Exegesis and Theology

The Blog of Brian Collins

Emotionalism no reason to disregard true affections

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They [the authors of the textbook Lewis is critiquing] see the world around them swayed by emotional propaganda—they have learned from tradition that youth is sentimental—and they conclude that the best thing they can do is to fortify the minds of young people against emotion. My own experience as a teacher tells an opposite tale. For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defense against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head.

C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: HarperCollins, 1947), 13-14.

Contextualization must Reckon with Antithesis

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“The first generation of Doleantie pastors were retiring and making way for the next generation, who thought differently and had only heard about the Herculean struggles and high price that was paid for Doleantie pastors to extricate themselves from the grip of the rampant liberalism in the Old State Church (HK). Bavinck’s students from the Free University were now occupying pulpits, and some were not as adept as their teaching in dealing with the problems of modern society. Whereas the older generation had emphasized the idea of the antithesis vis-à-vis culture, the younger generation was more in tune with the concepts of what today is called contextualization and accommodation in spite of what Bavinck and others had taught them.”

The younger generation argued that “in order for the Reformed church to remain relevant in Holland, it had to busy itself with seeking and finding ‘new paths’ for both church and society. Interestingly, the astute student of church history can find this pattern and these sentiments repeated throughout the ages. Equally interesting are the statistics that point inexorably to the truth that when a church starts down such a path, the results are often disastrous. Those desiring to be creative or innovative in the church usually compromise the gospel somewhere along the line, and the same holds true for those who are intent on ‘engaging the culture.’ They fail to realize that the culture will engage you back, and you had better be more than prepared to deal with both the blatant aspects as well as the subtleties of unbelief. Bavinck, Kuyper, Rutgers, Noordtzij, and other had developed an excellent way of working out a biblical life and worldview. . . . These youngish theologians were neither Kuyper nor Bavinck. They were lacking the requsite intellectual tools and life experience to analyze and to correct culture in the manner in which Bavinck had learned to do. Wanting to be Kuyper and Bavinck ‘clones,’ these young men fell short of the mark. Even though their intentions were honorable, without the requisite intellectual prowess and wherewithal their embrace of the new questions raised by culture carried the seeds of destruction for the Reformed church, as the history of the Dutch church would manifest.”

Ron Gleason,  Herman Bavinck: Pastor, Churchman, Statesman, and Theologian (P & R Publishing, 2010), 408-9, 412.

Suffering: The Price to Be Paid for Living Distinctively

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Pluralism is the accepted relationship between church and state in the contemporary West. Such an approach has been manageable while the competing religions have shared ethical norms. But what happens when perceptions of right and wrong sharply diverge.

Howard Chua-Eoan wites on Time.com in qualified praise of the legalization of homosexual “marriages” in New York:

But in one very important way, gay marriage will not quite be marriage even in New York, even 30 days from now when the law goes into effect. . . . Marriage without a church or temple wedding isn’t the real thing. Why can some people have all the bells and whistles in the church of their choice but not me? Of course, there have been and will be congregations and churches that allow gay men and lesbians to be married in their midst and to bless those unions, recognizing that God loves them just as much as Governor Andrew Cuomo does. But some rich and influential religious institutions are not only free to continue to reject gay men and women as equal beneficiaries of all aspects of faith but will now also rally their congregants to reject politicians who are willing to abide with this extension of secular civil rights — no matter how much acceptance there is of same-sex marriage elsewhere, no matter how many wedding announcements appear in the New York Times.

https://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2079861,00.html

In Chua-Eoan’s system of ethics rejection of homosexuality is a sin. Thus the offenders’ liberty must be curtailed so the righteous can freely enjoy theirs. Is pluralism workable in such a situation?

Michael Goheen, drawing on Newbigin, notes:

“No human societies cohere except on the basis of some kind of common beliefs and customs. No society can permit these beliefs and practices to be threatened beyond a certain point without reacting in self-defense.” . . . When ultimate believes clash, the dominant worldview strives to become the exclusive worldview, exerting tremendous pressure on dissenting communities to abandon their uniqueness and conform to the dominant community. Dissenters must opt either for accommodation or to live out the comprehensive call of the gospel faithfully and pay the price for their dissent with suffering.

Micahel Goheen, A Light to the Nations 95.

The Universal Blessing of the Abrahamic Covenant Fulfilled through the Davidic Covenant

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The Davidic covenant "also reestablishes the universal horizon of [Israel’s] calling: a king in David’s line becomes the object of future hope. God makes a covenant with David, promising that one day one of David’s descendants will rule over a universal and everlasting kingdom (2 Sam. 7:11-17). This is more than a promise of political success: it anticipates the goal of God’s redemptive work through Israel—the incorporation of the nations into God’s covenant people. Thus the psalmists celebrate the promise of God’s universal rule through Israel’s king (e.g., Pss. 2:7-9; 72:11-17)." Note, esp., the echo of the Abrahamic covenant in Ps. 72:17. See also the prophets: Isa. 11; 55:3-5; Jer. 33:14-22.

Goheen, A Light to the Nations (Baker, 2011), 55-56.

Does Mission Define the Essence of the Church?

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Michael Goheen’s book, A Light to the Nations: The Missional Church and the Biblical Story insightfully relates the theme of missions to both Israel and the church. Yet at a few points it may be asked if mission ends up overriding other necessary aspects of the church.

For instance: “At its best, ‘missional’ describes not a specific activity of the church but the very essence and identity of the church as it takes up its role in God’s story in the context of its culture and participates in God’s mission to the world” (p. 4).

John Bolt and Richard Muller question the legitimacy of defining the church’s essence in terms of mission:

“In simple language, what we are determines how we can act and what the result of our activity will be. The marks of the church indicate her fundamental identity, and her identity is the basis for the performance of her task. The opposite model, where the doing of a task is posited prior to careful statement of identity, or where identity is defined in terms of a task, can lead and historically has led to disastrous consequences. A redefinition and revision of the church’s task, framed primarily by numerical growth for example, threatens the very essence of the church. After having led converts to a new and different place, we may well discover that this is not a place where the Word is truly preached and the sacraments rightly administered. We have then arrived if not at utopia, at ucclesia, a nonchurch. The point here is that the expression a ‘mission-shaped church’ is vacuous. A church cannot remain church unless it is shaped by a mission that is itself shaped by the church’s essential identity.”

John Bolt and Richard A. Muller, “Does the Church Today Need a New ‘Mission Paradigm’,” Calvin Theological Journal 31, no. 1 (April 1, 1996): 204-205.

Church Conformed to Culture

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Michael Goheen lists and describes a variety of images of the church that are shaped more by the current culture than by Scripture:

  • Church as mall or food court: Malls offer a variety of consumer goods, and similarly food courts offer a number of choices. Likewise the church provides a variety of programs to meet the religious needs of the congregation.
  • Church as community center: Various institutions . . . exist to meet social needs and organize themselves around the hobbies and special interests of their members. In this model the church becomes a hub for its members to meet social needs as the organize around a shared set of beliefs and a shared religious interest. Various programs are conceived for youth, singles, young married couples, and other groups to meet their various social needs.
  • Church as a corporation: Corporations are rationally organized for growth, profit, and the efficient marketing of their product. Often church leadership and organization are oriented toward efficiency rather than pastoral care and missional leadership. They are organized to market the religious goods they can offer.
  • Church as theater: Theaters are places where people are invited to sit back and passively enjoy various kinds of entertainment. Often the way we structure our worship spaces and liturgies makes our ‘worship’ look more like occasions for entertainment.
  • Church as classroom: Educational institutions continue to dominate Western culture. Within a consumer framework, they offer teaching and insight for living. This may well reflect one of the consumer items the church has to offer its constituents through Bible study and teaching.
  • Church as hospital or spa: A hospital is a place of healing, and a spa offers an opportunity for rejuvenation in a stressful world. The church is a place of spiritual healing and rejuvenation.
  • Church as a motivational seminar: In our self-help-oriented world there is no shortage of motivational seminars to help improve various dimensions of our lives. The church can offer these too, from tips on better parenting to ways to improve your marriage.
  • Church as social-service office: The social-services arm of the government exists to take care of the weak, the needy, and the poor. The compassionate church concerned for diaconal mercy in its neighborhood may come to resemble this kind of institution in its care for those in need.
  • Church as campaign headquarters or social advocacy group: A social-advocacy group or political party promotes its particular brand of political economic, or ecological justice. In this mode, the church assumes this role, organizing pressure for a more Christian society.

Goheen recognizes that some, though not all, of these items contain aspects of church ministry that are essential (e.g., teaching). He identifies the problem: “The problem arises when the biblical story and the nature of the church are forgotten; then these activities are shaped by a different story and lose their authentic ecclesial form.”

Michael Goheen, Light to the Nations (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 15-16 (bulleted items quoted verbatim).

Distinct Living within a Particular Cultural Context

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The early church saw itself in light of the concept of "resident aliens" (παροικοι). "The primary sense of paroikoi* is that of a redemptive tension between the church and its cultural context. These early Christians understood themselves to be different from others in their culture, and lived together as an alternative community nourished by an alternative story—the story of the Bible—that was impressed on catechumens in the process of catechism. The entire catechetical process had this pastoral purpose: to empower a distinctive people shaped by the story of the Bible."

*Note 10: "Paroikoi is the Greek world found in the New Testament (e.g., 1 Pet. 2:11) and often early church literature. It carries the sense of both being at home in a place and being a foreigner."

Micahel W. Goheen, A Light to the Nations(Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 7.

Allegory and the Church Fathers

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"There is a general failure in antiquity to make a clear distinction between allegorical expression and allegorical interpretation. What we call ‘allegorical interpretation’ in this context normally takes the form of a claim that an author has expressed himself ‘allegorically’ in a given passage. . . . There is never any suggestion that the goal of the commentator is anything but the elucidation of the intention or meaning (διάνοια) of the author. Neither does the interpreter normally feel compelled to justify his claim that the text under consideration ‘says other things than the obvious. His goal is to find the hidden meanings, the correspondence that carry the thrust of the text beyond the explicit. Once he has asserted their existence, he rarely feels the need to provide a theoretical substructure for his claims. If such a substructure is implied, it is often no more than the idea that a prestigious author is incapable of an incoherent or otherwise unacceptable statement, and that an offensive surface is thus a hint that a secondary meaning lurks behind."

Lamberton, Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition, 20.

Sola Scriptura and Specific Applications

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How does God’s speech in creation relate to his speech in Scripture? In putting such a great emphasis on general revelation, are we not in danger of minimizing special revelation? Do we not thereby compromise the Reformation’s great principle of sola Scriptura?

This is a legitimate concern. . . . The analogy with ‘guidance’ can be helpful. It is certainly true that a preoccupation with ‘the leading of the Spirit’ in determining God’s will for decisions of everyday life can result in an undervaluing of Scripture, but that is not at all a necessary consequence of an emphasis on seeking God’s will in our daily lives. A sound approach to guidance will always stress the primacy and indispensability of Scripture as well as the exercise of ‘sanctified common sense,’ bit it will not thereby downplay the reality of a knowable and specific will of God for our personal lives. In fact, the Scriptures themselves by their insistent teaching of God’s lordship over all of our lives continually drive us to consider questions of guidance. Suppose John, a college senior has to decide whether // to go on to seminary or to pursue graduate studies in philosophy. Scripture does not decide that question for him. Instead it gives him certain indispensable guidelines: he must seek the Lord’s will in all things, he must be a good steward of the gifts God gives him, he must do all to the glory of God, God has a plan for his life and has been guiding him since childhood, he must subordinate his own wishes and desires to God’s, and so on. But these guidelines press him on to a consideration of what God’s will is in this situation, what gifts he has to be a steward of, what is most glorifying to God in this particular case, what God’s plan and guidance have been in his life to this point, what personal preferences must be downplayed, and so on. In considering all these individual questions he must continually check back with Scripture to make sure his bearings are right, but he would be foolish and irresponsible if he let a stray text decide the matter for him without considering available graduate schools, his own talents and temperament, specific historical needs, and so on.

Albert M. Wolters, Creation Regained, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 36-37

God is most glorified in us when we are most conformed to His image

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“This is the prime way of honouring God. We do not so glorify God by elevated admirations, or eloquent expressions, or pompous services for him, as when we aspire to a conversing with him with unstained spirits, and live to him in living like him.”
Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, 453 cited in Beeke, Puritan Reformed Spirituality, 404.