Exegesis and Theology

The Blog of Brian Collins

Calvin on Christian Liberty and the Law

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Christian liberty seems to me to consist of three parts. First, the consciences of believers, while seeking the assurance of their justification before God, must rise above the law, and think no more of obtaining justification by it. For while the law, as has already been demonstrated (supra, chap. 17, sec. 1), leaves not one man righteous, we are either excluded from all hope of justification, or we must be loosed from the law, and so loosed as that no account at all shall be taken of works. For he who imagines that in order to obtain justification he must bring any degree of works whatever, cannot fix any mode or limit, but makes himself debtor to the whole law. Therefore, laying aside all mention of the law, and all idea of works, we must in the matter of justification have recourse to the mercy of God only; turning away our regard from ourselves, we must look only to Christ. For the question is, not how we may be righteous, but how, though unworthy and unrighteous, we may be regarded as righteous. If consciences would obtain any assurance of this, they must give no place to the law. Still it cannot be rightly inferred from this that believers have no need of the law. It ceases not to teach, exhort, and urge them to good, although it is not recognized by their consciences before the judgment-seat of God. The two things are very different, and should be well and carefully distinguished. The whole lives of Christians ought to be a kind of aspiration after piety, seeing they are called unto holiness (Eph. 1:4; 1 Thess. 4:5). The office of the law is to excite them to the study of purity and holiness, by reminding them of their duty. For when the conscience feels anxious as to how it may have the favor of God, as to the answer it could give, and the confidence it would feel, if brought to his judgment-seat, in such a case the requirements of the law are not to be brought forward, but Christ, who surpasses all the perfection of the law, is alone to be held forth for righteousness.

Calvin, Institutes (trans. Beveridge), 3.19.2.

Books and Articles Finished in August

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Books

Lewis, C. S. Perelandra.

  • An enjoyable and insightful read about temptation and much, much more.

Metaxas, Eric. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. [Audio book]

  • The book has been criticized by Bonhoeffer scholars for trying to make Bonhoeffer too much of an evangelical. This is probably a valid criticism. But Mexaxes likely got the broad outlines of the story correct, and he is a masterful storyteller. For a free audio-book, not bad.

O’Brien, Robert C. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh . New York: Scholastic, 1971.

  • Never read this one as a child. Enjoyed it.

Stevenson, Robert Louis, The Black Arrow.

  • I really enjoyed this book as a boy and had fun revisiting it with my wife.

Articles

Bolt, John. “Grand Rapids Between Kampen and Amsterdam: Herman Bavinck’s Reception and Influence in North America.” Calvin Theological Journal 38 (2003): 263-280.

  • An interesting article that deals with Bavinck’s separatist heritage and with its effects on the present-day theological location of Calvin Theological Seminary.

Stek, John. “A New Theology of Baptism? Baptism: A Sign of Grace or of Judgment?” Calvin Theological Journal (1966):69-73.

  • An early, positive review of Kline’s defense of paedobaptism. Kline’s view’s have most recently been expounded in J. V. Fesko’s new book on baptism.

Bauder’s articles on Fundamentalism

Bell, Theo. “Calvin and Luther on Bernard of Clairvaux.” Calvin Theological Journal 34, no. 2 (November 1, 1999): 370-395.

  • Despite a number of errors on Bernard’s part, Calvin saw Bernard as a preserver of true doctrine in the middle ages and a demonstration that Calvin was not an innovator.

Wright, N. T. “Justification: Yesterday, Today, and Forever.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 54, no. 1 (March 2011): 49-63.

  • Wright needs to stop two things: claiming that he stands in the true spirit of the Reformation because Scripture, not tradition, determines his viewpoint and misrepresenting and then distancing himself from the Reformer’s teaching on justification. The Reformers gave tradition an important, if ancillary and non-authoritative, role in their theologizing. If Wright paid it more heed, perhaps he would avoid mis-representing what the Reformers actually taught about justification. At various points, if I read him charitably, it seems that Wright may be approaching aspects of the Reformation doctrine of justification. But he insists that the Reformers are wrong. Should I take him at his word or insist on reading him more charitably than he reads the Reformers?

Schreiner, Thomas R. “Justification: The Saving Righteousness of God in Christ.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 54, no. 1 (March 2011): 19-34.

  • Excellent exposition. Clear. Biblical.

Akin, Daniel L. “Bernard of Clairvaux : evangelical of the 12th century (an analysis of his soteriology).” Criswell Theological Review 4 (March 1, 1990): 327-350.

  • Highlights “evangelical” aspects of Bernard’s soteriology. It’s probably too much to call him an evangelical, but the continuities show why the Reformers liked Bernard.

Manetsch, Scott M. “Is The Reformation Over John Calvin Roman Catholicism And Contemporary Ecumenical Conversations.” Themelios 36, no. 2 (2011): 185-202.

  • An excellent and needed article about the continuing errors in the Roman church that Protestants must protest. See also his helpful critique of Noll’s book, “Is the Reformation Over?”

Peckham, John C. “Intrinsic Canonicity and the Inadequacy of the Community Approach to Canon-Determination.” Themelios 36, no. 2 (2011): 2-3-15.

What is the Mission of the Church: A Brief Review

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DeYoung, Kevin and Greg Gilbert, What Is the Mission of the Church?: Making Sense of Social Justice, Shalom, and the Great Commission. Wheaton: Crossway, 2011.

DeYoung and Gilbert argue that the mission of the church is the Great Commission: “the mission of the church is to go into the world and make disciples by declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit and gathering those disciples into churches, that they might worship and obey Jesus Christ now and in eternity to the glory of God the Father” (p. 241). Much of the book provides helpful responses to those who extend the mission of the church so broadly that the core of the Great Commission is minimized or lost. They convincingly argue that the missio dei and the mission of the church do not necessarily coincide, that incarnation is not the best metaphor for church ministry, and that Stott’s interpretation of John 21 is not the most accurate. They could have made their argument stronger, however, be canvassing Acts and the Epistles for further indications of the church’s mission.

According to DeYoung and Gilbert, the gospel can refer to all the good that results from God’s plan of redemption, but they rightly center the gospel on the provision of atonement and how it may be received by individual humans for salvation. They tell the story of Scripture as centered on humans and sin rather than on creation and corruption. This is basically correct, but there does seem to be some overcorrection on this point. The Creation Blessing/Mandate gets little play in the redemptive historical survey chapter. In a later chapter it is reduced to something that Adam failed to do, that no other human is tasked with doing, and that the Second Adam will accomplish apart from our work. This incorrectly ties the Creation Blessing with Adam’s probationary test. Genesis 1 and 9 present the Creation Blessing as something that all humans have, even though it is now twisted by the Fall. It is not uniquely Adamic.

DeYoung and Gilbert view the kingdom of God as a spiritual reign of God in men’s hearts. While Ladd, whom they draw on, is correct that “reign” rather than “realm” is foremost in the NT concept of kingdom, it is difficult to reduce the NT teaching about the kingdom to the spiritual realm alone. Involved is the regeneration of all things. They do get this right in their chapter about the new heavens and the new earth, in which they carefully delineate what we can and cannot say about continuity and discontinuity between the two. DeYoung and Gilbert rightly correct loose talk about building the kingdom or bringing in the kingdom and instead point out that Christians await the kingdom. Even so, there ought to be an emphasis on living consistently with the anticipated kingdom in one’s present vocations.

Two chapters cover the important topic of social justice, and a third deals with doing good works. They show both what social justice passages demand and they correct sloppy interpretations and applications of these passages. DeYoung and Gilbert helpfully show how to avoid pitfalls that equate social justice with particular political programs. They distinguish between the institutional church and the organic church and note that Christians as individuals sometimes must do certain things that the institutional church is either forbidden or permitted but not required to do.

Overall, DeYoung and Gilbert have tackled a complex subject and gotten a great deal right. What is more, they have offered a correction to common misconceptions. They could make their argument stronger in the future by reconsidering their treatment of the extent of the Creation Blessing and of the nature of the kingdom. In the end, however, they have provided a useful, readable contribution to a complex subject.

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.