoyment derived from it.
In this sense, art education must call attention to the gifts of grace—the whole earth—but it must also inculcate gratitude and stewardship for the sake of participation in grace. When the riches of Abrahamic inheritance are unknown, the joy therein promised grows dim. Berkhof warns accordingly:
Many children of God are even today living in spiritual poverty, though they are rich in Christ and heirs of the world, because they have not been taught to see the greatness and splendor of their
spiritual heritage. If we do not want our children to live as paupers in the spiritual penury and want while untold riches of grace and mercy are at their disposal, we must employ all the means at our command to unfold before their very eyes the treasures of divine grace of which they are heirs in Christ Jesus.
We say that the child is spoiled who lacks this character of receiving well, because ingratitude is a positive offense against the grace and person of the giver. So Berkhof speaks of the “heavy responsibility” of handling faithfully such an inheritance. “The affluent man,” he says, “has a far greater responsibility than the man of small means,” since “he may not squander his wealth . . . he must invest it to the best advantage.” And this responsibility is bolstered by a need for prudence: “Inherited riches often become a curse for the recipient because he has not been trained in the proper administration and use of money. Through lack of training the whole inheritance is sometimes lost.” Likewise for the sons of God who are heirs of his kingdom.
Gloria Goris Stronks says, “A deep appreciation of the world around us, of music, of art, or of poetry will not make one become a Christian. But Christians who have developed a knowledge and appreciation of these aspects find that their faith deepens because they have richer ways of responding to their Creator.” It will not make one a Christian, but awareness of the negative/positive tenor of a renewed cultural mandate will draw one into a greater grasp of what it means to be a Christian. Says Calvin Seerveld, “Young Christians busy with art should come to know it as a holy business; they should know that they can practice art to show their love to God, to revel in the fact that God is King of the whole earth.”
Nathan D. Shannon (PhD, VU Amsterdam) is Associate Director of Global Curriculum and Assessment as well as Adjunct Professor of Apologetics and Systematic Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary. Previously, he taught systematic theology at Torch Trinity Graduate University in Seoul. He is also an ordained teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church in America.
The Language of Music
JAMES A. ALTENA
What is the place and role of music in the life and faith of a Christian? Most Christians conceive of music in two ways: within acts of worship as an adjunct means of offering praise and glory to God, and in secular life as a source of entertainment and relaxing diversion for leisure. In the Reformed tradition, there has been much heated debate over whether any texts other than Psalm texts may be sung in worship, and whether hymns must be sung a cappella or whether instrumental accompaniment (and purely instrumental pieces) may be employed. This article will not address those issues, however. Rather, I wish to reflect on the nature of music from a broader theological and philosophical perspective in the economy of creation and redemption, as a medium that has a profound and unique power to affect and shape the soul.
The Scriptures have virtually no references to music in a generic sense. There are slightly over one hundred references to song and singing, almost seventy of which occur in the Psalms; in addition, fifty-five Psalms have a supplemental directive, “To the chief musician [natsach],” generally believed to have been a cantor and choir director for the temple in Jerusalem. There are also slightly over fifty references to the harp and harpplaying for various purposes. In addition, there are single references to a song with instrumental accompaniment (Lam. 3:63), and to music for stringed instruments (Lam. 5:14), and general references to musical instruments (Eccl. 2:8), the playing of music (Dan. 3:5, 7, 10, 15), and musicians (Rev. 18:22). The large majority of these references occur in the Old Testament; most of these concern an offering either of praise or acclamation to God or a king, or a lament for the death of a person or the fall of a city. The few exceptions—Ecclesiastes 2:8 and some of the mentions of the harp—concern either prophetic speech, relief from torment by a malign spirit, military alarms, or music for pleasure (e.g., to accompany a festival or banquet).
The Scriptures, then, offer some examples and directives for the right use of music—though as Daniel 3 shows, music also can be misused in the service of idolatry. They also show that music has a unique power not only to express thoughts and feelings but also to shape them—in short, to move and form the soul (e.g., 1 Sam. 16:14–16, 23). However, the Scriptures are not explicit as to how and why this is possible, nor do they give further directives for proper application to
Christian thought and conduct of life. To address these issues, it is necessary to attempt to draw some broader inferences from theological principles based upon general rather than special revelation.
First, as the previously cited Scriptural references to music show, music is not simply a set of noises or sounds assembled together in an arbitrary sequence; instead, it is a medium for communication of meaning. This has profound implications, for it means that music is, somehow, a vehicle for transmission of truth or falsehood, and therefore that musical pieces also have, at least implicitly and to varying degrees, moral content and character. (Note that I am not speaking here of the lyrics to songs, which are words, but of music per se.) Against Docetism and Gnosticism, the Scriptures pointedly affirm that all five of the human senses—sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell (1 John 1:1; Rom. 10:17; Psalm 34:18; 2 Cor. 2:14; etc.)—are means within the realm of general revelation for discerning and knowing God. Yet the latter three of these five senses do not involve speech at all, while the first two do so only sometimes. That said, all sensory information must be interpreted by the rational mind in order for it to be comprehensible.
Second, in order to be able to convey meaning, music must have definite content and structure, or design. It is therefore also purposive—its creation and use have a definite goal and end. And, even in creatures such as birds that act by instinct rather than ratiocination, it is the product of living beings. (Mechanical or electronic devices that produce music of course do so only as human inventions.) For human beings, the ability to produce music, like the ability to speak, is an innate, God-given capacity. While only God creates ex nihilo and de novo, man creates analogically, in a secondary, derivative, and imitative sense, as being made in the image and likeness of God. And since God is the God of order and not of confusion, the creation of music (indeed, of all art) in a proper sense must be an orderly activity, ultimately directed to his praise and glory.
A key influence here is De musica of the early Christian philosopher Boethius (c. 480–524), which was the fundamental theoretical text on music in Christian civilization for a millennium. Boethius posited three different types or orders of music in the cosmos. Musica mundana (music of the worlds or spheres), to which he devoted most of his attention, is the harmonious interrelation of the movements of the sun, stars, planets,
cosmic elements, and seasons of time, according to arithmetical and geometrical laws. This not only manifests the order of God’s entire creation, setting forth his power and glory, but also comprises ordering principles for all lower beings and objects, and thus also has a moral character. Musica humana (music of mankind) is the internal harmony of soul and body in man, as a microcosm paralleling and reflecting by God’s design the macrocosm of the cosmos. Both of these are purely theoretical and hence inaudible. Musica instrumentalis (instrumental music), the lowest of the three, is the actually audible music that human beings derivatively produce by artificial devices, in imitation of the motions of the musica mundana and musica humana that move them as living spiritual creatures, to the praise and glory of God.
C. S. Lewis, a scholar both of Boethius and of the Renaissance humanists who theorized for an audible musica mundana, drew upon this tradition in having Aslan sing Narnia into existence in The Magician’s Nephew. While the particular schematic details of Boethius’s theory are no longer held, his broader general principles regarding music as an ordering principle with moral character, reflecting the being and nature of God, retain their validity.
The problem lies in supposing that music is a language in the same sense as Hebrew or Chinese or English. Instead, it is language in the broader sense—of a genus, not a species—that we speak of computer language(s) or of mathematics. Just as there are a multitude of spoken human languages and dialects, so too are there a plethora of particular musical languages. Likewise, just as all human languages have parts of speech and structural elements—consonants and vowels, syllables and words, phrases and sentences, and correct pronunciation, spelling, grammar, and syntax—that are used to construct utterances ranging from aphorisms to novels, music has its own counterpart elements— pitch, duration, timbre, rest, dynamics, intonation, tempo, meter, rhythm, phrasing, articulation, etc.—that form musical statements ranging from themes, songs, and instrumental movements to symphonies and operas.
Third, there has been much debate over whether or not music is a language. I believe that it is, but I also think that this affirmation often has been incorrectly framed. As those who deny this position point out, music per se cannot state or name specific concepts or things, as spoken languages do. Richard Strauss claimed to be able by musical means to “differentiate a knife and a fork”; but while a person listening to the Sinfonia domestica with Strauss’s program in hand can follow its detailed portrayal of scenes from the composer’s home life, someone listening to the work without such prior verbal guidance would have no idea what is being described.
A crucial question arises here: If music in and of itself cannot name or state specific things and concepts, what kind of meaning can and does it communicate, and how? I would argue that whereas spoken languages (and their written correlates) are ratiocinative, musical languages are affective—they speak primarily to the emotions and intuitions, rather than to the logical faculties. (These domain boundaries are not exclusive, of course. Spoken languages also communicate to such non-rational faculties, and music to human reason, but they do so secondarily and indirectly. As with sensory data, reason must be employed to understand affective communications.) Music’s capacity to express and convey meaning lies in its ability to move us deeply in both our bodily and spiritual natures, in ways and to depths and by means that rational verbal discourse alone cannot. Felix Mendelssohn wrote, “People often complain that music is so ambiguous that what they
are to think about it always seems so doubtful, whereas everyone understands words. With me it is exactly the reverse. . . . What any music I love expresses to me is not thought too indefinite to be put into words, but, on the contrary, too definite.” Similarly, Victor Hugo asserted, “Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.” More simply, Hans Christian Andersen said, “Where words fail, music speaks.” However, the capacity for a person to understand what a given piece of music has to communicate will depend upon that person’s comprehension of and fluency in its particular language; someone brought up on Western musical idioms will not immediately grasp the expressive import of Indian ragas, and vice-versa.
Since God is the God of order and not of confusion, the creation of music (indeed, of all art) in a proper sense must be an orderly activity, ultimately directed to his praise and glory.
This intense affective capacity for emotional meaning—to express, convey, and arouse emotional and intuitive responses—is what makes music such an important means for communication. It can trigger, heighten, or reduce feelings of love, joy, peace, longing, anger, or sorrow; it can stimulate energy or induce lassitude, focus or distract attention. Music thereby has the capacity profoundly to shape human moral character. On the one hand, we have the ability to arouse or forfend particular passions by the choice of the music we listen to, both on particular occasions and more habitually. On the other hand, precisely because music reaches and affects aspects of our being beyond our rational control, we must be vigilant about not exposing ourselves to hearing music that either may arouse sinful passions, or else arouse licit passions in inappropriate circumstances. The senses
have a power that can overrule reason; while Eve was tempted to sin by the deceitful words of Satan, her doom was sealed when she gazed on the forbidden fruit and found the sight enticing. To the ancient Christian principle of exercising “custody of the eyes” and averting our gaze from sights that arouse lust, gluttony, and greed, we should add one of “custody of the ears” with respect to similarly inappropriate speech and music. Against contemporary secular culture’s siren song of indiscriminate diversity and openness to every influence, we must “let all things be done to edification.”
A consideration of the effects of the Fall upon man’s nature is helpful for understanding the ability of music to affect us, both positively and negatively. Per classical orthodox theology, God as a being is a singular unity “without parts or passions,” but he created man as an integrated compound unity of material body and spiritual soul. In accordance with the broadly Reformed tradition, the soul is traditionally analyzed into three distinct faculties: the mind, the will, and the appetites (i.e., desires). God designed these to work in harmonious coordination in a descending hierarchy: The mind by the activity of right reason is to direct the will to obedience, and the will in turn to direct the appetites to their proper ends. In the Fall, however, the will was perverted to disobedience to God by the misuse of reason in order to gratify a misdirected appetite for illicit knowledge and power. Consequently, the three faculties became dis-integrated in post-Fall man, with the appetites and the will usurping the role of the mind in governing the conduct of man: the more depraved the appetites, the more corrupted the will and the more darkened the rational understanding.
Hence the power of music: while as a human art produced by deliberate design it addresses the rational mind with respect to its formal structure and material content, its effects on the human soul go beyond the mind to stimulate and influence the appetites and passions, either for good or for ill. Consequently, there is no such thing as music that is mere entertainment; as with speech, every musical word that we admit through the portals of our ears enters more deeply into our entire beings, to direct them more toward or further away from God. Music has a unique capacity to ennoble or debase the soul by shaping our emotional character and responses, and the inclinations of the will. Thus the hearing of all music, like that of all speech, can
profoundly shape moral character in its disposition for good or for ill.
How then should Christians listen redemptively to music, and to what kinds of music should they listen or not listen? Here are some general suggestions for principles to follow.
First, make a conscious effort to judge the moral character of a piece of music. This is probably far harder for most people to do than it is for them to judge the moral character of a piece of literature, a painting, or a sculpture, because music is far more abstract than verbal or written speech or visual representation. Here, one must ask questions such as, “What emotions, sensations, and thoughts is this piece of music designed to stimulate or address? Are those intrinsically beneficial or injurious to one’s spiritual health? Even if it is morally unobjectionable in content, would it be spiritually beneficial or injurious for me to listen to this piece of music at this time, in my current circumstances?” For example, music that fosters mental and emotional agitation is contrary to the gospel command to cultivate peace in our hearts. And, while it is not wrong per se to listen to music that is sad or tragic, it is wrong to listen to it if one is in a deeply depressive state that such music would exacerbate. One also should not listen to music that distracts from concentration on more important obligations. To all things there is a proper time and place. Second, work to select music of good quality. Just as you should not subsist on a diet of “junk” food or read trashy romance novels, look for music that is substantial, not just ephemeral “ear candy” that offers only immediate and shallow sensory gratification, feeding what C. S. Lewis termed “the natural man’s instinctive hatred of excellence.” Substantial music will engage and exercise the mind as well as the senses; like good books and good food, it will require time to be savored and digested. (Excellent “light” music may be enjoyed in the manner as well-crafted light verse or a delicious dessert, as a glory and delight of God’s created order.) Also, truly good music will have the capacity to move the soul positively in all its aspects; compositions that are mere intellectual constructs, with little or no capacity to affect the passions, are failures. In songs and other music that sets words, one must also assess whether there is a proper fit between the two. Because music and words have their own respective, autonomous properties for communicating meaning, certain pairings of words
and music will be better or worse than others, as merely pairing the two cannot change the essential character of either one. An obscene text cannot be sanctified by singing it to a Christian hymn tune, nor can a violent piece of music be made Christian by setting a text of Scripture to it.
Third, one should strive to select music that is genuinely beautiful. C. S. Lewis famously wrote that love “is something far more stern and splendid than mere kindness”; so too the truly beautiful is something far more stern and splendid than mere prettiness. Rather, Christians must keep in mind the psalmist’s “beauty of holiness” as an ultimate ideal—the beauty of what is separate from what is ordinary and profane, and is raised to an exalted level of excellence with transformative power for good. Rightly understood and applied, the ancient triad of values for excellence—the true, the good, and the beautiful—is helpful here. Truly beautiful works of art need not be cheerful, optimistic, or tuneful. Like the Scriptures, they can frankly and unsparingly present us with the painful, the grievous, the tragic, the ugly, and even the unabashedly evil. But the Scriptures do not simply leave us there. All of the ills and evils of the creation are always portrayed against the infinitely greater context of the light of God’s glory, goodness, and purposes. They also are portrayed truly—not just in accuracy of detailed description, but infinitely more importantly in the light of God’s moral judgment upon and disposition of them. (The incomprehensible horror of the crucifixion is paradoxically also one of great beauty in its manifesting of the fullness of the love of God for sinful mankind. And so, human arts have portrayed this event by means of great beauty, not ugliness.) This standard also applies to pieces of music. If they voice
or portray grief, despair, tragedy, or evil, do they do so honestly as such, or else deceptively by glorifying or wallowing in them? (One may watch a documentary about Auschwitz in order to understand the workings and scope of its evils, but not to gratify a morbid curiosity of seeing how its victims were killed.) In short, if a piece of music, or of any art, evokes or portrays the evils of a fallen world, does it do so in ways conformable to God’s judgments and a larger redemptive context?
Fourth, seek excellence in musical performance as well. This is to some degree contextual; expectations should be appropriate, and charity in judgment exercised. At the same time, Christians must reject the modern mindset of aesthetic relativism, which asserts that all aesthetic judgments are merely subjective assertions of personal tastes and prejudices. Jesus’ command in Matthew 5:48 for his followers to be “perfect” (teleioi, also meaning “mature” and “complete”) after the pattern of the Father in heaven, and Paul’s exhortation in 2 Corinthians 8:7, are injunctions to seek and strive for excellence in all things. At the same time, the manifold diversity of the splendors of God’s creation also should lead us to cultivate a breadth of appreciation for different types of excellencies. Different performers may play or sing a given piece of music in widely differing interpretations, each of which illuminates the piece in a distinctive way, without one being better or worse than another, though one may have a personal preference for one or another.
Fifth, we need to reclaim and cultivate a proper notion of leisure. Christians are of course well aware of the biblical commandments for work and rest alike, and good music has a constructive role to play in both spheres. But too many people have been beguiled by a false notion of relaxation as a kind of mindlessness, in which one enjoys sensory gratification with little or no mental effort, the latter being seen as “work.” Instead, a proper conception of leisure is of turning to an activity that engages and stimulates the mind in a different way, providing invigoration by mental cross-fertilization. Music has a uniquely powerful capacity for such mental renewal, especially if one actively sings or plays a musical instrument rather than just passively listens to recordings. Participating even in amateur choirs or instrumental groups offers opportunities for Christian fellowship, evangelization of non-believers, and occasions to offer thanks, praise, and glory to God.
This last point means that music also has an inherently apologetical function. The beauty of good music sets forth the beauty and goodness of the character of God. Man did not create beauty; he only apprehends the beauty that God created for his enjoyment and spiritual elevation. Nor did man decide of himself what is or is not beautiful; the cosmos as God’s purposively structured creation has intrinsic standards (such as the classic triad of order, clarity, and harmony) for rightly discerning what is or is not beautiful. The composing and performing of music are two means by which man, in a derivative and secondary manner, imitates the original creative activity of God. Music also offers a means for offering God worship and praise that goes beyond ordinary speech; in the famous words of Augustine of Hippo, “He who sings prays twice.” A good musical setting serves to fix a passage of Scripture or a hymn text in the memory more quickly and firmly than does straightforward memorization. Likewise, the means that music provides for expressing the most profound joys and sorrows, for taking rest and for constructive release of energy, is a further testament to God’s providential care for man.
In sum, Christians should take music far more seriously than they often do. It should be received as a divine gift, created for the edification as well as the pleasure of man, as a means when rightly used for the glorification of God and the shaping of the soul of man. At the same time, we must also ponder much more deeply how, in a fallen creation, music is not morally neutral, and when wrongly used can further man’s depravity instead of fostering that which is good, given its profound power to communicate meaning. In so doing, let us think theologically about the nature and purpose of music for the glorification of God.
James A. Altena completed his MAR degree at WTS in 2024 and is presently working on a PhD there in church history. He is also a reviewer for and the Music Editor of Fanfare Magazine, the world's most comprehensive review publication for classical music recordings.
HARRISON PERKINS
The tower of Babel looms as one of the darker moments in human history, casting a long shadow over the succeeding millennia. That event explains why to this day humanity is divided among linguistic lines and struggles to communicate effectively with one another. That problem found its origins as the people in the land of Shinar indulged their desire for self-aggrandizement: “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth” (Gen. 11:4). Their hearts were, as John Calvin would help us see, factories of idols. The trouble was that they sought to preserve themselves by their own inventions. A deeply rooted idolatry motivated their longing to encounter glory through something that they built. They thought that they could fabricate something to give themselves stability and establish who they were.
The Christian life is full of trials, and western culture throws us an increasing number of challenges about identity and expression. Our easy impulse can be to think that we will be helped in these troubles by the soothing effect of having more of what we like, namely the things we enjoy. That assumption about coping, however, follows the same outlook prevailing in the culture that the best way to self-medicate is through indulging our desires. We think it is a helpful way to take the edge off the burdens that trouble us.
The second commandment provides pastoral help, especially in our personal trials, because it binds us to trust even when we cannot see.
The truth is, the idolaters at Babel thought that they could establish their identity and soothe their worries by their own inventions too. They were wrong, and it came with devastating effects. They should have listened to what God had to say about how to find satisfaction and safety.
The world is full of people trying to settle their distressed hearts by seeking to define themselves and build their own name in the way that they see fit. Identity politics has wreaked havoc through at least the western world as troubled people have sought to find respite through the processes of “expressive individualism.” The impulse to indulge whatever wells up from within us seems always to lead to a new idol, even when we think that idol will provide us with comfort.
When we are most troubled, the solution is never to indulge our idolatrous impulses to build something ourselves that might soothe our unsettled hearts. True comfort comes from finding our place before God through the means that he has given us to know him, to worship him, and to receive our identity from him in blessing. When we listen to God about how we should approach him, we can know the way to satisfaction and safety in his presence.
This article explores how the Reformed view of the second commandment is one of those truths that has tremendous value to help us face trials in life and challenges in culture. The second commandment is first explicitly revealed in Exodus 20:4–6, where God said:
You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
As our historic confessions express, the Reformed tradition has understood the second commandment to forbid not only the use of images in worship but also entirely forbids all attempts to make any image to depict God.
The spirit of idolatry since Babel has told us that the way to security is to build something that we think will give us comfort. The second commandment instructs us otherwise. When the spirit of the age says that we should soothe ourselves by indulging whatever desires well up in our hearts, God’s word tells us that we are at our best when we live within the paths that God has established for us. We pretend that we can find glory by listening to
ourselves and by inventing our own means to obtain it. God says he will make true glory known to us through the means that he has appointed for us to encounter him. As we consider how the Reformed have understood the second commandment, we will see that locating ourselves in the structures of pursuing God that he has given to us through his word proves to be the true way to know satisfaction and safety.
This article argues that the second commandment, by prohibiting making images of God and using images in worship, has tremendous pastoral value for our Christian discipleship. More specifically, the Reformed understanding of the second commandment contains theological riches that equip us with strength in trial and to push back against troubling cultural assumptions. The main payoff is that the second commandment calls us to trust God by not going beyond our limits.
Truths about God
How is the second commandment grounded in God’s nature? What does it tell us about God?
This section explores three ways that the second commandment relates to God himself, explaining why this (and every) commandment of the moral law always binds the creatures made in his image.
First, God is invisible. We cannot depict what cannot be seen. The second commandment forbids us from pretending that God looks like something when he does not look that way. It prevents us from exceeding our limits, at least in this life, in that we don’t know how God looks. Second Helvetic Confession 4.1 explains the relation to God’s invisibility:
And because God is an invisible Spirit, and an incomprehensible Essence, he cannot, therefore, by any art or image be expressed. For which cause we fear not, with the Scripture, to term the images of God mere lies.
The second commandment helps us avoid inventing God according to our own imagination, which cannot provide a true apprehension of God in a visible manner.
Sometimes, the objection rises that the second commandment’s wording in Exodus 20:4–6 seemingly forbids making any image absolutely. Nevertheless, Christians throughout the centuries have not understood
it to forbid every image but the making of any image specifically to depict God or using any image for the purpose of worship. Heidelberg Catechism 97 explicitly addresses the issue of images that are not meant to depict God or to be used in worship: “God cannot and may not be visibly portrayed in any way. Creatures may be portrayed, but God forbids us to make or have any images of them in order to worship them or to serve God through them.” In other words, we can draw all the pictures of creaturely things that we want so long as they are not meant to represent God nor for use in worship.
The tragic episode in Exodus 32 concerning the golden calf relates directly to these concerns about the second commandment. We easily overlook that the Israelites did not make the idol of the golden calf as if it were some other god but as an image of their God. Although English translations do not always show it clearly, even from the outset, Israel calls Aaron to “make for us Elohim” (Exod. 32:1; my translation). As the people explained the calf’s identity, they declared it to be “your Elohim, O Israel, who caused you to go up from the land of Egypt” (Exod. 32:8; my translation). Throughout the Old Testament, “Elohim” refers readily to the true God (e.g., Gen. 1:1). Moreover, the people claim that the calf was Elohim, the God who had brought them through the
Exodus. They intended this image to depict the true God as a way that they might relate to him.
In that situation, the people’s intention to depict the true God violated God’s law. Even if they had the best intentions—debatable at best—God did not take kindly to their choice as becomes obvious when he sends Moses down the mountain to grind the calf into powder to be drunk in their water, and those who would not repent were killed (Exod. 32:19–20, 25–29). Thus, the second commandment is not about if you should paint a picture of a tree to represent a tree. It is about how we may not make any likeness of any creaturely thing to represent God.
Second, the second commandment is grounded in God’s nature because God alone rightly generates his image. This reason concerns the doctrine of the Trinity. In the divine essence, the Father has eternally generated the Son, whom Hebrews 1:3 calls “the exact imprint of his [the Father’s] nature.” Further, Colossians 1:15 says that the Son “is the image of the invisible God.” As Christ says about himself in John 1:18: “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” Therefore, God has been generating his image as the Son comes forth from the Father.
On that note, the Reformed tradition has always understood that the prohibition against images of God includes images of the incarnate Christ. According to Westminster Larger Catechism 109, the second commandment forbids, “the making any representation of God, of all or any of the three persons.” Since Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, the second commandment forbids making any visual depiction of him at all, as well as of the Holy Spirit.
Furthering the point, the triune God created humanity after his image. God crafted his image into creation by making us. The best that can be done at representing God at the creaturely level has been done by God himself as he generated his image in making us to reflect his character into creation. We should not pretend that we can make better representations of him than he has done when he alone has the right to send forth his image.
Third, the second commandment is grounded in God’s nature because God alone has the right to determine how we know and worship him. Heidelberg Catechism 96 says that God’s will for us in the second commandment is that “we are not to make an image
of God in any way, nor to worship him in any other manner than he has commanded in his Word.” Any time we attempt a visible representation of God, we impose creaturely form onto the uncreated, invisible God. Further, making an image to depict God is a way of imposing our way of knowing God onto him rather than submitting to the ways that he reveals himself.
We know God by general and special revelation. As Romans 1:20 says, his “invisible attributes” are revealed “in the things that have been made.” We have a knowledge of him through creation. Second Helvetic Confession 4.2 even says that seeing “the lively and true creatures of God…do much more effectually move the beholder than all the images or vain, unmovable, rotten, and dead pictures of all men whatsoever.” Creation teaches about God more fruitfully than our efforts to depict him. Further, God reveals himself in Scripture, in words, so that we know who he is and what he has done. God has not revealed any visible representation or image of himself by which we should know him. Second Helvetic Confession 4.2 connects this point to our Christian experience: “But that men might be instructed in religion, and put in mind of heavenly things and of their own salvation, the Lord commanded to preach the gospel—not to paint and instruct the laity by pictures; he also instituted sacraments, but he nowhere appointed images.” As God has made himself known to us, he has given us no visual media to use to represent him directly. Thus, truths about God and how we relate to him require that we do not make images of the Godhead.
Trust in God Whom We Cannot See
How does the second commandment apply today? Though we see that it is grounded in realities of who God is, explaining our ongoing need to submit to it, how does it help us in the Christian life? How does it provide that pastoral value? The second commandment provides pastoral help, especially in our personal trials, because it binds us to trust even when we cannot see. It enjoins us to have faith, to believe God, even when we cannot put eyes on the fulfillment of a promise.
That application begins to get us to the pastoral heart of this commandment. Potentially, application of the second commandment might be hard to accept, but a pastoral burden sits heavy on my heart concerning why the second commandment is good for us, directs us into
greater holiness, and helps us in amazing ways. Although its grounding in God’s nature entails that the second commandment could not be otherwise, it also comes home to support and encourage us in particular aspects of life where we need great help.
We easily overlook that the Israelites did not make the idol of the golden calf as if it were some other god but as an image of their God.
A particular challenge to keeping the second commandment as the Reformed tradition has understood it is that we live in a highly visual age. Visual media is the most popular and predominant form of communication. People love television shows, movies, and children’s picture books that all depict God or at least the incarnate Christ. Thus, the Reformed tradition runs against the grain of twenty-first century methods as we stand against depicting the most fundamental aspects of our message: God himself. Nevertheless, the Reformed view of the second commandment that we should not make any visual representations of the Father, Son, or Holy Spirit is truly most profitable for our souls. It plays out in how we relate to God, in how we learn to trust God, and in how we learn to submit to God. The second commandment teaches us to trust God even when that trust must extend beyond what we can understand as certain from a human perspective.
First, pushback sometimes comes that it is acceptable to make an image of God so long as we do not worship that image or use it to worship. This attempt to explain an exemption wherein we can have images to use apart from worship causes me some great struggle, especially in defense of images of Christ. On inspection of the idea that we could see Jesus without worshipping, the reason for my struggle becomes obvious because the phrase, “Here’s Jesus, don’t worship,” makes no sense. What true Jesus might I see that I would not worship him? If I see
God, I must worship. How could it be otherwise? How could you show me my Savior and not let me worship him? That someone would show Christ to me but forbid me to worship him is at least cruel if not implicitly blasphemous. Thus, Second Helvetic Confession 4.1 affirms that, “although Christ took upon him man’s nature, yet he did not therefore take it that he might set forth a pattern for carvers and painters.” The second commandment pertains because worship must follow
upon seeing God. The Reformed view of the second commandment is most beneficial because we inevitably will drift into worship by an image and so ground our relationship with God on something we can see.
Second, if we tie our relationship to God to what we can see, our faith suffers. How often do the struggles in our life require us to trust God beyond what we can perceive with our eyes? As Hebrews 11:1 affirms, so much of the Christian life is about trusting God when we cannot see: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Faith must extend to realities that surpass what our human senses can apprehend. If we start to practice our faith in ways that rely upon what is seen, we move away from the
posture that our faith must take in this age. Until Christ returns, the Christian life must be one of faith apart from what we can see.
That posture of faith is for our good. Paul drew this application in 2 Corinthians 5:6–7: “So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight.” The critical conclusion is that we are of good courage because we walk by faith and not by sight.
We trust even apart from what our eyes behold. If we depend on what we can see, we will falter and fade. We will lose courage if we try to walk in this age by sight. The second commandment helps us because it reminds us of the nature of faith, that God is at work and is for us even when we cannot see him. Christ is at work on our behalf, pleading our case in heaven, even though we cannot see him.
The challenge is that, in our experience, many people feel as though they have been helped by visual media that depicts Jesus. Even ages ago, medieval cathedrals were filled with images of God because people felt helped in knowing biblical stories and truths by visual representations. Although that practice was grounded in
widespread illiteracy, the proliferating use of visual media in the modern age owes to a growing aversion to reading, even if illiteracy per se does not afflict the western world in the same way as it did in past centuries. With some similarity to that past situation, contemporary Christians often feel that they understand Scripture better, or that Scripture has come to life to them in new ways, because of visual media that depicts Jesus.
Concerning the pastoral value of the second commandment, those feelings all mislead us. God has given us the means that he ordains as adequate and suitable ways for us to know him. Our feelings to the contrary about images suggest that we know better than God about how we need to learn about him. Thus, Heidelberg Catechism 98 answers whether we may use images to teach people without using them to worship, saying, “No, for we should not be wiser than God. He wants his people to be taught not by means of dumb images but by the living preaching of his word.” Not only do our feelings that images help us deceive us to their helpfulness, they deceive us as to whether we are using images for worship. After all, as soon as we sense that an image helps us get closer to Jesus, is that not bringing us to worship? Is not closeness to Jesus on account of whatever medium we use the pathway of worship? Ultimately, it seems that we cannot get around that some use of images will lead to a violation of what the second commandment clearly forbids.
Third, the second commandment helps us by teaching us more fully how to submit throughout this life to the Lord in every way. Even if we might feel that an image helps us, God has said that we should not have them. We must, therefore, learn that the best way forward is always submission to what God has said, not in how we might feel. As we learn to submit to the Lord as he directs our piety in this matter of images, it trains us in submission to him more widely.
This matter of submission is where the Reformed view of the second commandment has particular value for today regarding many of our cultural challenges. We are taught, as is obvious throughout the western world, that we should submit to our own individualism. We are told that our desires govern reality. We are told the worst thing that we could do is to suppress our feelings.
The second commandment instructs us otherwise. It says that even though an image might feel good, the most fruitful and faithful way forward is through God’s
appointed ways of relating to him. We cannot invent the ways that we approach God, because we must submit to how he has said we might know him. Westminster Shorter Catechism 51 brings the same idea to bear: “The second commandment forbiddeth the worshipping of God by images, or any other way not appointed in his Word.” This idea that worship must conform to the Scripture and must exclude any element not commanded in Scripture has significant profitability for discipling us, our children, and new Christians about how we relate to issues that cause our greatest cultural concerns.
A prevailing approach to worship in the contemporary church has been to shape services around what is enjoyable by human standards. Since worship and its means of grace are God’s primary way of discipling his people in truth, is it any wonder that younger generations believe that God is supposed to cater to their desires? Certain styles of worship have discipled countless people to think that God is supposed to submit to their every whim rather than that they must submit to the Lord. Although modern worship bourgeons with practices meant to fit what people like and what entertains, we must not think worship is about what is nice for us. It is about what truly honors and pleases God. We then listen to what he has revealed in Scripture to know what belongs to our worship. In this way, we train Christians in truths about God that forge a bulwark against the dominant cultural mindset. Since worship trains us for the whole Christian life, as we learn the value of submitting to how God’s word tells us to worship, we are trained more widely for the whole Christian life to submit to God. The second commandment implies that we worship only as God’s word says because that submission will help us learn and practice how to live faithfully for God in every way. The second commandment inspires trust as we depend on what God has said rather than what we see. It shows us that even when we cannot see, God is at work to help and to shape his people.
Conclusion: The Coming Age for Sight
That we might close on a note of hope, how does the second commandment point to Christ? We are not left without a way to know him. Paul wrote in Galatians 3:1: “It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.” Still,
this public portrayal was never in any picture, but in the preaching of the holy gospel. The sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are the most visual displays we have to use in approaching the Lord and knowing Christ’s work.
When we struggle in so deeply wanting to see Christ, to see our God, let us rejoice in that struggle. We struggle because we are made to see him. The struggle is hard because life this side of glory is hard. We are not yet home. Nevertheless, Christ lived, died, and rose to bring us home. Our Savior took on flesh, so that even though we should not take it to ourselves to make images of him, we will put physical eyes upon God himself one day.
We should then embrace the difficulty of that struggle as good because this age is not the age of sight. As we submit to that reality, even as it is difficult, we learn of the beauty of the age to come. Because the age for sight is coming. Jesus promised: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8). At the end of all things, “No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face” (Rev. 22:3–4). We will see God in the future.
The second commandment presents us with gospel truth about timing. Absence ought to make the heart grow fonder. The longer we cannot see God, the more we should yearn to see him. We should not try to alleviate the difficulty in this life of not getting to see God because it is not yet right to see him. Just as it is not right for a man and woman to see and do certain things before they are married, so we await the marriage supper of the Lamb when it will be right and good that we see him. Just as that moment arrives in its course with blessed fulfillment, so too does Jesus have an appointed day to return. He will come. We will behold his glory. Faith will give way to sight.
Harrison Perkins is pastor of Oakland Hills Community Church (OPC), online faculty in Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary, and visiting lecturer in Systematic Theology at Edinburgh Theological Seminary. He is the author of Reformed Covenant Theology, Righteous by Design, and Created for Communion with God
OCTOBER 14-15, 2025
The Cross The Cost and
Faculty Feature
Rob Edwards Associate Professor of Apologetics and Pastoral Theology
I was a graduate of the University of Georgia and became a Christian late in my sophomore year, though I grew up in a Christian home. I had one foot planted in the truth, but throughout high school and early college, I had another planted in the world and was leaning heavily on that foot. I had questions, but I realized that at the heart of all of those questions was the fact that I just wanted to live my life. To use Van Til’s language, I wanted to live autonomously, and to pursue my own desires, my own plans for my own life. Yet, what I knew about God eventually caught up with me. There was a clear choice: Would I continue to follow my own desires in this world, or would I submit my desires to God and follow Christ? So there was a confrontation in my own life with the gospel that, through my own coming to faith, set me on a path to understand my own struggles with unbelief. That gospel confrontation also suggested how I might engage other students. I was a philosophy student at the University of Georgia, and so was within a context and degree program that forced me to reflect further on these things. That led me to read a good number of apologetic type works, starting with Francis Schaeffer.
After seminary, about midway through my time serving as a campus minister at the University of Georgia, one of our students invited me to a debate, as well as representatives from the Jewish and Roman Catholic student ministries. Various standard objections to the Christian faith were raised in our conversation, specifically by the professor of religion. I began to press things that I knew we’d agree on because we are all alike created in God’s image and live in God’s world. Therefore, we all have common experiences in this world that unbelieving systems can’t account for.
It came out that the religion professor himself had an evangelical background he had left behind. His interest in religion was now primarily historical and cultural. One of the questions I pressed was how he could account for love, which he had affirmed as a religious value that he also promoted. It was clear in his responses that he didn’t have answers to those questions, and he knew it. He remained interested in religion but had no ability to account for that interest or the various values that he affirmed. That conversation didn’t end with him acknowledging this and professing faith. But it was evident that he was bothered, that it provoked him in certain ways.
That really is behind Van Til’s approach: you begin with confidence that people are created in God’s image, and they live in God’s world, and they experience tension as they seek to suppress that truth that they know in the core of their being. We want to press into those areas and expose their inability to account for those values and truths that they want to affirm. And then we aim to demonstrate how only God’s word resonates with their experience in the world and makes it intelligible. And we trust that the Lord will use that—if not in that moment to bring them to a point of faith and repentance, then at least to provoke their covenant consciousness.
Those are fundamental convictions that I operate with as I engage unbelievers, whatever the context, knowing who they are, created in God’s image, even as they’re seeking to suppress that truth. We want to press into what they know, what is undeniable, and demonstrate how only the true God, the triune God who’s revealed himself in Scripture and climactically in the person and work of Christ, can account for their experience, knowledge, and values in this world.
Westminster News
Prospective Student Days
At our on-campus prospective student days, sit in on a Westminster class, take a special historicaltheological tour of campus, enjoy lunch with students and our community, ask your questions at our Faculty Q&A, and learn more about studying in seminary. Prospective Student Days for this upcoming semester will be announced in the Westminster Weekly email and at wm.wts.edu.
Annual Conference for Preaching and Preachers, October 14–15
Details forthcoming in Westminster Weekly and at wm.wts.edu.
“Seminary on Saturday,” November (date to be determined)
A few of our professors give a talk on a given topic, bringing “seminary lectures” to lay listeners. Details will be published at wm.wts.edu and in the Westminster Weekly as the date approaches.
Micro Courses
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Church Planting and the Word: The Detroit Project
In 2012, there were only two PCA churches in the Detroit area, leading to the birth of the Detroit Project. This project was developed by Rev. Ryan McVicar with the purpose of planting more churches. There are now five churches established, with more in progress. Led by Director Dan Millward, the Detroit Project’s goal is to plant thirty-five PCA churches in the next ten years.
To learn more, visit https://www.detroitproject.org/ or call (313) 871-8700. To make a donation to the Detroit Project, please visit https://give.pcamna.org/to/the-detroit-project/
Jerry Timmis: Being a Detroit kid, I am especially enthusiastic to work with you, Dan Millward and Aaron Carr, and the Detroit Project. To begin, Dan, would you first introduce yourself and then speak to the genesis and the vision of the Detroit Project, in addition to church planting as a particular movement in today’s milieu?
Dan Millward: I was born and raised in Metro Detroit, and so was my wife. We met when I was nineteen and she was eighteen, and we ended up having three children and fifteen grandchildren. We grew a company together. At a very young age, we took on a floor covering company and turned it into one of the largest retail floor covering companies in the Midwest.
But an encounter that I had with God showed me that God really could be known personally, that Jesus could be known personally. I used to poke fun at somebody talking about a personal relationship with the Lord because I thought that was kind of goofy, until I had one. Then within five years, through a series of events, I knew that God was calling us to something else. We sold our companies. I was thirty-five, she was thirty-four, and we moved to Traverse City, Michigan. Within two years, I became the Director of Youth for Christ for five years. I also ended up in a seminary situation, became a pastor, and planted the first PCA church in Northern Michigan: Redeemer Presbyterian Church of Traverse City. After about ten years, I took a call to do the same thing in Detroit, which I thought was comical at first. You don’t go from this beautiful town of Traverse City to Detroit; you go the other way
around. But we did prayerfully consider it and felt the Lord was calling us there.
So, we planted Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Detroit. Our first morning service was Palm Sunday in 2015. Along the way, I built a team and brought on another gentleman, Jon Saunders, who eventually took over that ministry in 2020. Then I embarked on a church planting network where the goal was to plant churches all around Detroit and Metro Detroit. I didn’t know how that was going to go. And in God’s providence and by his grace, within eighteen months, we had five works (churches) going, and we’re on the brink of several others right now, including one potentially in Windsor, Ontario.
Along the way, we tweaked the methodology of church planting, sensing that a lot of these church plants are just really reshuffling sheep. We have a vision to not do that, at all costs. The Christians that come along with us, we want them to get the mission, but we really are trying to reach people who are not currently in the faith or people who have walked away from the faith. And so, right now in the four works that are worshiping, we have about 50% Christians that have joined us and who currently “get” the mission. We have about 25% who haven’t been to church in years and are revisiting, and about 25% that are converts.
One of the passages of Scripture that moves me, and I think is a catalyst for what we’re doing, is in Acts 2. At the hands of the Apostles, it says, everyone was in awe. And then a couple verses down, it says, “and the Lord was adding to their number daily those who were being saved.” We’re not there yet, but at our Thursday morning prayer meetings where we gather all the church planters, I think we can honestly say the Lord is adding to our number weekly, at this point, those who are being saved. But probably the key difference from typical church planting is we are taking this idea of evangelism seriously, meeting people out in the marketplace and confronting them with the greatest news that’s ever been given. And the Lord seems to be blessing it.
JT: Dan, you were leading Youth for Christ in the greater Traverse City area. My understanding is that it was
extremely fruitful in terms of kids coming to know Christ. Likewise, Aaron, you had a call for ministry, you went to Bible college, and while you were there, you were involved with fellow students in a street evangelism outreach. Can you talk about how that pulled your heart more into gospel ministry, and how that informs a 500-person Presbyterian church in Trenton, Michigan today?
Aaron Carr: I’m the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Trenton, Michigan, which is down river, literally, from Detroit. I was born and raised there, and felt a call early on. God led me to a small Bible college, Clearwater Christian College in Clearwater, Florida. One of the things that impacted me the most was realizing how many homeless individuals were there in Florida; I had a heart that these people needed Jesus. A few classmates and I began to take socks and blankets and toothbrushes, and whatever we could get our hands on, to create opportunities for conversations. It wasn’t just about meeting people’s physical needs, but more about pointing them to the truth of the gospel.
Through that outreach, God blessed me with a couple of unique relationships. There was a man by the name of George, an old veteran who, on my graduation day, took a cab off of the street to my college to take me to lunch because of the impact our life together had. We would write all summer while I was away. He had a PO box. He literally lived on the street in Tampa, Florida. It really struck me that God is doing something in the lives of all people, and it doesn’t always look the same as what I was experiencing back home in Downriver [Detroit]. God’s people are everywhere, and our job is to just be faithful ministers, preaching the gospel and pointing people to the good news of Christ.
Since then, God obviously has used that calling to develop me. There was a mentor by the name of Brian Johnson, who was pouring into my life and showing me the importance of serving: it’s a calling, and it means giving of yourself. And so I really wanted to be open to wherever the Lord led me. By God’s grace, he led me and my wife back home. We’re about five minutes from where both sets of our parents had lived. We were given the opportunity in 2005—after I went to RTS in Charlotte, North Carolina—to come back home and serve at the church I now pastor. This is my twentieth year. With that came the vision and the passion for
seeing the gospel of Christ go back to the streets. We are involved in the public schools, in the football fields, trying to pour into the people of Downriver. And that’s not just me; our church as a whole embodies that. Part of that is a mission to the world, including helping plant churches. We currently have been able to help a church plant in Inverness, Scotland, Middlesbrough, England, and six other churches around the greater Detroit area.
JT: Dan, there’s this verve that Aaron has, and I suspect that the fact that you’ve got a church that embraces church planting is because the shadow that Aaron casts is long. Can you talk about this amazing synergy of your vision for planting churches and the idea of the infrastructure that you thought was missing, which God sovereignly brought together?
DM: With the idea that we were going to go after it and plant as many churches as possible, various church planters are on the field together, and we’re growing, learning, exploring, and collaborating together. It’s a wonderful thing. Some people thought it was comical that we had a vision to even try to get five going at the same time. But in God’s providence, that’s what happened. A part of me thought, “This is like a house of cards. We got a lot of stuff going, but there isn’t much under it.” Along the way, I had known about Aaron, and Aaron had known about me for years. I learned that Aaron was working on something for the last twelve years, and realized that could be the infrastructure that lies under what we’re doing. And if we join together, it could be a pretty powerful thing. He’s had a church planting cohort where he’s been taking guys from the ground up. The thing that was missing for me was that pipeline. That’s the component that Aaron brings to the table. We ended up together working on the Detroit project. Aaron’s bringing guys in and establishing that pipeline, and already sending guys out to some of our church plants, where they’re apprenticing with the goal of one day being sent off to plant a church down the road.
JT: As I become more involved in the Detroit Project and as Westminster becomes collaborative with you all—as you know, we train specialists who put into practice the theology that they are learning here—we see a church
planting initiative that has an evangelistic vision fortified by 2 Timothy 2, namely, a multi-generational discipleship that is working really well in this context. It’s catalytic. And it’s so exciting to be a part of it. Theologically, when we talk about apologetics, you have some really interesting ties with the theological heritage of Westminster. Can you share a little bit about that history?
DM: Well, when I was called to plant the church in Traverse City, I had three Van Til families who were part of that: Dr. L. John Van Til and Kathy, who were both still teaching at Grove City but retired shortly after, and their two sons, Dirk and Ethan Van Til, and they were all part of our congregation. So I became well acquainted with “Uncle Case.” L. John was Cornelius’s nephew, and they could sit and tell Uncle Case stories all day long. The thing that really helped shape me was something that L. John taught me early on. When you’re engaging in evangelism, challenge people on their source—what is your source for what you believe? If you tease that out, that gives you an opportunity to talk about the Bible. Is the Bible God’s word? And then, aren’t we into presuppositional apologetics? I mean, if you can’t come to the place where they see the Bible as a source that is valuable and worth looking at, and want to know what it has to say, what difference does it make? So that was very much key in forming my evangelistic fervor, that presuppositional-type thinking when you’re trying to reach lost people.
JT: Dr. Van Til, and certainly Dr. Scott Oliphint in his book Covenantal Apologetics, would eschew the term presuppositionalism, preferring rather the inherently biblical term (and concept) covenantalism summed up as presuming that the image bearer, whether suppressing the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1), or expressing the truth in righteousness, must either be suppressing or expressing. And everybody’s got a covenantal relationship with God through what has been made. And when God says that his word does not come back void, in a sense it’s on the premise that everybody knows God at some level. You like to say that the time of “relationship evangelism” in some sense has come and gone, that there’s a greater urgency—we just need
to cut to the chase with people regarding the truth and where they stand with it. So, can you explain why that is so critical to evangelism and church planting success today?
DM: Well, I think things have changed pretty dramatically. Even unbelievers we engage on the street have a greater sense of urgency today. They’re looking for truth. And so I think the old “get to know the person on the treadmill next to you and then build a relationship with them” strategy is wonderful at some level. But it’s not really where people are at today. What we’re finding is, if we’re in a coffee shop and we start a conversation with somebody, we get right after it with questions like, “Where does God fit in your life? Or does he, and what do you think about these things?”
We’re bringing people to an interest in Christ and in God’s word; we’re bringing people to faith in Christ. And relationships are forming through that, not forming in hopes that you can do a little bait and switch and then try to introduce God’s word. One of our church planters said, “Post COVID, nobody’s got any friends.” It’s a very dark time in America. And if there is truth, people want to know it. So we’re seeing something that we haven’t seen in a long, long time, especially for adults: converts who were previously Muslims, Chaldeans (Iraqi Catholics)—who, even though they’re in the Catholic church, have no clue what the doctrines of grace are.
A Rapper based in Metro Detroit has a podcast and a radio show, and he’s coming to faith in Christ and now bringing one of our church planters into his podcasts and saying, “I want to tell my listening audience about this.” They’re forming a beautiful relationship, but it was formed through him coming to faith in Christ.
JT: You talk about a missionary storefront approach. Given our global ministries, a Westminster conviction is a historical approach, training international students and sending them back because they’re typically going to be way more effective in gospel ministry than someone from the U.S. going there. You have a subculture in the U.S. that this rapper is a part of, and he is bringing in this gospel herald. And yet, what is he doing that is making your church planter’s message acceptable to this large group?
DM: He’s largely saying, “I’ve never met a churchman or pastor that can engage in a dialogue with me at the level that you can.” I think it’s just the genuineness of our church planter there. His name is Micah. One of the things I try to teach the church planters, and I frankly learned this from Tim Keller, is don’t ever act desperate. So our church planters don’t act desperate. If somebody just says the most outlandish things about the faith or Jesus or the Bible, we’re never caught off guard. And I think that’s the thing that disarmed Rude Jude, the rapper and radio radio show and podcast host.
Micah, our church planter, went to this Peace Fest. It’s the most New Age thing you’ve ever seen—I would even say Satanic. He signs up and gets a booth there. Nobody can believe that a pastor would even come near there, let alone get a booth and so forth. He and his team—brand new church plant, they hadn’t been in the community for two months—had eighty gospel conversations in two days at the Peace Fest. And a number of those people have come to
faith and are coming to church at that new church plant up there.
We think of a missionary as someone who goes where people have never heard the gospel. That’s every city in America today. And even if they think they’ve heard the gospel, they have not heard the gospel. They don’t understand free grace. They don’t understand the beauty of the story of the gospel.
JT: Even Grand Rapids, Michigan, largely regarded as the cradle of American Reformed thought and the birth place of some denominations, has one half of the population unchurched, and one quarter of that city is Roman Catholic. That’s evidence of your point.
One of your church plants is in Dearborn, Michigan. Aaron, can you talk about the demographic makeup of Dearborn and why planting a church there is an opportunity based on this missionary model?
AC: The population of Dearborn has the highest propensity of Arab Americans. And one of the things
From left to right: Jerry Timmis, Dan Millward, and Aaron Carr.
that’s interesting is that the church plant there, Grace Church, has been well received in the community. We’ve been in awe of the way God has shown favor for [Grace Church Pastor] Jerry’s ministry from even the city council. You have a Muslim mayor who literally wants to cut the ribbon at Jerry’s church opening. And this is a Christian church that’s opening in a predominantly Muslim community with a city council that’s predominantly Muslim.
JT: Now, Jerry has deeply engaged in the community and has spoken glowingly about his community experience. And what’s been the impact of that?
AC: Yeah, he wrote a blog, which talks about a day in the life of a Dearborn resident. And he’s writing about his interactions with his barber, his interactions at the market, the walk home—the city caught wind of this and actually published his article because they were just so excited about his perspective on the city of Dearborn and how much Jerry was in love with the people and the city. And it's amazing to see a Christian church that has now been given a platform to be a witness in a very dark place because of the absence of the gospel. There are churches closing at a fast rate in Dearborn, and here, you’re seeing God’s blessing on all the ministry that’s taking place through Jerry and the team there. I think the key is Jerry’s investment with people on the streets. He’s not waiting for them to come to him. He’s going to them, he’s meeting them where they’re at, and he’s opening his life and pointing them to the word of God.
JT: Dan, you shared a story with me recently of Jerry engaging with a couple of students at University of Michigan’s Dearborn campus.
DM: It’s remarkable. He was standing in the place where people hang out outdoors when the weather is nice, and he was talking to two Muslim students about the Lord. They’re having this discussion back and forth about Christianity, about the Bible, about the gospel and so forth. And then all of a sudden there were about six people there. He said that before he knew it, there were twenty students there, predominantly Muslim young people, and they were all engaged. He couldn’t believe
it. So here they are, right in the central square of the campus. And then Jerry said, “Listen, this has been great. I have another appointment I have to get to. Somebody’s going to be waiting for me.” And these students were all basically saying, “Can we do this again?” And so that has opened the door to a regular meeting on the Dearborn campus.
JT: Dr. Garner, our Chief Academic Officer, a systematic theologian, and the head of our global ministries, shared that the modern textual criticism that Scripture has withstood is being applied to the Koran. And the Koran is not withstanding this textual criticism. What kind of a missionary outreach opportunity to Muslims does this point in history provide, regarding the fracturing of the source, and how can we partner in stepping into this moment?
DM: I think it’s epic right now. What God showed us in that circle where Jerry was on campus, I think that’s just telling of where we’re at.
JT: Our leadership are genuinely excited about working with you men and with your team. Any observations that you’ve had by way of encouragement with your interaction with some of our key faculty?
AC: I think Dan and I both are encouraged and overwhelmed with the missional focus from the president on down. We’ve been very encouraged to see where Westminster’s at in the heart of the actual mission, that you want to see your students not just knowing the truth, but actually living and breathing that truth into the communities in which they’ll serve.
DM: I loved that the administration that we’ve met with have the same kind of fervor that we do for going out into the field and not just reshuffling sheep.
JT: Well, we love the commitment that you have made. We love the synergy of how God has brought together First Presbyterian as an infrastructure to support the vision of church planting. We love that where there were no PCA churches in Detroit just ten years ago, now here are seven. And we love the global approach that you have. So guys, it is such a privilege.
CONSTRUCTION UPDATE
“We are delighted to report that we are on schedule to open our new academic building at the end of Spring 2026,” said Chun Lai, Chief Operating Officer at Westminster. “The Lord continues to bless us in big and small ways to keep us on track, including providing the exact number of dry and warm days needed to complete our concrete work so that the steel work could commence without delay. Literally one or two fewer such days would have caused a delay of several weeks and substantially more difficult construction techniques. How amazing that our Father in heaven would care about such details!”
After years of planning and more than $22 million raised, the final steel beam of the three story Westminster Hall was placed on January 30th, marked with a “topping off ceremony” celebrated by our community.
“Steel conducts electricity! As the new building protrudes from the earth, jolts of excitement electrify our community as we await this new campus epicenter,” said David Garner, Chief Academic Officer and Vice President of Global Ministries. “With state-ofthe-art classrooms, faculty offices, conference rooms,
recording studio, a café, and more—this new building will facilitate effective training of generations of pastors and missionaries, teachers and counselors.”
Westminster Hall replaces Van Til Hall, which was razed this past summer. Van Til was Westminster’s primary classroom building for 50 years. Celebrated Reformed scholars such as Richard Gaffin, Vern Poythress, Edmund Clowney, John Frame, and Meredith Kline taught within those walls. And countless students who went on to impact and lead the church have been equipped for fruitful ministry in its classrooms.
Westminster Hall will carry on that legacy. Phase one of the project is completing the 31,400 square foot academic building.
Phase two will involve a 12,000 square foot chapel that will seat 400, built as an addition to the academic building.
“By God’s grace, for generations to come, may his servants train students therein in the unsearchable riches of the gospel that are so deeply cherished by the Reformed faith,” said President Peter Lillback. “Thanks to each and everyone who has prayed, supported, and encouraged this milestone in the life of Westminster Seminary.”
Cornelius Van Til may not have intended to launch the biblical counseling movement, but his Bible-saturated presuppositional approach to philosophy and science infused its breath. What exactly did presuppositional apologetics contribute to biblical counseling? Van Til’s thought brought biblical counseling to life, and can maintain and restore it.
Biblical Counseling’s Presuppositional Birth
Biblical counseling grew to maturity in the scholarly community that clung—and clings—to the sole authority of Scripture, against the modernist and liberal authority of autonomous science and philosophy, an authority derived from so-called “brute facts.” Their authority cannot be integrated with that of Scripture, because the Bible proclaims them antithetical to its foundations. Romans 8:7 states, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile [antithetical] to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.” This community, Westminster Theological Seminary, is alma mater or friend to most readers, who are well acquainted with her headline apologist, Van Til, who propounded this antithesis with single-eyed clarity: “Apologetics is the vindication of the Christian philosophy of life against the various forms of the non-Christian philosophy of life.” He taught that these opposing philosophies stem from different attitudes toward God—love or hatred of him—and that these attitudes either purify or pollute all human thought, volition, behavior, study, even our merest glance. Where differing orientations toward God meet, at their point of contact, they join in dynamic conversation— evangelism, apologetics, and biblical counseling.
Biblical counseling pioneers at what became the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation— Adams, Bettler, Welch, Tedd and Paul Tripp, and Powlison—arose breathing this air of antithesis and point of contact under Van Til’s influence. Following his reasoning, they inhaled the Scripture’s scintillating, hopeful insight that each person’s behavior arises from his inner predisposition toward God, con or pro—Van Til’s antithesis. Their insights—written, taught, and trained—raised the banner of biblical authority and sufficiency for the care of souls from the half-staff to which modern psychologies had lowered it, to full-staff, and launched the biblical counseling
movement. The heart, the inner man, leapt out as man’s presuppositional basis.
Private Talks Show Public Need
During our student days (my wife Sharon and I studied together at WTS in the mid-1990s), three conversations suggested how deeply the coherency of biblical counseling with presuppositional apologetics had penetrated the Westminster curriculum. Taken together, these highlight the importance of Van Til’s key insights to biblical counseling.
As we were finding our seats in the Van Til auditorium for “The Dynamics of Biblical Change” (David Powlison’s introductory course in biblical counseling), we heard one classmate observe aloud, “This is Van Til applied!” Since we were also taking our introductory apologetics class, his connection seemed natural, even fundamental. Our presuppositions determine our conclusions; our loves and fears determine our actions. Since God alone can change our presuppositions, we who studied counseling and apologetics found it natural that God alone can change our loves and fears, our worship. As course followed course, these two principles merged into a single dynamic, exciting reverence for God’s power through the Bible to exchange our God-suppressing presuppositions and beliefs for the fear of God.
All brute facts or ideas have, standing behind them, a shadowy rival to God’s authority.
Sharon, an MAR Biblical Counseling major, recalls this advice from a fellow student who was finishing his final MDiv year: “If you want to understand Van Tilian presuppositionalism, take Powlison’s class, ‘Theology and Secular Psychology.’” She took the class, and understood Van Til more deeply. I enrolled the next year.
As my residential studies at WTS were wrapping
up, a professor friend asked me about my ThM thesis. I replied that I was developing a biblical argument for a pre-affectional approach to aesthetics, standing triadically with the better-known presuppositional approach to noetics and a predispositional approach to ethics. He observed, “You Van Til types focus on antithesis, but I’m more in the common grace camp.” I gulped. My studies in aesthetics had made me closely acquainted with common grace, so his suggestion that antithesis and common grace stood against each other startled me. Was there no coordinating them? What does Scripture teach? My ears went up. The Scripture had already provided a working model for common grace in aesthetics that took full account of antithesis, probably because I had also been reading Van Til. As I reflected on my friend’s remark, this simple working model seemed more urgently worth developing.
As I went on to practice and teach biblical counseling, and to write a biblical doctrine of aesthetics (now published as A Redemptive Theology of Art), the risk of brute values in these coordinated fields remained firmly in view.
No Brute Facts!
Van Til maintained that every fact or predication finds its meaning only within a system of thought shaped by one’s predisposition toward God, for or against him. This basic predisposition, this presupposition, starts as an attitude toward God, fleshed out as implications about his character and purpose. Such presuppositions usually remain tacit, present but unconsidered. These false beliefs contradict what God says about himself.
In our fallen condition, we find contradictory doctrines of God attractive. Our false views of God seem obvious when we consider the details of our situation, severed from their context in God. Thus, they seem to be brute facts, with an authority all their own. Van Til warned his students, “No brute facts.” All facts find their meaning in the fear of the Lord. By presupposing that God is bad or nonexistent, people suppress his truth by imagining that his facts have authoritative meaning without him , that is, such facts are “brute.” Thus, the line between good and evil runs directly through each heart. Threats to biblical counseling through misconception of these areas arise
first from every biblical counselor’s own heart. Biblical counselors’ and teachers’ misdirected approaches appear most readily as we set them beside Van Til’s signature insights.
Brute values of every kind threaten all Christian undertakings, including biblical counseling. A counselor can value his mission for its own sake rather than for God’s sake, altering that mission. This alteration attributes a “brute” character to that aspect, suppressing the antithesis between two mutually exclusive postures toward God. To elevate some word, category, concept or outcome for its own sake alone, as if it were spiritually inert, creates the delusion that neither love for God nor resistance to him makes any difference. “Brute” describes anything that holds the same value to the unbelieving mind as to the believing mind. By designating a treasured object as neutral, we make it “brute.” All brute facts or ideas have, standing behind them, a shadowy rival to God’s authority.
Van Til’s presuppositional approach at work sets a hopeful course correction to restore biblical counseling, where it strays, to its biblical distinctives and its roots. Three representative issues in biblical counseling— suffering, desire, and common grace—demonstrate a threat to its integrity when they “break brute.”
Suffering
The Westminster Shorter Catechism states, “The fall brought mankind into an estate of sin and misery.” God cursed his creation because of Adam’s sin, bringing suffering to him and to all his descendants. God has various intentions for this suffering. These contrasting purposes, beginning with punishment for some and discipline for others, all unite in glorifying God.
People respond to suffering variously, each according to his stance toward God. Peter urges suffering believers to suffer faithfully and fruitfully, not faithlessly. We suffer faithlessly by assuming God does not purpose in our suffering his glory, and our discipline and maturing. Such purposeless suffering qualifies as brute, since it has the same meaning for the believing heart as for the unbelieving one—at best, nothing; at worst, God’s malice. We all know something of temptation to fruitless, faithless suffering. Here are some things that “brute suffering” does.
1. Brute suffering tempts us to be “surprised at the fiery trial” (1 Peter 4:12), seeking comfort in blaming God as unfair or absent, and in self-exalting isolation: “I suffer alone.” “The world has it in for me.” “No one has suffered like I have, so no one can understand me, comfort me, or advise me.”
2. Brute suffering tempts us to assume that our suffering gives us unique authority, often using the name, “lived experience.” The unassailable authority of my own experience of hardship and victimhood validates my interpretation of it. We can appeal to our lived experience to prove the justice of our complaints against our persecutors and our moral superiority to them.
3. Brute suffering is blind to our sin against God. When someone wrongs us, we take the lead role as sufferer-in-chief. Used corporately—“We are victims”—this God-ignoring approach finds modern articulation in the familiar social construct of oppressed vs. oppressors, usurping God’s centrality as the oppressor’s target, as his judge, and as the liberator of the oppressed.
4. Brute suffering may induce me to conclude that my suffering must be my own fault: “God is paying me back for something I did.”
5. Brute suffering can tempt us to deny God’s word that he is strong and good, by pretending that God is too weak, too distant, or too harsh to prevent our suffering.
On the counselor’s side, the sufferings of others may stir us to prioritize relieving suffering, usurping God’s compassion toward the sons he disciplines and his purposes to sanctify and relieve them. Such a focus can make attractive to counselors those techniques and practices that have demonstrated effectiveness for sufferers, irrespective of a person’s posture toward suffering, whether they suffer faithfully or see their suffering as brute and undifferentiated.
While all suffer, Scripture distinguishes two sorts of suffering: punishment and discipline. Since all appear to suffer similarly, and God’s various purposes remain hidden in his secret counsel, our examination might better consider two attitudes toward suffering, faithful and faithless. The faithless heart is surprised at suffering, and so can respond with indignation, blaming, despair, and isolation. Scripture resounds with warnings to believers to avoid the faithless attitude. The faithful heart in suffering submits himself to God, discerns his participation in the sufferings of Christ, and cries out to God for relief.
A brief review of God’s purposes in suffering will clear the air and our minds. God brings suffering to his people:
• According to his will (1 Peter 4:19)
• As discipline reserved exclusively for his sons, for our good, that we may share his holiness and that we may see him (Heb. 12:5–10, 14)
• To produce the fruit of righteousness (Heb. 12:11)
• To produce endurance, character, hope, and vindication in God’s love through the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:3–5)
• To fill up “what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body” (Col. 1:24)
• To share with others the comfort we have received in Christ (2 Cor. 1:4–7)
• To reveal Christ’s life in us (2 Cor. 4:10)
• To prepare for us future glory so great that it vastly outweighs our present suffering (2 Cor. 4:14–18)
All believers’ sufferings will be relieved! Some can be alleviated in this life, but full comfort waits for the life to come. For now, as Jesus healed the sick and blind, the biblical counselor can pray and work to relieve the suffering, to strengthen weak knees (see Heb. 12:12–13). But when biblical counselors set relieving suffering over God’s fatherly purposes for his children’s suffering, they ignore the antithesis between faithful and faithless suffering that Van Til pioneered, rendering suffering brute.
All believers, even those whose suffering we can help relieve, need training, encouragement, and fellowship to suffer faithfully. They should not suffer in isolation from Christ, nor should their suffering define their identity. For this, we must see and show Christ’s powerful grace
that answers our sin of isolating in our suffering, so we may faithfully pursue God’s purposes in it. All believing sufferers—whether from illness, mental disorders, injuries, abuse, hostility, fraud or imprisonment—can look to Christ as the first sufferer, so we can turn from isolation and suffer with him. Guided by Scripture, we can look to God’s promised purposes in suffering—it produces endurance, character, and hope that does not disappoint (Rom. 5:3–5); our light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison (2 Cor. 4:17). Believing sufferers can see Christ in Scripture, sufficient to change our solitary suffering to suffering in solidarity with him.
Desire
Our desires masquerade as imperial, immutable impulses, even as requirements or needs. We experience them as if they happen to us without our will. Sin-sick Israel gave in to their desire as if they were powerless. Jeremiah 2:25 states, “But you said, ‘It is hopeless, for I have loved foreigners, and after them I will go.’” And Jeremiah 5:30–31 says, “An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule at their direction; my people love to have it so….” The sinful actions are deplorable; the inner affection is abominable.
Sexual desires are paraded in our days as brute desires, and any discussion of changing them is worse than impossible; the very thought of change is repellant as if the very brute-ness of sexual desire is itself to be desired. Our brute desires justify us and blame God: “God made me this way.” Desires once acknowledged as perverse are now alleged to be God’s good gift, conferring a preferred identity and demanding affirmation.
Modern rhetoric about desires and affections, even among Christians, frequently overlooks God’s desire and considers only human desires. Casting our desire as immutable and active, with ourselves passive, suppresses the voluntary aspect of our desires, the suffering they entail, and God’s redemptive purposes. Such desires are brute, without reference to God.
As the Bible teaches two ways of suffering, so also it teaches two trajectories of desire, as Galatians 5:17 says, “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these
are opposed to each other…” We learn from Proverbs 13 that desire’s opposite, revulsion, reveals with equal clarity which pattern we are following: “A desire fulfilled is sweet to the soul, but to turn away from evil is an abomination to fools” (Prov. 13:19). Everyone desires either God-honoring wisdom or self-honoring folly. No desires are brute.
The antithesis between the desires of the flesh and the desires of the Spirit, seen through the Fall and embedded in redemptive history, appears as a dynamic tension with a sure conclusion coming. This battle displays God’s desire and power to break the stranglehold of brute desire from his people, that we may desire him. To sanctify his sheep who still incline to unholy desires, God promises and delivers rich compassion—his own presence. He gives us a heart of flesh in place of our heart of stone, so that we may say with the psalmist, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you” (Ps. 73:25). Our compassionate God calls biblical counselors to comfort and help our counselees in discipling the whole person, including their desires, revulsions and other affections, together with their mind and will.
Common Grace
Common grace, a latecomer to systematic theology, came to articulation through Abraham Kuyper. He envisioned this doctrine as Christians’ warrant to take part in the common life and culture that surrounded them, resisting the Anabaptists’ insistence on separation from it. He could attribute to God all good things that come to humankind without distinction.
The doctrine of common grace is largely understood, even in the Reformed circles, as blessing all people alike, and having no further purpose. This misconstruction renders it vulnerable to breaking brute, establishing an authority outside the Scripture that believers are obliged to respect.
Biblical counselors can discover this vulnerability when we make outcomes—change the situation, relieve the suffering, escape addiction—our final goal. Where proven methods for relieving people’s suffering emerge in secular counseling, those methods can then be urged on biblical counselors because “they come from God’s common grace”—the blessings that God gives to
all without distinction. We have no need to consider antithesis, because “this effective technique comes from God.” If it brings the desired relief, it must be because of God’s common grace. Equipped with these techniques, the biblical counselor can pursue measurable positive outcomes in the name of God’s compassion. This pursuit as a guide to the care of souls ignores the purpose of our own salvation, which is to seek God’s glory.
Kuyper’s doctrine of common grace caught on with later scholars, who re-articulated it with increasing abstraction from Kuyper’s concept:
• “There are no two kinds of grace in God, but only one,” writes Louis Berkhof, meaning to unify God’s common grace with his saving grace, differing only in degree, resulting in “different gifts and operations.”
• Charles Hodge distinguishes common grace from saving grace as “operations… of an entirely different kind.”
• By the early twenty-first century, Wayne Grudem could write bluntly, “common grace does not save people.”
• John Frame prefers to speak of such common graces as “common goodness or common love,” and not as grace at all, thus finalizing common grace’s distinction from saving grace.
A common grace so conceived could touch all alike without distinguishing God’s elect from others. Whatever the purpose and effect of common grace blessings, they would have the same effect on the elect as on the unregenerate, and this would be according to God’s own sovereign will. By this means, common grace became brute grace, incapable of advancing God’s glory in redemption. But it would acquire a special authority all on its own, outside of God’s word. This authority could give warrant for biblical counselors to incorporate secular premises and methods. It amplifies the freedom of the counselees’ will to seize on God’s general benevolence, or not, as they wished, free of the imperatives that directly follow from the indicative of God’s electing, saving grace.
Such common “grace” would diverge from, as Ephesians 1 says, “the mystery of God’s will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him….” Such common grace could be applauded as God’s general benevolence to all, closely resembling the universal
potential atonement argued by Semi-Pelagians and Arminians—autotelic, and therefore powerless to actually save. Where saving grace is restored, such common brute grace is revealed as unbiblical and unsuitable for the biblical counselor. Common grace, seen biblically, is most fitting for God’s purposes, unfolding in his time. Here again, Van Til points the way.
Secularists and liberals argued, in Van Til’s day, that scientific facts lie outside of any religion or philosophy of life, and are not conditioned by them; but rather have inherent authority of their own, authority over any other philosophy, especially the Christian philosophy of life. We see the same in our day, exemplified in yard signs proclaiming, “We believe… Science is science.” The contagion of extra-biblical authority has spread to the soft sciences and is smuggled into biblical counseling under the aegis of a misconstructed common grace. Van Til saw the danger and framed a biblical view of common grace that accords with antithesis. Though not unfamiliar with common grace in its broader usage, Van Til did not separate it from saving grace: “Common grace is subservient to special or saving grace. As such it helps to bring out the very contrast between this saving grace and the curse of God.” While this helps us, what doctrine of common grace does the Bible teach that serves in biblical counseling?
Soul change comes from God through a change of heart, a change of our worship, a change of our foundational presuppositions.
Jesus teaches a clearer, more consistent, and helpful model for common grace. Consider these two familiar teachings of common grace from Matthew 5:44–45: “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” God’s gifts of sunshine and rain and the passing of time are tokens of God’s common grace.
Add to this the similar agricultural metaphor of this familiar parable:
The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?” He said to them, “An enemy has done this.” So the servants said to him, “Then do you want us to go and gather them?” But he said, “No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, ‘Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”
(Matt. 13:24–30)
Again, in this parable, the soil, the sun, and the patient passage of time represent God’s common grace to wheat and weeds alike. Every passing day brings clearer development and distinction of the weeds and the wheat. These, God’s common graces, distinguish his people from others, to the praise of his glorious grace.
God’s common grace is powerful to draw his people to himself and distinguish them from others. Jesus’s parables themselves exemplify common grace; he addressed his parables to all who came to him. He closed many parables, and his letters to the churches, by commanding, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” His hearers might wonder, “Is he talking to me? Do I have ears to hear?” Among all who heard Jesus’s parables, only those to whom God gave ears could hear and obey his command, thus distinguishing them from all others. Nonhearers listened to his parables only to increase their guilt and advance their distinction, until the day God gives them ears or calls them to account. This purpose is the headwater of the right doctrine of God’s common grace.
God’s common grace always serves God’s purpose by incrementally advancing the distinction of his own people from others. It is always telic—accomplishing his objective—and never autotelic—an end in itself. One might even say that common grace is saving grace for the elect. Calvin affirms, “It is the Lord’s particular work to
divide people into their respective ranks, distinguishing one from the other, as seems good to him, all men being on a level by nature.”
Counseling goals and methods that arise independent of the Scripture, independent of love of God and love of neighbor, and justified by appeal to brute common grace, fail, though they may bring immediate relief; they fail to strengthen the believer’s assurance as an incentive for hope, repentance, and faith; they fail to convict nonbelievers; they fail to glorify God. How can we think better? Let us remember and study biblical counseling’s origin in presuppositional apologetics. Biblical counseling at its best still retains the inner logic of presuppositional apologetics: our premises, arising from one of two antithetical attitudes toward God, determine our conclusions, our prayers, and our next steps toward bearing good fruit.
One Great Hope
My own myopic instinct to bring relief, instead of letting steadfastness under trial have its full effect (James 1:2–4), has already been paid for in Christ’s death. I can repent of panting after self-sufficiency and self-glory, and of berating myself for an unsatisfactory end to a counseling effort. Anything that the biblical counselor honors as brute, including suffering, desire, and common grace as it has been popularly conceived, once plunged beneath the cleansing flood, will display the profitability of Scripture to instruct, reprove, correct, and to train in righteousness (2 Tim. 3:16–17).
Biblical Counseling Headwaters
In this brief consideration of an extensive subject, let it be enough for us here to hike to its headwaters, to its very watershed. Presuppositional apologetics shines a bright light that sets it apart from its classical and evidentialist cousins in the same way that biblical counseling is properly set apart from all forms of Christian integrationist counseling. Van Til made clear that arguments and evidences for God are secondary, not primary, for soul change. Soul change comes from God through a change of heart, a change of our worship, and a change of our foundational presuppositions. We were disposed against God before we acknowledged him—pre-indisposed! We appear before God guilty and
condemned, not neutral, not capable of forming sound judgments of arguments or of evidences. We begin with our backs turned toward God. God reveals to his people their former antipathy so that they may excitedly love his mercy, turn toward him, honor Christ, and thank God for having paid for it in Christ’s death and resurrection. This bright air is the very oxygen that first filled the lungs of biblical counseling. God at work in this new heart changes everything.
God’s mercy has already reached our selfish presumptions: presumptions that our suffering is our own alone and gives us a superior authority; that our desires are our own, private and valid. Biblical clarity helps us see this and shows that God is already at work, graciously enabling and obliging counselee and counselor alike to repent. We counselors, together with our counselees, can and must throw ourselves on the rich mercy of God in Christ. We are already free from brute suffering, brute desire, and brute grace, together with the extra-biblical authority they imply.
Let us diligently preach the word to our own hearts. No finger-pointing will suffice to correct the slippage of biblical counseling into secular therapies. Let us look especially to Van Til’s two key insights— never brute facts, always antithesis—applied to ourselves and to those we love and serve. As there are no brute facts, so there is no brute biblical counseling. Adapting a phrase from Os Guinness, biblical counseling goes forward best when it goes back first. Van Til fathered biblical counseling, rightly describing and perhaps anticipating the practical working out of presuppositionalism in the care of souls. We lose sight of Van Til at the peril of losing biblical counseling.
David A. Covington is a singer-songwriter and musician. David married Sharon, and together they studied at Swiss L’Abri, homesteaded with their children, sang Jesus songs around the country, staggered companionably through WTS and CCEF, and have returned to their mountain hideaway to write, counsel, farm, and make wine. And sing. David holds MDiv, ThM, and DMin degrees from Westminster and is the author of A Redemptive Theology of Art (Zondervan, 2018)
The Legacy of Professor Grier
Editorial Note: This article depends on information from Regular Baptist Ministries, Cornerstone University, Our Daily Bread University, obituaries, and Dr. Joel Beeke’s personal website, along with recent correspondence.
“Theology is a verb. It’s an activity—everyone does it. The purpose of doing theology is to enact authentic Christian ministry,” said James Grier (1932–2013). While Dr. Grier has been in glory for nearly twelve years, his legacy of faithful, Christian work and proclamation of the gospel continues to impact those whom he mentored and with whom he partnered—and countless others unconscious of his influence on their own ministers and mentors.
Dr. Grier’s life was marked by a noble pursuit of truth. Being the son of a faithful pastor of a Regular Baptist church, Dr. Grier displayed an insatiable desire to learn about God and his word. Indeed, he earned four degrees between three seminaries and devoted his life’s work to passing on his knowledge of and godly love for the infallible and authoritative Scripture. This work was undertaken in churches located in Michigan and in various institutions of higher learning, including Cedarville University, Cornerstone University, and Grand Rapids Theological Seminary (Cornerstone Theological Seminary). Dr. Grier earned a BTh from Baptist Bible Seminary, an MDiv from Grace Theological Seminary, a ThM from Westminster, and a ThD, also from Grace Theological Seminary. “He was a born teacher, a disciplined teacher, a loving teacher, and above all, a perpetual student,” wrote Joel Beeke, former President and current Chancellor of Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary.
A former student of Dr. Grier, Dr. William Potter recalled taking his philosophy class at Cedarville University in 1970 (which was then known as Cedarville College): “With arrogant schoolboy insouciance, I skipped classes, ignored the warning signs that my ill-discipline would have unpleasant consequences, and proceeded to fail a course for the first time in my life,” Dr. Potter said. “I did not understand any of the
questions on the final exam and wrote him that I would tell him to ‘eat his heart out, but he would break his teeth,’ a quote he used in his intro to philosophy classes for years to come.”
But Dr. Grier patiently encouraged him to retake the class, and with such kind encouragement, Dr. Potter “absorbed the content like a sponge,” learning about Van Til and how to engage with philosophy from a biblical perspective. “Professor Grier transformed my approach to teaching history, the major goal of my collegiate education, and, as it turned out, my calling for more than fifty years thus far,” he said. Dr. Potter remarked that “Professor James Grier’s teaching changed my presuppositions and provided the biblical framework for my life’s calling…I believe Dr. Grier had more influence on my intellectual and spiritual development than any other individual in life.” Dr. Beeke wrote, “I don’t say this lightly, but I believe he is one of the two best professors I have ever sat under in my life. His clarity of thought, his command of complex subjects and vocabulary, his humble demeanor and spirituality, his freedom to confess his own shortcomings, were all simply astonishing.”
Dr. Peter Lillback, now president of Westminster Seminary, remembers being in Dr. Grier’s Introduction to Philosophy class. He was so overwhelmed with the breadth of Grier’s thinking, he decided to bring a cassette recorder to class. He recorded every lecture and wrote it down word for word, learning vocabulary he had never heard before, such as metaphysics, epistemology, presuppositionalism, the self contained ontological triune God of Scripture, and yes, the name Cornelius Van Til. Later, Dr. Lillback became the president of the philosophy club at Cedarville, and at that time, he was able to deepen his knowledge of the unique approach to apologetics that was part of the Van Tilian system taught by Professor Grier.
Other former students, Gillis West and John D. Street, also noted the transformative influence of his philosophy course at Cedarville: “Never before had I heard such rigorous thought expressed in an otherworldly vocabulary and married to a profound love
education, Dr. Grier began to pass on the truth he was garnering by pastoring two Michigan churches—North Adams Baptist and Evangel Baptist—through the 1960s. While he went on to preach in many churches, his first sermon, and his last, he preached in his childhood church in New York.
Gillis West noted how Dr. Grier was an excellent preacher and expositor whose instruction has directly impacted the preaching of his students for the past 50 years. “I will never forget when he described to me how he preached from the original text of the Old and New Testaments and translated the text as he spoke because he always wanted to be as close to God’s original revelation as he could in his preaching. Wow! Who does that kind of thing?” Mr. West said, noting Dr. Grier’s pastoral heart: “He also explained to me that his primary apologetic mission was to proclaim the gospel to dead sinners and not to win intellectual arguments, even though he possessed a first-rate mind and superior intelligence and could hold his own in any debate.”
After his time teaching at Cedarville University, in 1982, he took on the role of Executive Vice President and Academic Dean of Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, now Cornerstone Theological Seminary, where he also taught as a distinguished professor of philosophical theology, also serving at Cornerstone University. He would continue teaching at the seminary for roughly 30 years. He also taught at Puritan Reformed Seminary, among many other institutions. Indeed, while much of his career in ministry and teaching was spent in Michigan, Dr. Grier’s influence was international, as he taught at London Reformed Baptist Seminary, Evangelical Baptist Seminary of Quebec, and at Asia Baptist Theological Seminary, as well as teaching in Zambia and Hungary.
of the Scriptures and elevation of the sovereignty and majesty of God,” Mr. West said. Dr. John Street agreed, saying, “I will never forget my first day in his philosophy class as a sophomore. I was prepared to take notes, but the depth of his vocabulary and the passion in his lecture captivated me so much that I didn’t write a single word.”
Between his many years pursuing his own theological
Walking and working beside him in his full and active life of ministry was Dr. Grier’s wife Shirley, whom he met in college and married in 1954. Dr. Grier’s legacy is alive and well in those whom he taught, those who carry on the biblical fidelity and philosophical inquiry that marked his gospel ministry. As Dr. Daniel J. Estes of Cedarville University recently remarked, Dr. Grier taught many how to “think as a Christian scholar, how to care as a compassionate pastor, and how to walk as a man of God.”
Photo of James Grier: Cedarville University Archives, Cedarville, Ohio. All rights reserved.
Can ethics serve as apologetics? The question is not one that many are asking, but it is appropriate given society’s need today to recover a grounding for both truth and morality. Perhaps the most popular example of the intersection between the two among Christian apologists is C. S. Lewis’s concept of the Tao, which he described in his 1943 book, The Abolition of Man For Lewis, the Tao reflected the understanding that there exists an order of morality and truth that transcends the specifics of any one philosophical school or religion. In an April 2024 article entitled, “The Fierce Urgency of the Tao,” Jonah Goldberg argued that rediscovering the concept of the Tao would help restore much-needed civility in our highly politicized age because it would foster both a sense of accountability to a higher power outside ourselves for right ethical behavior and an accompanying humility about our own commitments. In a rejoinder, Hunter Baker and Andrew Walker argued we need to go further and encourage the current revival of natural law and natural theology, which ultimately point to Christianity. Yet, Baker and Walker themselves may not be going far enough. There is a tendency today among advocates of natural law and natural theology to speak in generic terms of values and virtues that would be compatible with Christianity but not necessarily specific to Christianity. In his writings, Cornelius Van Til criticized this kind of “blockhouse” method of apologetics, in which one posits a foundation autonomous from revelation and then brings in Christianity to complete the structure. Van Til recognized that such an approach is fundamentally unsound because the assumptions underpinning Christianity are inconsistent with the rationalistic and autonomous foundation. Thus, if we are to challenge the worldview of our day, we need a more holistic approach, since how we are to act follows from our understanding of what constitutes reality and how we know that reality; to put it more precisely, our ethics follows from our metaphysics and epistemology. Van Til himself actually provides such a holistic approach, not just in his apologetics, but in his teaching on ethics as well, and he can be useful for us as we confront the moral chaos of our day.
Ethics Apologetically Formulated
When Van Til joined Westminster Theological Seminary in 1929 as one of the founding faculty, he developed courses in Christian
Ethics and the Ten Commandments, in addition to those in apologetics and systematic theology. He first taught the ethics course—which he later relabeled Christian Theistic Ethics—in 1930 and would continue to teach it for the better part of the next thirty years. Even a cursory look at his 1930 syllabus shows he had apologetic interests in mind from the outset, as he not only engaged a wide range of idealist and pragmatist philosophical thinkers, but also popular liberal churchmen of the day. Van Til self-consciously articulated an understanding of ethics directly contrary to the dominant Protestant liberalism, which had reduced the entirety of the Christian faith to just ethics and which saw Christ Jesus merely as a good moral teacher.
Understanding that God is the summum bonum of Christian ethics establishes man’s telos or purpose in existence.
Van Til’s subsequent changes to the Christian Theistic Ethics syllabus also reflected his apologetic concerns. In 1940, he thoroughly revised the syllabus, expanding it to more than two and a half times its original length to strengthen his argumentation against Protestant liberalism. In several book reviews of mainline Protestant books on ethics during the 1930s, he highlighted how modernism and liberalism veered toward moralism but lacked any real metaphysical or epistemological foundation. His ethics syllabus, by contrast, aimed to supply exactly such a foundation. In 1947, he made a second significant, though smaller, revision to the syllabus. These changes had a similar impetus to his earlier apologetics against Protestant liberalism. In the 1940s, the Neo-Orthodoxy of Karl Barth and Emil Brunner began to gain ground among American Protestants, and Van Til sought to show how Barthianism and modernism shared ground in rejecting the absoluteness of God’s law for ethics. Also, in his syllabus revisions he added apologetic language against Roman Catholic and Arminian evangelical
views—drawing more explicit distinctions against the views of Thomas Aquinas—and in several places showed how evangelical Arminianism, like that of C. S. Lewis, shared the same deficiencies as Roman Catholicism. These additions probably were made because of the greater public prominence of Roman Catholics after the Second World War and the beginnings of Neo-Evangelicalism.
A Holistic Approach
Although Van Til modified his Christian Theistic Ethics syllabus to address some of the apologetic challenges of the day, the focus of the syllabus naturally was still on ethics. So, what expectations should we have for the apologetic use of ethics? He did not try to argue that the moral sensibility that men exhibit across cultures and time periods is an argument for the existence of God, since he presupposed, rather than tried to prove, the existence of the self-contained, triune God of the Bible. Van Til consistently held that we must defend the system of Christian doctrine as a whole—a much more expansive goal. A practical effect of this is that Van Til’s goal opens up opportunities for dialogue with non-Christians across the whole spectrum of Christian teaching, not just on the existence of God. Indeed, one must remember that apologetics is not simply rebutting objections from non-Christians but includes correcting misunderstandings and articulating the truth for Christians and non-Christians alike. This necessitates a decidedly theological approach that is both holistic and integrated. Van Til laid this out explicitly in his Defense of the Faith, with specific chapters on metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.
The kind of holistic approach exhibited by Van Til has particular relevance for our day because it gets to the foundations underpinning one’s worldview. Our age is characterized by people who are passionate about any number of issues and whose rhetoric often veers toward moralism, but who have no real foundation for their moral views. Since the Enlightenment, there has been a deliberate effort to sever ethics from any kind of revelational foundationalism, and most works on ethics today will talk about various “sources” of ethics—reason, conscience, religious texts—but end up focusing on principles, values, and virtues in an abstracted
sense that does not adequately constitute any kind of systematic foundation. By pressing on the lack of foundations for people’s ethics, we can also present an alternative that has solid conceptual foundations. Indeed, such a holistic approach may be even more important today—especially because of ethics—than in Van Til’s day. In Van Til’s lifetime, the West still operated within the general framework of Christian assumptions about the nature of reality, even with the inroads made by Protestant liberalism and secularism. In the “Negative World” of our day (to use Aaron Renn’s term), these assumptions about the nature of the world around us have largely disappeared and are in the process of being replaced outright. This helps explain why we now see such hostility to Christianity. Christians today not only have to make an apologetic case for God and for salvation through Christ Jesus, but they also have to make a case for a radically different understanding of the nature of reality such that this salvation is even seen as necessary. That case is intertwined with ethics, both in terms of recognizing that the natural order is inherently moral, and that man’s core problem is essentially ethical, not a matter of his finitude. The doctrine of God is at the center of this task.
The Summum Bonum
If people are to pursue the “good” in ethics, then what constitutes man’s highest good (summum bonum)?
Much modern writing on ethics does little to define man’s highest good, and insofar as it is given any attention, man’s highest good is defined in terms of abstract concepts like human flourishing or abstract virtues like love. The emphasis and attention given to the summum bonum, however, is a key distinctive in Van Til’s approach to ethics. For Van Til, man’s summum bonum is God himself. In the 1930 version of his ethics syllabus, Van Til put the discussion of the summum bonum at the end, but in the 1940 revision, he moved it closer to the front and devoted about sixty percent of the syllabus to it. This emphasis has philosophical, theological, and practical implications.
Philosophically, by seeing God himself as the highest good, Van Til addressed the Euthyphro dilemma posed by Plato in the dialogue of the same name. As Plato phrased the question, is the good good because God declares it to be so or because the good transcends
even God? If the former, then good and evil are simply arbitrarily determined by God; if the latter, then the good is something greater than even God. The historical Christian answer is that good is good because it is rooted in the nature and character of God himself. Thus, it is not arbitrarily determined, nor does it transcend God. Because God is absolute and unchanging, the ethics established by him are the same. Defending God as man’s summum bonum answers the question as to what the ultimate foundation for ethics is, but the apologetic import of this does not stop there.
Theologically, Van Til’s commitment to a whole-of-theology approach means he is not content merely to assert God as the Absolute, but is committed to presenting a robust, biblical understanding of who God is. The Absolute God is also the Creator God, who is separate from his creation. It is this Creator-creature distinction that is the foundation of a proper Christian understanding of both reality (metaphysics) and knowledge (epistemology). The Absolute Creator God is also a (tri-)Personal God, so the natural order he has created refers back to him and is infused with personal moral significance. Moreover, because God is separate from his creation, the Christian worldview avoids pantheism. Modern thinking invariably tends towards pantheism, and pantheism obviates all sense of individual moral agency, since everything collapses into an abstract oneness. Thus,
our ethics is not simply legalistic conformity to abstract values, principles, or virtues, but our actions, good or bad, affect our relationship to this Creator God, and that imbues them with inherent, meaningful significance. There is a notable hunger for that kind of significance among people today.
Practically, one implication of positing God as the summum bonum is how it rightly recognizes the problem of conscience. Historic Reformed theology recognizes that with the Fall, man’s conscience has been thoroughly corrupted, but much modern writing on ethics does not really address the problem this creates for ethics—indeed, to the contrary, conscience is often treated as an independent source of ethics. However, if man’s conscience has been corrupted, then it makes sense that God’s revelation of himself, his ethical standard for mankind, and the salvation that he
extends to man would necessarily need to come from outside of man. Hence, the need for special revelation. Ethically speaking, man needs to be regenerated for his conscience to really begin to work correctly, and even then, man’s conscience is only as good insofar as he is sanctified. Thus, true Christian ethics must necessarily be methodologically Scriptural.
True significance, true justice, true mercy, true beauty can only be intelligible and even possible from within the worldview centered on the God of the Bible.
Second, and more importantly, understanding that God is the summum bonum of Christian ethics establishes man’s telos or purpose in existence. In the words of the Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” Or, to put it another way, man’s telos is communion with God, not some vague notion of “human flourishing.” Such a telos means that one can be fulfilling one’s essential purpose even in the midst of suffering. Apologetically, the question can be posed to non-Christians and Christians alike in terms of what the purpose or goal of their lives is and, with that, what the basis for those views are. Christianity posits a genuine purpose. For example, a Christian going through a period of suffering with a debilitating disease or a difficult job can see this as a period of being refined according to the image of Christ and prepared for works of service to God; for the non-Christian, suffering is merely to be endured, and there is no inherent purpose in it.
Lastly, understanding that God is the summum bonum of ethics provides coherence to the Christian life. Often, discussions of ethics get reduced to abstract principles and virtues that are loosely connected with or even disconnected from other aspects of the Christian
faith. It is easy for ethics to devolve into moralism that loses sight of the gospel and amounts to just trying harder to do better. Yet the truth of the Christian life is that the God who gave us his law for our good and his glory is the same God whom we worship and delight in, as the psalmist declares in Psalm 119. Our ethics in a public sense are not separated from our personal sanctification, nor is that separate from our worship and devotion. Recognizing God as our summum bonum, as Van Til does, means that there is an organic integration and integrity between all aspects of our life, rather than the compartmentation that modern life imposes upon us and that we have become accustomed to. This carries apologetic weight as well, as people are hungry for coherence, consistency, and meaning in their lives, as they see fewer and fewer examples of that in today’s society.
Characteristics of the Ethical Ideal
In Christian Theistic Ethics, Van Til distinguishes the biblical summum bonum as having four characteristics. He says,
We can sum up the differences between Old and New Testament ethics, in opposition to all other ethical theories, by mentioning four characteristics. First, the whole Scripture says that the ethical ideal is as absolute as we have spoken of it when discussing the ideal summum bonum. Secondly, the kingdom of God, as the summum bonum of man, is presented in the whole Scripture as a gift of God. Thirdly, a part of the work in reaching the summum bonum is taken up with the negative task of destroying the works of the evil one. Fourthly, because the works of the evil one continue till the end of time, the ideal or absolute summum bonum will never be reached on earth. Hence biblical ethics is always an ethics of hope for what lies beyond history.
After this quote, Van Til proceeds to provide an extensive biblical and theological development (spanning three chapters and fifty pages) explicating these four themes. A brief examination of these four characteristics highlights some of the apologetic angles inherent in them.
On the ethical ideal, Van Til concluded it must be absolute and unchanging because God himself is that way, and God made the moral order unchanging. This directly challenges the relativism that is all too pervasive in our age, and it is necessary for this ideal to be unchanging because the salvation God extends to people in his Son applies to all peoples in all generations. Were God’s ethical ideal changeable, then both the necessity and the security of salvation would be thrown into question. Positing an absolute ethical ideal, however, does raise the question as to why God allows for different moral behaviors in the Old Testament than in the New Testament, for example, on the matter of divorce. The issue is complicated, regarding continuity and change between the testaments and biblical law. For Van Til, the apologetic take is that God’s moral law has not changed, but God works with his people in history through the unfolding of revelation and redemption culminating in Christ Jesus. He uses the analogy of a sick child who needs to focus on some things immediately over others to be healed.
The other three characteristics reflect an eschatological understanding of ethics. The Kingdom is not some kind of heaven on earth or even a golden age of Christianity, but it is God’s redeemed coming into full communion with him, after the final defeat and judgment of all evil. It is a gift in the sense that
For Van Til, man’s summum bonum is God himself.
man does not bring this about by his ethical actions, but it is by God’s work alone. It is an ethics of hope in that it is not completed in this life. Apologetically, these two characteristics run counter to optimistic liberal postmillennialism in Van Til’s day and transformationalist views in our own day, which envision the Kingdom in a more material sense, either as the general improvement of mankind or a golden age. It therefore gives the understanding of a more spiritual kingdom, or as Christ described it, a kingdom not of this world. This runs contrary to a separate, eschatological ethics as proposed by some theologians. The ethics of the Kingdom is continuous with the ethics of God’s people from Sinai onward. It also puts into proper balance Van Til’s understanding that the ethical ideal involves destroying the works of the evil one. As God’s people are subordinated to their Lord and called to reflect his image, they are not to be passive, waiting only for the return of the Lord. They are to work for justice and practice mercy now. The work they do in sanctification in terms of putting to death sin is
paralleled by the good works they are to do in opposing the evil one in this life. Historically, Christianity has been a force for social change, and given the widespread agreement across the contemporary political and religious spectrum that things are on the wrong track, this characteristic of the ethical ideal is likely to find resonance.
Living the Narrative
One of the challenges posed by an ethics that is focused on abstract principles, values, and virtues is that it becomes difficult to discern which ones to prioritize over others and even how to define them. The task becomes extremely subjective, and it is for this reason that there are almost as many different approaches to ethics as there are writers on ethics. Such abstraction dissolves the coherence of any approach to ethics and undermines the motivation behind ethical obligation. What provides coherence and motivation, by contrast, is a narrative that sets both a context for these values and defines the relationship between them. Human beings live by narratives, whether the epic poems of Homer, the Enlightenment narrative of liberty, the Marxist narrative of oppressed versus oppressors, or other such accounts. With the doctrine of God defining for Van Til both a metaphysical view of reality and the telos of man, and the view of history inherent in the eschatology described above, he in effect is tapping into the biblical narrative as part of the grounding for his ethics. To be sure, he is not labelling his ethics as “narrative ethics,” and the term would indeed have been anachronistic to him, since it did not really come in vogue in the academy until the 1980s, whereas he preceded it by fifty years. Nevertheless, the term fits. By doing this, he shows that we are not witnessing merely to the truth of certain propositions; we are witnessing to a vision of the Christian life. This is apologetically significant because it is a fundamental problem for non-Christians (and even for many non-Reformed Christians). In short, what is the broader vision of the good life? For many, it is at best just getting along and is thus empty. True significance, true justice, true mercy, true beauty can only be intelligible and even possible from within the worldview centered on the God of the Bible; any other
system has to borrow capital from the Christian worldview to even make a claim for these things. Getting the unbeliever to see this should be a key apologetic priority.
Conclusion
What Van Til shows both theologically and practically regarding ethics as apologetics is that a whole-of-theology approach is needed; it is not enough to simply appeal to a natural moral sense in all men or an imitation of Jesus. For Christians, reducing ethics to abstract principles and values that are severed from the redemptive-historical narrative of Scripture can only lead to contradicting affirmations of Christian doctrine. The Christian ethic only makes sense in the context of a Christian worldview. At the center of that approach is the doctrine of God, biblically understood and summarized by the Reformed creeds, confessions, and catechisms. Ethics involves so many assumptions about the nature of God, reality, and man, that abandoning a confessional approach will weaken our apologetic effort. For Van Til, the absolute and unchanging God created a world that is suffused with moral significance, established an ethical ideal that like himself is absolute and unchanging, and directs men to the highest good of all existence, that is, God himself. Starting with that allows us to apologetically and evangelistically challenge not only the ethical foundations of non-believers, but also motivations for their actions, the cogency of their worldviews, and the aspirations of their very lives. This can indeed be a powerful witness for the Christian faith in a world that desperately needs to hear it.
Scott J. Hatch has a BA in political science from the University of New Hampshire, an MA in religion from Reformed Theological Seminary, Washington D.C., and a ThM from Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. He is the author of Van Til and the Foundation of Christian Ethics and serves as a ruling elder at Christ Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Burke, Virginia.
ALUMNI PROFILE: BILL DEVLIN
Dr. Bill Devlin graduated with his MAR from Westminster in 1989. He is missionary pastor of Infinity Bible Church in the Bronx and volunteer CEO of REDEEM! He specifically travels around the world to war zones in order to both support persecuted Christians and minister to those suffering from conflict. This interview has been compressed and edited for clarity. Reader discretion is advised for some depictions of violence.
Anna Sylvestre: What led you to Westminster?
Bill Devlin: I love telling this story. I was at a very non-Reformed church, and my wife and I were newly married. And there were four brothers. Two were actually graduates of Westminster, and they were serving in a church in southern Florida. And one of my colleagues at the hospital where I worked as a nurse invited me to a picnic and said,“You need to meet these two guys.” I had already been accepted to a non-denominational seminary in the South, and they said, “Devlin, what are you doing? You need to go to Westminster; it’s the ultimate place to study the word of God.” And then at this non-Reformed church, there were two brothers in Christ, and I’d been helping direct a college and career ministry, and they said, “Forget that other seminary; you need to go to Westminster.” I’m not a great student, and I had begun to hear from other people, “Oh wow, Westminster. That’s like the Harvard University of seminaries.” I’m like, “I’ll never survive.”
I had just finished my nursing degree from Florida Atlantic University. We were living in Southern Florida, where my wife is originally from, Miami. And I just remember saying to Nancy, “God is really speaking to me. I’ve got the nursing degree, but God is speaking to me about studying God’s word full time.” So that’s when I applied to Westminster.
I jumped in feet first. We packed up a U-Haul with a two-year-old baby. And my wife was pregnant with our second child. We moved to the Philadelphia area, and it has impacted my life ever since. I just began to swim in what I call the ocean of Westminster theology. I learned about the abundant grace, love, and mercy of God, and also the authority of Scripture, the
sovereignty of God, and the necessity of sharing Christ. You know, people often say, “You Reformed people don’t think you need to share Christ.” But I am bold for Christ when I’m in the war zones in Gaza sharing Jesus with Hamas, and when I’m in Khartoum sharing Jesus with Sudanese government officials. (One of my best friends in Sudan is the former foreign minister.) Wherever I go, I’m sharing Jesus. And that was something I learned at Westminster.
AS: Who were some of the professors and theologians you learned from?
BD: I learned from many professors—everybody going back to Ed Clowney, Vern Poythress, Pete Lillback, Cornelius Van Til, Tremper Longman, Sam Logan, Clair Davis, Richard Gaffin, Sinclair Ferguson, Roger Greenwood, Al Groves, Ray Dillard, Ed Welch, David Powlison.
And on a practical level, I learned two things from engaging with them. Number one was personal holiness And I mean—these guys—their personal holiness and their humility really impressed me. Number two was their devotion and dedication to Christ. So it was not only what I was reading—Herman Dooyeweerd, Abraham Kuyper, Geerhardus Vos—but it was the lives of the seminary professors both in the classroom and outside of the classroom, meeting them on campus, going to their homes. It was really just by a process of osmosis that I learned and grew during the seven years I went there for the MAR. And what I learned at Westminster is still active in my ministry and generating me today.
AS: Can you tell me about your background in ministry?
BD: There’s no question that Westminster Theological Seminary had a deep impact on my life, particularly related to engaging the vacuum of the secular public square. When I was at Westminster, I had already been engaged in ministry for ten years. And I had been in the military. I was only one of two Christians in a unit in Vietnam of 250 enlisted and officers, military men. And so when you’re only one of two people that love Jesus in
a very hardcore military unit, you have many opportunities to open up your mouth for Jesus, and so that was really my initial crucible of learning how to engage the hostile public square.
But I learned a lot about ministry when I was at Westminster, too. Beginning there in 1982 and living in the suburbs, we had two young children, and we were involved in the pro-life movement. We began taking in drug addicted HIV positive pregnant young women, as a result of what I was learning at Westminster about the sanctity of life and the sanctity of family and the sanctity of marriage. We lived in Hatfield, PA, which is about thirty minutes north of Westminster. We had been there three years, and we had been taking in these young women, and then an opportunity came up for us to have a three-story, six-bedroom house, and we moved into it site unseen. And once we got there, it was in the city of Philadelphia—the Logan area—and we found out that all the urban social pathologies were present there: so the highest HIV AIDS rate, highest teen pregnancy rate, highest murder rate, highest robbery rate, and lowest test scores. And it really was the worst neighborhood in the city of Philadelphia, but we went there because of what I had learned at Westminster about being an incarnational witness to our culture and society.
AS: What did that witness look like in practice?
BD: We developed what I call the “triple ‘i’ strategy.” We infiltrated, we integrated, and then we incarnated. We went to a place that nobody else would live (infiltrate), and we developed relationships, not only with our neighbors but also with influencers in the city of Philadelphia (integrate). And the reason we were able to live there, even in the midst of all the urban chaos, was because God allowed us to incarnate his abundant grace, love, and mercy.
But this was not easy, and was sometimes even dangerous. One night, when I was returning late from an elders meeting (I had become an elder in the PCA) I pulled up to my home. We didn’t realize that our block had become a drug den, and as I got out of my car, there was a young man that popped out of the bushes in front of our home. It was midnight, March 1, 1987—I remember the day—and I said, “How’re you doing?” And he looked at me and he said, “I want your money.” I said, “Look, I don’t have any money,” and he pulled a big butcher knife out of his hoodie and said again, “I
want your money.” I knew what he was going to do with that. I started to run. He caught up to me, and he began stabbing me all over my body. I was out cold for about ten seconds, and the reason I knew it was ten seconds is because I saw him running underneath the streetlight, and I ran after him to share the Lord Jesus Christ with him. A Philadelphia police car pulled up, and they jumped out, and they grabbed me, and they threw me in the back of the police car and drove me up to Albert Einstein Medical Center, where I was cared for.
Why do I share all that? Well, because of another concept that I learned at Westminster from the Heidelberg Catechism: my only comfort in life and death is that I am not my own but I belong to my faithful Savior—body and soul—to Jesus Christ.
AS: What a striking witness to the security found in God’s sovereignty over his children’s lives—both to the young man who attacked you and to the first responders! Could you tell me about how you apply that truth to your current ministry work?
BD: Let me fast forward to the work I’ve been doing the last eleven years. I’ve done 337 journeys as God called me to go to the war zones to minister to widows, orphans, the broken, the neglected, the forgotten, and the lost. And as I go to places like Afghanistan, Pakistan,
thirty-three trips to Gaza, Northern Sudan, Khartoum, Nigeria, Ukraine—anywhere there’s a war zone—I can take that same strategy of infiltration, integration, and incarnation, knowing that my life is not my own.
If I really believe that my life belongs to God and my family belongs to God and my ministry belongs to God, then I can go to these places with total abandon. And I can say, “Lord, if I get beheaded in Nigeria, if I get shot in Afghanistan, if I get acid thrown in my face in Pakistan, it’s all for your glory. And for me ‘to live is Christ and to die is gain.’”
When I invite other pastors to Iraq, to Afghanistan, to Gaza, to Sudan, to Nigeria, I say, “Hey, will you come with me?” and they always say to me, “Is it safe?” And here’s my retort: I say, “[t]he call of Jesus never gives provision for safety, security, or comfort.” So when I go, I sleep in the tents of the refugee camp; I sleep on the floor of persecuted Christians. That’s why I can go to Sri Lanka after a suicide bombing and rebuild the Zion Evangelical Church. That’s why I can raise the money for medical expenses and income replacement and funeral costs for the twenty-seven adults and fourteen children that were murdered there by an Islamic suicide bomber.
That’s my calling. Do we have a heart for the persecuted church? And are we going to leave the safety and security and comfort and the regularity of our lives here in America, and will we go?
AS: You have shown courage in reaching out to the lost in dangerous parts of the world. How would you advise us to engage with the same apologetic spirit in our respective contexts?
BD: In 1 Corinthians 13 we read, “The greatest of these is love.” When you’re talking about diving into the sphere of government, politics, media, entertainment, business, community, and society, we need to do it with love and with grace and with mercy because that’s what Jesus exhibited to us. Can we get righteously angry? Yeah. Should we be arrested for righteousness’ sake? Yeah. However, I love this verse: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.” So we should have beautiful feet. And I always quote to people that great verse, “I’m an ambassador for Christ.” And, whatever I do, I have to remember that I’m reflecting Christ in every word, in every thought, in every deed, and in every sentence. I need to be a practical theologian doing surgery. So, “let
your speech be always seasoned with salt, like apples of gold in settings of silver” (Col. 4:6; Prov. 25:11).
When you’re sharing the love of Jesus and the grace of Jesus and the mercy of Jesus before a watching world, you have to be a surgeon, you have to be careful, not in a wimpy way, but in a way that is going to—what?—attract people, right? Isn’t that what the gospel should do? It should attract people. And that’s not saying that you give up the hard things of the gospel. Jesus said, “Eat my flesh and drink my blood.” He got radical on ’em, right? He said, “Look, this is really why I’m here. I came to die.” He said, “You should come to die as well and follow me.” What does the Scripture say? It says they all went home. So, you can say hard things in a gracious, loving, and kind way. The key thing is don’t give up your principles. Don’t compromise the word of God.
AS: That’s a necessary reminder for all of us, not just those with a public platform. What is the consequence of compromising the truth to soften it?
BD: I’ve learned that the public square abhors a vacuum. So, if a pastor in a pulpit or somebody like me is not willing to speak to the major and minor issues of the day, then evil’s going to get sucked into it, and then we lose our voice, and then bad public policy is a result of that loss. I learned the word ‘intentionality’ at Westminster. Now, no other professors or my fellow students probably used that word, but I began to understand that if I want to impact and influence and engage the naked public square of planet Earth that we live in, I need to be very, very intentional about that. And therefore, whatever country I’m in—Gaza, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Northern Sudan, Ukraine—I mean, wherever there’s a war in the world today—I’m intentionally engaging at a very high level. So, some Christian workers in some of the places where I work are undercover. They’re doing another kind of a job. Maybe they’re engineers or they’re medical doctors. Well, I go in basically with the flag of Jesus flying. I want them to know initially who I am. So I’m more demonstrative in my faith with my words and also with my actions. And I find that when that happens, and I’m intentional about it, and every meeting, every conversation, every one of my trips has a goal to present Jesus Christ and his love, grace, and mercy, and his word, in the public square wherever I am, then that impact and influence is great.
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And this our life, exempt from public haunt,Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything.I would not change it.
-William Shakespeare
