Exegesis and Theology

I don’t get the common evangelical impulse to find whatever good can be salvaged from the wrecks of popular culture. The most recent example I’ve stumbled across is in the September issue of CT [print edition, p. 93].

Craig Finn, lead singer and songwriter for Brooklyn’s the Hold Steady, writes about drug addiction, casual sex, and Jesus. There’s lots of debauchery as well as religious iconography in most of these songs. . . . Stay Positive is a gritty, supremely uncomfortable masterpiece, a Christ-haunted work that finds glimmers of glory even in the gutter.

Of course good can be found in many depraved people and activities. The doctrine of total depravity does not teach that all men are as bad as possible. Thus it seems as though asking "is there anything good that can be found in this?" is the wrong question to ask of popular culture. If that is the question, the answer will always be yes.

Even God’s law, which we often regard as a stern taskmaster, is a delight to the redeemed heart (Pss. 1:2; 119:97; Rom. 7:22), a gift of God’s grace (Ps. 119:29). It is our way of life, not in the sense that it brings us eternal life apart from grace, but in the sense that it brings fullness of  blessing to those who are saved by grace and walk in God’s ways (Lev. 18:5; Deut. 5:33; 8:3; 11:13-15; 28:1-4; 30:11-20). God has given the law for our good (Deut. 10:12-13; 4:40; 12:28).

John Frame, Doctrine of the Christian Life, 304.

The second prescriptive [of the WSC, viz. to enjoy God forever] is entirely scriptural. To redeemed human beings, glorifying God is a delight. In chapter 16, I showed how often Scripture mentions the rewards that God has promised to those who love him. Those rewards are delightful beyond our imagining, and they are a powerful motivation to obedience. In that chapter, I emphasized, that the Christian ethic is far removed from Kantian deontology, in which we do our duty for duty’s sake, with no thought of reward. Rather, in the Christian life, we seek to do God’s will for God’s rewards.

John Frame, Doctrine of the Christian Life, 304.

Here are Frame’s comments from Chapter 16:

God promises rewards to his people, and they receive those rewards when Jesus returns. That promise serves as an additional motivation (Ps. 19:11; Matt. 5:12, 46; 6:1-6; 10:41-42; Rom 14:10; 1 Cor. 3:8-15; 9:17-25; 2 Cor. 5:10; Eph. 6:7-8; Col. 3:23-25; 2 Tim. 4:8; 1 Peter 5:4; James 1:12; 2 John 8; Rev. 11:18).

I confess that I was surprised by the number of times Scripture uses rewards to motivate obedience. Like many of us, I tend toward the Kantian notion that we should simply do our duty for duty’s sake and never think about reward. But that notion is quite unbiblical. If God takes the trouble (this many times!) to urge our obedience by a promise of reward, we should embrace that promise with thanks, not despise it. That is, we should not only do good works, but we should do them for this reason.

 

This teaching, of course, is not salvation by works or merit. Although the word reward is used in these passages, there is no suggestion that we have earned the reward in the sense that we have paid God what the reward is worth. Jesus says that even when we have done everything commanded of us (and not one of us has done that), we have none no more than our duty (Luke 17:7-10). Indeed, in that case we are ‘unworthy’ servants. Elsewhere, Scripture represents the reward as something out of all proportion to the service rendered (Matt. 19:29; 20:1-16; 24:45-47; 25:21-30; Luke 7:36-50; 12:37).

 

Nevertheless, there is some sort of gradation in the rewards given to individuals. . . . The parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14-30; cf. Luke 19:11-27) provides the best argument for proportionate rewards. One cannot argue, however, that the degree of investment success ascribed to the first two servants entitles them, as a strict payment, to the master’s rewards. Rather, the master acts generously, out of the goodness of his heart. This is to say that here, as with every transaction we have with God, we deal with him as a person, not with an impersonal principle of cause and effect.

 

Essentially, the reward is the kingdom itself (Matt. 5:3, 10; 25:34), which comes by electing grace (Matt. 25:34; Luke 12:31-32). Good works follow, rather than precede, this gift (Luke 12:33-48). TO put it differently, the Lord himself is the inheritance of his people (Pss. 16:5; 73:24-26; Lam. 3:24). He is the inheritance of every believer. If there are differences of degree, they are differences of intimacy with the Lord himself. If some glorified saints lie closer than others to God’s heart, no one else will be jealous or angry, for the eternal kingdom excludes such emotions. Rather, the lesser members of that kingdom will rejoice t the greater blessings given to others, and those who are greatest will serve the lesser—beginning with the Lord himself [Luke 12:37] . . . . Who would not want as much intimacy as possible with such a wonderful Lord? Here is a reward that profoundly motivates holiness of heart and life.

John Frame, Doctrine of the Christian Life, 283-85.

But the Catechism adds a second phrase to its formulation of our chief end: ‘to enjoy him forever.’ At first it is difficult to see how these two phrases fit together. The first is theocentric, but the second appears to be anthropocentric. The first is distinctly biblical, but the second sounds rather like the goal of pleasure in secular teleological ethics.

 

It helps to notice, however, that even the second phrase is centered on God. We are not to enjoy ourselves, but to enjoy him. So the second phrase calls us to find our chief enjoyment in God, not in the world. To embrace the enjoyment of God as the goal of life is to sing with Asaph:

 

Whom have I in heaven but you?

   And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.

My flesh and my heart may fail,

   but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

For behold, those who are far from you shall perish;

  you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you.

But for me it is good to be near God;

   I have made the Lord GOD my refuge,

   that I may tell of all your works. (Ps. 73:25-28)

 

Although Asaph uses forms of the first person pronoun ten times in this passage, and thirty-three times in the whole psalm, these verses are profoundly theocentric. So when the Catechism moves from the first phrase to the second, it is not moving form God-centeredness to man-centeredness. Rather, it is looking at God-centeredness from two perspectives.

John Frame, Doctrine of the Christian Life, 303f.

Some speak of how far reason will go if put to good use; but, alas! the plumbline of reason is too short to fathom the deep things of God. A man can no more reach the saving knowledge of God by the power of reason, than a pigmy can reach the pyramids. The light of nature will no more help us to see Christ, than the light of a candle will help us to understand. ‘The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: neither can he know them’ (1 Cor. 2:14). What shall we do, then, to know God in a soul-saving manner? I answer, let us implore the help of God’s Spirit. Paul never saw himself blind till a light shone from heaven (Acts 9:3). . . .

We may have some excellent notions of divinity, but the Holy Ghost must enable us to know them in a spiritual manner. A man may see the figures on a dial, but he cannot tell how the day goes unless the sun shines. We may read many truths in the Bible, but we cannot know them savingly till God’s Spirit shines upon us.

Watson, The Godly Man’s Picture, (BoT, 1666/rp. 1992), 27.

Prof. Mackintosh says many good things well and strongly. We have noted numerous passages where truths of importance, often truths disputed in circles with which Prof. Mackintosh manifests a certain sympathy, are stated with clearness and force. And the drift of the whole discussion is on the side of the angels. But the points of view from which Prof. Mackintosh approaches his task and the presuppositions with which he endeavors to accomplish it, gravely compromise his results, or rather, if we are to speak quite frankly, render it from the first impossible that he should succeed in reaching a satisfying solution of the problems which it offers.

Warfield, Critical Reviews, in Works, vol. 10 (Baker, rpt), 307.

What a shame it is to be without knowledge! ‘Some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame’ (1 Cor. 15:34). Men think it a shame to be ignorant of their trade, but no shame to be ignorant of God. There is no going to heaven blindfold. ‘It is a people of no understanding: therefore he that made them will not have mercy on them’ (Isa. 27:11)

Watson does not divide doctrine and life:

How many knowledgeable persons are ignorant? They have illumination, but not sanctification. Their knowledge has no powerful influence upon them to make them better. If you set up a hundred torches in a garden they will not make the flowers grow, but the sun is influential.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Many in the old world knew there was an ark, but were drowned because they did not get into it. Knowledge which is not applied will only light a man to hell.

Watson, The Godly Man’s Picture, (BoT, 1666/rp. 1992), 25f.

It has been customary among a certain school of writers to speak of the Scriptures, because ‘inspired,’ as a Divine-human book, and to appeal to the analogy of Our Lord’s Divine-human personality to explain their peculiar qualities as such. The expression calls attention to an important fact, and the analogy holds good at a certain distance. There are human and divine sides to Scripture, and, as we cursorily examine it, we may perceive in it, alternately, traits which suggest now the one, now the other factor in its origin. But the analogy with Our Lord’s Divine-human personality may easily be pressed beyond reason. There is no hypostatic union between the Divine and the human in Scripture; we cannot parallel the ‘inscripturation’ of the Holy Spirit and the incarnation of the Son of God. The Scriptures are merely the product of Divine and human forces working together to produce a product in the production of which the human forces work under the initiation and prevalent direction of the Divine: the person of Our Lord unites in itself Divine and human natures, each of which retains its distinctness while operating only in relation to the other. Between such diverse things there can exist only a remote analogy; and, in point of fact, the analogy in the present instance amounts to no more than that in both cases Divine and human factors are involved, though very differently. In the one they unite to constitute a Divine-human person, in the other they coöperate to perform a Divine-human work. Even so distant an analogy may enable us, however, to recognize that as, in the case of Our Lord’s person, the human nature remains truly human while yet it can never fall into sin or error because it can never act out of relation with the Divine nature into conjunction with which it has been brought; so in the case of the production of Scripture by the conjoint action of human and Divine factors, the human factors have acted as human factors, and have left their mark on the product as such, and yet cannot have fallen into that error which we say it is human to fall into, because they have not acted apart from the Divine factors, by themselves, but only under their unerring guidance.

B. B. Warfield, "The Biblical Idea of Inspiration," in Works (OUP, 1932; reprinted, Baker, 2003), 108f.