Making the Gospel Visible

If Kevin Vanhoozer is right (and I think he is) in saying—"The church is the place not only where the gospel is heard but also where it is seen" (Faith Speaking Understanding, 170)—then surely we ought to give attention to those parts of discipleship or body life that highlight most brightly the visibility of the gospel. Doesn't it follow? Surely it does.

And so we should ask: in what parts of discipleship does the Gospel shine most brightly and visibly? I think the answer, if Scripture is allowed to be our guide, is simple and straightforward: the Lord's Supper, and Christian marriage. Yes, that's right. The Lord's Supper, because it is the Gospel made visible (and tasteful, and tangible, and fragrant) in the corporate, communal life of the fellowship of the redeemed. And Christian marriage, because it too makes the Gospel visible (as Ephesians 5 teaches) in a most poignant manner, in the form of a living parable that points to the greatest of all stories.

There are other ways no doubt that the Gospel becomes visible to disciples in process of becoming "little Christs" (as C. S. Lewis put it) and to a watching world. But I believe the Lord's Supper and Christian Marriage are the two main ways set forth by the Bible for making the gospel perceived with bodily eyes as well as the eyes of the heart. And so I also believe these two ways ought to be underlined in discipleship.

To this we should also add a cruciform life, where the sufferings of Christ for the good of others are seen in the lives of his members (e.g., Gal. 6:17). It is certainly significant, but I don't include it alongside the other two because suffering is more or less visible depending on calling and circumstances. In other words, in any given week or month, you may or may not see much suffering for Christ in the lives of Christians in a given church. But you should always see the Gospel made visible in marriage and the Lord's Supper.

Gospel Visibility and Formation

Vanhoozer:

Local churches would do well to give an even greater role and prominence to the Lord's Supper, perhaps by celebrating it on a weekly basis. If preaching is weekly, why not also the Lord's Supper, a visible word of the gospel, especially when we have an explicit dominical command, "Do this" (Luke 22:19)? Indeed, regular celebration of the Lord's Supper may also be a means of responding to another dominical command, "Make disciples of all nations" (Matt. 28:19), since Communion can be a powerful means of spiritual formation: "It focuses the church's attention on the core realities of the Christian faith: the incarnation, the cross, the resurrection, and the return of Jesus Christ."[1] To get the Lord’s Supper right is thus to grow in understanding of the whole drama of redemption.

—Kevin Vanhoozer, Faith Speaking Understanding, 166.

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[1] John J. Davis, Worship and the Reality of God, 165.

How Reliable Are Psychology Studies?

The Atlantic recently published How Reliable Are Psychology Studies? It's an illuminating article, well worth your time, with helpful and encouraging suggestions and directions for a way forward.

The Word Made Flesh: God's Self-Revelation

D. A. Carson:

The emphasis of the Prologue, then, is on the revelation of the Word as the ultimate disclosure of God himself. That theme is dramatically reinforced by the remarkable parallels between v. 1 and v. 18, constituting an inclusio, a kind of literary envelope that subtly clasps all of 1:1-18 in its embrace. Thus ‘in the bosom of the Father’ is parallel to ‘with God’; ‘the unique one, [himself] God’, is parallel to ‘was God’; and to say that this unique and beloved Person has made God known is to say that he is ‘the Word’, God’s Self-expression.

—The Gospel According to John (Grand Rapids, MI: 1991), 135.

Piety

Calvin:

I call "piety" that reverence joined with love of God which the knowledge of his benefits induces. For until men recognize that they owe everything to God, that they are nourished by his fatherly care, that he is the Author of their every good, that they should seek nothing beyond him—they will never yield him willing service. Nay, unless they establish their complete happiness in him, they will never give themselves truly and sincerely to him.

—John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion 1.2.1

Consulting the Communion for All of Christ

Vanhoozer:

While the local church is a true church, it is not the whole church. It may feel like a blow to our ecclesial pride to admit it, but the truth of the matter is that no single Christian community communicates the fullness of the gospel or of what is in Christ. Local churches (and even denominations) would thus do well to consult the broader communion, historical and geographic, of the saints to see how other communities are acting out what is in Christ.

—Kevin Vanhoozer, Faith Speaking Understanding, 167.

Creation Care in Perspective

It is not unusual for (post)modern evangelicals to sound the alarms arm in arm with the secularists about the pending doom of creation if we don't act fast. It's commonplace, at least in my quarters of evangelicalism. And it's not that I am against stewardship of God's creation, but I do want to speak against what I perceive to be a lack of proportion and priorities.

I do believe that Christians should be good stewards of creation. But we need a focusing of our priorities. And so let's begin with creatures created in God's image who are eternal beings, and who are killed by the millions in our nation. It seems mentally and spiritually imbalanced to get bent out of shape over creation and not care much about God's image-bearing creatures who are taken to the slaughter in abortion clinics near you.

Now of course I realize that politically one issue is accepted and encouraged by many secularists (creation care), while the other isn't (civil rights of unborn children). And so therein lies the challenge. It's easy to go along with creation care in our culture—unless we're talking about the crown of creation, namely, human beings.

Many evangelicals are zealots when it comes to saving the planet (whatever that means), but these same evangelicals often just don't appear to care much about the unborn who are slaughtered by the millions, butchered for profit, with their parts sold cooly and calmly for grand and noble purposes (like buying a lamborghini). 

Perhaps even worse, many just don't want to get into it because it involves swimming against the tide culturally and politically. It involves cross-bearing. And that's uncomfortable to our tender little evangelical hearts. If we stand up for the unborn, in Jesus' name, we just might not be accepted. And above all we can't have that.

So, yes, let's be good stewards of creation. But let's not let secularists define for us how this looks. And surely the crown of creation—image-bearing human beings—ought to be the focus of our energies and efforts in caring for creation. God cares more about human beings than he cares about trees and lions. (Not doubt about it. Not afraid to say it. But, at the same time, this is not the same thing as saying he doesn't care about trees and lions at all.) And perhaps once we've stopped shedding so much human blood our hearts might be in better shape to think and act straight about trees and lions and the like.

How could anyone argue otherwise? Well, actually, no one, so far as I know, is arguing that caring for creation while ignoring creatures is the way to go. Yet the relative neglect of concern for the unborn among creation-care types should give us pause before following their lead. When these folks start giving themselves to the most vulnerable and most valuable among God's creation, God's beloved image-bearers, then perhaps we should pay a little more attention to what they're saying. Perhaps then their hearts will be in the right place to speak wisdom about creation care.  

Redemptive Communication

A redemptive strategy for engaging readers and hearers is summed up in these six communication tasks:

1. Know the people with whom you are speaking.
2. Love them genuinely.
3. Enter into their questions, their defining experiences, their terminology.
4. Retell their story in a fuller way than they are able to tell it, creating dissonance.
5. Show and tell the truth of God and his gospel of Christ in a fresh and personally relevant way.
6. Hold open a door of invitation to come in.

—David Powlison, "Giving Reasoned Answers to Reasonable Questions," Journal of Biblical Counseling 28, no. 3 (2015): 5–6.

Getting a New Testament Vision for Your Marriage

"We must recover the New Testament's vision for marriage as an aspect of discipleship and as a reflection of God's unbreakable faithfulness" (Vanhoozer, Faith Speaking Understanding, 155).

Disciples of Christ and Marital Fidelity

"One of the most important ways disciples act out the reconciliation that is in Christ is by practicing marital fidelity" (Vanhoozer, Faith Speaking Understanding, 154).

Peaceful Planned Parenthood Protest

I participated in a peaceful Planned Parenthood protest today in Aurora, IL, which was part of a nationwide protest effort. It went well. There was an outstanding turnout.

It almost makes me want to become a Roman Catholic again. Our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters are leading the way in this greatest of civil rights issues of our times. I'm proud of them.

To my Protestant brothers and sisters, I'll say what one local Presbyterian minister said publicly to the Protestants in the crowd: "We've got a lot of catching up to do."

However, this is not a Christian concern only, though of course many Christians are concerned precisely because of our beliefs and convictions: we value all human life as bearing the image of God, and as given incalculable worth by God himself. 

But we want all Americans who stand for the civil rights of all people—all people, regardless of their age or stage of life, including life in the womb—we want all Americans, whether Christian or not, to join in this greatest of all social justice issues. You won't want to be on the wrong side of history on this one.

So let's follow the lead of the Roman Catholic Church and fight for the life of the weakest and most helpless in our society (which, not incidentally, oftentimes includes the women who are taken advantage of for their babies' body parts to sell).

Healing and the Messiah

In John 9, we read of the healing of a man born blind. We also read of the opposition of the Jewish leadership to Jesus, and of the fear of some of this Jewish leadership.

After the man who was born blind was healed, his parents were asked by the Jews who it was who had healed him (Jn. 9:19). And they were afraid to name Jesus (9:20–22), because "if anyone should confess Jesus to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue" (v. 22).

Confess Jesus to be Christ? By saying he had healed a man? Given him sight? Yes. Apparently confessing this healing would have been bound up with a confession of the coming of the Messiah. And likewise in Matthew’s account (chapters 8–10), the healing ministry of Jesus signals the coming of the King and the kingdom of God.

Now go and read Isa. 35:4–6. The King has come, and his kingdom has dawned. 

Entering into the True Story

"Instead of asking how the text 'applies' to us in our day and age as if the important thing is to discover how the text relates to our world, it is better to think in terms of inserting oneself into the world of the biblical text, which is the true story of our world" (Vanhoozer, Faith Speaking Understanding, 133).

Great Knowledge Alone Can Never Save

This is why I read Jonathan Edwards:

Whatever clear notions a man may have of the attributes of God, and doctrine of the trinity; the nature of the two covenants, the economy of the persons of the trinity, and the part which each person has in the affair of man's redemption; if he can discourse never so excellently of the offices of Christ, and the way of salvation by him, and the admirable methods of divine wisdom; and the harmony of the various attributes of God in that way; if he can talk never so clearly and exactly of the method of the justification of a sinner, and of the nature of conversion, and the operations of the Spirit of God, in applying the redemption of Christ; giving good distinctions, happily solving difficulties, and answering objections; in a manner tending greatly to the enlightening the ignorant, to the edification of the church of God, and the conviction of gainsayers; and the great increase of light in the world: if he has more knowledge of this sort than hundreds of true saints, of an ordinary education, and most divines; yet all is no certain evidence of any degree of saving grace in the heart.

—Jonathan Edwards, Sermons and Discourses 1743–1758 (vol. 25 in the Works of Jonathan Edwards; ed. Wilson H. Kimnack; New Haven: Yale University, 2006), 616.

The New Way of Fasting in the New Covenant Era

Have you ever read Mark 2:18–22 and scratched your head wondering what on earth Jesus is talking about? I have. Repeatedly. What do his illustrations illustrate? What's with these garments and wineskins? Why does Jesus give us these illustrations when he speaks of fasting? And what do they mean? How do they apply?

Some scholars, sensing a disconnect, suggest that verses 21–22 didn't originally belong with verses 18–20, or that perhaps they ought to be taken as an independent bit of instruction. But such suggestions undoubtedly miss Jesus' point, miss the connection, misunderstanding biblical theology, the gospel of the kingdom, and the nature and relation of the covenants. And so we need not posit the kinds of things scholars are apt to posit when they cannot see how a passage hangs together.

Furthermore, some scholars, who grant a connection, think the old is Judaism, and the new is Christianity. Though there is undoubtedly some truth to this, inasmuch as Judaism was a way of practicing the old in the first century when Jesus gave this instruction, yet it focuses too narrowly on one slice of what Jesus is addressing. John and his disciples are also part of the old (v. 18), however we understand the old. And John and his disciples, we have no reason to doubt, practiced, more or less, old covenant spirituality, and did so in a way that was no doubt God-glorifying. So they point to some practices that align more nearly with faithful old covenant spirituality. But Jesus, to whom John points, goes beyond old covenant spirituality, and supersedes it. And thus viewing the old as narrowly referring to the Judaism of the first century doesn't quite seem to get at the contrast between the new that Jesus' brings over against the old that's gone before.

So here's how I think it works. The illustrations of verses 21 and 22 seem clear enough. The new cannot be put on the old; the new does not fit into the old. The new rips the old; the new bursts the old. The new in some sense is distinct from the old. That's plain. Isn't it? But what's not as plain is how these illustrations illuminate how we're to practice fasting—and, particularly, fasting in the new covenant era.

So, how shall we understand these illustrations with respect to fasting in the new covenant era? Well, I think I've finally understood Jesus, after years of head scratching, and here's my attempt to answer the question. Think it over, and you judge for yourself whether or not you think I've got it right.

You cannot fast the way the saints fasted in the old covenant era. That fasting did not focus on the Bridegroom the way fasting in the new covenant era does. "The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day" (v. 20, italics mine). Is this simply saying that disciples will resume fasting again? No, no. That misses the new element. Fasting in the era of the new covenant purchased with Jesus' blood is Christ-centered. It's oriented on the gospel of the kingdom, a kingdom that dawned in the coming of the incarnate King, a kingdom that comes in all its fullness in his coming again in glory with the holy angels.

So fasting after Christ's first coming longs for Jesus' return. It yearns for the King to bring the kingdom in all its glorious fulness (Matt. 6:10). It strives for God's will to be done on earth as it is being done in heaven (Matt. 6:10). It wants—more than it wants anything—for God's name in Christ to be hallowed and adored and praised and blessed and esteemed above all else (Matt. 6:9). And it pants after the river of God's pleasures that passes through the new Jerusalem (Rev. 22:1–2; Ps. 36:8–9), that is, for God's Spirit poured out in fullness in a new heavens and new earth.

Fasting in the old covenant era did not look like this. And so the new way of fasting, if it does not go beyond the garments and containers of the old, rips and bursts the old. The old is old: it cannot wear the new, cannot contain the new. The new is new: it needs new garments, needs new wineskins. The glory of gospel garments far exceeds the glory of the old garb. The glory of gospel fine wine far exceeds the glory of the old wine. The old had glory; but the new far greater glory. And so it must go on in a new way, a new and living way, centering on Jesus, focusing on the his coming kingdom, longing for the fullness of his fellowship. Having been given the engagement ring in the gift of the Spirit, the new way of fasting longs for that Wedding of all weddings.

We might even be able to extrapolate and make applications more broadly to spiritual disciplines generally: the spiritual disciplines of the old covenant era cannot wear or carry the spiritual disciplines of the new. Christ's coming changes everything. The old had its place in God's plan. And it still does, as it continues to point forward to the realities of the new, as it continues to provide the categories for embracing the King and his new covenant kingdom. But now, with the cataclysmic coming of the new age into and driving out the old, the new age and her crowned King must be the center of all our devotion.

"Then they will fast in that day" (Mark 2:20). Now is "that day." Now is the day of salvation. Now is on the edge of eternity. So come, Lord Jesus. Come! For you we wait. For you alone we long. For your glory we pray. Sweep us off our feet, and take us over the threshold of the new Jerusalem into the everlasting kingdom of God. Forever, and ever. Allelujah! Maranatha!

Paul's Salutations

Prof. Beale:

It is generally acknowledged that Paul's introductory thanksgivings (and pray/blessing) contain the major themes to be developed throughout the epistle and that Paul's conclusions have the similar function of summarizing these major themes (see O'Brien, 1977; Weima, 1994).

—G. K. Beale, 1–2 Thessalonians (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2003), 24.

Usage in Context Determines Meaning

D. A. Carson:

The wealth of possible backgrounds to the term logos in John’s Prologue suggests that the determining factor is not this or that background but the church’s experience of Jesus Christ. This is not to say the background is irrelevant. It is to say, rather, that when Christians looked around for suitable categories to express what they had come to know of Jesus Christ, many that they applied to him necessarily enjoyed a plethora of antecedent associations. The terms had to be semantically related to what the Christians wanted to say, or they could not have communicated with their own age. 

Nevertheless, many of the terms they chose, including this one, had semantic ranges so broad that they could shape the term by their own usage to make it convey, in the context of their own work, what they knew to be true of Jesus Christ (cf. Boice, p. 163). In that sense, as helpful as the background study may be, it cannot by itself determine exactly what John means by logos. For that information, while thinking through the background uses, we must above all listen to the Evangelist himself.

—The Gospel According to John (Grand Rapids, MI: 1991), 116.

My Life for Yours, or Your Life for Mine

With the recent revelations and growing scandal vis-à-vis Planned Barrenhood, Doug Wilson continues to write to keep the troops moving apace. Here's a snippet from his latest foray:

God created the world, and He configured it in such a way that there are only two possible ways for persons to interact. They may follow the example of the Lord Jesus, and say “my life for yours,” or they may walk in the way of Cain, who slew his brother, saying “your life for mine.” Those are the only possible options, and for sinners the former way is closed to us and impossible unless the free grace of God intervenes. But when it intervenes, we are then able honestly (albeit imperfectly) to say “my life for yours."

And a little further on:

Everyone in authority — like kings, or parents — has been placed in a position where they will use their authority in line with their fundamental creed. And remember, that creed is either grounded in the gospel, and is “my life for yours,” or it is grounded in self, and must therefore necessarily be “your life for mine.”

What Is Being in a Covenant of Exclusive Love with God Like?

"The covenant is like a marriage: the blessing is communion, but the condition is faithfulness" (Vanhoozer, Faith Speaking Understanding, 104).

What Is a Covenant?

A covenant is a "relationship involving an oath-bound commitment" (Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant, 132).

What Is a Covenant?

"A covenant, in its normal sense, is an elected, as opposed to natural, relationship of obligation under oath" (Hugenberger, Marriage as a Covenant, 11).

Humility in the Modern World

Chesterton:

What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.

—G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1995), 36–37.

On Christian Martyrdom: Jesus Is Lord

Vanhoozer:

To be a martyr is first and foremost to be a witness, one who indicates, in life or death, what is in Christ. Martyrdom is indeed the authentic vocation of followers of Jesus and, indeed, of all human creatures and followers of Jesus: to bear witness to the great things God has done in all creation and pre-eminently in the history of Jesus Christ. Unlike Heidegger, who believed that authenticity was a matter of always being prepared for one's death scene, Christians must always be prepared to bear witness in the courtroom drama of world history, where the most important judgment to be made is whether Jesus is Lord. 

—Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Faith Speaking Understanding: Performing the Drama of Doctrine (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2014), 70.

The Context of All Biblical Interpretation

Frame:

Each particular verse of Scripture has many contexts: the verses on either side, the book it is part of, the section of Scripture in which it is found, other passages dealing with the same topic, other books by the same author, other books (even extrabiblical books) of the same genre, other writings that come from the same setting. In the end, however, the most important context of any verse is the Bible as a whole.

—John Frame, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2013), 55.

Rationalistic Madmen

"The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason" (G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 24).

Original Sin

"Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved" (G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 19).

The Task of Doctrine

“It is the task of doctrine to direct disciples to fill empty spaces and empty moments with redemptive speech and action. At its best, theology helps form us into people who can walk across the stage of world history like Christ” (Vanhoozer, Faith Speaking Understanding, 47). 

The Relation of Matter and Method in Theology

“The subject matter of theology should determine the methodological manner in which we approach it” (Vanhoozer, Faith Speaking Understanding, 46).

Performance Pedagogy

"Teaching is showing someone how to live and how to die."

—Gabriel Moran, Showing How: The Act of Teaching (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1997), 41.

The Israel of God

There has always been an Israel within Israel. That is to say, a true Israel within an Israel in name only. So argues the apostle Paul, for example, in Rom. 9:6, and elsewhere (e.g., Gal. 6:16; Phil. 3:3; see esp. the Greek of these texts, and note the various versions, esp. Gal. 6:16, NIV).

But this is clear from the Old Testament as well as the New Testament. Paul himself points this out in Rom. 9:6ff. Another text that makes this clear, it seems to me, is Ps. 73:1, though I don't believe this is often pointed out.

There we read:

          "Truly God is good to Israel,
          to those who are pure in heart."

I put the text like this so you can see the parallelism of the two lines in this verse. "Israel" is parallel to "those who are pure in heart." And so "those who are pure in heart" defines who Israel is, who the true Israelites are. Those Israelites with impure hearts are not Israel. At least in one vital sense.

So unless you're going to try to argue that all of ethnic Israel was pure in heart at the time the psalmist composed this poem (which seems to strain credulity, given Israel's checkered history), we have a plain statement in Psalm 73 that "they are not all Israel who are from Israel" (Rom. 9:6, NASB).

The Fierce Christ of Easter Faith

Here's a portion from Timothy P. George's powerful piece over at Patheos, "A Franciscan Moment," which speaks into the discussion of the future of evangelicalism:

As parachurch groups like Campus Crusade and InterVarsity appealed to an earlier generation, so today movements like The Gospel Coalition, Acts 29, and the Passion conferences are calling thousands of young Christians to take up their cross and follow Jesus — not the tame Jesus who would fit in well at a cocktail party but the fierce Christ of Easter faith.

You may read the whole piece here. 

Looking Away from Abortion

A sober piece by Ross Douthat of the New York Times: "Looking Away From Abortion."

Here's an excerpt:

The reluctance to look closely doesn’t change the truth of what there is to see. 

Those were dead human beings on Richard Selzer’s street 40 years ago, and these are dead human beings being discussed on video today: Human beings that the nice, idealistic medical personnel at Planned Parenthood have spent their careers crushing, evacuating, and carving up for parts. 

The pro-life sting was sweeping; there are reportedly 10 videos to go. You can turn away. But there will be plenty of chances to look, to see, to know.

What Is Theology?

Here's an Edwardsian definition: Divinity is “the doctrine of living to God by Christ.”

—Jonathan Edwards, Sermons and Discourses 1739–1742 (vol. 22 in the Works of Jonathan Edwards; ed. Harry S. Stout; New Haven: Yale University, 2003), 86.

The New Establishment

R. R. Reno:

The Obama administration is staffed by people whose skin colors and ethnic backgrounds make them look very different from the old WASP elites. But they’re almost entirely formed by Establishment institutions once run by WASPs, institutions that deliberately and successfully ­reinvented themselves with slogans of diversity and ideologies of multiculturalism. The president himself is perhaps the most perfect example of the new Establishment, which has emerged in profound continuity with the old one.

 —"Our Carrie Nation," First Things June/July (2015): 4.

What Makes a Good Teacher?

"The good teacher, of Christian doctrine or anything else, knows that one must not only state facts but also show how. One successfully shows how only when others are able to follow directions and 'go and do likewise' (Luke 10:37)."

—Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Faith Speaking Understanding: Performing the Drama of Doctrine (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2014), 44.

Slaves of Signs

"He is a slave to a sign who uses or worships a significant thing without knowing what it signifies" (St. Augustine, On Interpretation, 3.9).

Christ's Finished Work and Our Unfinished Work

Vanhoozer:

There is nothing we can do to add to the finished work and definitive performance of Christ; however, it does not follow that there is nothing for Christians to do. On the contrary, Christ calls his disciples to participate in his work by bearing witness to its achievement and to do so in word and deed.

—Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Faith Speaking Understanding: Performing the Drama of Doctrine (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2014), 18.

The Best Lack All Conviction

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

—W. B. Yeats, "The Second Coming."

Face to Face with God's Majesty

"Man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God's Majesty" (Calvin, Instit. 1.1.3).

The Need for Prophetic Edge

Over at First Things, Peter Leithart says some important things, including this:

There is an opportunity here to forge or strengthen local coalitions of churches. In some cities, pastors’ associations have issued statements affirming biblical marriage. That’s good and needs to happen across the country. But those statements will be most effective if they have a prophetic edge. Saying what’s right is necessary, but it’s not enough. Pastors need to be willing to say that other churches are wrong, and dangerously so.

The Sources of True and Sound Wisdom

"Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves" (John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion 1.1.1).

Abortion in Decline in America

R. R. Reno:

Abortion is declining in America. A recent report puts the drop at 12 percent nationwide since 2010. Part of the decline undoubtedly stems from pro-life legislation in a number of states. But a broad cultural change also plays a role. We’ve succeeded in convincing the public that abortion is bad. That’s true even among people who think it’s a “tragic necessity.” This success has been hard won. It’s been a long struggle, and it continues. But as we face bad news about marriage, let’s keep this success in mind. In our permissive, nonjudgmental culture, it’s possible to move people toward sanity. In spite of all the damage done to marriage, it’s possible to rebuild a social consensus that, however imperfect (and what consensus for 300 million people won’t be?), encourages people to do the right thing, which is to restore the link between male-female sexual union, children, and lifelong marriage.

—R. R. Reno, "While We're at It," First Things August/September (2015): 68.

A Love Affair with the Lord and His Law

Van Gemeren:

Psalm 119 is well known for its teaching on God’s law. Yet the beauty of this psalm lies not only in the recitation of devotion to the law but also in the psalmist’s absolute devotion to the Lord. . . . This is a psalm not only of law but also of love . . . not only of devotion to precept but also of loyalty to the way of the Lord. The beauty of this psalm resounds from the relationship of the psalmist and his God.

—William A. Van Gemeren, "Psalms," EBC 5 (rev. ed.; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), 858.

How to Settle Church Conflicts

"In the church, conflicts between people are not necessarily settled through negotiation, as would be the case in the political world. They are settled through repentance."

—Solomon Andria, "James," in Africa Bible Commentary, ed. Tokunboh Adeyemo (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 1514.

A Sermon for Five

Doug Wilson's sermon this Lord's Day addresses the five supremes who voted in the majority opinion. Well worth reading.

Tempted Repeatedly to Rationalize the Mystery

“The doctrine of the Trinity has always bristled with difficulties, and therefore it is no wonder that the Church in its attempt to formulate it was repeatedly tempted to rationalize it and to give a construction of it which failed to do justice to the scriptural data.”

—Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1958), 82.

Sermonizing Plainly

"In the midst of all this clamor for fine writing and florid style, the preacher should be a resolute man, and dare to be a plain writer . . . This determination will affect his whole sermonizing . . . It will appear in the composition and manner, in a stripping, flaying hatred of circumlocutions, and of all unnecessary ornament. The preacher whose head is right, and whose conscience is right, will soon come to possess a love for this plainness. He will not be able to read authors who do not understand themselves. He will be impatient with a public speaker who does not distinctly know what he is saying” (Shedd, Homiletics and Pastoral Theology, 68-69).

HT: Doug Wilson

Who Gets to Interpret the Constitution?

Michael Stokes Paulsen, distinguished university chair and professor of law at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, provides a primer on constitutional law in two parts over at the Witherspoon Institute: part 1 and part 2. Below is a snippet from part 2:

Who gets to interpret the Constitution? The law-school-course answer is “Well, the Supreme Court, of course! They’re supreme, after all!”

This is clearly the wrong answer. The right answer is that the Constitution does not specify a single authoritative constitutional interpreter, and that this is a singular, defining feature of its text and structure. In this respect, the American Constitution contrasts rather sharply with the approach of some nations that have a designated “Constitutional Court” with explicit textual authority to resolve all questions of constitutional interpretation. The structure of the US Constitution—separation of powers, with each branch independent in the exercise of its authority and with no branch literally bound by the actions or judgments of any other branch—refutes the notion that anything the courts say goes.

Why Do the Nations Rage?

"My country, right or wrong," is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, "My mother, drunk or sober."—G. K. Chesterton

And now for a catchy little ditty based on Psalm 2.

For God's Sake

Kidner, commenting on Ps. 119:2: “Note here what is implicit throughout the psalm, that Scripture is revered for being his ( or ‘thy’) sayings, and God’s servants thereby seek him, not the book for its own sake” (Psalms 73-150, 424). 

The High Christology of James

In Jas. 1:1, James is a slave both of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the same breath, he tells us—on the face of it—that his bondservice to Jesus Christ is one and the same as his bondservice to God. And so without making any distinctions here (other than that two distinct persons are in view), James puts the Lord Jesus Christ on the same plane with the God of Judaism and the Hebrew Bible.

James, as a Palestinian Jew conversant with the Septuagint (he cites it routinely: see, e.g., Jas. 4:6 GNT and cf. the LXX and MT), knew of course that the designation κύριος was used throughout the Septuagint to translate the divine name, YHWH. And of course, as a leader of the early church, he also took part in confessing Jesus as Lord of all in the fullest sense. And so this is high Christology indeed, despite what many have said of James’ lack of Christology.

The Church's Deposit of Doctrine

Vanhoozer:

Doctrine refers to the deposit of authorized teaching entrusted to the church's care (1 Tim. 6:20; 2 Tim. 1:14), yet it is more than a body of knowledge. It is instruction whose aim is to form, inform, and transform disciples into doers who can speak, act, and think the way Christ did. Doctrine serves as a finishing school for disciples by helping them to view their lives as Christ did his, as caught up in the great drama of redemption. Doctrine, then, is not simply an inert body of knowledge; rather, it intends an active bodily doing. Church without doctrine to direct it is dazed and confused; yet doctrine without the church to embody it is arid and empty. 

—Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Faith Speaking Understanding: Performing the Drama of Doctrine (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2014), 4.

Pauline Prayer Patterns

"It is remarkable that in all of his writings Paul's prayers for his friends contain no appeals for changes in their circumstances."

—Timothy Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God (New York: Dutton, 2014), Kindle Edition, 19.

Attending to Our Own House

Peter J. Leithart, at First Things:

Orthodox Christianity has lost all cultural potency in the United States.  

No one defending traditional marriage before the court dared raise the fundamental question: Who creates marriage, God or the state? Theology has no public standing, no persuasive force in the culture at large. 

Obergefell is another nail in the coffin of the Protestant establishment. It’s not the first nail, or the last. It may be the one that snaps the lid closed. 

What to do? For starters, Don’t panic. The church began as a disestablished minority, and that’s where much of the global church is. Early Christians were accused of incest; we can endure being treated as bigots. Been there, done that. 

Then: Don’t pretend. We should stop acting like an exiled Tsar, hoping for the coup to put us back in the Winter Palace. 

We should instead double our efforts to form an alternative public among the churches. 

That means we stop veiling our convictions behind a publicly-approved idiom antithetical to orthodoxy. We can’t defend marriage without talking about God who joins a man and woman; we shouldn’t try. And we might as well say it plainly: We oppose gay marriage because we believe homosexual acts are sinful, and we believe that for biblical and theological reasons. Unbelievers already know it. Let’s admit it. 

Some Christians aren’t convinced that the Bible prohibits homosexual acts. Let the Courts and the States go where they will. It’s absurd to urge the country to affirm Christian marriage until we’re united on the question. Given today’s disarray, that’s the work of a century or more. 

Churches must take responsibility for marriages and families. The argument that we need to protect marriage for children is true in principle, laughable in practice. In sections of America, marriages aren’t steady enough to protect anyone. The best argument for traditional marriage is a thriving traditional marriage. 

Creating an alternative public sounds like a plan to intensify the culture war, but it’s the opposite. Culture war continues because, in response to our displacement, we’ve tried to politick our values back on top. We failed, but for the church this is a skirmish in a spiritual war crossing millennia. We have the luxury of patience. 

Attending to our own house is now our best strategy for evangelization and prophetic witness. It’s also the way of peace, perhaps the only way of peace remaining.

How to Respond to a Lawless Decision

Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, over at First Things:

How shall we respond to a lawless decision in which the Supreme Court by the barest of majorities usurps authority vested by the Constitution in the people and their elected representatives? By letting Abraham Lincoln be our guide. Faced with the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, Lincoln declared the ruling to be illegitimate and vowed that he would treat it as such. He squarely faced Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney’s claim to judicial supremacy and firmly rejected it. To accept it, he said, would be for the American people “to resign their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”

Today we are faced with the same challenge. Like the Great Emancipator, we must reject and resist an egregious act of judicial usurpation. We must, above all, tell the truth: Obergefell v. Hodges is an illegitimate decision. What Stanford Law School Dean John Ely said of Roe v. Wade applies with equal force to Obergefell: “It is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.” What Justice Byron White said of Roe is also true of Obergefell: It is an act of “raw judicial power.” The lawlessness of these decisions is evident in the fact that they lack any foundation or warrant in the text, logic, structure, or original understanding of the Constitution. The justices responsible for these rulings, whatever their good intentions, are substituting their own views of morality and sound public policy for those of the people and their elected representatives. They have set themselves up as superlegislators possessing a kind of plenary power to impose their judgments on the nation. What could be more unconstitutional—more anti-constitutional—than that?

The rule of law is not the rule of lawyers—even lawyers who are judges. Supreme Court justices are not infallible, nor are they immune from the all-too-human temptation to unlawfully seize power that has not been granted to them. Decisions such as Dred Scott, Roe v. Wade, and Obergefell amply demonstrate that. In thinking about how to respond to Obergefell, we must bear in mind that it is not only the institution of marriage that is at stake here—it is also the principle of self-government. And so we must make clear to those candidates for high offices who are seeking our votes, that our willingness to support them depends on their willingness to stand, as Abraham Lincoln stood, for the Constitution, and therefore against judicial decisions—about marriage or anything else—that threaten to place us, to quote Jefferson, “under the despotism of an oligarchy."