Exegesis and Theology

The Blog of Brian Collins

Calvin on the Role of Systematic Theology

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Although Holy Scripture contains a perfect doctrine, to which one can add nothing, since in it our Lord has meant to display the infinite treasures of his wisdom, yet a person who has not much practice in it has good reason for some guidance and direction, to know what he ought to look for in it, in order not to wander hither and thither, but to hold to a sure path, that he may always be pressing toward the end to which the Holy Spirit calls him.

John Calvin, “Subject Matter of the Present Work: From the French Edition of 1560,” in The Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 6.

Political Virtues: Humility and Respect

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In BJU Press’s Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption we aslo gave attention to the virtues of humility and respect. Here is a selection from an inital draft that was later reduced due to space constraints:

Repeatedly Scripture urges Christians to engage those who oppose them with respect. Consider Titus 3:1-3. In the context of submission to governmental authority, Paul describes how Christians should conduct themselves: Christians should not slander, defame, or verbally abuse anyone, especially a person in a role of authority. When Paul was on trial and the high priest ordered Paul to be struck illegally, Paul shot back: “God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall.” Paul pointed out the hypocrisy of those who were judging him according to the law breaking that law in their very proceedings. But when it was pointed out to Paul that the person he spoke against was the high priest, Paul retracted his statement and confessed he was wrong since the law said, “You shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people” (Acts. 23:2-5; cf. Ex. 22:28). Rather than quarreling with opponents, the Christian should be known as gracious, considerate, and peaceable. Paul bases his instruction on the fact that Christians were no different than the sinners who rule over them and live around them. Christians are saved by grace, not by any merit of their own. Thus Christians should be gracious, not abusive toward others.

If Christians participated in political life with these virtues, they would stand out as distinctively Christian. Sadly, too often Christians speak with the same harshness, quarrelsomeness, and sometimes even untruthfulness about their political opponents as the lost world. Such things ought not be so (Jam. 3:10). Even under a ruler such as Nero, who had starkly unchristian policies, Peter says, “Honor the emperor” (1 Pet. 2:17).

I fear that too often we are more shaped by talk show or TV personalities than we are by Scripture in these matters. Not only does this harm conservativism politically, as Mona Charen points out in an excellent article in National Review, but, more importantly we are conformed to the world in an area of public witness and we may be unaware of our worldliness and the damage it does to the cause of Christ.

This is by no means a call for Christians to disengage from the political area or to be less bold in such engagement. It is a call for strength of conviction to be clothed with humility and respect.

The Political Virtues: Prudence and Boldness

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In BJU Press’s Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption we gave some attention to the political virtues of prudence and boldness (p. 280).

Prudence means understanding your situation, seeing what good can be accomplished in it, knowing what options are both morally legitimate and likely successful—and then pursuing the wisest goal in the wisest way. Prudence is a key virtue for Christians involved in politics (Prov. 8:12–16). The Bible does not provide specific revelation about how to frame laws, manage campaigns, or even who to vote for in a presidential election. But the Bible was written to help Christians live wisely in every aspect of their lives. Prudence is knowing the best way to get from here to wherever you ought to be. For example, Christians and radical feminists fundamentally disagree about the structure of the family and the roles of men and women in society. But they both see pornography as degrading, and both oppose domestic abuse of women. A politically prudent Christian can reach across the aisle and cooperate with someone who wants the same biblical things even if their motivations are ultimately different.

Of course, some fundamental disagreements will always remain. Cooperation is sometimes impossible. On these matters the Christian should state the Christian position boldly, but not brashly.

Another example of political prudence can be seen in the abortion debate. Ideally, the Christian would see a constitutional ammendment passed that would see the life of the unborn protected in the nation without exceptions. But such an ammendment is a political impossibility. The prudent Christian, however, sees that abortion can be constrained and limited though more limited laws that Congress and state legislatures pass. If a pro-life politician agrees to a law that will prevent or hinder him from reaching the goal of ending abortion in the United States, that would be compromise. But he he is pressing for laws that move toward the goal even if they don’t reach it, that is political prudence.

This kind of prudence is not a weak-kneed approach to politics, even if it avoids making Quoxitic stands. It typically requires a great deal of foresight and boldness if it is going to be successful.

Christian Political Involvement

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This last year I had the privlege of contributing a section on the Christian’s involement in politics in BJU Press’s new textbook, Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption. We looked at the Christian’s political responsibility under these headings:

Praying for All People

Pressing for God’s Will to Be Done

Preserve the Good, Reform the Evil

Develop Christian Political Virtues: Prudence, Boldness, Humility, and Respect

In the first draft of this chapter I wrote what follows about prayer (the published text was cut due to space constraints and improved by fellow authors and editors; I present the initial draft here because it is fuller and blogs don’t have space constraints):

When God sent the Israelites into exile, they were a conquered, politically powerless people. They were scattered form their homeland for the purpose of breaking their political power. And yet they are told to pray for the city to which they would be sent. (Jer. 29:7). Prayer was still possible. Likewise, the Christians in first century Rome did not have any political power. Many Christians were slaves. But Paul makes prayer for those in authority a duty for all Christians (1 Tim. 2:1-4).

The content of these two prayers is significant. In Jeremiah the people are to pray for the welfare of the foreign city to which they were exiled. Israel may have been tempted to view the Babylonians simply as the enemy. They may have been tempted pray curses down on these enemies. But God says his people’s welfare will be found in the welfare of the people they live among. Though Christians are not exiles under God’s judgment, they are still exiles and sojourners in this present evil age awaiting the return of their King (1 Peter 1:1). They may face persecution, if only the credulous mocking that comes when Christians resist the debauchery around them (1 Peter 2:11-12; 4:4). Nonetheless, Christians should view the unbelievers around them not as enemies, but as neighbors. They should pray for their welfare.

Paul urges that Christians pray for all people, but he calls out kings and other authorities for special attention. In particular, Paul says that Christians should pray that rulers would rule in such a way that Christians can lead “peaceful and quiet” lives. This may be a way of praying that governments would live up to their obligations as laid out in Romans 13:1-7 and 1 Peter 2:13-17. Rulers who are a terror to bad conduct but a blessing to good conduct will lead to peaceful and quiet lives for all, including Christians. But this prayer goes beyond praying just that government would fulfill its responsibilities. Paul is praying that the government will permit Christian’s to fulfill theirs. He prays that Christians might live lives of eusebia, which means a life lived in the fear of God, a life that seeks to please God in every aspect of life. He also prays that Christians would be able to live “dignified” lives. A dignified person is not flippant about life; he knows that every moment is lived before God. Life may be enjoyed but it should be enjoyed with due recognition of the duty to live always before God and a watching world. Finally, Paul indicates that Christians pray for everyone because God desires everyone to be saved. This means that Christians should pray for the salvation of those in government.

Paul’s example here of praying the government would fulfill its God-given duties reveals that Christians can pray that their leaders would be enabled by God to promote justice in all that they do. Christians should pray that governments will defend those who are deprived of justice from their oppressors (Ps. 72). Christians should also pray that their leaders would be just, righteous, morally self-controlled, and aware that they will give an account before God for their actions (Acts 24:25).

Jesus’s model prayer instructs us to pray that the Father’s will be done “on earth as it is in heaven.” This would include God’s will about the matters of state (Matt. 6:10).

Finally, Christians should pray for the soon return of Jesus from heaven to establish his righteous rule on earth forevermore (Matt. 6:10).

Review of Sanders’s The Deep Things of God

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Sanders, Fred. The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything. Crossway, 2010.

This book has two notable strengths. First, it is an excellent introduction to the Trinity and its implications for the Christian life. If anyone thinks that the Trinity is an arcane doctrine that cannot have the central importance for the Christian life that Christians have historically given to, this would be a book to read. Personally. I especially appreciated the chapters on the Trinity and Scripture and the Trinity and prayer. Second, Sanders demonstrates that evangelicalism has strong Trinitarian foundations, even if sometimes only implicitly. Evangelicals have a tendency toward self-critique that can sometimes become problematic, so it was nice to read an author who, though not uncritical toward the evangelical tradition, was determined to draw on its strengths.

Reading Lewis and Edwards

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Lewis, C. S. The Horse and His Boy.

Lewis works on many different levels. On the one hand, this is simply a fun adventure story. On another it thoughtfully examines topics such as pride, providence, and even liberal approaches to Christianity.

Edwards, Jonathan. “An Account of the Revival of Religion in Northampton in 1740-1742, as Communicated in a Letter to a Minister of Boston.” In Jonathan Edwards on Revival. Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1965.

In this letter Jonathan Edwards recounts the revival in Northampton. He is careful to distinguish what he believes to be the true work of the Spirit of God with lasting Spiritual effects and what he takes to be less pure manifestations that are primarily “visible commotion” rather than a true work of God.

Review of Mark Rogers Article on Luther, Mullins, and the Priesthood of the Beleiver

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Rogers, Mark. “A Dangerous Idea? Martin Luther, E. Y. Mullins, and the Priesthood of All Believers,” Westminster Theological Journal 72, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 119-134.

The title of this article is a play off the title of Alistair McGrath’s book, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution. McGrath argues that Luther’s teaching of the priesthood of the believer “had a ‘democratizing agenda'” that fostered democracy among Protestants. Rogers notes that “McGrath’s argument draws entirely on Luther’s pre-1522 writings” and that a fuller view of Luther’s view of the priesthood of all believers requires attention to his later writings as well.

In the first part of the article Rogers looks at Luther’s writings about the priesthood of the believer. He notes that Luther always held to this doctrine, “but after 1524, as he began to see the danger of uneducated and spiritually immature Christians making up their own theology, he emphasized accountability among official teachers, both to the orthodox fathers of the church and to spiritually nature lay people.” Also interesting in this section of the article was Rogers observation that Luther saw the priesthood of the believer as a communal ministry to one another rather than   in an entirely individualized sense.

In the latter part of the article Rogers compares Luther’s teaching with that of E. Y. Mullins, an early twentieth-century theologian whose view of the priesthood of the believer is probably the most widely held today. Rogers notes that with Luther Mullins rejected the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church, maintained that the “Christian could have direct access to God without any human mediator,” and a affirmed a role for the Christian ministry.  Rogers points out three differences as well, “Mullins emphasized competent individualism whereas Luther focused on the interdependent priesthood of all Christians,” Mullins held to “the right private judgment” where Luther did not, and they differed in their view of church government.

Roger’s conclusion: “The Enlightenment, American democracy, modern subjectivism: these factors, rather than Luther’s doctrine of the universal priesthood, moved much of American evangelical theology in a radically democratic, egalitarian, and individualistic direction. The result is that the priesthood of all believers, a doctrine that should build Christ-centered, Bible-saturated, interdependent community in the church, has, in many pockets of evangelicalism, morphed into a teaching that encourages radical individualism and undermines the significance of the church’s life together. Luther’s doctrine was not perfect. Few evangelicals will want to return to a reliance on a state church system or limitations on religious liberty. But a proper understanding of Luther’s teaching and this doctrine’s development in history could help churches recover a more biblical, Christ-centered view of the priesthood of all believers, and thereby a more biblical community life within the church.”

Thinking about Democracy

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For most Americans that democracy is good is a given. This was not always so. Mark Noll observes:

Republican themes have been so widely embraced by both religious and nonreligious Americans that it is now difficult to understand why defenders of traditional religion once looked with such suspicion on civic humanist, commonwealth, Real Whig, and country convictions. Yet such suspicion was in fact the norm until the unusual convergence of republicanism and Christianity in the American founding.

Traditional Christian complaints were recited for several centuries as a common litany: Republican instincts prized human self-sufficiency more highly than dependence on God. They demeaned the life to come by focusing without reservation on this-worldly existence. They defined the human good in terms of public usefulness instead of divine approval. Both Protestants and Catholics, in addition, regularly noted the persistent correlation of republican political convictions and heterodox theological opinions. This discourse of virtue, vice, liberty, and tyranny seemed always to be associated with the rejection of innate human sinfulness, with views on human salvation that dispensed with the substitutionary work of Christ, with opinions about Jesus treating him as no more than an unusual human being, and, in the most extreme cases, with arguments denying the existence of God altogether.

Mark Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 57-58.

Through friendlier to democracy that Christians in earlier generations David Koyzis warns against democracy as an ideology. When Koyzis issues this warning, he is not claiming that democratic elements in a government are a problem. To the contrary, democracy as an element of a governmental system seems appropriate given that God has given all humans the responsibility of ruling over the earth (Gen. 1:26-28).

But sometimes political figures speak as if the spread of democracy would bring salvation, or at least stability and freedom, to the world. This kind of thinking, Koyzis says, is idolatrous. In addition it neglects the reality that unchecked democracy has significant flaws: “Democracy, in short, can endanger politics by attempting to impose a single majoritarian interest on a diverse and pluriform political community” (Kindle loc 1592). It is true that modern democracies often have checks and balances built in, but Koyzis notes that “democratic checks on political power are insufficient to prevent a totalitarian expansion of that power, especially if there are no countervailing checks on democracy itself” (Kindle loc 1711). The American founders instituted a number of these checks on democracy, from the election of senators by legislatures and of the president by the electoral college to the appointment of Supreme Court justices for life. Yet these checks have been eroded or are now regularly challenged on the grounds that they are undemocratic.

Koyzis notes a “second way in which democracy can become totalitarian: by attempting to extend the democratic principle throughout the entire political system and even into the whole of life, including an array of spheres where for various reasons it is simply not appropriate. Here democracy becomes not simply a form of government, but a way of life with definite idolatrous religious roots” (Kindle loc 1718). Examples of this noted by Koyzis include running families, churches, and schools as if they were democracies. Sometimes people presume that all of society and culture should be democratic in nature.

C. S. Lewis also identified this extension of democracy as a problem: “When equality is treated . . . as an ideal we begin to breed that stunted and envious sort of mind which hates all superiority. That mind is the special disease of democracy, as cruelty and servility are the special diseases of privileged societies” (“Equality,” in Present Concerns, Kindle loc 147).

The privilege to participate in the governing process should be valued by all Americans, but we must be alert to the dangers of democracy as well as to its blessings.

Review of Van Reken on Christians as Pilgrims or Settlers

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Van Reken, Calvin P. “Christians in This World: Pilgrims or Settlers,” Calvin Theological Journal 43 (2008): 234-56.

Van Reken traces and “Old Vision” and a “New Vision” in the CRC regarding the Christian’s place in the world. Interestingly he approaches this topic by looking at revisions to the denomination’s hymnals. For instance, he notes that a hymn that once read “Spirit of God, who dwells within my heart, wean it from earth” was altered in the 1987 hymnal to read “Spirit of God, who dwells within my heart, wean it from sin.” He then documents a shift from seeking the world “as so vile as to be dangerous to Christians” to seeking the world as a place that Christians should seek to redeem. In the new vision sees “the world as our home in need of our attention.” Van Reken believes that the new vision is correct in some areas. But he has two concerns: worldliness and lack of evangelism.

He notes that 1928 CRC “did not warn the church about cultural engagements in general; it warned specifically about worldly amusements.” It did not call these amusements “intrinsically sinful.” But it did recognize a danger in them that differed from other kinds of cultural engagement: “the less hazardous forms of cultural engagement, such as working in a factory or running for Congress, are not things so pleasant as to make us forget God. They have much less power to lure us away from our interest in heaven. Worldly amusements, on the other hand, are enjoyable.” Van Reken thinks that danger from worldly amusements is greater now than in 1928 but that concern about this matter has greatly diminished—making the danger even greater.

Van Reken’s other concern is an increasingly lack of attention given to evangelism. He praises the increased social outreach that the new view has generated, but he is distressed that this social work seems to have replaced an emphasis on evangelism. And what shall it profit if Christians repaired a home destroyed by a hurricane but failed to share the gospel of salvation with the homeowner?

Fundamentally, however, Van Reken believes that the new vision has forgotten that the old vision was rooted in the Bible’s teaching about the pilgrim life of the believer. Van Reken does not think that the pilgrim vision should detract from engagement with the world. But he does think that it reminds us to consider what is temporary and what is eternal. It reminds us that the life to come is eternal and that this life is transitory. In other words, Van Reken concludes, “If we completely lose the old vision, we are in danger of forgetting what is really most important.”

Koyzis on Liberalism and the Christian Worldview

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Koyzis observes that liberalism exists in many different forms today. Indeed, many of the debates between the right and left in American life are debates between differing kinds of liberals. In elucidating this, Koyzis notes that there are several stages to liberalism. The first stage might be labeled “proto-liberal.” In this stage the ideas of a state of nature in which the individual is sovereign is proposed. From this it follows that sovereign individual precedes the community or the body politic. In this period the form of government might still be an absolute monarchy, but the rationale is laid for oppressed individuals to unite to overthrow a tyrant.

The second stage Koyzis labels “the night watchman state.” In this stage of liberalism, government’s role is to ensure the protection of private property. Government should not intrude upon the marketplace as that limits a person’s economic freedom. By the late nineteenth century many people were concerned about large monopolies. They thought that these businesses, and not government only, had the power to threaten people’s freedom. So in the third stage of liberalism the “regulatory state” is born. Koyzis said that “‘reform’ liberals” thought they could use government power to protect people’s freedom from powerful nongovernmental entities.

In the fourth stage of liberalism government adds another role to come “the equal opportunity state.” According to Koyzis, FDR’s “four freedoms” are an example of this stage of liberalism. The second stage liberals, often called “classical liberals,” thought that government should be limited so that individuals had the “space to pursue their own interests as they see fit.” But equal opportunity liberals note that poor children do not have the same opportunities that children of well-to-do parents have.

Koyzis thinks that this progression reveals a weakness in liberalism:

[Liberal individualism] is not only unable to account for the ontological status of community; it also ignores the connectedness of individuals to previous and succeeding generations. It pretends that the individual is an isolated runner in the race, whose success or failure depends wholly on herself. When it becomes apparent that this is not the case—that is, when liberals bump up against reality—they are often driven to pursue policies quite at variance with classical liberalism’s initial antistatist orientation. This late liberals came to embrace the welfare state.

A fifth stage of liberalism, according to Koyzis, is “the choice enhancement state.” There is a long background to this stage. Prior to liberalism, philosophers and theologians believed that “there is a substantive good which human beings or their political leaders are obliged by their nature to follow.” But Thomas Hobbes declared, “There is no such, finis ultimus, utmost aim, nor summum bonum, greatest good, as is spoken of in the books of the old moral philosophers.” Every individual can decide for himself what he thinks the good life should be for him. Koyzis notes, “The task of liberalism, therefore, is to try to accommodate these desires as much as possible. . . . But in no case should the liberal state attempt to prejudge the choices lying before individuals, since that would be an undue limitation on freedom of choice.” In previous eras, non-liberal elements in society  (such as widely held religious beliefs) placed a check on this aspect of liberalism. But now the liberal idea that government should not legislate morality has become a commonplace. These ideas have consequences:

Government may decline to ‘stigmatize’ divorcees or to place legal obstacles in their way, but it cannot proclaim that divorce will have no deleterious effects on the parties involved and on the larger society. It may similarly abstain from adversely judging nonmarital intercourse, but it cannot decree that unwanted pregnancies or sexually transmitted diseases will not proliferate. Government may legally affirm that single-parent families are ‘just as valid’ as two-parent families, but it cannot declare that there will be no negative fallout from the choice to end a marriage or that fatherlessness will not leave its impact on the lives of the offspring.

When these undesirable consequences do occur, rather than acknowledge that the quest to validate all lifestyle choices equally is a utopian one doomed to failure, fifth-stage liberals increasingly call on government to ameliorate, if not altogether eliminate, such consequences so they can continue to engage in this fruitless quest. This inevitably leads to an expansion of the scope of government that is difficult to contain within any borders whatever. . . . This final stage of liberalism demands that government effectively subsidize irresponsible behavior for fear that doing otherwise risks making government into a potentially oppressive legislator of the good life.

From a Christian perspective, certain forms of liberalism are better than others. However, Koyzis has identified two major flaws. First, liberty is viewed as the ultimate value, and every individual is allowed to choose his own definition of the good life. On a practical level this does not bode well for social cohesion, but from a Christian perspective it denies the grand truth that God’s glory should be the end of every individual and society because God’s glory is the end for which God created the world. Second, later stages of liberalism try to cushion people from the consequences of violating the structures that God built into his creation. But a society cannot continuously press against the norms God has built into his world without suffering the consequences of living contrary to creation.

Source: David T. Koyzis, Political Visions & Illusions: A Survey & Christian Critique of Contemporary Ideologies (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2003), 53-64.