Exegesis and Theology

The Blog of Brian Collins

Review of Aniol, By the Rivers of Babylon – Part 1

by

Scott Aniol’s writings about music, worship, and culture present a viewpoint that is in need of careful consideration for the health of the church. He brings knowledge of theology and a knowledge of music together in ways that many people on both sides of the debate over worship do not do. Further, Scott grounds his discussions about music in a broader, theologically-rooted understanding of culture and conservatism. I am in fundamental agreement with Scott on these issues, and so I commend his latest book By the Rivers of Babylon: Worship in a Post-Christian Culture along with his other writings on religiousaffections.org.

Despite our fundamental agreements, Scott and I disagree about some matters in the central section of this book. He tends to favor a two kingdoms approach to culture and to take a dim view of Al Wolters’s reformational approach, whereas I have found great value in Wolters and have some serious reservations about the two-kingdoms approach. I thank Scott for having Kregel send me a review copy of By the Rivers of Babylon, and I hope this review serves not only to commend Scott’s book to others but also serves to foster greater agreement between us regarding these two differing approaches to culture.

By the Rivers of Babylon falls into three general sections. The first section, chapters 1-3 evaluates the missional church movement. The second section, chapters 4-7 survey different Christian approaches to culture and present Aniol’s own proposal. The third section, chapters 8-10, focuses on Christian gathered worship. Chapter 11 wraps up with implications and applications. These three areas—missions, culture, and worship—are often discussed in isolation of one another, but Aniol is wise to bring them together one’s view in one area will have implications for one’s view on others.

Missional Theology

The section on the missional church movement provides a brief history along with a summary of missional theology. In doing this survey Aniol recognizes the difficulty of defining missional. The term is used across a wide spectrum of people and organizations that range from theologically liberal to evangelical. The treatment is careful to specify who precisely is under consideration and focuses mainly on the evangelical side of the spectrum. Aniol notes three positive contributions of the missional church movement. First, evangelism is a prominent concern. Second, the missional church movement, in theory, views worship as an activity primarily of believers and rejects the evangelism-centric services of the church growth movement. Third, the missional church movement has recognized that western Christians now live in post-Christian societies. This affects how the church functions in society. It also provides an opportunity to reflect on how the Enlightenment shaped the church in less than desirable ways. Aniol then notes three negative aspects to the missional church movement. First, it takes its critique of the church of Christendom too far, thus rejecting too much of the inheritance that Christians have from past centuries. Second, it too often assumes that culture is neutral and that church practice can be easily adapted to a wide variety of differing cultural forms without loss. Third, it maintains a close connection between worship and evangelism that at times belies its critique of the church growth movement.

Aniol’s evaluation of the missional church movement seems balanced and fair, and I think his concerns are sound. A naïve view of cultural neutrality combined with a substantially negative view of prior church practice both impoverishes the church and leaves it up to cultural corruption. One of Anoil’s most telling observations relates to the difference between the tendencies among missional theologians and practitioners: “The theologians seem to emphasize the fact that culture shapes the church (especially harkening back to the ways Christendom and the Enlightenment shaped the church in the West) and warn against being shaped by the culture in ways that ‘might be compromising gospel truth.’ Most practitioners, on the other hand, tend to minimize the possibility that any culture could shape the gospel harmfully, instead emphasizing the need for the church to engage the culture and redeem it for the gospel” (34-35). If this is the case, then the practitioners are setting themselves up to repeat the errors of the past without reaping its benefits.

Since the missional church movement is concerned to contextualize the gospel within particular cultures, chapter 3 concludes with a survey of changing definitions of culture from culture as high culture to anthropological definitions that recognize that all people groups have a culture. Chapter 4 opens with a survey of the roots of the contextualization idea in the World Council of Churches. These discussions transition to the second part of the book, which examines how Christians are to understand and relate to culture.

Tensions in the Puritan View of Culture

by

Puritanism and its Reformed-pietist successors constantly vacillated between whether they were rebuilding Christendom by making towns and eventually nations into virtually Christian societies, or whether they were advocating a pure, called out church. Edwards had strong commitments to both ideals. Heir to the Puritan establishment and part of a powerful ruling class, he was jealous of the privileges of ministerial prestige in town and province. He looked forward to a worldwide Reformed Christendom as the millennium approached.

Yet he was also a luminary among the international awakeners whose insistence in conversionism could—like earlier Puritanism—be disruptive of the standing order. The awakeners worked on the premise that many church members, including many clergy were unconverted. The implication seemed to be that true churches should be made up of true believers only. . . . Some had become Baptists, applying the logic of converts-only purity to both sacraments. It is easy to see why Edwards’ opponents would accuse him of moving toward separatism.

Edwards wanted rather to resolve the old conundrum without resorting to separatism. He would show how to maintain both the purity of the church and the establishment.

George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 350-51

Culture and Creation

by

Culture is what we make of creation. Literally we take the stuff of creation and shape artifacts and institutions. We build things from stone and steel. We make art by arranging colors and textures, sounds and words. And our social institutions are shaped by taking into consideration the nature of human nature. Figuratively, we make something of creation—we project an appraisal in our cultural forms of the kind of world that God has made and the kind of creatures he’s made us to be. Cultural disorders often come from inadequate or false readings of creation. Many people today deny the very existence of a given human nature, arguing that cultural institutions are simply social constructions, arbitrary and freely chosen patterns guided only by human willing.

Ken Myers, Mars Hill Audio Journal 78 (Jan/Feb 2006): 00:08-00:57

Thomas Boston on the Vanity of Life

by

A meditation for turning our eyes toawrd eternal realties, in preparation for the Lord’s Day:

If we look on our life, in the several periods of it, we will find it a heap of vanities. ‘Childhood and youth are vanity,’ Eccles. xi. 19. We come into the world the most helpless of all animals, young birds and beasts can do something for themselves, but infant man is altogether unable to help himself. Our childhood is spent in pitiful trifling pleasures, which become the scorn of our own after-thoughts. Youth is a flower that soon withered, a blossom that quickly falls off; it is a space of time in which we are rash, foolish, and inconsiderate, pleasing ourselves with a variety of vanities, and swimming, as it were, through a flood of them. But ere we are aware, it is past, and we are in middle age, encompassed with a thick cloud of cares, through which we must grope; and finding ourselves beset with pricking thorns of difficulties, through them we must force our way, to accomplish the projects and contrivances of our riper thoughts. And the more we solace ourselves in any earthly enjoyment we attain to, the more bitterness do we find in parting with it. Then comes old age, attended with its own train of infirmities, labour, and sorrow, Psal. xc. 10. and sets us down next to the grave. In a word, All flesh is grass, Isaiah xl. 6. Every stage, or period of life is vanity.”

Thomas Boston, Human Nature in Its Fourfold State, 287.

Thinking about Objections to Corporate Prayer

by

The latest 9Marks journal includes an insightful article about the importance of corporate prayer for the church.

What caught my attention, however, were the objections this pastor received for leading his church to begin this practice:

He felt our prayer times in the morning service were already long. They detract from the music team’s ability to get into a rhythm, and disrupt the worship experience. I’ve had others suggest it may foster legalism, by giving people something else they feel they must do.

What does it say about us when prayer is contrasted with worship? What does it say when worship identified more with the rhythm of the music than it is with prayer? What does it say when prayer is seen as a hindernace to this kind of “worship” rather than integral to worship?

Or what does it say about our comprehension of the gospel when a corporate gathering of prayer is seen as legalism because it implies that prayer is something that we must do? As if it were legalism to recognize that prayer is commanded of God for his people.

Luther, hardly a legalist, wrote:

You should pray and you should know that you are bound to pray by divine command. . . . You have been commanded to give honor to God’s Name, to call upon him, and pray to him, and this is just as much a command as the other commandments, “You shall not kill,” and so on. LW 51:169.

Luther did not see this as debilitating legalism. Rather he saw the command to pray as liberating:

Therefore, since it is commanded that we pray, do not despise prayer and take refuge behind your own unworthiness. Take an example from other commands. A work which I do is a work of obedience. Because my father, master, or prince has commanded it, I must do it, not because of my worthiness, but because it has been commanded. So it is also with prayer. So, when you pray for wife or children or parents or the magistrates, this is what you should think: This work I have been commanded to do and as an obedient person I must do it. On my account it would be nothing, but on account of the commandment it is a precious thing. LW 51:170.

I should conclude by noting that perhaps the people cited by the pastor were young believers. Or perhaps they thought better of what they said afterwards. The point is not to critique those people, as they seem to have an undershepherd who is shepherding them. The point of this post is for myself and those who read it to reflect on these ideas for our own edification and, if need be, correction.

The Significance of Our Union with Christ

by

First, we must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us. Therefore, to share with us what he had received from the Father, he had to become ours and to dwell within us. For this reason, he is called ‘our Head’ [Eph. 4:15], and ‘the first-born among many brethren’ [Rom. 8:29]. We also, in turn, after said to be ‘engrafted into him’ [Rom 11:17], and to ‘put on Christ’ [Gal. 3:27]; for, as I have said, all that he possess is nothing to us until we grow into one body with him.

Calvin, Institutes, 3.1.1.

Wise Counsel from John Newton

by

Grant, George, ed. Wise Counsel: John Newton’s Letters to John Ryland, Jr. Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2009.

51UXb8yEwBL._SY344_BO1204203200_This is a collection of letters, many previously unpublished, from the Anglican minister John Newton to the Baptist minister John Ryland, Jr. The name of John Ryland, Jr. may be unknown to many, but he was one of the rope-holders for William Carey, who is well-known for his pioneer missionary work in India. The letters begin when Ryland is a young man and continue into Newton’s last years of life. The title of the book captures their nature. These are letters of wise counsel from an older minister to a younger. Since they cover such a long span of time, a whole variety of life’s experiences are commented upon. These are well worth reading and meditation.

Luther on Repentance

by

Luther_with_tonsure

First three of the 95 Theses:

1. When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” [Matt. 4:17], he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.
2. This word cannot be understood as referring to the sacrament of penance, that is, confession and satisfaction, as administered by the clergy.
3. Yet it does not mean solely inner repentance; such inner repentance is worthless unless it produces various outward mortifications of the flesh.

Review of Van Reken on Christians as Pilgrims or Settlers

by

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.”

Review of Beeke, Family Worship

by

Beeke, Joel R. Family Worship. Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage, 2009.

In this book Joel Beeke makes the case that family worship is a concept rooted in the Bible and which should therefore be practiced by Christians. I found the book stimulate my desire to worship God with my family. Beeke also provides practical suggestions for what to do in family worship. It’s a small book, but it is packed with helpful material.