sex-in-the-christian-life-november-december-2001 by Modern Reformation

PLEASURE OR PROCREATION? ❘ CONCUPISCENCE AND ORIGINAL SIN ❘ THE SONG OF SOLOMON

MODERN REFORMATION

SEX IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

VOLUME

10, NUMBER 6, NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2001, $5.00

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SEX IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

13 Concupiscence: Sin and the Mother of Sin Although Augustine employed concupiscence to give sex a bad name, a host of other theologians, as well as biblical writers, help put the term in broader perspective. by R. Scott Clark

16 Two Become One, Two Become Three: Pleasure and Procreation in Christian Understanding of Sex Is sex for pleasure or procreation? The history of Christian thought reveals a diversity of opinion that highlights the need to be careful when answering this question. by Michael J. McClymond Plus: The Double Cure: Additions and God’s Grace

22 Sexual Relations as Redeemed Intimacy: The Message of the Song of Solomon The sexual connotations of this book, which have often caused Christians to ignore the Song, actually point to Christ and the significance of sex in marriage. by Frederic C. Putnam

28 “Amour Adulterine:” The Myriad Flirtations of the Soul Adultery can be defined far more broadly than just having sex outside of marriage. Subtle temptations and insidious desires exist that make the seventh commandment—in all its prohibitions— a useful guide in thinking about lust. by A.C. Troxel

32 Godly Emotions COVER PHOTO BY STOCK MARKET

Whether showing mercy for doubters or expressing hatred for sin, reactions to sexual deviance and other forms of sexual sin are legitimate when they mirror God’s own emotions. by Mark R. Talbot Plus: Sin and Sins

Editor-in-Chief Michael Horton

Can We Talk?

MODERN REFORMATION

Executive Editor D. G. Hart

t the heart of the Protestant Reformation was the conviction that the Bible is the Managing Editor Irene H. DeLong

only rule for faith and life. For some Protestants this understanding of the authority of Scripture suggests that the Bible speaks infallibly and specifically on

every aspect of life, from politics to music. In this view, the comprehensiveness of biblical teaching extends logically to sex. And yet when it comes to reflection on the intimate affairs between husbands and wives, church newspapers and theological journals are usually quiet. An occasional piece may show up on homosexuality or abortion, but most editors are remarkably squeamish about a topic that is supposedly fair game for the Bible’s comprehensive guidance. Part of the problem is that sex is not a subject fit for public comment, and appropriately so. Some aspects of life are by their very nature private and best left for discussion among those whose relations are expressed in more intimate cadences, such as husbands and wives, parents and children. Of course, critics will say that avoiding the topic of sex demonstrates prudery if not a puritanical avoidance of pleasure. And yet to be “hung up” about sex may not be the worst thing if it stifles the explicit discussions of sex one encounters, for instance, on The Jerry Springer Show. Another reason for avoiding the subject of sex is that it involves matters upon which there is legitimate difference of opinion among Christians. Justification by faith alone is one thing—a topic that even while inviting disagreement among Christians is a crucial component of the Bible’s teaching about salvation. Sex, however, does not have the same kind of significance. As important as it is to understanding what it means to be human, and as good a gift as it is from God’s generous hand, sex cannot pretend to be at the core of biblical teaching. This does not mean that theology has nothing to say about human reproduction and sexual pleasure. The Protestant doctrines of vocation and creation, after all, did alter the way Protestants regarded marriage and marital relations. Still, the Next Issue confessions of the Modern Reformation sixteenth and sevenTurns Ten teenth centuries are

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virtually silent about sex because it is not of primary import in Scripture. At the same time, silence on a subject about which the Bible does teach poses problems of a different kind. If the one extreme of casualness risks distorting the private character of sex, the other extreme of disregard threatens to divorce theology altogether from the intimate and private realm, thus prompting Christians to look elsewhere for guidance and norms. This is not to suggest that churches need to be involved in sex education, even if it is primarily theological. Like its practice, teaching about sex is best left in its proper sphere of the family. Nevertheless, the topics of creation, the human form, the estate of marriage, and procreation are ones that theologians and pastors need to address if only because the Bible speaks to them. In many aspects of life the sort of theological and ethical reflection in which church officers engage must be inferential and tentative. But it would be an impoverished understanding of the Bible that concluded sex was completely off limits. This issue of Modern Reformation has been assembled with the conviction that theology matters even to as private and contentious a topic as sex. The editors do not expect readers to agree with every view presented here because even among those dedicated to the theology of the Reformation there will be differences of opinion on sex. Even so, this subject presents a useful exercise in how believers might think theologically about a topic not typically included in a book of systematic theology. If believers are going to approach sex differently from the prevailing advice of our “liberated” times, and if they are to avoid the moralistic stances that have often come across as repressed, theological reflection about the purpose and meaning of sex may very well be worth the awkwardness.

Alliance Council Gerald Bray ❘ Mark E. Dever J. Ligon Duncan, III ❘ W. Robert Godfrey John D. Hannah ❘ Michael Horton Rosemary Jensen ❘ Ken Jones John Nunes ❘ J. A. O. Preus Rod Rosenbladt ❘ Phil Ryken R. C. Sproul ❘ Mark R. Talbot Gene E. Veith, Jr. ❘ Paul F. M. Zahl Department Editors Lisa Davis, Open Exchange Brian Lee, Ex Auditu Benjamin Sasse, Between the Times Mark R. Talbot, Reviews Staff ❘ Editors Ann Henderson Hart, Assistant Editor Diana S. Frazier, Contributing Editor Alyson S. Platt, Copy Editor Lori A. Cook, Layout and Design Celeste McGhee, Proofreader Kathryn Baldino, Production Assistant Contributing Scholars Charles P. Arand ❘ S. M. Baugh Jonathan Chao ❘ William M. Cwirla Marva J. Dawn ❘ Don Eberly Timothy George ❘ Douglas S. Groothuis Allen C. Guelzo ❘ Carl F. H. Henry Lee Irons ❘ Arthur A. Just Robert Kolb ❘ Donald Matzat Timothy M. Monsma ❘ John W. Montgomery John Muether ❘ Kenneth A. Myers Tom J. Nettles ❘ Leonard R. Payton Lawrence R. Rast ❘ Kim Riddlebarger Rick Ritchie ❘ David P. Scaer Rachel S. Stahle ❘ David VanDrunen Cornelis Van Dam ❘ David F. Wells Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals © 2001 All rights reserved. The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals exists to call the church, amidst our dying culture, to repent of its worldliness, to recover and confess the truth of God’s Word as did the Reformers, and to see that truth embodied in doctrine, worship and life. For more information, call or write us at: Modern Reformation 1716 Spruce Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 (215) 546-3696 ModRef@Alliance Net.org www.AllianceNet.org ISSN-1076-7169

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Dr. Tim La Haye’s comments in the Free Space interview were at best naive, and lacked any sense of profundity concerning God’s Word. In my opinion, the Left Behind series is another example of a marketing scheme to sell the gospel. I am reminded of Paul’s words in 2 Cor. 2:17; “For we are not like many, peddling the word of God, but as from sincerity, but as from God, we speak in Christ in the sight of God.” Richard Dias Hollister, CA

I just read the letter from Sanders, Pinnock, Boyd, Hasker, and Rice and your response in the most recent edition of Modern Reformation. It seems to me that you conceded the point a little too quickly. They claim not to reject omniscience, but in affirming the term they redefine the doctrine. Further, their handling of specific Scriptures raises questions about whether they truly affirm God’s complete knowledge even of that which is knowable (for examples of this inconsistency, see the article I wrote with Steve Spencer, “A Critique of Free-Will Theism, Part One,” Bibliotheca Sacra (July-September 2001). They also acknowledge divine immutability in their letter, but it is worth pointing out they can do this only because they have separated God’s will, thoughts, and emotions from His nature. Please don’t be intimidated by the forcefulness of their rhetoric. Redefining terms and then claiming them angrily doesn’t “advance the cause of Christian theology” either. Robert A. Pyne Professor of Systematic Theology Dallas Theological Seminary

I recently read the article on “Feeding on FastFood religion,” by pastor John Nunes. Much of his article is good, so I was confused by his reference to Martin Luther King. Nunes wrote, “The cruciform sign of hope gives meaning. From Stephen, the proto-martyr, to Martin Luther King, Christian history is replete with examples of redemptive suffering.” First of all, I am confused by his use of “redemptive suffering.” What is meant by this combination of words? Second, I wonder about appealing to Martin Luther King, Jr., in the context of Confessional Christianity. In his book, House Divided-The Life and Legacy of Martin Luther King, author Lionel Lokos reveals King’s deficient theology. According to Lokos, King rejected the historic Christian faith and King’s greatest failure as a clergyman involved his failure to proclaim the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ. He did not affirm such core Christian doctrines as original sin, the full deity of Christ and Christ’s virgin birth and Resurrection. I find pastor Nunes’ reference to King ironic in light of his challenge to a “staff member” of one mega-ministry who said in response to questions about theology, “We’ll let God worry about doctrine in heaven.” Wouldn’t the same challenge apply to King? Pastor Joseph Burkhardt Acsension Lutheran Church Scappoose, OR

Since R. Scott Clark casts himself in the role of prosecutor when reviewing my “The Story of Christian Theology” (MR July/August 2001) I will gladly accept the role of defendant and appeal to Modern Reformation’s readers as my jury. My plea is “not guilty!” and I ask the jury to consider whether a volume that has won two prestigious awards and been highly recommended and positively reviewed by leading evangelical historical theologians (including Reformed) could possibly be as bad as prosecutor Clark accuses…. Here I will only raise a few points…. Mr. Clark apparently did not take the book’s Introduction

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seriously and expects the volume to be something it does not pretend to be—pure, objective recounting of historical facts (as if such a book exists!). The volume presents my version of the story of Christian theology. Other volumes of historical theology present their authors’ versions of that same story and that is often revealed, for example, in their exclusions of serious treatments of Anabaptist, Arminian and Pietist theologies. The reviewer's animus appears in his protest against the subtitle Twenty Centuries of Tradition and Reform; he seems to think “tradition” is used in a negative sense. Any fair reading of the book would reveal otherwise. The book uses the principle that reform without tradition is blind while tradition without reform is dead. By no means is “tradition” badly treated in the book— unless one’s perspective is that tradition does not benefit from occasional reform. Mr. Clark’s prejudice is revealed when he accuses the author—me—of positioning myself as a “champion of progressive neo-evangelicalism.” Objection! Where have I done that? Nowhere— except in the prosecutor’s mind. And I have certainly not “aligned” myself with “the new doctrine of God…known as ‘open theism’.” I have only defended its proponents as evangelicals. The prosecutor’s biases are showing. This alone should cast suspicion on the rest of his case. Anyone who reads the book without a jaundiced eye will see that the charge that it falls into anachronism is misleading at best and false at worst. Evidence presented includes that the author “treats Luther as a ‘born again’ Christian.” In fact, what I wrote in this regard is that “Luther testified that he felt ‘born again’ when the true meaning of Paul’s words finally sunk into his mind and heart [in his ‘tower experience’]” (p. 377) after which I provided a quotation from Luther that includes “Here I felt that I was altogether born again.” Contrary to what the prosecutor suggests, I noted in the book that the “five points of Calvinism” were actually made official doctrine by the Synod of Dort as a result of the Arminian controversy; that Arminius discerned them within Calvinist theology and questioned them before they were made official teaching of the Reformed Churches at Dort is obvious to anyone who reads Arminius’ own writings. Mr. Clark’s accusations of anachronism do not do justice to the text of the book. (To put the matter bluntly and at risk of sounding defensive: I am not as stupid as he wants the jury to think.) Finally, the review argues that my account of the nature of contemporary theology is flawed. Really? Or is it perhaps his own interpretation of it that is flawed? Who can take seriously his claim that “it is

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debatable whether [Karl] Barth believed historic Christianity beyond the resurrection of Christ?” And of course I did not treat Barth as exactly like Tertullian in every respect or Paul Tillich as like Clement of Alexandria in every respect; I only compared their attitudes toward the use of philosophy in theology. On the one hand, Mr. Clark accuses me and my book of lacking objectivity and engaging in value judgments and on the other hand he criticizes me for describing Wolfhart Pannenberg as “critically orthodox.” In fact, that is how the German theologian described his theology to me in personal conversation. To describe it otherwise would be biased. And, of course, he seems to imagine that the only conservative alternative to the futurist eschatology that I seem to imagine is of the Tim LaHaye/Hal Lindsey variety. Not so strangely, a dispensationalist reviewer scored the book for ignoring that tradition. Sometimes a writer of a general survey just has to take it on the chin from critics who feel their pet doctrines have been neglected. One cannot discuss everything in depth and detail. Overall and in general I conclude that the prosecutor’s case is so emotionally charged and biased that it should give the jury pause to consider inquiring into the evidence for themselves and not take his word for its value. To the jury I say “Try it! You might like it!” Roger E. Olson Professor of Theology George W. Truett Theological Seminary Editor's Response: That theologians differ should come as no surprise to readers of MR. And that some theologians attribute those differences to prejudice and emotion should also generate little amazement. What may be astonishing is when theologians expect their views to be perfectly agreeable.

Join the Conversation! Modern Reformation Letters to the Editor 1716 Spruce Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 215.735.5133 fax ModRef@AllianceNet.org Letters under 200 words are more likely to be printed than longer letters.

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by Sean P. Gates

Exchanging the Gospel

W Interested in contributing to Open Exchange? Send your name, address, and essay topic to: Open Exchange c/o Modern Reformation Magazine 1716 Spruce Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 or contact us by e-mail at OpenExchange @AllianceNet.org

hen John Muether wrote of American evangelicals’ “dumbing down of the Word of God” (May/June 2001), he put his finger on a symptom of an alarming crisis: the evangelical church’s loss of its scriptural moorings. While Muether pointed to Gospel minimalism as causing the church to “drift away,” another root of this phenomenon is the church’s drift from the study of Scripture in favor of the latest seven-easy-step how-to manual for spiritual maturity—The Latest Best Seller. Just as gospel minimalism “shrinks … the greatness of the gospel,” these perfunctory road maps undermine the Christian life. We know that the Word of God is “living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb. 4:12). It is the “sword of the Spirit” (Eph. 6:17) and “is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17). In short, Scripture is sufficient. Yet now it seems that the study of The Latest Best Seller is replacing the study of the Word of God. It’s not hard to see why. After all, The Latest Best Seller promises near instant “victory,” “spiritual growth,” “power,” or “abundant life,” all in seven to twelve easy steps. It’s filled with easy-to-understand examples, encouraging stories, and helpful guidelines. It comes complete with a study guide and videotape packed with testimonies from Christians who, through tears of joy, tell of their life-changing experiences. There’s even a version for teens and another for children. Most importantly, though, The Latest Best Seller offers an easy route to the elusive Spirit-filled life. There’s no more need to struggle through difficult passages to find spiritual maturity. There’s no need to turn to dry commentaries to get the most out of God’s

Word. Gone are the days of seemingly undirected and endless Bible study. Gone are the ancient creeds and obscure doctrines. The Latest Best Seller offers efficiency. It offers direction. It offers results. And who can argue with results? Seeing these, evangelicals unblinkingly accept The Latest Best Seller as gospel. The Latest Best Seller is biblical, they reason: Look at all the verses cited throughout the text! Besides, how could a book that sold four million copies be wrong, especially when it is festooned with endorsements from evangelical leaders? And those testimonies! It must be from God. So what’s the problem? After all, what’s wrong with a road map to living the Christian life? The problem is that beneath the veneer lurk serious dangers. Gradually and imperceptibly, The Latest Best Seller becomes the standard. Though the Bible and The Latest Best Seller sit together in the evangelical’s lap, The Latest Best Seller is on top and is the one that is open. If this were not enough, many Latest Best Sellers are demonstrably unbiblical, often in subtle but insidious ways. But even where The Latest Best Seller isn’t heretical, the Christian life cannot be built on sound bites and vignettes. Just as trying to minimize the gospel to under 100 words inexorably leads to loss, so, too, does shoehorning the rich and often difficult Christian walk into seven easy steps.

Sean P. Gates is an attorney and a member of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California.

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Isaiah 53:3–6

Christ’s Death— What does it all mean?

e was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him

not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:3–6) In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. I don’t know how many of you have read C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. I recommend it to adults, as well as children. In the first of the Narnia chronicles, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, young children go through the back of a wardrobe and enter into a whole new world, the world of Narnia. But that world is enslaved under the spell of a Witch. It is the middle of winter, and as the book says, “It is always winter and never Christmas.” But rumor has it that Aslan, the great king from far beyond, is coming, and spring is beginning to burst forth. Aslan finally does come, but one of the children betrays the group for a piece of Turkish delight, and comes under the dominion of the Witch. Aslan, to free this betraying young person, gives himself to the Witch, who gleefully kills Aslan on a great stone table. Of course the children are horrified as they see their beloved Aslan being killed. When they go back the next day to find the body, it is gone. They approach the hill and see the altar on which Aslan was slaughtered, and they’re mystified

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and confused because they see that there’s a big crack in the stone:

The rising of the sun had made everything look so different—all colors and shadows were From FATHER changed—and for a JÜRGEN LIIAS moment they didn’t see the important thing. Then they did. The stone table was broken into two pieces Rector of Christ by a great crack that ran Church down it from end to end, Hamilton, MA and there was no Aslan. “Oh, oh,” cried the two girls, rushing to the Table. “Oh, it’s too bad” sobbed Lucy, “they might have left the body alone.” “Who’s done it?” cried Susan. “What does it mean? Is it more magic?” “Yes!” said a great voice behind their backs, “It is more magic.” They looked around. There shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself. “Oh Aslan!” cried both the children, staring up at him as much frightened as they were glad. “Aren’t you dead then, dear Aslan?” said Lucy. “Not now,” said Aslan. “You’re not—not a—?” asked Susan in a shaky voice. She couldn’t bring herself to say the word ghost. Aslan stooped his golden head and licked her forehead. The warmth of his breath and a rich sort of smell that seemed to hang about his hair came all over her.

“Do I look it?” he said. “Oh, you’re real, you’re real! Oh Aslan!” cried Lucy, and both girls flung themselves upon him and covered him with kisses. “But what does it all mean?” asked Susan. What Does It All Mean? What does it all mean? That’s the question that we ask of this great drama that we have participated in this Palm Sunday. This is the story of all stories. What does it all mean? The death of Jesus Christ upon the cross is the very axis of the Christian faith around which the whole of the gospel moves. It is not just the end of the story. It is the story. When you read the Gospels, you see that these are not biographies about a wonderful man. If you study them carefully, almost a half of the material has to do only with the last week of Jesus’ thirty-threeyear life—this week which we begin to meditate upon today. If you look at the Epistles of Paul and Peter and John, they say almost nothing about Jesus’ earthly life, almost nothing about his teachings, but focus constantly upon the meaning of his death. Now this isn’t to say that his teachings aren’t important. Among the last things Jesus said before he ascended to heaven was, “Go make disciples and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you.” But the heart of the gospel is his death. Even Jesus in his teachings constantly is teaching about the fact that “The Son of Man must suffer.” Particularly in John’s Gospel he talks about his hour … Not yet having come … Not yet having come … And now— as he comes to his death—now his hour has come. The Son of Man is to be glorified. “Shall I say, take this cup away? Nay, it is for this purpose that I have come to this hour.” Jesus was a great teacher, a great healer, a great lover, but the purpose of his coming, finally and ultimately, was that he came to die. But what does it all mean? What does his death mean? I can spend a lifetime of sermons trying to unravel, and never fully unravel it, but I want you to think of two dimensions of the meaning of Jesus’ death today. The Cross and Suffering The first is that Jesus’ death speaks to us about a God who suffers. There is a wonderful poem called “Jesus of the Scars” by Edward Shillito: The other gods were strong, but thou wast weak They rode, but thou didst stumble to a throne But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak And not a god has wounds but thou alone. Along the same lines William Temple, probably the greatest Archbishop of Canterbury, said one

time, “There cannot be a god of love, men say, because if there were, and he looked upon this world, his heart would break. The Church points to the cross, and says his heart does break.” When we face the cross of Jesus Christ, we are going about as deep as you can go into the mystery of God. That the God whom we love and adore, the God who has created us, is a God who suffers with us. In Jesus Christ’s life and particularly in his passion, you have the whole spectrum of human suffering. Do you want to suffer physically? There was no more gruesome torture ever devised by humanity than the crucifixion. Do you want to understand or get a taste of emotional suffering? After having been with these men for three years, to have them betray him, to deny him, to abandon him. You talk about disillusionment? To have in a sense this vision of a new humanity, all of it shattered there. And then the greatest kind of suffering ever possible for the human heart, even to have a sense of God’s complete abandonment. “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Physical suffering, emotional suffering, spiritual suffering, Jesus partakes of all of it. And therefore there is no suffering that any one of us can ever go through, will ever go through, that Jesus has not already gone through and will be there with you when you go through it. There is a great story that Eli Wiesel tells in one of his books. When he was in Auschwitz, one day they brought out three people to hang, two men and a little boy about 12 years old. And they put them on the gallows and pulled the rope. The two men snapped their necks and were killed immediately. But the little boy, because he was so light, hung there, suffering, choking, for over half an hour before he died. And there was a voice in the crowd where Eli Wiesel was, himself just a young man, “Where is God now? Where is God now?” And Eli Wiesel—not a Christian, but a Jew—says he heard this voice from the depths of his being: “There is God, hanging on the gallows.” Some people say they cannot possibly believe in a God on a cross. In this world, I can’t believe in anything but a God on a cross. When I’m standing alongside a woman and she’s burying her child, I thank God I have a God who was on the cross. When I’m kneeling beside someone who’s body is being wracked and killed by cancer, I am glad that I have a God who was on the cross. When I’m counseling some woman who’s been sexually abused and beaten by her father, I thank God that I have a God who was on the cross. When I read the papers and listen to the news, I thank God that I have a God who was on the cross. “Oh Savior of the world, by thy cross and precious blood, save us and help us we humbly beseech thee.” This is the God whom we celebrate today, a God who suffers.

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The Cross and the End of Suffering But it even goes deeper than that. It is not only a God who suffers with us, but a God who goes into the deepest darkness of our soul. Because when you look at that whole story that we just shared in, therein is the whole spectrum of human sin. Quisling politicians who’ll do anything to keep their power. Mob psychology one day praising Jesus, wanting to crown him—the next day screaming out to crucify him. Cowardice and betrayal and denial, all of it, all of human sin is there portrayed in that drama. And so much of suffering, in fact, is the product of sin. And yet in this moment, in this great drama, we speak about not only a God who suffers with us, but a God who suffers and dies for our sins. Isaiah, five hundred years before Jesus was even born, had the great prophetic vision which we already read this morning: “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief…. Surely he has born our griefs, carried our sorrows…. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, with his stripes we are healed” (Isa. 53:3–6). Theologians speak about the atonement, the great substitution. The Scriptures are filled with these verses, like Saint Paul who says, “God made him sin who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). Or Saint Peter says, “He died for our sins once and for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Pet. 3:18). Or Saint John, “If any man sins, we have an advocate,” a defense attorney, “with the Father. And he is the perfect offering for our sins, and not for ours alone, but for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:1). Over and over the Scriptures speak about this deep profound insight that in Jesus’ death something has completely changed in the cosmos that the great gulf between a holy God and a sinful humanity has now been breached by the cross, and now we can walk over it. That is the ladder into the kingdom of heaven, and through his death we are washed in his blood and now can put on robes of righteousness—not our righteousness but his righteousness—so that we can come into the presence of a holy God And the whole Old Testament is all a preparation for this great moment. All the sacrificial system of the Jews, the great Passover of liberation from Egypt, the intended slaughter of Isaac by Abraham—when God stops Abraham’s hand, giving a ram and saying, “I’ll provide the sacrifice.” All of that is just preparation for this great drama of God sending his Son to die for us. Now I don’t know what sense you make out of the atonement. To be honest with you, even though

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I grew up in the Church, it made no sense to me. I remember in seminary we used to sit around and mock the whole idea of the atonement. But God one day revealed to me the meaning of this death, and it came to me in a moment of prayer. I had this overwhelming sense of sin. And particularly I had an intuition about my attachment to the German race. I’m of German stock; I was born in 1948, after the war, but I had this overwhelming sense that I was guilty for the Holocaust. That I was as guilty as anybody who worked in those concentration camps. I had this incredible image that I was as guilty as anyone that slammed the doors on the ovens when the bodies were pushed in to be burned. That I was guilty. And at the same time, for the first time in my life, as I was aware of all this blood guilt, I was aware of the blood of Jesus Christ which alone could wash it away. And for the first time in my life I understood what this was all about. Who, after all, could possibly atone for the Holocaust? Who could atone for it, but God himself. Just last week I read an article about a priest who was working in Rwanda, who had seen the extraordinary butchering, piles and mounds of men, women, and children hacked to death. A reporter asked him, “Doesn’t this shake your faith in God? How can you believe in God?” He said, “Believe in God? I don’t believe in man at all any more. The only thing I believe in is God.” For all the suffering, wickedness, and evil in this world, what can atone for it but God himself, gathering up all the sins of the human race—your sin, my sin, all sins—gathering them up and having them nailed to the cross. What does it all mean? “It means,” said Aslan, “that though Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic even deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge only goes back to the beginning of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack, and Death itself would start working backwards.” In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Father Liias (M.A., M. Div., Episcopal Theological School; M.A., Amherst College) is Rector of Christ Church in Hamilton, Massachusetts.

Speaking of... A

nother example [of the faulty proofs of

the Papists]: Every act of concupiscence is illicit; the marital act is an act of concupiscence; therefore [marriage is illicit]. I reply to the minor premise: The marital act is not an act of concupiscence. Rather, the act which attracts sex to sex is a divine ordinance. Even if by mischance the act is impure on account of original sin, in itself itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s still licit and pure. From Lutherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Works: Table Talk (Fortress Press, 1967)

he gospel is a reaffirmation of the human body and therefore of human sexuality. But sexuality is not affirmed as an animal dynamic that surges solo in its own arena of hormones and genitalia. Human sexuality is not on a biological tributary running alongside but apart from the life of the soul. The gospel sets the vital springs of biological sexuality into the rapids of personal life. . . . This is so because the body is wholly involved within the reality of the new creature in Christ. Sexuality cannot be left alone to seek its release or satisfaction apart from the new being of the person. The human body is the outer self made new in Christ along with the inner self. Lewis B. Smedes, Sex for Christians (Eerdmans, 1976)

he Protestant movement also contributed to a certain secularization of marriage. While in the Church of England the clerics were the recorders of marriages until the second half of the nineteenth century, elsewhere Protestants often stressed the civil and contractual character of marriage and turned over most jurisdictional matters concerning wedding and divorcing to civil, not ecclesiastical, courts. Human law was to govern most aspects of marriage, a teaching that the Reformers thought they were taking from the Levitical code in the Hebrew Scriptures. This did not mean that ecclesiastical teachers and teachings were not to have any bearing on marriage and sexual practices. Instead, churchly blessing was ordinarily given to the wedding service and Christian interpretations were used to reinforce the covenantal and civil aspects of family life. Martin E. Marty, Protestantism (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972)

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Where Are the Augustinian Americans? n the weeks after the terrorist highjackings and plane crashes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, politicians have quoted Scripture, journalists have found a new interest in religion, and ministers have tripped over one another rushing to the m i c r o p h o n e s . Most of this was entirely p r e d i c t a b l e : Bible passages intended to comfort the Church were wrenched from their contexts and applied to America as a whole. LiberalProtestantclergydronedon endlessly about the urgent need for "all peoples of faith" to help us find the "better parts of ourselves." One National Public Radio host—representativeofmuchelite opinion—editorializedthatreligion canbeatremendousforceforgood in this world, so long as no religionist values anything more than human life. And CNN profiled a Roman Catholic priest angry at President Bush for "confusing children" by bothclaimingtobeaChristianand promisingamilitaryresponse. Evangelicals on the airwaves expressed markedly

different views from these, but, sadly, little of this commentary revealed any greater levels of discernment. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson announced that these events were God’s judgment on America because of the presence and influence of homosexuals and the ACLU. Other imprudent speakers informed audiences that no one should be surprised by the twin towers’ collapse because these are the end times, and, obviously, New York is Babylon. Billy Graham carefully noted that the believers who died September 11 were with their Savior and would not now wish to be with us instead of with him. Besides this laudable point, though, Dr. Graham also encouraged the faulty notion that modern nations have souls and that America has some unique relationship with God. Conspicuously absent from this public debate has been the Augustinian or "two kingdoms" position held by so many churchpeople of old. Following the fall of Rome in

SUM 58 + of the = TIME

Churches closed since early 2000

by Laotian authorities, in an

escalating attack on Christianity.

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410, Augustine vigorously counseled Christians against two prevalent errors: either fleeing from this world and its cultures, institutions, and governmental structures; or naively identifying Christ’s Kingdom with Rome or some other this-worldly power. Instead, Augustine insisted—and Lutherans, Calvinists, and some Baptists have echoed ever since—the faithful are simultaneously the citizens of two kingdoms, one eternal and the other temporal. As those who are redeemed, we love our enemies, pray for those who terrorize us, know that all human governments finally fail, and hope for lasting security, peace, and justice only in Christ’s ultimate return. At the same time, because we are also residents of particular this-

worldly nations, we should seek temporal justice and security—limited though it will be—for ourselves, our families, and our neighbors. We are thereby free to engage in just wars, which— according to the Western tradition heavily influenced by theologians like Augustine— require: just cause, legitimate authority, right intent, the final goal of peace, potential for success, and a due proportion of good to evil. This final requirement moves the discussion from the prerequisites of justly declaring war, to the means or methods of justly conducting war. Chief among the obligations of waging a just war has always been distinguishing between combatants and noncombatants. Ironic though it may sound to our ears "between

the times" of Christ’s initial and final comings, there is no contradiction in a Christian soldier engaged in a legitimate cause simultaneously praying for his enemy’s conversion and seeking to kill him for the sake of order in the civic community. As a citizen of the City of God, he has been humbled by the law and knows that he—just like Osama bin Laden—is a wretched sinner deserving God’s wrath. Only the mercy of Christ has saved him, and as one parched beggar to another, he invites bin Laden to the Well of Living Water. Yet, paradoxically, because he is also a citizen of the City of Man—as a son, a brother, a father, a friend—he seeks to aid the authorities God has placed over him in restraining evil. As Luther bluntly put it: If there is a shortage of hangmen, the Christian will volunteer to be the executioner. Though "punishing the wicked" may "seem an unChristian work…it [actually] amputates a leg or a hand, so that the whole body may not

ÍSaddleback Community and Willow Creek, two leading megachurches, have been experimenting this year with live Internet and satellite links to their worship services. According to Saddleback’s pastor, Rick Warren, it is unclear whether all members of "the next generation want to worship

perish." Clearly two kingdoms doctrine does not provide simple sound bites. And, more seriously, there is always the danger that zeal for this-worldly justice will cause us to neglect the call to love and pray for our enemies. Yet surely this danger is less for the Augustinian Christian than it is for the evangelical who fails to distinguish the two kingdoms. For the former consciously affirms that he and his opponent have been compatriots in the rebellion against Christ, while the latter often self-righteously suggests that the line between good and evil runs between the Muslim radical and the homosexual on one side, and God and me on the other. Here we hypocrites must again hear Jesus, who taught that—before the Authority of heaven—there is no distinction between the one who only hates and the one who actually kills; we all stand condemned. Nonetheless, we must draw an important civil or this-worldly distinction between the mere

in huge buildings." In August, a San Antonio–based group, newchurch2001, decided to take this logic a step further, launching CyberChurchOnline: "A church with no doors, no walls and no limits!! We are not bound by a denomination, religious rules or tradition…. Tired

hater and the actual murderer. For these two acts have very different this-worldly consequences, and thus are rightly treated differently by this-worldly authorities. At a time when the president is chastised by some as un-Christian for fulfilling his calling; at a time when Christian broadcasts mistakenly interpret America rather than the Church as the New Israel to whom God has made his promises; at a time when bookstores at O’Hare and other major airports feature the Left Behind novels alongside Tom Clancy as the display books for those asking what it all means—at just this time, we need Christians who will solidly embrace both of their citizenships but yet insist upon clearly distinguishing them. Of course it would be easier to deny the distinction between my national identity and my Christianity, and to claim that this-worldly conflict will bring about heaven. But this is not true. Or alternatively, it would be easier to deny earthly identity altogether, and flee

of the same old boring church services[?] … As Jesus did 2000 years ago, we’re here to break religious tradition!" ÍThe United Methodists have begun airing fourteen different commercials on CBS, CNN, and other cable networks. According to the Buntin Group, the project’s ad agency, the $20

from all this-worldly conflict, claiming that— because it cannot secure lasting peace—it actually accomplishes nothing. But this is not true either. In a paradox that often leads the watching world to request an explanation, Augustinian Christians participate in wars for the sake of security and peace, acknowledging all the while that lasting security and peace can come only from on high. Augustinian Christians affirm their identities in particular nations and yet recognize that true community is ultimately comprised not of countrymen but of the people of God across national borders. Augustinian Christians labor faithfully Monday through Saturday in the secular causes of this world, yet yearn particularly for the Lord’s Day and the collective plea, "Lord, thy Kingdom come."

million, four-year campaign aims to segment the population, identify the "40 percent [who] are actively searching," and invite them to "continue their search" in a Methodist context that embraces theological diversity.

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SEX IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

Concupiscence: Sin and the Mother of Sin n recent years, the study of virtue has experienced a renaissance. While we are recovering our classical grammar of virtue, we should also recover our vocabulary of vice as well. Concupiscence is among our choicest words to be recovered. Because of the great influence of Augustine, it traditionally has been associated closely with sexual desire, even within marriage. Its range of meaning, however, is broader. Derived from the Latin verb, concupisco, “to lust for worldly things,” the noun concupiscentia is a word found many times in the Latin Bible (Vulgate). From there, it entered English in the early fourteenth century but has fallen out of use as the Authorized Version ([AV] 1611) has lost its influence on the language.

Concupiscence in Scripture n the Latin Bible the “Tombs of Desire” (Kibroth Hataavah) prepared for those who craved food other than that which the Lord provided (Num. 11:34–35) was rendered the “Tombs of Concupiscence” in the Vulgate. In Psalm 62:10 the Vulgate used the verb concupisco to translate the expression “set not your heart” (on riches). Among the seven vices that the Lord hates is lustful desire (concupiscat) for the beauty of the adulteress Folly (Prov. 6:16, 25). According to the Apostle Paul, concupiscence is the result of the fall and the quintessential illustration of the danger of the Law to sinners. In Romans 7:7, 8 concupiscentia translates the Greek noun epithumia or “coveting” (NIV) and “coveteous desire” (NIV). Following the Vulgate, the AV translates epithumia as “concupiscence.” Without the Law “I would not have known what concupiscence was.” In Galatians 5:17 it translates the Greek verb “to desire” (epithumeo) in the clause, “For the flesh

BY R. SCOTT CLARK

desires what is contrary to the [Holy] Spirit.” In Colossians 3:5 Paul lists “evil concupiscence” as one of those “earthly members” to be put to death and warns believers not to participate in the “lust of concupiscence” (1 Thes. 4:5 [AV]). The Apostle John warns against the transitory “concupiscence of the eyes” (1 John 2:16), which he contrasts with God’s eternal will (2:17). So far it is clear from the Scriptures that concupiscence is sin, but according to James, it is more than that: it is also the seminary (seedbed) of sin. He uses an obstetrical metaphor to describe the psychological and moral process of sinning. “[E]ach one is tempted when, by his own evil desire [concupiscence], he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after concupiscence has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death” (James 1:14–15 [NIV]). For James, concupiscence is our fallen inclination to sin, such that our own corrupt hearts and wills are the authors of sin and it is they we must blame and not God. Concupiscence (original sin) conceives actual sin and actual sin brings death. Three chapters later James fires a salvo at his congregation when he says that the source of their in fighting is their concupiscence (4:1). He continues, “You lust (L. concupiscitis; Gk. epithumeite) and you have not, you murder and desire.” Rather than praying, despite the futility of their concupiscence, they pursue it even by taking fellow Christians to court (4:2). Because of their corrupted desires, God does not grant their requests when they do pray. It is not as if, however, if they could somehow suspend their concupiscence, God would suddenly begin answering their prayers. Rather, their concupiscence is only more evidence of the fact of their friendship with the world (4:4) and that they do not have true, saving faith (2:14–26). According to James, not all concupiscence is evil. It is not that we should not have intense desires. Indeed, God the Holy Spirit who “dwells within us” does precisely that (concupiscit Spiritus), but he does not desire the sorts of things we do; rather he desires piety and holiness (4:5). Therefore God the Spirit gives us greater grace and resists the arrogance demonstrated in concupiscence (4:6). Christ confessors ought to stop behaving like rank pagans. They ought to repent and believe, submit to Christ, and resist the devil. Paradoxically, spiritual strength is not found in fulfilled desires but in abandoning them for Christ’s sake. Concupiscence in Christian Theology ertullian (c. 160–c. 225) argued that the root of concupiscence is idolatry. In a letter encouraging Eustochium to continue

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her chaste (monastic) life, Jerome (c. 345–420) said that Daniel had refused to eat the bread of desire or “drink the wine of concupiscence” (Dan. 1:8). St. Augustine (354–430) expressed his mature views in the treatise On Marriage and Concupiscence (419) written against the Pelagians. Under the influence of neo-Platonism, Augustine interpreted Paul’s teaching on the “Spirit” and “flesh” in terms of the way things are rather than as ethical and religious categories. Though he denied any “carnal concupiscence” before the fall and he considered it the “law of sin” (Rom. 7:23), he also associated it very closely with sexual desire. Baptism, “the laver of regeneration” (Titus 3:5), washes away original sin and the guilt of concupiscence, but in this fallen world, the act of concupiscence remains, even among the regenerate. The “evil of concupiscence” may be tamed for procreation, but even in marriage it brings shame when its passions run hot. According to Thomas Aquinas (c. 1224–1274) humans were created good, with all the virtues, but because we are creatures and are material, we necessarily have “lower powers” or “appetites.” Even before the fall, these powers were subject only to the soul, only by a “super added gift” (donum super additum) of grace. He says, “even before sin” man “required grace to obtain eternal life.” From the beginning, before the fall, Adam had within his soul certain lower powers, one of which (concupiscence) was “the craving for pleasurable good,” and this desire itself arises from natural, lower appetites. Thomas reasoned this way because he presupposed a sort of continuum of being between God and man, with God having complete being and man having relatively less. In short, for Thomas, concupiscence is the result of being human and was the precondition for sin even before the fall. The Reformation not only reformed the doctrine of justification but also moral theology. Against the prevailing medieval and Roman view, the Protestants denied that we fell because we were human. Rather, as the Heidelberg Catechism (1563) taught in Question six, we were created “in righteousness and true holiness, that we might rightly know God our creator, heartily love him and live with him in eternal blessedness.” Thus, the First Adam needed no grace before the fall. Grace is for sinners, not for the sinless. The Protestant theologians consistently defined concupiscence as a post-fall phenomenon. Among the children of the first Adam, concupiscence is both an actual sin and the precondition or proclivity to sin. Unlike Aquinas, who restricted concupiscence to the “sensual appetite,” Calvin argued that it affects the whole of fallen man. “[T]hat everything which is in man, from the intellect to the will, from

the soul even to the flesh, is defiled and pervaded with this concupiscence; or, to express it more briefly, that the whole man is in himself nothing else than concupiscence” (Institutes 2.1.8). Thinking about the deadly mixture of God’s Law and our sin, Calvin rejected any idea of sinless perfection in this life. “[I]f we go back to the remotest period, we shall not find a single saint who, clothed with a mortal body, ever attained to such perfection as to love the Lord with all his heart, and soul, and mind, and strength; and, on the other hand, not one who has not felt the power of concupiscence” (Institutes 2.7.5). Unlike Augustine, Calvin did not necessarily associate concupiscence with sexual desire. For Calvin, concupiscence is nothing more than a comprehensive synonym for sin. The Ethics of Concupiscence oncupiscence is a violation of the eighth and tenth commandments. The Heidelberg Catechism (Q. 110) says:

Q. 110. What does God forbid in the eighth Commandment? A. God forbids not only such theft and robbery as are punished by this magistrate, but God views as theft also all wicked tricks and devices, whereby we seek to get our neighbor’s goods, whether by force or by deceit, such as unjust weights, fraudulent merchandising, measures, goods, coins usury, or by any means forbidden of God; also all covetousness and the misuse and waste of His gifts. Considered according to its first use, the Law condemns all of us as concupiscent, covetous, thieves. The Gospel is that Christ Jesus, the Second Adam has actively obeyed this law for concupiscent sinners and his justice is imputed to all those who believe. For those who have been justified sola gratia, sola fide, solo Christo, the Law has a third use: as the moral norm for the Christian life. Those who have been redeemed should not be marked by sinful desire. In this regard, it is striking that the Heidelberg Catechism focuses on our commercial life. If there is any area where American Christians have been prone to excuse themselves from God’s Law it is in the area of business. Ministers who address matters of commerce are likely to be accused of meddling rather than preaching. Put positively, there are certain virtues that Christians must cultivate through the use of the means of grace (Word and Sacrament). The Heidelberg Catechism (Q. 111) says:

Q. 111. But what does God require of you in this commandment? A. That I further my neighbor’s good where I can and may, deal with him as I would have others deal with me, and labor faithfully, so that I may be able to help the poor in their need. Christians should be identified with utter honesty in all business dealings and by the proper use of God’s gifts. By its nature, concupiscence makes others into mere vehicles for self-fulfillment. The modern corporate business culture often makes concupiscence into a virtue by calling it “personnel management.” Christian morality has been profoundly influenced by the corporate culture. Pastors are too often rewarded not for proclaiming faithfully the Law and the gospel, but for being good CEOs. In their meetings they do not often discuss biblical exegesis or theology; rather, they tend to compare the size of their congregations. Ministry done for self-aggrandizement and by deceit is concupiscence. The root of this sin is revealed even more clearly by the tenth commandment that forbids us from “the least inclination” against God’s Law and requires that “with our whole heart we continually hate all sin and take pleasure in all righteousness.” As we have seen from Scripture, concupiscence is about inclinations as much as it is about actions. Just as we need Christ’s justice imputed to us, we also need a daily renewal of our affections, flowing from which should be satisfaction with Christ and his mercies. Conclusion oncupiscence is a confusion of the two kingdoms. We live and fulfill our callings in both, but one is eternal and the other is not. As citizens of the heavenly kingdom (Phil. 3:20) we must also acknowledge that we have too often replaced the virtue of selflessness with the vice of concupiscence. With the help of grace, let us repent daily of our concupiscence and desire instead to be so governed by the “Word and Spirit that we submit always more and more” to Christ. ■

R. Scott Clark (D. Phil., Oxford University) is associate professor of church history at Westminster Theological Seminary in California. He is also a minister in the United Reformed Church.

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SEX IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

Two Become One, T T

he gospel is good news for humans as sexual beings. The Bible affirms sexuality as created good by God and speaks of the profound union of man and woman in the words “the two shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). Marital love is generative, and children are an expression of human love and divine blessing (Ps. 127:3–5). Yet as R. J. Levis has noted, “Puzzling cross-cur-

rents of opinion have characterized the Christian approach to sex, love, and marriage from the beginning.” I hope to show that some common assumptions regarding the history of Christian thought on sexuality are not supported by the evidence, and that a reexamination of the data can be a help in rethinking the relevance of the Christian message in our day of sexual waywardness and brokenness. One assumption is that Roman Catholicism embodies an otherworldly spirituality that denigrates sex and marriage and that sixteenth-century Protestantism changed this. Yet over the last millennium, the Roman Catholic tradition has shown a slow but unmistakable progress toward recognizing the legitimacy of sexual pleasure in marriage. Conversely, Luther and Calvin preserved key aspects of the Augustinian tradition, including its distrust and disapproval of sexual pleasure even in marriage. A second assumption is that contemporary Christians have rediscovered the fullness of biblical

teaching on human sexuality. Rather, Christians today are at risk of buying into a functionalist or physiological understanding of sexuality that misses the richness, depth, and spiritual significance of married love. The more that we think about sex on the basis of secular or biological assumptions, the less prepared we will be to resist the lure of sexual licentiousness. The Russian revolutionary Lenin stated that the need for sex was just like the need of a thirsty man for a glass of water; Christians will need to grasp theology as well as physiology to refute this sort of reductionism. In treating the history of Christian thinking on sexuality, it is helpful to highlight the twin aspects of pleasure and procreation, first treating early Christianity and Protestantism and then medieval and modern Roman Catholic teachings. This is not intended as an exercise in antiquarianism. Rather the hope is to examine history in such a way as to shed light on the present.

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b y M I C H A E L J . M C C LY M O N D

Two Become Three: Early Christianity and Protestantism agan Romans were struck by the early Christians’ stringent stance on sexuality. Sex was only for married persons. Marriage was permanent, and divorce was either entirely forbidden or grudgingly allowed in cases of adultery or abandonment. Although the early Christians did not disapprove of sexuality as such (as did certain Gnostic groups), many were sexual ascetics, suspicious of pleasure even in marriage. Clement of Alexandria, writing in about A.D. 200, tells us: “The man who has taken a wife in order to have children should also practice continence, not even seeking pleasure from his own wife, whom he ought to love, but with honorable and moderate desire having but one intention, children.” Augustine sanctioned and deepened the tendency to denigrate the goodness of sexual desire and fulfillment. He intimated that uncontrolled sexual desire (or concupiscentia) is a paramount danger to believers, with the power to derail the Christian’s journey toward holiness. As readers of Augustine’s Confessions will be aware, the sinnerturned-saint wrote from personal experience. Once he had prayed for God to “give me chastity,

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but not yet,” and his sexual compulsions may have hindered his conversion for many years. For Augustine lust “assumes power not only … from the outside, but also internally; it disturbs the whole man.” At the climax of sexual experience, “there is an almost total extinction of mental alertness,” and so “every lover of wisdom would prefer, if this were possible, to beget his children without suffering this passion” (City of God, 14.16). Echoing the pagan philosopher Seneca, he wrote that “too ardent a lover of his wife is an adulterer, if pleasure in his wife is sought for its own sake” (Contra Julian, 2.7). Augustine speculated that in paradise Adam had the ability to procreate calmly and deliberately, and that the organ of generation would then have obeyed Adam’s will “as the hand now sows seed on the earth.” The quandary here is that Augustine teaches simultaneously that the Christian life is an exercise in rational control and that the sexual act is by nature a loss of rational control. So how does one keep control while losing control? And then there is a further problem of discerning motives. Who could ever be sure that his or her marital act was not “adulterous” in pursuing pleasure for pleasure’s sake? Augustine’s response was to lay emphasis on procreation, which is the ordered good that serves as a moral justification for an otherwise dubious act. Martin Luther did not essentially break from Augustine. Although he rejected the medieval valuation of celibacy as spiritually superior to marriage, he repeated much of Augustine’s teaching on marital sexuality. Luther wrote that “in Paradise marriage would have been most delightful. The heat and fury of sexual desire would not have been so intense there.” Though Luther spoke of marriage as a “remedy” for lust, he also stated that those who enter into marriage “to avoid fornication” are “not the equals” of those who do so “looking for children.” For Luther, as for Augustine, procreation has priority over pleasure. The reformer also insisted on sexual moderation in marriage: “It is indeed true that sexual intercourse in marriage should be moderate, to extinguish the burning of the flesh. Just as we should observe moderation in eating and drinking, so pious couples should refrain from indulging their flesh too much.” John Calvin, too, followed the broader Augustinian tradition. In his commentary on 1 Corinthians 7, he wrote of the letdown that follows intercourse: “A husband, having satisfied his passion, not only neglects his wife but even despises her. And there are few who are not sometimes waylaid by this feeling of distaste for their wives.” Sex, for Calvin, involved regret as much as rejoicing. Like Augustine and Luther, Calvin disapproved of sexual fervor in marriage: “The uncontrolled passion

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with which men are aflame is a vice springing from the corruption of human nature; but for believers marriage is a veil which covers over that fault, so that God sees it no longer.” Note the word “fault.” Though the passion is culpable, God “covers” it. Puritanism showed a more positive view of marital sexuality, and this is connected with an emerging view of spouses as both practical and spiritual companions. The New Englander Thomas Hooker wrote approvingly of ardent love: “The man whose heart is endeared to the woman he loves, he dreams of her in the night, hath her in his eye and apprehension when he awakens … [and] the stream of his affection, like a mighty current, runs with full tide and strength.” Yet many Puritans retained scruples regarding marital sexuality. Since it was popularly believed that children were born on the day of the week on which they were conceived, some looked askance at the Sabbath-day activities of couples with children born on Sundays. A distinctive of recent American evangelical writing on sexuality has been the rise of a physiological or functionalist outlook. In their widely read book, The Act of Marriage (1976), Tim and Beverly LaHaye speak of marital sex as the “legitimate, God-ordained method for releasing the natural pressure” of sexual desire, and an “eruptive climax that engulfs the participants in a wave of innocent relaxation.” LaHaye links male self-esteem to sexual fulfillment: “A man can endure . . . failure as long as he and his wife relate well together in the bedroom; but success in other fields becomes a hollow mockery if he strikes out in bed.” LaHaye tells of a man whose business went under, and he became depressed. His wife made “aggressive love” to him, and “this started him upward . . . and today [he] is enjoying a successful career.” Sex for wives, according to the authors, is less about success and ego and more about reassurance and being loved. One is struck at how purely functional and physiological LaHaye’s presentation of sexuality, or at least male sexuality, is: Sex is a stress-reducer and career-enhancer. The Roman Catholic Tradition uring the early medieval period, the Roman Catholic tradition became even more hostile toward marital pleasure than the early Christian teachings had been. Gregory the Great (590–604) taught that even married couples intending procreation transgressed the law of marriage if pleasure were “mixed” into their act of intercourse. Some church teachers forbade sexual intercourse except in the so-called “missionary” or man-on-top position. St. Peter Damian (1007–1072) prescribed a penance of twenty-five

years of fasting and penance for married persons over the age of twenty whenever an unorthodox coital position was confessed! John Brundage writes: “It is sobering, even depressing, to reflect upon the pall that the [Church’s] teaching … has cast upon the lives and intimate joys of so many generations of married men and women, who were scarcely able to beget a child without pangs of conscience and mortal dread lest they enjoy the experience and die without repenting it.” A change appears in Thomas Aquinas, who wrote that “the natural inclination of a species cannot be to that which is evil in itself … therefore carnal intercourse cannot be evil in itself.” Aquinas continued to view intercourse as sinful if couples pursued it simply for the sake of pleasure, but he broke with Augustine in teaching that even “the abundance of pleasure in a well-ordered sex-act is not inimical to right reason.” The Quaestiones morales of Martin LeMaistre (1432–1481) went further than the teachings of Aquinas and asserted that sex for pleasure per se is not culpable. For LeMaistre sex was a form of bodily relaxation and hence was good. He seems also to have had a pastoral consideration in adopting this position: if making love to one’s wife when one feels the urge is a mortal sin, then why should one not seek out a mistress or a prostitute? Yet the Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566) continued the traditional teaching that “marriage is not to be used for purposes of lust or sensuality.” During its Byzantine period, Eastern Orthodoxy was less concerned with the perils of sexual pleasure than was Latin Christendom. Married couples who did not engage in sex on holy days, or in unusual ways, were able to escape Church censure. A still more favorable position toward sexual pleasure appeared with St. Alphonsus Liguori (1696–1787), who argued that it was not culpable for married couples to desire sexual pleasure per se, so long as they also had other ends in view. The “chaste touchings” between married persons were necessary “for showing signs of affection to foster mutual love.” Alongside of the procreative function of sexuality, Liguori implicitly recognized a unitive function, in which sexual lovemaking served to express and enhance the mutual love of husband and wife. A century later, the moral theologian John Gury wrote in 1852 that there were four legitimate ends for marital sexuality, each of them sufficient to justify the conjugal act: producing offspring, fulfilling the marital “debt,” avoiding infidelity, and promoting conjugal affection. By presenting conjugal affection per se as a legitimate end for sex, Gury decisively broke from the Augustinian tradition and helped set the context for later Catholic debates over the relationship between the

procreative and unitive aspects of sexuality. In the mid–twentieth century, Herbert Doms presented the sexual act as first and foremost a union of two persons and an intimate participation in the life of another. Thus the primary end of marriage lay in the personal fulfillment of the spouses. Procreation was distinct from marriage itself, considered in its meaning as two-in-oneness. The Vatican II document, Gaudium et Spes (1965), basically upholds Doms’s position. Marriage is defined as “an intimate partnership of love and life,” and marital acts are called “noble and worthy” and “signs of the friendship distinctive of marriage.” Equally “marital and conjugal love are by their nature ordained toward the begetting and educating of children … the supreme gift of marriage.” Thus in Gaudium et Spes there is no explicit prioritizing of the unitive and procreative functions of marriage. But the Vatican teaching was soon to change. Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae (1968) taught that openness to procreation is essential to legitimate sexual activity and forbade all methods of artificial birth control. “The Church … teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life.” This is based on “the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act.” Humanae Vitae treated both contraception and abortion as a “direct interruption of the generative process” that runs seamlessly from intercourse to conception and to childbirth. The encyclical anticipates and opposes the objection that one must consider the fruitfulness of the entire marriage relationship, rather than that of individual marital acts. Yet it sanctions the “recourse to infertile periods” as a method of natural family planning. Paul VI opines that a man using contraceptives would be likely to “forget the reverence due to a woman” and “reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires.” Reflections o what should we make of this historical overview? Let me suggest three things: a reconsideration of the relation between Roman Catholic and Protestant thinking, a reevaluation of the proper role of sexual pleasure, and a renewal of sacramental thinking on marriage. First, Roman Catholic and Protestant approaches to sexuality are not as disparate as the recent disputes over birth control might lead one to believe. Both emerge from a common Augustinian legacy that, for better and worse, has shaped most Christian thinking on the subject of sexuality since

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the fifth century. Unfortunately, by condemning every sexual act unaccompanied by a willingness to procreate, Humanae Vitae nixed fourteen centuries of effort to recognize pleasure as a legitimate sexual aim. For if legitimate sexual acts are defined by an openness to procreation, then pleasure per se cannot be a valid and independent goal. Second, and balancing out what has just been said, it is clear that many of the church’s eminent teachers have viewed sexual pleasure-seeking as a spiritual impediment. Such a wide and deep current of opinion, amounting to a near consensus among writers prior to 1900, should give us pause. Though it is easy to scoff at an ecclesiastical killjoy such as Peter Damian, the concurrence of Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin is hard to dismiss. Does the contemporary American church have something to learn here? Christians immersed in a pleasure-seeking culture, and affirming the goodness of sexual pleasure, may simply be conforming to the world. If we disapprove of pleasure-seeking individuals, should we approve of pleasure-seeking couples just because they are married? Paul wrote that greed amounts to idolatry (Col. 3:5), and this is true of sexual greed as

much as material. Every aspect of the believer’s life is under Christ’s Lordship, and Jesus’ followers are not to bow to Aphrodite. Sexual fulfillment is legitimate, but it is not an end-all or be-all of human life nor even of the marriage relationship. Augustine understood the power of sexual desire to captivate the mind and overwhelm the soul. In North America, the multibillion-dollar pornography industry unveils hundreds of new websites each day, young people engage in sex earlier and delay marriage longer than ever before, and countless households are destabilized or destroyed by infidelity. The secular world does not need to hear that sexual pleasure is good. Instead it is in dire need of people who indicate by their words and actions that bodily pleasure is less important than loving one’s spouse, keeping one’s promises, and seeking God’s kingdom. And the unmarried can make an even greater statement against sexual idolatry than the married since perseveringly celibate people are a powerful witness against the culture’s obsession with pleasure. Third, Christians need to understand the spiritual significance of marriage. The sexual philosophies of our day place a premium on variety and intensity of experience, and not on fidelity or char-

The Double Cure: Addi Nature or Nurture? amous (or infamous) Harvard psychologist B. F. Skinner sharply contrasts traditional views of human nature with modern ones. In Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971), the founder of “behaviorism” writes,

In what we may call the prescientific view … a person’s behavior is at least to some extent his own achievement. He is free to deliberate, decide, and act, possibly in original ways, and he is to be given credit for his successes and blamed for his failures. In the scientific view … a person’s behavior is determined by a genetic endowment traceable to the evolutionary history of the species and by the environmental circumstances to which as an individual he has been exposed. Skinner allows that neither view can be proved, but quickly adds, “It is in the nature of scientific inquiry that the evidence should shift in favor of the second.” He thinks of the human being as a machine, determined by an environment. “The measures we use are those of physical and biological technology, but we use them in special ways to affect behavior.”

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There is no doubt that the “scientific” (i.e., materialist) doctrine is widely embraced by scientists, with some geneticists even wondering out loud if there might be a “gay gene” or an “alcoholic gene.” To the extent that the medical establishment defines addictions as sickness or as a genetic encoding, human behavior is reduced to animal instinct. Ironically, setting out to raise “autonomous man” to the summit of power and authority, modern thinkers like Skinner have succeeded only in reducing human beings to passive agents almost helplessly determined by factors that are virtually beyond their control. Although the crude form of Skinner’s project may not be as dominant today, the perspective certainly seems to be firmly in place. The rule of thumb in business management applies here: no responsibility without authority and vice versa. If we expect middle-management employees to execute their senior staff’s plans, we cannot keep them up at night worrying about problems if we do not give them the authority to fix them. But Skinner’s outlook is the ideal recipe for children of a willful and self-indulgent age: Human beings can escape their responsibility while retaining their authority. All of this has been observed already by the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans. There we are told that sinners have suppressed

ity toward one’s partner. The advice books expatiate on the physical aspects of sex, yet say nothing about whether the acts occur with a spouse, a neighbor, or someone one just met. The personal relationship does not matter. What matters is the sexual technique as applied to Ms. X or Mr. Y. The biblical teaching differs radically. There everything depends on the context, that is, the presence or absence of a lifelong, for-better-or-for-worse pledge of commitment. “Covenant” may be the term that best expresses a Christian alternative to today’s sexual confusion, a word that captures the rocklike firmness and stability of faithful love. Unfortunately, books such as the LaHayes’ The Act of Marriage do not provide much of a counterpoise to the secular sex manuals. They share many of the same presuppositions and interpret sex largely in biological and impersonal terms. Of course, Protestants and Roman Catholics disagree on whether or not marriage is a sacrament. Because marriage began with creation and not with Christ, Protestants assert that marriage is not properly a means of grace. And even if Augustine’s definition of a sacrament as “a visible sign of an invisible grace” does not quite work, Protestants along with Roman Catholics should be comfortable affirming

that the primary reality signified by Christian marriage is the meaning explained in Scripture: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the Church” (Eph. 5:31–32). Marriage is a tangible, concrete, earthly expression of an intangible, heavenly, and eternal reality, namely, the loving relation between Christ and his people. Non-Christians may not know this, but Christians should. By their faithful, persevering, covenant love as husband and wife, Christian couples provide a tangible expression of a spiritual reality much greater than themselves. For this reason, the two who are one, are also three, since they point beyond themselves to the Savior who draws people to himself in faithful love (John 12:32). What could possibly be more significant than that—my tiny and faulty little marriage relationship as a tangible sign of the everlasting and unfailing love of God? ■

Michael J. McClymond (Ph.D., M.A., University of Chicago; M.Div., Yale University) is assistant professor of theology at St. Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri.

ictions and God’s Grace all awareness of God despite the obvious hand of God in creation and providence (Rom. 1:19). They “became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man” (21–22). Particularly singled out here as an example of this rejection of responsibility is homosexual behavior. It is not that this is the unforgivable sin but that it is a prime example of how far we go to justify ourselves and rationalize our abandonment of God. Nothing can be more obvious, even from the crudest anatomical analysis, than that such people “exchanged the natural use for what is against nature” (26). Like Adam and Eve in the garden, human beings—as described here by Paul—are proficient at playing the blame game: Adam blames his transgression on Eve (and ultimately God: “the woman you gave me”); Eve blames the serpent. Nobody wants to take responsibility, so ultimately God is to blame, or perhaps we can reduce human behavior to either one’s environment (nurture) or genes (nature). Similarly passive moments occur to us when we say, for instance, “I’m only human.” From the biblical perspective being human is precisely what holds us to the highest possible standard. Human beings were not created ethically weak, much

less sinful. Being human, created as God’s image-bearers, entails a far greater degree of personal responsibility for our lives, not less. In our “scientific” culture, then, behavior has no real relation to God. David’s confession to God after his adulterous and murderous relationship with Bathsheba, “against you and you alone have I sinned,” is far from our minds today. Wicked habits we now euphemistically label “addictions.” Alcoholism is a sickness, like any other debilitating disease. Having lost our sense of sinning against God, we are often too little disturbed even by offending other people. The real victim is always ourselves, and sin—if such a thing exists—is largely something that I do to myself (not living up to my potential, not living a fulfilling life, etc.— approaches that are often applied in our churches as well). Michael Horton (Ph.D., Wycliffe Hall, Oxford and the University of Coventry) is associate professor of historical theology and apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary in California, and chairs the Council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.

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SEX IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

Sexual Relations as Redeemed Intimacy: The Message of the Song of Solomon ntil fairly recently, any interpretation of the Song of Solomon has focused on rescuing an apparently erotic and secular text from the condemnation of being “purely sensuous.” This goal led the rabbis to read the Song as an allegory of God’s love for Israel, and most Christian interpreters for two millennia noted a picture of the love between Christ and his church, Christ and the believer, or the relationship between God and Mary. Within the past generation, however, another perspective has emerged. The Song, accordingly, is regarded as love poetry that celebrates the intimate relationship between a man and a woman. Within this broadly literal approach, the book has been mined as a divinely inspired manual of sexual tech-

nique, a paean to love (whether married or illicit), or as outline of the biblical pattern for courtship, love, and marriage. Before addressing its interpretation further, however, we need to be careful that our greater understanding of the nature and role of genre in biblical interpretation does not mislead us into mocking the allegorical view. In God’s providence that view was the human reason for its preservation and inclusion in the canon and was offered by interpreters who sincerely wanted to find in Scripture the “wisdom that leads to the salvation that is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15). In fact, there is some biblical basis for the allegorical approach, since marriage is a prominent image of the relationship between God and his own people, espe-

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cially in the prophets (for example, Hos. 1–3, Ezek. 23), in the epistles (Eph. 5:22ff), and in Revelation (19:9). Having said this, we must admit that not only does the Song embody love poetry—as even the most rabid allegorists have recognized—it also celebrates love between a woman and a man. For many Christians, however, this does not solve the problem of its role in the canon. And our culture’s saturation with sex (can anything be sold without a virile man or a nubile woman?), its degradation of relationships into conflict, insult, and titillation, and its perversion of sex into technique, selfishness, and vulgar comedy, also makes it extremely difficult to read about breasts and thighs, especially in the Bible. Furthermore, many who try to read the Song find it simply bewildering. Why is a lover called a garden, hair a flock of goats, and a neck a tower? Here, cultural distance and our general ignorance of how poetry works—especially when it lacks any context (in contrast to, for example, the Song of the Sea in Exodus 15 or the Song of Deborah in Judges 5), plot, progression, or outline—stand between the text and us. How then should we read the Song of Solomon? Organization and Purpose glance at any three or four study Bibles, versions, or commentaries reveals a text divided into as few as six or as many as thirty poems or sections. The textual basis of the divisions and structure of its individual poems remains invisible at our linguistic and cultural distance, as the variety of analysis shows. This general fogginess doesn’t mean that we can’t tell when we have passed from one section to the next, but rather that the precise boundaries are often fuzzy. The Hebrew text is less ambiguous, since Hebrew pronouns and verbal forms indicate whether one or more man or woman is being addressed. Even Hebrew grammar, however, cannot assign every verse to a particular poem or to a certain speaker or group (again, compare the labels used in any two or three versions of 8:10–14). The Song’s relative formlessness implies that defining or interpreting it section-by-section is not as important as when studying, for example, individual psalms. It further implies that the Song was written to be read through, as a literary work, rather than in segments. We can identify and study poetic units (just as we can analyze subunits of any literary work), but the Song was composed as a single poetic text bound together by consistent imagery and expression as well as by features of the Hebrew text which are invisible in translation. It is

not an anthology or song cycle and certainly not a random bunch of concatenated poems. And, at only 117 verses, it is short enough to be read through at one time, even aloud (the best way to read any poetry). Its apparent ascription to Solomon (1:1), which may be dedicatory (“for Solomon”), or even “in the style of Solomon,” causes many readers to puzzle over how to relate the Song to his polygamy (1 Kings 11:3). The Song, however, is imaginative lyric poetry, and the man and woman are literary figures, invented by the poet to explore the theme of marital affection, not actual people (just as any good author can describe things that he or she has not experienced). Nor does the Song contain a story, despite many attempts to discover one, and despite the use of pronouns (I, you, etc.), which suggest actual conversations. The wide divergence of suggested plots (two or three main characters, a satire or serious romance, etc.) and the complete failure of any one story to convince more than a minority suggest that this attempt scrutinizes the Song through the wrong lens. It does not narrate the course of true love but explores and expresses the feelings of love itself. The Song is a poet’s “example of virtue,” a picture of redeemed intimacy. Endearment he strangest passages of the Song—and those most usually mocked—are the sections in which the two lovers praise each other (4:1–6, 11–15; 5:10–16; 6:4–9; 7:1–9). Some of the images sound strange merely because we seldom consider our own metaphors. For example, a common endearment in our culture is “hon” (“honey”). Calling one’s love a food (not to mention less common terms such as “sweetheart,” “sugar,” “cookie”) seems fairly close to referring to a lover as filled with [the delights of] “pomegranates, fruits, nard, saffron, cinnamon, frankincense” (4:13–14). Somewhat stranger are the agricultural metaphors—hair like goats, teeth like shorn ewes, breasts like fawns—which probably refer, respectively, to texture or color and delicacy. But the most unusual images are architectural (necks and noses like towers; Song 4:4; 7:4). Apart from insults such as “built like the broad side of a barn,” we don’t usually use architectural metaphors to describe someone’s appearance. But why not? What if a husband said to his wife, “When I saw the Washington Monument in the Reflecting Pool, I thought of your posture—straight and tall—and how you stand out in my eyes.” Probably your response to reading that sen-

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In Print November/December Book Recommendations Sex for Christians: The Limits and Liberties of Sexual Living Lewis B. Smedes Considered one of the definitive statements on sex and sexuality from a Christian perspective, Sex for Christians provides a thoughtful evangelical discussion of the subject. B-SMDS-2 PAPERBACK, $15.00 The Limits of Love: Some Theological Explorations Gilbert C. Meilaender A thoughtful work in theological ethics that addresses the context and implications of sexual relations and procreation. B-ME-1 PAPERBACK, $18.00 Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar: Readings on Courting and Marrying Amy A. Kass and Leon R. Kass An extensive anthology that functions as a higher form of sex education and shows the depth and breadth of marital love. B-KA-1 PAPERBACK, $15.00 Sexual Character: Beyond Technique to Intimacy Marva Dawn Dawn attempts to provide a biblical understanding of human sexuality, dealing with such issues as marriage, divorce, teenage dating, and homosexuality. B-DAW-4 PAPERBACK, $13.00 Family Questions: Reflections on the American Social Crisis Allan Carlson Drawing upon evidence from the fields of history, sociology, psychology, and economics, this book shows how recent trends in marriage, divorce, illegitimacy, and fertility are interconnected, and so pervasive as to warrant the term â&#x20AC;&#x153;crisis.â&#x20AC;? B-CA-1 PAPERBACK, $25.00 The Book of Marriage: The Wisest Answers to the Toughest Questions Dana Mack and David Blankenhorn Couples spend an enormous amount of time and energy planning for the perfect wedding. But what about planning for the perfect marriage? The Book of Marriage offers a treasury of marital wisdom from across the ages. Intellectually engaging, morally responsible, and ideologically balanced, this anthology gathers some of the deepest, wittiest, and most edifying perspectives on the big questions of married life. B-MAC-1 $30.00

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On Tape From the Alliance Archives The World, the Flesh, and the Devil Ours is a world polluted with sin. Each Christian must be at war with the tempting forces around him or her. We are called not only to be obedient to God’s righteous commands, but to fight in God’s own strength, to repel the daily temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil and to live in ever-increasing victory over temptation. In this four-part White Horse Inn series, Michael Horton, Kim Riddlebarger, and Rod Rosenbladt examine the true nature of spiritual warfare as well as the sure defenses against temptation demonstrated in Scripture. C-WFD-S 2 TAPES IN 1 ALBUM, $13.00 Issues In the Christian Life Grace is not only important for a proper understanding of salvation, but it is also essential for living the Christian life. Featuring Michael Horton, Kim Riddlebarger, and Rod Rosenbladt, this White Horse Inn series reminds us that gratitude is the only proper motivation in sanctification. In short, we do good works because we are saved, not in order to be saved. C-LBG-S 8 TAPES IN 1 ALBUM, $43.00 Putting Amazing Back Into Grace: Introduction to Reformed Theology What does it mean to say that we are saved by grace? Does our salvation come as the result of making a decision, or are we saved because of God’s decision? This four-tape lecture series corresponds to Michael Horton’s book titled Putting Amazing Back Into Grace. In it he re-introduces us to the doctrines of grace, and explains to us why God’s grace is so amazing! C-PBG-S 4 TAPES IN 1 ALBUM, $23.00

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tence would be to call it corny, romantic mush. Perhaps, but if nothing else, the poet’s variety of images encourages us to reflect creatively about those whom we love, rather than mouth the handiest cultural term. The imagery suggests further that lovers think about the other’s person, and consider how best to honor him or her. The gift here is not cash, gift certificates, or jewelry, but the time and energy required by reflective thought, which will be revealed by the most appropriate word, spoken in its time. Unpacking a Metaphor here are three basic steps to unpacking any metaphor, including those in the Song. First, understand the cultural referents—what the poet is comparing. For example, a dominant image in the Song is that the woman is a garden (cf. Song 4:12–15). A garden in ancient Israel was not public, a flowerbed by the road for any passerby to admire, but walled and private, accessible only to its owner (cf. Song 4:12). The second step requires interpreting the image. What do the two things have in common that enables the poet to say, in this case, that the woman is a garden? One common element is privacy; their expressions of intimacy were not public. It also suggests that the husband’s primary source of refreshment, rest, and relaxation is his relationship with his wife, just as the garden that he describes is filled with delightful sounds (flowing water), scents (cinnamon, frankincense, myrrh, aloes), and flavors (pomegranates, fruits). The third step, asking what the image means today, leads us to conclude that husbands should not seek refreshment, delight, or consolation in other women or relationships. It also implies that intimacy is a private, personal affair, so that modesty and restraint typify relationships in public. It does not, of course, forbid public displays of affection, merely those that ought to be private. Here, incidentally, is where we must read the text carefully and interpret what it says. The poet does not say that the woman’s body is a garden but that she is a garden. In other words, this metaphor refers to the entire range of their relationship, not just to sex. The Song is about sex, but it is not only about sex. The Song is about intimacy, one aspect of which is sexual. It is this flood of metaphors that gives the Song its atmosphere of delicacy and modesty, even when those metaphors are far more direct than has often been recognized. Here are no four-letter AngloSaxon words, no slang, no Latin anatomical terms, but language borrowed from the world of creation and agriculture. Their way of speaking rebukes

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both our culture’s brashness and the Church’s tendency toward prudery, and encourages thoughtful reflection on the person of the beloved. Poetry from other ancient Near Eastern cultures, especially the love poems from Egypt, sheds light on some of these images as well. In those poems, for example, lovers call each other “sister” and “brother” (4:9, 10, 12; 5:1, 2), showing us that these terms are not incestuous but describe close relationships (as in Song 8:1). Reading Canonically wo separate issues concern the Song’s relationship to the rest of the Bible. The first is how its presence in the canon influences our interpretation of the Song; the second is the Song’s contribution to the whole of biblical revelation. Since the Song is in the canon, the intimacy it expresses is between a husband and wife. The physical consummation of their relationship is clearly described in 5:1 (for example), and Scripture consistently condemns illicit relationships. Another result of its presence in the canon is that although we affirm loudly that the Song is love poetry, we must deny that it is secular love poetry, as many (even some evangelicals) claim. It is true that it does not mention God, Israel, or their history, but the Song is no more secular than is the book of Esther. The covenant, for example, is unmentioned because it is assumed—does even the most consistently reformed person writes “d.v.” or “God willing” after every item in his or her daily planner? Cultural assumptions are normally unexpressed, and few assumptions would have been more basic in ancient Israel than their covenantal relationship with Yhwh. The Song brings to the canon a strong, if implicit, rebuke of the theological dualism that reduces the body and its functions to a lower level of creation, or sees those functions as less than spiritual, so that sexual relations, for example, exist merely for propagation (as many in the medieval church said). Its message, therefore, parallels the implicit message of the Incarnation. On the other hand, the Song is not merely about the physical act of lovemaking. It is primarily about redeemed intimacy, so that it celebrates that joyful, even playful intimacy that delights in the other’s company, appearance, and body. The sexual expression of their intimacy is just that—it expresses what pervades their entire relationship, so that they enjoy going for walks together, talking with each other, eating meals together, and having sex. Sex is part of intimacy, but sex is only part of intimacy. And, in the Song, intimacy is pursued with equal ardour by both the wife and the hus-

band. In fact, as many have pointed out, the woman is the leader in much of the book, and speaks just as frankly and forcefully as her husband. This is not a passive-aggressive relationship, but one of equals, jointly pursuing all aspects of their relationship and life together. In an added twist to the biblical worldview, the Song celebrates sexual delight as primarily relational, not as merely procreational. Fertility and reproduction are not part of the Song, despite the metaphor of the woman as a garden. It thus stands apart from the consistent value placed on childbearing (for example, Sarai/Sarah, Tamar, Hannah; Ps. 113:9), and suggests that infertility should not bring guilt into marital sex, since sex was not created solely to bring forth children. This also supports the idea that the author was writing poetic reflections on the relationship described in Genesis 2:25, that is, on the state of marital love and affection in an unfallen world. Reproduction is certainly in view in Genesis 1:28, but there is no hint of childrearing in Genesis 2:18–25. This does not mean that it was not part of the reason for the woman’s creation or one of the anticipated outcomes of the first marriage (the curse only increases the woman’s pain in childbirth; Genesis 3:16). It was not, however, the—or even a—point of the story of the woman’s creation. What does this intimacy look like? The Song describes lovers who are honest, vulnerable (naked) before each other, yet unashamed, confident, and secure in each other’s love. They find in each other the source of their refreshment, delight, and pleasure, so that separation is misery. Furthermore, their expressions of intimacy are private, reserved for one another, not for display. The Song thus reminds us that the pursuit of intimacy—in all aspects of the marital relationship—also pursues the order of a creation created and redeemed by Christ. A final word of caution: In a culture that uses sex to sell everything, and which is therefore unaware of the true unifying power of sexuality, it is possible that some readers of the Bible have only begun to overcome or escape enslavement or addiction to pornography or other sexual sins. Do not allow the Song to become a source of titillation. The fault lies not in the Scripture, of course, but in our fallen tendency to abuse it, deliberately or through our own naiveté. As Jesus says, the fault lies not in the right hand, but in the heart that controls it, so that it would be better never to have read this book than to find in it an occasion of sin (Matthew 5:27–30). Overall, this reading of the Song encourages us as believers to examine our relationships and how

we view others, especially those of the opposite sex, and most especially our spouses, and points us toward relationships that are redeemed by Christ, in which we discover and grow into God’s good purposes. ■

Frederic C. Putnam (Ph.D. Annenberg, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is professor of Old Testament at Biblical Theological Seminary, and a teaching elder in the Presbyterian Church of America.

A Brief History of the Song ernard of Clairvaux (A.D. 1090–1153) interpreted Song 1:13 so that the breasts refer to the region of the Christian’s heart, the myrrh to the Christian’s sufferings for Christ, and the entire statement as an encouragement to keep Christ’s sufferings in view and thus to persevere. Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. A.D. 429) was apparently the first to read the Song literally, suggesting that it was a wedding song celebrating Solomon’s marriage to Pharaoh’s daughter (1 Kings 3:1). His interpretation was anathematized by the Second Council of Constantinople (A.D. 553). During the Middle Ages, the Song was commented upon more than any other biblical book, but the influence of neo-Platonism, which assigned the body to a lower order of being and exalted celibacy, made those medieval commentaries consistently allegorical or typological. Even Martin Luther, who aimed to read the Song literally, drifted into allegory. Many study Bibles and popular–level expositions still follow the lead of the rabbis and the early Church. Thus, through the ages the Song has been understood largely as an allegory of God’s relationship with his people.

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“Amour Adulterine:” The Myriad Flirtations of the Soul hen many Christians, especially the literati, hear the words, “You shall not commit adultery,” they probably think of the heroine’s indiscretion in The Scarlet Letter. To be sure, their impulse is correct because Hester Prynne’s sin is the quintessential example of this transgression. But how would those same Christians respond to the following query: Which is the more telling sin, the fact that Prynne committed adultery, or that she later justified it by saying to her lover, “What we did had a consecration of its own”? Our response to such a question

reveals not only how, but how well we understand the nature of adultery and appreciate the pervasiveness of its various facades and twisted rebellion. The Extent of Adulterous Love he gist of the seventh commandment is its prohibition of sexual relations outside of or against the marital relationship (Exod. 20:14; Deut. 5:18; Heb. 13:4). The positive side of this prohibition can be seen in the first marriage where God told the man to be united to his wife and thus the two would become “one flesh” (Gen.

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2:24). The strength and passion of their marital union was preserved and shielded by its singular and unique commitment. God’s commandment was intended to ward off that which would sully the union that God intended to be prized and protected. Nevertheless, we should no more deduce from this that marital love is merely sexual than we should think that sexual immorality is only marital. And if this is true, then sins of adultery have greater dimensions than we may have previously realized. Historically the church has agreed that there are many inappropriate forms of sexual expression that transgress, subvert, replace, pervert, or destroy the marital bond: fornication, cohabitation, prostitution, incest, homosexuality, bestiality, and rape among others (1 Cor. 5:1f; Rom. 1:24f; inter alia). All forms of sexual immorality are guilty of adultery because they directly or indirectly violate, degrade, or contradict marital intimacy. But there are a host of subtle and not so subtle forms of temptation which encourage or lead down the path of sexual immorality. For instance, God warns men about the seductress and her unchaste actions as she walks along with her flirting eyes, mincing steps, and jangling ornamentation (Isa. 3:16; 2 Pet. 2:14). In like manner God alerts men of the equally seductive power of her enticing speech as she leads her naive young victim like an ox to the slaughter (Prov. 7:21). The point is that her enticing words are as potentially alluring as her erotic attire. The enduring popularity of “telephone sex” proves this to be all too true—and this in an age of digital downloads and video revelry. Christians then should avoid the more subtle actions and speech which are of the same stripe. Women ought to “dress modestly” (1 Tim. 2:9), and men should make sure that they “make a covenant with their eyes” and look “straight ahead” (Job 31:1; Prov. 4:25). The same is true of speech. Adultery flows from the inner man out of the mouth (Matt. 15:19). If the marriage beds of Christian couples are to be kept pure so should their mouths. Paul says that there must not be even a “hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity” because these are “improper for God’s holy people” (Eph. 5:3). That seems clear enough. But Paul goes on to say in the same verse, “nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or course joking, which are out of place.” The sort of “joking around” Paul has in view is that which is sexually tinged and nuanced—everything from the suggestive innuendo and double entendre to the explicit dirty joke. This type of cleverness-gone-bad deflowers innocence, trivializes what is truly extraordinary, drags the beautiful down into the gutter, and creates an

atmosphere that tolerates and even encourages sexual degradation and vice. More Than Sex s was mentioned previously, we should not think that marital love is merely sexual, any more than that sexual immorality only applies to marriage. Anything that contravenes, ruptures, or intrudes upon the singularity of marital love is adulterous. Marriage is more than physical intimacy. It is built upon honor, devotion, respect, friendship, compliance, and the mysterious bonds of emotion. Sexual immorality, therefore, is not the only villain that threatens marital ties. Undoubtedly many an illicit relationship began not with sexual attraction but with emotional gravitation. Many a corrupt man has wooed a woman by invoking her feelings of sympathy only to manipulate them against her for his own selfish ends. The female gender is no less talented at the same craft. Perhaps in many churches well-intentioned married men and women are divulging their secret thoughts, frustrations, and temptations to a sister or brother in Christ who is not their spouse, and as their two souls draw closer and closer in “Christian love” and “spiritual transparency” the singularity of marital commitment is threatened and violated, all in the name of “sharing” and Christian “fellowship.” In C. S. Lewis’s retelling of the cupid story, a woman accuses the Queen of stealing her husband. However, she does not accuse the Queen of being his lover, but of depriving her of her husband’s soul and sole affection. Through their deepening bonds of friendship, the two were having an affair, only it was not sexual but emotional. Cleaving involves the soul, not just the body. The emotional side of the one-flesh union has not been lost on those who have had to console a heartbroken girl who has just been seduced by some guy whom she loved. Her pain is caused by the fact that she did not merely give him her body, but her heart and soul as well. Similarly, many romantic novels are digested by women, not for their literary value, but for the intimate bonds and fantasies that they provide for their readers. These novelettes elicit responses that are not dissimilar from those which pornography encourages. The reader is investing emotional and romantic attachments to someone imaginary. This is one reason why pastors may need to refrain from long telephone conversations with any woman in the church. Parties can bond even over a telephone. In other words, intimate unfaithfulness is not merely sexual, it is also spiritual and emotional. This is why in the church, marriage should be honored by all people, not just married people (Heb.

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13:4). Both married and unmarried must respect the boundaries of marriage, guarding its fidelity and honor, maintaining its chastity and purity. And this often begins long before physical touch ever takes place. It starts when we feel that we are drawing close to someone to whom we must not cleave. Although divorce is clearly a heinous sin in itself, it is actually often the grievous end of earlier sins of indiscretion that were neither curbed nor controlled but simply allowed to run their course. Therefore, one could hardly overstate how important it is to spot adulterous affections and temptations when they sprout, and then immediately nip them in the bud. Our Lord made this clear in the Sermon on the Mount as he explicated the sin of adultery and other areas of God’s moral will when he said, “You have heard that it was said,

themselves from those particular occasions and curtail those recognized chain of events that present certain temptations, knowing from Scripture or from experience that they will trip up the child of light. Even if one must take radical measures to avoid them, our Lord assures us that amputating one’s hand or gouging out one’s eye in order to save your heart is of little sacrifice (Matt. 5:29–30). The deeper problem is that adultery in its various manifestations is just like all other sin. Sin loves sin for its own sake. Sin is “in it” for itself, simply for the love of sinning. Sin is not just having sinful desires but is the sin that we desire. We are right to be horrified and saddened when we hear of a fellow pilgrim who has fallen into sexual sin, but we ought to be equally startled and grieved at our own constant flirtations with lust and its many dangerous forms of titillation. As Augustine True love, because it wants to share and get to know the other person, is patient recounts his spiritual pilgrimage in his Confessions he does and has true selfless regard for the other person, considering them worth the wait. not hide his dark and torturous struggle to end a longstanding Lust on the other hand, because it has no concern for the other, is impatient and adulterous relationship. And yet, when Augustine explains the nature of sin he refers, not selfish and therefore takes and violates others, even if it injures and destroys. to his seasoned adultery, but to an incident in his youth when ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that any- he and others stole pears from a neighbor. Why one who looks at a woman lustfully has already would he do this? Why would he bypass the more committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matt. scandalous and darker sin of adultery? Because 5:27, 28) By juxtaposing the seventh command- Augustine understood that what lies at the bottom ment with his, “But I tell you,” Jesus was not down- of every sin is the simple love of evil for its own playing the scandalous nature of adultery. Rather, sake. One critic of Augustine’s spiritual autobioghis intent was to prick the hearts of those who raphy has said that the Confessions is a big fuss over thought that they were beyond or above commit- a few pears. Would he apply the same pun to the ting adultery, when in fact they were guilty of it fall of our first parents from their innocent state? every time they looked at a woman lustfully. The After all, all they did was eat forbidden fruit. But sin committed in lust and in adultery are of the God’s prohibition, seemingly arbitrary to some, same genus. Both are unchaste and violate the other smoked out Adam and Eve’s deepest motive and party, whether that person is the object of lustful will. Perhaps Augustine wisely perceived the analthought or immoral behavior. True love, because it ogous event in his life that exemplified the root wants to share and get to know the other person, is problem of his adultery and a fundamental problem patient and has true selfless regard for the other per- of our race: the desire to take and consume that son, considering him or her worth the wait. Lust, on which does not belong to us. Lust is selfishness and the other hand, because it has no concern for the pride joined together, stretching their greedy other, is impatient and selfish and therefore takes hands for forbidden fruit. and violates others, even if it injures and destroys. Lust needs only a little more time before it begins to The Extent of Divine Love o walk in purity while surrounded by ramresemble its brazened sibling, adultery. Surely the pant immorality is often arduous, to say the reason our Lord warned so solemnly about lust as a least. We are constantly tempted to surform of adultery was because if unchecked it leads to render to the siren voice of Lady Folly, who loudly further unfaithfulness. Those who are weak and prone to the tempting calls out to us from Mt. Ebal to take and eat her fornemesis of lust must steer clear of its favorite haunts bidden delicacies. But the husband of the church and peddlers. Christians must be ready to distance calls out to his bride from the opposing Mt.

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Gerizim and proclaims the blessings of purity, chastity, self-control, and marital union. He urges us to follow the path of honor and true love. But we stumble and fall. And as we commit various sins of adultery, we incur the consequences. We suffer guilt, shame, and self-destruction, not to mention the harm we inflict on others (Prov. 6:27, 32). Memories of past sexual sin do not easily die, and we struggle to forgive those who have sinned against us sexually. From one standpoint we ought always to have such struggles. All of our sin against God is a form of “playing the harlot” in which we have been unfaithful to the one who has betrothed himself and has spread the corner of his garment over us, covering the nakedness of our sin (Ezek. 16:8; cf., Ps. 51:4). But sexual sin is peculiar in its nagging guilt. Perhaps this is because, “All other sins a man commits are outside his body,” but “he who sins sexually sins against his own body” (1 Cor. 6:18). This may explain why those who have struggled with the temptations of lust also struggle with the reality of God’s forgiveness. God’s Word exposes sin so graphically that it is hard to believe God will actually forgive such sin. But our God is faithful and betrothed himself to us forever (Hos. 2:19). His love is undying and he will not let us go. God made this clear to Israel again and again, and he has demonstrated it to the church, once and for all, in the suffering and exaltation of his Son. The surety of our forgiveness is the act of Christ’s love on the cross where he purchased his bride. He loved her so much he gave himself up for her (Eph. 5:25). It is the depth of this love which makes the forgiveness of our sins complete. Jesus came to save us from all our sin, even sins against the seventh commandment. He came to call sinners, even prostitutes who were “entering the kingdom of God ahead” of the Pharisees (Mark 2:17; Matt. 21:31). To be sure, our sin is great. But his love is greater, stronger, deeper, and higher. His love cuts a wide swath, it separates our sin from us as far as the east is from the west (Ps. 103:11,12). Though our sin be like scarlet and red as crimson, “they shall be as white as snow” and “like wool” (Isa. 1:18). He has so lavished his love upon the church that he has made her lovely and radiant, “without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish” (Eph. 1:7; 5:26, 27). There is no sin that stains so deeply that it cannot be washed away by his blood. There is no sin so strong that it can withstand the overwhelming power of his love. Of course the extent of God’s love is that it ensures the eternal forgiveness of our sin. Christ will not abandon his bride nor will he leave us for another. Even “if we are faithless, he will remain

faithful” (2 Tim. 3:13). His love is an everlasting love. He says, “never will I leave you, never will I forsake you” (Heb. 13:5) because his love is like that of a jealous husband who has promised that no one will snatch us from his hand (John 10:28). He has begun something good in us, and he is determined to carry it on unto its completion (Phil. 1:6). God wants us to know that he loves us and always will. But he also wants us to know how great is his love for us. He wants us “to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge” (Eph. 3:18, 19). So when Christians think of the forgiveness reserved for those who sin against the seventh commandment, they ought to think of their biblical heroine in Scripture who wet Jesus’ feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. Her sin was great and she knew it. She knew that she needed much forgiveness (Luke 7:47). But Jesus said, “Your sins are forgiven. . . . Your faith has saved you; go in peace” (Luke 7:48, 50). Her pardon is a quintessential example of those who repent and believe in the Savior, no matter what their sin. The pervasiveness of her twisted sin was gone, now replaced by his all-encompassing love. In love, she beautifully prepared Jesus’ body for burial, adorning the one who would soon go to the cross for her adultery. This is the power of God’s love in the Gospel. Our response to such an event in the ministry of Jesus (and in the life of our sister), reveals not only how, but how well we understand the nature of forgiveness and appreciate the expansiveness of God’s love for us in his Son. This love is wide enough to cover all our sin. It is long enough to last for an eternity. It is deep enough to unseat the deepest sexual sin. It is high enough to carry us to heaven, even as pure in God’s sight, as a bride made ready for the wedding supper of the Lamb (Rev. 19:9). Such is his great love for sinners like you and me. ■

A. C. Troxel (Ph.D., Westminster Theological Seminary) is senior pastor of Calvary Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Glenside, Pennsylvania.

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Godly Emotions ne of Scripture’s most arresting incidents occurs in the book of Numbers. Numbers records Israel’s wilderness wanderings. In chapter 25, Israel was encamped at Shittim getting ready to cross over the river Jordan into Canaan. But even there, on the verge of entering the Promised Land, Israelite men began to indulge in sexual immorality and Baal worship with foreign women. God reacted fiercely to this and commanded Moses to execute the guilty Israelites. Yet even as this was happening, Zimri, the son of one of the Simeonite leaders, brought a Midianite woman, Cozbi, into the Israelite camp in front of everyone. Here the text becomes a bit unclear, but it seems that Zimri and Cozbi went into his tent to have sex. In any case, when Phinehas, a grandson of Aaron, saw what was happening, he grabbed a spear and killed Zimri and Cozbi with a single thrust. God then declared to Moses, “Phinehas . . . has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel because he was jealous with my jealousy.” God praised Phinehas’s act because it arose from godly jealousy; and because of Phinehas’s jealousy, God made a special covenant of peace and perpetual priesthood with him and his descendants forever. Jealousy is an emotion—a particularly intense emotion, as Scripture sees it (see Prov. 27:4), and a negative one at that (see Deut. 29:20; Rom. 10:19). It arises when we believe that our right to someone’s exclusive attachment or loyalty is being threatened or when we resent someone else’s advantages or success. Usually, we think that jealousy is a bad thing and something to be avoided, as it often is (see Acts 5:12–18; Rom. 13:13; James 3:13–16). Yet sometimes jealousy is a good thing (see 2 Cor. 11:2–3; Ezek. 36:1–7; Zech. 8:1–8). If I am not jealous of my wife’s affections, then I don’t love her as I should. And if God were not jealous for the exclusive affection of his people, then he would not be serious about his covenant with

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them (see Ex. 20:1–6; Deut. 4:23–24; Ezek. 16:35–43). It is striking how often Scripture characterizes God as a jealous God (see Ex. 34:14; Deut. 6:13–15; Nah. 1:2). But this is just part of Scripture’s more general ascription of strong negative emotions to God. For instance, Scripture often asserts that God in his holiness hates idolatry and wickedness (see Prov. 6:16–19; Jer. 44:2–4; Isa. 61:8). Flying in the face of the popular Christian assumption that God hates sin but loves sinners, it avows that God hates not only evil but also evildoers (see Ps. 5:5; 11:5). And its references to God’s anger and wrath are too frequent to be easily counted (see Ex. 4:14; Josh. 7:1; Ezra 8:22; Ps. 78:49; John 3:36; Rom. 1:18; Rev. 14:9–11). As Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary defines these terms, hatred involves “intense hostility and aversion.” Anger is an “emotional reaction of extreme displeasure”; whereas wrath suggests an even stronger emotional reaction that includes “a desire or intent to avenge or punish.” If we take Scripture seriously, then we must be sobered by its ascription of such strong negative emotions to God. Scripture also ascribes these emotions to God’s holy people. The psalmist declares, “Let those who love the Lord hate evil” (97:10; cf. 119:104, 128; here and throughout, italics added for emphasis). In Proverbs, Wisdom says essentially the same thing: “To fear the Lord is to hate evil; I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech” (Prov. 8:13; see 13:5). God sought out David as someone after his own heart (see 1 Sam. 13:14 and Acts 13:22). We may, then, expect that David’s emotions will generally mirror God’s own feelings. And so we find David telling us not only that he hates the deeds of faithless men (see Ps. 101:3) but also that he hates idolatrous people (see Ps. 31:6; cf. 139:21–22; 119:113). Moses, who is a type of Christ (see Deut. 18:18–19 with Acts 3:18–23), was often angry (see Ex. 11:8; 16:20; 32:19–20). Occasionally his anger was sinful (see Num. 20:2–13 with Ps. 106:32–33), but it usually arose out of a proper concern for God’s honor or for the welfare of God’s people. On at least one occasion, it anticipated God’s own anger (see Num. 16). Strong Emotions Justified ometimes it is claimed that Scripture’s attitude to strong negative emotions such as jealousy, hatred, and anger are limited to the Old Testament. Claims like these, however, involve a superficial reading of the New Testament. It is not just that its authors actually repeat some of the council of the Old Testament (see Rom. 12:9), but

also that the Gospel cannot be understood unless it is set against the backdrop of God’s wrath (see 1 Thess. 1:10; 1 John 4:10 [NASB]; Rom. 1:16–3:26 [RSV]—the “For” appearing at the beginning of 1:18 is crucial to explain why Paul is not ashamed of the Gospel). When Paul finds the purity of the Gospel being threatened, he reacts very negatively (see Gal. 1:6–9). And any adequate assessment of human anger in the New Testament must deal with what B. B. Warfield established in his article on “The Emotional Life of our Lord,” namely, that Jesus himself, as the sinless God/man, was often angry or upset (see Mark 3:5; 10:14; John 2:14–16). In addition, Jonathan Edwards establishes, in Part I of his great Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, that it is not merely our Lord and the great heroes of the faith who have these strong negative emotions. He shows that all true religion consists, in great part, in having strong emotions. You and I, as ordinary Christian believers, should not think that we are right with God unless we are strongly moved—both positively and negatively— by whatever impacts our faith. If something brings God much glory, then we should be joyful; and if his standards are flouted, then we should feel sorrow or indignation. Consequently, we can test the health of our faith by determining whether we feel these strong negative emotions when we should. As Edwards puts it, Christians “are called upon to give evidence of their sincerity by this, ‘Ye that love the Lord, hate evil’.” As he says, Scripture witnesses so pervasively to the fact that all real believers will experience strong emotions that those who maintain otherwise must throw away their Bibles and find some other and nonbiblical standard for judging the nature of true religion. Why is this? What is it about saving faith—or what Edwards calls “true religion”—that makes our experiencing these negative emotions inevitable? And why is it that, as we grow in true godliness, we will feel them more and more? It all follows from the principle, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:21). Our hearts—which include our emotions—are tied to what we treasure—to what we love or are deeply committed to. Our concern for what we treasure prompts our emotions, both positive and negative. In fact, if we really treasure someone or something, then various emotions will inevitably arise in us as soon as we have specific thoughts or beliefs about that person or thing. For instance, if I love my wife, then my love for her is bound to produce certain feelings as my beliefs about her change. If I have just learned that her coworkers have given her an award for the quality of her work, then I will feel joy that her efforts have been appreciated. If I hear that she has been in a car

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accident, I will feel anxiety until I know that she is okay. If I don’t rejoice in my wife’s award upon hearing of it, then I am probably not identifying with her as a husband should. And if you were to see me showing no signs of anxiety on hearing that she had been in a serious wreck, then you would have reason to think that I do not treasure her as I should. There are two crucial points here. The first is that specific emotions inevitably arise in us under specific conditions. So if they don’t arise, then there is reason to conclude either that we lack specific thoughts and beliefs or that we do not really treasure what we claim to treasure. So whether I have appropriate feelings in particular circumstances really is a test of what I believe and treasure. The second crucial point is that if I treasure someone or something, then I am as susceptible to specific negative emotions as I am to specific positive ones. It is not possible, in this fallen world, to decide to have only positive emotions. For in this world bad things

can threaten or overtake what we treasure. When they do, our awareness of these threats or disasters inevitably produces negative emotions. By allowing myself to love my wife, I open myself up to the possibility of great sorrow. And the greater my love for her, the stronger my negative emotions of grief or anxiety or anger or jealousy can be. So emotional contraries such as love and hatred, hope and fear, joy and sorrow are actually linked in ways that makes feeling each of them, in the appropriate circumstances, a sign of true godliness: “Let those who love the Lord hate evil” (Ps. 97:10). “[T]he eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love” (Ps. 33:18; cf. 147:11). “Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy” (Ps. 126:5; see Matt. 5:4; John 16:19–22). Indeed, words like “love” and “fear” often function more as synonyms than as antonyms in Scripture, since both loving and fearing the Lord produce the intense hostility and aversion

Sin an espite the triumph of the therapeutic in American Protestantism, many evangelicals still strenuously object to the “victim” philosophy and encourage a more robust notion of human responsibility. If a person in such circles struggles with sexual immorality, he or she is likely to be told that the matter is entirely in his or her hands. It is as if the person is neutral and is only engaging in particular sins by an absolutely free choice— that is, a choice that is in no way affected by the person’s predispositions, environment, or other external factors. Homosexuals just get out of bed one morning and decide to be gay, the logic goes. If “science” is blind to human responsibility, evangelicals tend to ignore the complexity of the Christian doctrine of sin and its mysterious power over our lives. One significant factor in this appears to be the reduction of “sin” to acts. When we talk about sin, it is usually in terms of actual things that people such as ourselves do. The majority of evangelical Christians would probably have no problem accepting the notion of sin as long as it relates to actions, rather than to who we are. In other words, do we view sin primarily as a condition or in terms of isolated acts? Do we believe that we sin because we’re sinners or that we are sinners because we sin? This makes all the difference in the world. “Addictions” may indeed be involved in one’s choice to become gay or to be a promiscuous heterosexual. Genes may even be involved for all we know. This is only a threat to a weak view of sin as act, and as acts in relation to which we are basically neutral. But it presents no difficulty to a biblical doctrine of sin.

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The doctrine of original sin reminds us that we are sinful from birth, which entails both our moral depravity and our moral guilt. We are sinners from conception, and it is out of this corruption that we plot and execute moral rebellion. But total depravity has never suggested that everyone is as sinful as he or she could be, nor that everyone sins in exactly the same manner. Rather, it means that there is no part of the self or of human existence that is not in some manner corrupted by sin. We are not born into this world neutral, but hostile to the things of God (Ps. 51:5; John 6:44; Rom. 3:10–18; 1 Cor. 2:14; Eph. 2:1–9, etc.). Although we are not all trapped under the same fallen timber, we are all trapped in one way or another. We may not all have the same predispositions, tendencies, affections, or habits, but whatever ours are, they are just as sinful as anyone else’s. Whatever role nature (even genes) might have in our sinful decisions, however, our environment cannot account for sinful behavior. The Reformed scholastics made a helpful distinction between natural and moral ability, insisting that human beings are naturally capable of obedience, since Adam was created upright. In other words, there are no “parts” missing. The fall did not destroy our freedom, but corrupted it. We are still free moral agents who decide for ourselves what we will do or refrain from doing. And yet, we are morally enslaved. We are free to do whatever we want, but our sinful condition causes us to want the very things that make us unfree. Furthermore, our environment undoubtedly plays a significant role in our moral formation. Think of the emphasis that Scripture places on the contrast

that we call “hatred” of evil (compare Ps. 97:10 with Prov. 8:13). The implications of these truths for how we ought to respond to the moral situation of our time should be obvious. Christians are those who have had their hearts changed by God’s Holy Spirit (see John 3:1–8; Titus 3:3–7; Ezek. 36:24–27, 31) so that they can begin to love God and the things of God as they should (see Rom. 8:2–4; Eph. 2:1–10; Gal. 5:16–25). Because God’s Spirit indwells us, we now possess the very mind of Christ (see 1 Cor. 2:10–16; Eph. 4:17–24). And Christ’s mind mirrors the mind of his father (see John 14:7–11; 2 Cor. 4:4–6; Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:3). Reflecting God’s Emotions t is then natural and right for our emotions to mirror God’s emotions. God, as perfectly righteous, is deeply concerned about justice and morality (see Gen. 18:16–25; 1 Kings 3:5–15; Isa. 1:10–17).

In all of his dealings with us, he judges our moral condition and then reacts appropriately. Scripture also tells us that various sexual acts and practices are detestable (see Lev. 18:22; Deut. 22:5; Jer. 13:24–27), which means that God detests them (see 1 Kings 14:22–24 with Deut. 23:18) and so should we (see Deut. 7:26). In Moses and the prophets, these acts and practices are detestable partly because they were associated with pagan religious rituals (see Deut. 23:17–18; Jer. 5:7–9). To engage in them was to break covenant with Yahweh and make covenant with pagan deities deliberately and explicitly (see Num. 25:1–3 and 31:15–16 with Rev. 2:14). Yet even there, the emotional aversion that such acts and practices produce is never completely separate from the fact that they also fly in the face of the created order as God intended it (see, for instance, Deut. 24:1–4 with Gen. 2:24). This aspect of their immorality or perversity becomes more central to their detestability in the wisdom literature and in the

nd Sins between “the house of the wicked” and “the house of the righteous,” the two covenantal environments that shape children. People mature in God’s house by taking on habits of the covenant people, learning the ways of God from and with the people of God. Intermarriage was a perpetual threat to the covenant. Examples abound in Scripture of environmental factors figuring in to Israel’s obedience and disobedience. Conservatives have been fairly good at recognizing that we are sinners and that we are not passive, helpless victims of nature and nurture. However, in their laudable attempt to uphold human responsibility they have not always given sufficient attention to the deep magic of the sinful condition that renders us not only sinners but sinned-against. We are victims after all—but victims and victimizers. Even while we may legitimately accept that we are victims of, say, an abusive parent, we are ourselves contributing to the mistreatment of someone else, although perhaps in a different way. No one is off the hook, and yet there are different hooks. We cannot dismiss the notion of victimization in our defense of human responsibility. Our doctrine of sin is deep enough and wide enough to account for both sinful predispositions and sinful environments as factors in the shaping of human behavior. However, it is far richer and less reductionistic than the materialist account. Behavioral psychology—naturalistic “science”—has been incredibly reductionistic in understanding its subject matter, collapsing natural and moral categories. So, for instance, there is no spiritual or moral dimension to human action, but only physiological, chemical, neurological, and environmental factors. But then, a practical

Pelagianism in conservative Christian circles also lurks, seeking to reduce sin to actions and behaviors. Both approaches apply their own reductions and fail to recognize the seriousness of sin. A robust biblical account, then, is capable of including the truth in the observations of naturalistic psychology (viz., the role of nature and nurture) and conservative morality (viz., the role of personal responsibility). One may be predisposed to alcoholism or anger from birth and through the environment of one’s childhood. And yet, that person is still a real moral agent who is responsible for his or her decisions as to whether to indulge those tendencies. The same is true for homosexuals, promiscuous heterosexuals, or anyone else struggling with sexual sin. Good News for Immoral Christians After explaining how, “as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life” (Rom. 5:18), Paul concluded his treatment of justification by saying, “But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (20–21). Paul was well aware of likely objections to what some of his readers (then and now) could only regard as the most blatant form of antinomian preaching. In the very next verse he anticipates the reaction: [ C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 3 6 ]

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New Testament (see Prov. 11:20; Rom. 1:24–27; 1 Cor. 6:18; 2 Pet. 2:4–16). We, in God’s New Covenant times, are God’s new royal priesthood and holy nation (see 1 Pet. 2:9). We, like his Old Covenant people, are called to be holy because he is holy (see Lev. 20:7–24; 1 Pet. 1:15–16). This means that “there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity [among us], … because these are improper for God’s holy people” (Eph. 5:3; see 5:3–20; 1 Thess. 4:3–8). In the Beatitudes, Jesus stresses that the threshold for sexual immorality is much lower than the Jewish people had taken it to be (see Matt. 5:27–32). Paul is so averse to any sexual impurity that he rules even “foolish talk” and “coarse joking” as “out of place” (Eph. 5:4). In our time, the floodgates of sexual immorality and moral perversity have been thrown open. One of the primary strategies of those who would erode Judeo-Christian sexual standards is for them to redescribe the various forms of sexual immorality and moral perversity in ways that make those acts and practices less likely to arouse emotional aversion. For instance, some segments of the homosexual community are working hard to destigmatize

the sexual molestation of pre- and post-pubescent boys by homosexual adults. In 1998, an article appeared in the American Psychological Association’s prestigious Psychological Bulletin claiming that scientific evidence does not support the common belief that such sexual encounters invariably harm the boys involved. Consequently, it concluded, it is inappropriate to label all such encounters “sexual abuse.” Willing encounters “with positive reactions” should just be labeled “adult-child sex” (see Mary Eberstadt’s “‘Pedophilia Chic’ Reconsidered,” Weekly Standard, January 1/January 8, 2001). Similarly, Peter Singer of Princeton University’s Center for Human Values recently published a webzine essay that tries to normalize bestiality by highlighting some of the “science” in Midas Dekkers’s pro-bestiality book, Dearest Pet. In both cases, this strategy involves comparing these still generally abhorred practices with sexual practices that our culture no longer decries. God Detests Immorality t is clear that God detests practices like these (see Deut. 27:21; Lev. 18:22–30; 20:13, 15–16). Yet is it clear that we do? Do we feel

Sin an What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized in Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. (Rom. 6:1–4) There are two approaches that the Apostle’s logic here rules out. First, a Christian cannot actually be an antinomian—that is, someone who rejects the continuing validity of the law in the life of the believer and insists that genuine conversion can be present where there is no genuine repentance. “Shall we sin that grace may abound?” is the right question, but “No” is the right answer, Paul says. But it also means, second, that a Christian cannot be a legalist, since the basis for this freedom from sin’s power is the same as the basis for freedom from sin’s guilt: Christ’s victory. Paul does not say, as many of us have heard growing up in “victorious Christian life” circles, “You certainly don’t have to live in defeat.” No, Paul puts it all in the indicative: “How shall we who

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died to sin live any longer in it?” This is not only indicative, it’s past tense: this is something that has happened already. Christians are not, upon conversion, brought to a place where they can now choose to live “Spirit-filled” lives “in victory” or “carnal” lives of defeat. Paul is not pleading with us, as if to say, “How can you possibly live in sin after all that God has done for you?” He is saying something entirely different: “How is it possible for you to live in sin after all that God has done for you?” In other words, it is not possible. “Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized in Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” This is not a victory to be achieved, but a victory to be received. Christ has already defeated sin and dethroned it as a reigning principle in our lives. He has done this! We do not “put Jesus on the throne” or “make Jesus Lord of our life.” He is on the throne and he is Lord of our life. This is why he can say, as he introduces the Ten Commandments, “I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. [Therefore] you shall have no other gods beside me.” It is because he is Lord that he is able to save to the uttermost. This is an essential point, because many of us are quite willing to allow that justification is by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone. But then we come to the question of the Christian life and move to a different basis. Some choose the

emotional aversion in the face of sexual immorality and moral perversion? Are we willing to serve as mirrors of God’s character to our culture by expressing it? On any given evening, any number of us watch television programs that break the bounds of propriety that the Scriptures set. We may think that our belief in Scripture’s sexual standards is enough and that it does not really matter that we do not emotionally detest what we see, but Scripture tells us otherwise: “Let those who love the Lord hate evil.” The psalmist declares that God’s wrath against human beings brings him praise and that by it its survivors are restrained (see 76:10 [NIV]). It is part of our task, as God’s holy people, to manifest his holiness through our emotions. Moral perversion makes headway in our culture when we are not moved to decry the less-shocking forms of sexual immorality. How much better might the moral situation of our time be if many of us could say, “I never sat in the company of revelers, never made merry with them; I sat alone because your hand was on me and you had filled me with indignation” (Jer. 15:17)? Phinehas’s decisive act, prompted by his godly jealousy, is credited with turning away God’s right-

eous anger against Israel (see Num. 25:10–11; Ps. 106:28–30). Phinehas responded appropriately to Israel’s sin. He did not gloss over it or just look the other way. And because he reacted so vigorously against such appalling sin, God stopped the plague that he had unleashed against his people, and they were spared to enter the Promised Land. Because Phinehas was jealous with God’s jealousy, God could be merciful without the risk that his mercy would thereby be taken as an excuse for sin. In one of the New Testament’s last books, we, too, are urged to be conduits of God’s mercy even while retaining our fear and hatred of sin: “Be merciful to those who doubt; snatch others from the fire and save them; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh” (Jude 22–23). ■

Mark R. Talbot (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is associate professor of philosophy at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

nd Sins high road, others the low road. But Paul is telling us that there is only one road and it flows naturally out of the one gospel that is God’s power unto salvation for everyone who believes. To be baptized into Christ is to be forever free of the guilt and tyranny of sin. This is why, in “Rock of Ages,” the hymn writer Augustus Toplady wrote, “Be of sin the double-cure, free from sin’s guilt and its power.” Christ in the gospel does not do away with sin’s guilt only to leave it up to us whether we will gain victory over its power. He has crushed the serpent’s head, rendered the law’s condemnation null and void because of our substitute, taken death’s sting away, and subdued our wills so that for the first time we now love the things of God, despite our continuing struggle to obey (Rom. 7). You may be a closet pervert. Nobody knows what you think, what you savor, what you allow yourself to dwell upon but you— and God. The problem, of course, is that the one who does know your heart even better than you do is also the holiest being in existence and is your judge. But the good news is that Jesus Christ, who was tempted in all points as you are but without sin, kept his mind, heart, and body pure so that his obedience could count as yours and so that, in this marvelous exchange, you would be clothed in his righteousness. But it doesn’t stop there: the

gospel is the double-cure. It is sufficient not only for the sexually immoral; it is sufficient to break the grip of sexual immorality in the lives of believers. The complexity of its continuing power is not undervalued, as Paul goes on to point out in Romans 7. The normal Christian life is a struggle—neither a surrender to sin nor a freedom from sin, but a constant battle. Repentance is never complete in this life, any more than is faith. We turn from our sins and then find ourselves repeating them. But we get back up and keep carrying our cross, knowing that it is not our cross that saves us but Christ’s. This life, therefore, may not look like sterling victory, but it is nonetheless the daily outworking of that victory that has already been accomplished. Paul’s argument, then, is this: Christ has saved you to the uttermost, from both sin’s guilt and dominion. Therefore, why do you continue to live as if this were not the case? You are not a defeated slave of sin, so why do you act like it so often? Today, we are already as believers baptized into Christ’s death and raised in the newness of his life. One day, we will finally be free from the very presence of sin. Only then will there no longer be struggle.

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Interview with Wendell Berry

What is Sex For? Wendell Berry (1934- ) a native of Kentucky, lived in New York and California for several years, before returning to his homeland not only to write but to farm, which he has done for over thirty years. Berry has used his experience as a farmer to write insightfully about agriculture, economics, marriage and families, animal husbandry, and community. He is the author of over thirty books of essays, poetry, and fiction. His titles include The Unsettling of America, Gift of Good Land, What Are People For?, Sex, Freedom, Economy and Community, Sabbaths, Jayber Crow, A World Lost, and Fidelity.

WENDELL BERRY

Author of The Unsettling of America

MR: Political writers on the right and the left have tried to claim you as one of their own. This is no less true on the topic of sex since you criticize Christians for offering a simplistic approach to sexual restraint while you also point out the flimsiness of arguments for sexual liberation. What is your attitude to Christianity and how much has religion contributed to your understanding of sex and the body? WB: I suppose my attitude toward Christianity would have to be described as divided. The Bible, especially the Gospels, has always been important to me. Some parts of it were planted firmly in my mind when I was a child. It remains close to my thoughts and I read it fairly regularly. I am not always a confident or convinced Bible reader, but to myself I seem to be pretty much a Scripture-oriented person. On the other hand, I feel uncomfortably at odds with some Christian organizations because of their estrangement from the natural world and economic life, their spiritual-physical dualism; and because I have strong misgivings about evangelism. My understanding of sex and the body owes very little to what I have heard in churches, but it has been profoundly affected and shaped by my reading of the Bible. The biblical idea that astounds and consoles and frightens me every time I think of it (which is often) is the proposition that sanctity is inherent in all created things; every life lives by sharing in God’s spirit and breathing his breath; everything we have is a divine gift.

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MR: What frightens and consoles you about the sanctity that is inherent in all created things? Do you have any thoughts about why our society appears to have lost this sense of fear and consolation inherent in creation? WB: What consoles me in the thought of the sanctity inherent in all created things is that if we accept that this is so, then we humans are relieved of the burden (and the inevitable errors) of making meaning and assigning value. We are thus returned to our original task of caretaking— attending to or, as the Buddhists say, “saving” the creatures. This is particularly frightening now, when caretaking is in eclipse and we all are participating in a destruction-based economy. MR: What is the greatest weakness in the Christian church’s response to the so-called sexual revolution? WB: I’m not able to speak with any authority about the Christian church’s response. I think the “sexual revolution” came about partly in response to a religious absurdity: the belief that sex is attractive to us because we are evil. The rejection of that absurdity (on which no sound sexual discipline could have been established), plus the idea that we are merely “higher animals,” plus the availability of “birth control” technology gave us the “sexual revolution,” which is based on another absurdity: the belief that sex is just a sort of all-natural handshake, a good way for strangers to get acquainted.

Between these two absurdities, I think, it is possible to construct an idea of Christian sexuality that corrects them both. Sex is a divine gift (“without him was not any thing made that was made”). When you have received a divine gift, you must be glad, you must be grateful, and you must make a return of proper care or carefulness. Sex, like food or drink or shelter or any other need or delight of bodily life, confronts us with the practical duties of stewardship. What must we do to protect the beauty, the pleasure, and the sanctity of these good things? MR: To mention the “practical duties of stewardship” involved in sex is to take something pleasurable and involve it with work. So is part of the reason for our impoverished view of sex that we have an impoverished view of work, that is, that anything involving toil cannot be pleasurable? WB: Yes. To say that our participation in sexuality ought to involve us in the work of marriage making, family making, homemaking, etc., does not detract from sexual pleasure and it implies no necessary insult to the work. Do we assume that we get to the pleasure of eating only after the hardship of farming or gardening and cooking and before the hardship of cleaning up the kitchen? If so, why eat? The popular idea that we must dread and drudge and sacrifice for the sake only of a few widely scattered moments of pleasure is an argument in favor of suicide. MR: In your fiction you are restrained in your depiction of sex compared to authors such as John Updike. Maybe no one can compare with Updike, but do you have definite ideas about what kind of sexual explicitness is appropriate in good literature? WB: I think I made a pretty adequate study of literary sex scenes, starting with God’s Little Acre in the late 1940s and continuing approximately to Couples. But finally, without losing interest in sex, I lost interest in sex scenes. Once a couple gets into bed, they don’t do anything unusual. Sex scenes are no more astonishing than food scenes. There is probably an inevitable dullness and absurdity in sex scenes involving other people. They ought to be written as comedy if they are to be written at all. I think, too, that there are degrees and kinds of intimacy that cannot be represented in art. To represent directly a couple making love, if they are to be taken seriously as lovers, seems to me as presumptuous and disrespectful and false as to represent directly a person praying alone. Finally, it is a fact that sexual love making

itself is not dramatic. The climax, you might say, is altogether too predictable. There is no more drama in sex than there is in eating a sandwich. The drama is in the story that brings a couple together. All of The Odyssey, to use the greatest example, gathers toward the reunion of Odysseus and Penelope in their marriage bed. The thought of that night has moved the imagination of half the world for two or three thousand years, and yet Homer tells us nothing more explicit than this: “So they came / into that bed so stedfast, loved of old, / opening glad arms to one another” (Robert Fitzgerald translation). This is so powerful, so sexually powerful, precisely because of its discretion. To have gone on to tell what the lovers did, in the manner of a modern sex scene, would have reduced those lines to about five percent of their power. MR: Have you thought much about chastity as a subject for fiction? Is it any more dramatic than sex? WB: I am not much of an expert on chastity. For a long time I didn’t get the point. But the young John Milton wrote a wonderful poem, a mask, entitled Comus, which deals with “the sage and serious doctrine of Virginity.” It is a poem about the proper use of nature’s gifts, about temperance. In thinking about that poem, I finally got the point I had missed before. The point about temperance, including sexual discipline, is not that it reduces pleasure, but that it safeguards abundance. To be “riotous” with nature’s abundance is to use it up. The question is in what circumstances does this abundance give the most, and the most lasting, pleasure. Comus is hardly a cliffhanger—but, yes, what one does in confronting the temptation to be riotous with nature’s abundance is authentically a story, and is more dramatic than storyless sex. MR: In your most recently published novel, Jayber Crow, the main character considers himself to be married even though he has no sexual relations. Does this mean that you think it possible to have marriage without sex or are the two essential to each other? WB: Jayber Crow makes his “marriage,” without the bride’s knowledge or consent, because he has reached the crisis of his life and faith. He is in love with a married woman whose husband, to whom she is faithful, is unfaithful to her. Jayber cannot bear to think that by the terms of this world she could not have had a faithful husband. But he can prove otherwise only by becoming himself her “faithful husband.” For him, the only

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possibility of life is in this faith. I think this says something about marriage, but I don’t think it says anything about the possibility of sexless marriage. MR: So faithfulness is part of the stewardship necessary for sex? If so, is this why marriage is the fitting context for sex? WB: It does seem to me that faithfulness is part of the necessary stewardship. By faithfulness, I suppose, is meant the complete and permanent commitment that the marriage vows call for. Marriage asks us to recognize that we have entered into a sharing of life and fate with another person, and it asks us to keep trying to give ourselves into that utter mutuality. But it is easy to be bigoted or silly on this subject. I am talking about marriage only as I best know it. Other people in other places and cultures will know other ways. What our culture seems to me to be saying to us, in countless stories and songs, is this: sexuality is

itself. That is what lust and pornography do: they make sex an end in itself. And the corporate “conservatives” concur in this project—as witness their advertisements and many of their products. But sexual love, to achieve its full goodness and beauty and power, needs the amplitude of a story. It joins husband and wife together, joins them to their fertility, to their children and grandchildren; for its sake the couple makes a home, a household, an economy, which joins them to the fertility of the world, to the generosity of God. Sexual love can do this, or it can fail to do this, but its success or failure is a story. MR: Another important consideration in your writing about sex is the way in which current economic arrangements have affected our understanding of marriage, the relations between husbands and wives, and the connections between families and communities. Could you explain why the economic health of local communities is essential to a deeper understanding of sex and its function in marriage?

WB: Sexual love is the power that joins a couple together. To ratify and honor that power, I think of it (which is often) is the proposition that sanctity is inherent we make marriage. Marriage is the way we protect the in all created things; every life lives by sharing in God’s spirit and possibility that sexual love can become a story, joining many breathing His breath; everything we have is a divine gift. things together. It is strange and sad that in our age of the a divine gift. Like other such gifts, it is a world we have learned so to disvalue this great dangerous power, dangerous to ourselves and connective power that we can disconnect it from to others. To limit the danger, we try to contain everything and make it an end in itself. the power within the form of marriage. But When love sees itself becoming a story, it marriage itself is dangerous, involving fearful naturally calls for good work: the work of risks and great effort. When it works, it works homemaking, place making, life making, well, allowing the pleasure of sexual love to neighborhood making, community making. It calls ramify in the pleasures of home life and family for good houses, good furniture, good food, good life. But it doesn’t always work. Sometimes it clothing, good teaching, and so on. When love is fails. It takes more than a church wedding to its motive, work strives to be good. But when we remove love from fertility, from its make a marriage, and (as folk wisdom has it) story, we place it in a whole series of divorces: of “more than four bare legs in a bed.” love from work, of utility from beauty, of work MR: In The Unsettling of America, you ground from pleasure, of money from economy, of your discussion of sex and marriage in a more fundamental economy from nature, and so on. Love is seen as a point about the interconnectedness of body and soul, body reason to buy something, not as a reason to work and other bodies, and the body and the earth. Since you are lovingly or to make things well. I probably should add that I’m not implying an a farmer and a thoughtful defender of farming communities, could you spell out the relationships you see between human opposition to birth control. I do object to abortion reproduction and the fertility of the land? as a method of birth control, but various means of limiting population have been recognized as WB: Sex is not a story in itself. It has interest, necessary for a long time, and I think they are meaning, even power, only when it is understood necessary now. In objecting to sex as an end in itself, as part of a story. To divide sex from fertility is I am objecting to “carefree sex.” I think sexuality and to divide it from its story and make it an end in sexual love require—and repay—care.

he biblical idea that astounds and consoles and frightens me every time

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MR: If you think that sex should not be divided from fertility, does this mean that you also think sex is primarily for procreation, since part of the story making of procreation is to add another member to the story of the household and the neighborhood? WB: I’m tempted to say that sex is primarily for pleasure and procreation merely a by-product. That is often the way it is understood, and often the way it appears to be. But I really think that to divide sex from any of its attributes is wrong. The idea that sex is only or primarily for procreation seems to me to be a part of the utilitarianism that has so uglified and displeasured the world. It seems to me that we have an obligation to take a legitimate or undestructive pleasure in all the world’s pleasurable things, and that the pleasure does have a kind of primacy: If we took no pleasure in them, why should we be troubled to take care of them or use them well? MR: One last question. Sex appears to be one of the more intimate aspects of marriage. Is that a fair statement, or is our attitude to sexual intimacy the product of an overly low view of the body? In other words, do you have any thoughts about the function of intimacy in marriage and how sex contributes to intimacy? WB: Intimacy has the sense of “inmost,” as in inmost knowledge. So there can be such a thing as unintimate sex. Sex is certainly an intimate part of marriage, but surely it is no more intimate than all the rest that is implied by “living together.” The best possibility of marriage is that intimacy and love might exist together, that a person can be known with inmost knowledge by another person and yet be loved. When older people recommend marriage to the young, they are wishing for them that their loneliness might find an answer in this intimate love. There are no guarantees; this is just the best we can do.

SPEAKING OF

ou cannot devalue the body and value the soul — or value anything else. The prototypical act issuing from this division was to make a person a slave and then instruct him in religion — a “charity” more damaging to the master than to the slave. Contempt for the body is invariably manifested in contempt for other bodies, the bodies of slaves, laborers, women, animals, plants, the earth itself. Relationships with all other creatures become competitive and exploitative rather than collaborative and convivial. The world is seen and dealt with, not as an ecological community, but as a stock exchange, the ethics of which are based on the tragically misnamed “law of the jungle.” This “jungle” law is a basic fallacy of modern culture. The body is degraded and saddened by being set in conflict against the Creation itself, of which all bodies are members, therefore members of each other. The body is thus sent to war against itself. Divided, set against each other, body and soul drive each other to extremes of misapprehension and folly. Nothing could be more absurd than to despise the body and yet yearn for the resurrection. In reaction to this supposedly religious attitude, we get, not reverence or respect for the body, but another kind of contempt: the desire to comfort and indulge the body with equal disregard for its health. The “dialogue of body and soul” in our time is being carried on between those who despise the body for the sake of its resurrection and those, diseased by bodily extravagance and lack of exercise, who nevertheless desire longevity above all things. These think that they oppose each other, and yet they could not exist apart. They are locked in a conflict that is really their collaboration in the destruction of soul and body both. — Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America (1977)

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The Communion of Saints Living in Fellowship with the People of God Philip Graham Ryken, editor Fresh insights into our relationship with the body of Christ. FEATURES · Includes Spiritual Gifts Questionnaire and leader’s Guide · Contributors include William Edgar, Hughes Oliphant Old, and others, as well as Phil Ryken

240 pages, Paperback, $12.99

In a day when Christians are more divided than united, true believers must again commit themselves to their common spiritual communion with one another. This biblical and practical guide, complete with leader’s guide and spiritual gifts questionnaire, guides those united in Christ toward life in the Christian community.

Philip Graham Ryken (M.Div., Westminster Theological Seminary; D. Phil., University of Oxford) is Senior Minister of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. He is the author of Is Jesus the Only Way? and When You Pray: Making the Lord’s Prayer Your Own.

“Spiritual isolationism has reached a crisis level among American Christians. This study winsomely addresses the urgent need to reclaim biblical fellowship within the body of Christ.”—Jerry Bridges “Have you noticed how many of the New Testament’s directives for sanctification are in the plural? Think about it! We need a biblical recovery of the corporate dimensions of Christianity. I’m delighted to commend this study—it will benefit Bible teachers, new Christians, and new members classes.”—J. Ligon Duncan

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BOOK

| The Prayer of Jabez: Breaking Through to the Blessed Life

God, Prayer, and American Evangelicalism

his little book, its website reports, has been a runaway best-seller, appearing on both the New York Times and the USA Today top ten lists and winning Nonfiction Book of the Year, Retailers Choice Awards. Over six million copies are in print.

The Prayer of Jabez: Breaking Through to the Blessed Life by Bruce H. Wilkinson Multnomah Publishers, 2000 $7.99, 93 pages, Paperback

Time magazine has chronicled its extraordinary success. The New York Times ran a front-page article on it. James Dobson devoted two radio programs to it. Tommy Nelson, Thomas Nelson’s children’s division, published a collection of books based on it for children aged 2 to 12. And Howard Hendricks, Distinguished Professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, declares: “If you long to live your life the way it is meant to be lived in Christ, The Prayer of Jabez is a must read. A small book, a lifechanging message! Highly recommended!” A book this popular is emblematic of some mindset. So what is it about? And what does that tell us about American Evangelicalism? What Is The Prayer of Jabez About? Wilkinson’s book opens like this: “The little book you’re holding is about what happens when ordinary Christians decide to reach for an extraordinary life—which, as it turns out, is exactly the kind God promises.” He proceeds to tell us how he discovered the Jabez prayer. He has prayed it word-for-word every day for the past thirty years. He says his own experience and that “of hundreds of others around the world” has shown that God has “unclaimed blessings” waiting for each of us, if only we will pray this prayer. Jabez’s prayer is found about midway through

the lengthy genealogies that open 1 Chronicles. Sometimes the Chronicler comments about someone he has named. With Jabez, he says:

Now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, “Because I bore him in pain.” And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, “Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!” So God granted him what he requested. (1 Chron. 4:9–10 [NKJV]) Wilkinson calls this a “daring prayer that God always answers” and declares that “it contains the key to a life of extraordinary favor with God.” He proceeds to analyze Jabez’s four requests. With the first request—“Oh, that you would bless me indeed!”—Wilkinson pictures Jabez “standing before a massive gate recessed into a sky-high wall.” Naming a child “Jabez”—the Hebrew word for “pain”—meant predicting for him a life of pain. Thus, “[w]eighed down by the sorrow of his past and the dreariness of his present, [Jabez] sees before him only impossibility—a future shut off. But raising his hands to heaven, he cries out, ‘Father, oh, Father! Please bless me! And what I really mean is … bless me a lot!’” “With the last word,” Wilkinson imagines, “the transformation begins. He hears a tremendous crack. Then a groan. Then a rumble as the huge gate swings away from him in a wide arc. There, stretching to the horizon, are fields of blessings.”

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And, Wilkinson concludes, “Jabez steps forward into another life.” This life is a life of “supernatural favor,” for that is what receiving God’s blessing means. Wilkinson is careful to say that Jabez “left it entirely up to God to decide what the blessings would be and where, when, and how [he] would receive them.” Requesting God’s blessing is nothing like “the popular gospel that you should ask God for a Cadillac.” We must want for ourselves “nothing more and nothing less than what God wants for us.” For “[w]hen we seek God’s blessing as the ultimate value in life, we are throwing ourselves entirely into the river of His will and power and purposes for us. All our other needs become secondary to what we really want—which is to become wholly immersed in what God is trying to do in us, through us, and around us for His glory.” Yet a “guaranteed by-product of sincerely seeking His blessing” is that our lives “will become marked by miracles.” For a life where we make this request is one where “God’s power to accomplish great things suddenly finds no obstruction” in us. By means of “a little fable” about the Apostle Peter and a Mr. Jones who has just died and gone to heaven only to realize that God had wanted to give him many more earthly blessings, Wilkinson interprets the claims “Ask and it will be given to you” (Matt. 7:7) and “You do not have because you do not ask” (James 4:2) to mean that while “there is no limit to God’s goodness, if you didn’t ask Him for a blessing yesterday, you didn’t get all that you

glory the influence of my household.” … No matter what your vocation, the highest form of Jabez’s prayer for more territory might sound something like: O God and King, please expand my opportunities and my impact in such a way that I touch more lives for Your glory. Let me do more for You! Wilkinson stresses that our asking God to enlarge our territory must be motivated by our wanting to make a greater impact for him. “Enlarge my territory” means “give me more ministry.” But “more ministry” means “more influence and responsibility.” So Wilkinson says that [w]hen Christian executives ask me, “Is it right for me to ask God for more business?” my response is, “Absolutely!” If you’re doing your business God’s way, it’s not only right to ask for more, but He is waiting for you to ask. Your business is the territory God has entrusted to you…. Asking Him to enlarge that opportunity brings Him only delight.

As usual, Wilkinson supports these claims not by making arguments from Scripture but by relating his own and others’ experience. “Oh, that your hand would be with me!” is interpreted as the way in which we “release God’s power to accomplish His will and bring Him glory” as we face the impossibility of our handling the increased influence and his is not quite “name it and claim it” theology, since we are not to pray responsibility that have come from God’s answering our explicitly for six-figure incomes or any “material sign that [we] have found a previous request. “As God’s chosen, blessed sons and way to cash in on [our] connection with Him.” Yet it is close. daughters,” Wilkinson says, “we are expected to attempt were supposed to have.” Thus, he concludes, something large enough that failure is guaranteed through praying this “simple, believing prayer, you … unless God steps in.” But God won’t step in can change your future. You can change what unless we ask. God is “watching and waiting” for us “to ask for the supernatural power He offers.” happens one minute from now.” In interpreting Jabez’s next request, Wilkinson Wilkinson cites 2 Chronicles 16:9 as establishing argues that these blessings will include all kinds of that God “eagerly seeks those who are sincerely success. He says that “[w]hen Jabez cried out to loyal to Him.” But the loyalty must come from us: God, ‘Enlarge my territory!’ he was looking at his “Your loyal heart is the only part of His expansion present circumstances and concluding, ‘Surely I was plan that He will not provide.” We “are always only one plea away from inexplicable, Spiritborn for more than this!’” More generally, he says: enabled exploits. By His touch [we] can experience supernatural enthusiasm, boldness, and If Jabez had worked on Wall Street, he might power.” But, ultimately, it’s up to us. have prayed, “Lord, increase the value of my Wilkinson takes Jabez’s fourth request as investment portfolios….” Suppose Jabez had equivalent to the request “And do not lead us into been a wife and a mother. Then the prayer temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” in the might have gone: “Lord, add to my family, Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:13). He says that this is not favor my key relationships, multiply for Your

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a request for God to strengthen us while we are being tempted but for him to keep Satan and his temptations away from us. It is especially crucial after we have begun to experience some “spiritual success,” for we are then most prone to think that we can resist temptation on our own. The Book’s Strengths and Weaknesses We now have enough of Wilkinson’s book in front of us to make some observations about its strengths and weaknesses. No doubt, Wilkinson wants to lead us to live lives that are more God-glorifying. Because he believes that God is most glorified when we go from one inexplicable Spirit-enabled exploit to another, and because he believes that this will only happen if we ask God for “supernatural blessing, influence, and power,” he sees Jabez’s prayer as the means by which God becomes most glorified as we become most blessed. Repeating it over and over will “set in motion a cycle of blessing that will keep multiplying what God is able to do in and through [us].” As this cycle repeats itself, we find ourselves to be “steadily moving into wider spheres of blessing and influence, spiraling ever outward and upward into a larger life for God.” The result is “exponentially expanding blessings” for us that bring ever-greater glory to God. This is not quite “name it and claim it” theology, since we are not to pray explicitly for six-figure incomes or any “material sign that [we] have found a way to cash in on [our] connection with Him.” Yet it is close. For Wilkinson is placing an unbiblical emphasis upon our success. His stories aim to convince us that God will continuously—indeed, miraculously—open doors of ever-increasing opportunity, influence, and responsibility to whomever asks. He declares to each of his readers that “God wants your borders expanded at all times with every person.” At one California college, he challenged students to pick some island somewhere in the world and then just go and “take [it] over” for God. Often—as when his youth group prayed for thirty decisions for Christ by the end of their first day of beach evangelism—his stories encourage us to specify to God the terms of our success. But is this scriptural? In Scripture, do God’s people just decide what they want to do and then “Just do it!”— even while recognizing that their accomplishments come only through God’s strength? Do we ever find any apostle praying, “Lord, give me thirty decisions for Christ today?” The Apostle Paul had some borders closed to him (see Acts 16:6–7). His desire to minister to the Romans was frustrated repeatedly (see Rom. 1:11–13; 15:22). Satan

stopped him from revisiting the Thessalonians (see 1 Thess. 2:18). In some cases, his preaching had very little positive effect (see Acts 17:32–34; 18:5–6). Were these restrictions on his ministry unnecessary? Did Paul lack faith? If he had prayed Jabez’s prayer, then would those borders have opened and would he have had more success? James urges us always to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that” (James 4:15). Scripture requires our faithfulness without promising us success. Indeed, sometimes things will go badly for us, in spite of or because of our faith (see Job; Heb. 11:35–39; Acts 7; 1 Pet. 1:6–7; 4:12–19). Wilkinson’s relentlessly upbeat stories, where praying Jabez’s prayer has guaranteed triumph after triumph, don’t acknowledge this. By Wilkinson’s own admission, Jabez’s prayer is “tucked away” in a part of the Bible where very few are likely to find it. Sometimes we who believe that all Scripture is inspired by God and thus useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness will stress what we have found in some obscure corner of the Bible as a way of emphasizing that truth. But in this case, there seems to be more of a whiff of gnosticism here—an appeal to a piece of esoteric knowledge that brings those who know it special blessings from God. If this prayer, prayed word for word day after day, has such power to revolutionize our Christian lives, then why didn’t our Lord and his apostles stress it? No doubt, portions of Jabez’s prayer—at least as Wilkinson interprets it—may be found elsewhere in Scripture. Yet are his interpretations correct? In nearly all English translations but the New King James Version that he has used, Jabez’s fourth request sounds far less wise and noble than Wilkinson makes it seem. The New International Version’s rendering is typical and suggests that Jabez was just afraid of more pain: “keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.” Overall, Wilkinson spiritualizes Jabez’s requests. For instance, context does not warrant Wilkinson’s paraphrasing Jabez’s request that God enlarge his territory as “please expand my opportunities and my impact in such a way that I touch more lives for Your glory. Let me do more for You!” Interpretations like this violate the principle that we should not add to what Scripture actually says (see Prov. 30:5–6; 1 Cor. 4:6 [NIV]). They encourage Wilkinson’s readers to be less than careful with God’s words. Wilkinson also “Christianizes” Jabez’s requests. This flattens out the Bible’s redemptive/historical message in ways that can desensitize his readers to the full glories of what God has done in Christ. Take, for example, his imagining Jabez crying out “Father, oh, Father!” in his first request. In the Old

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Testament, God is occasionally called the “Father” of the Israelite nation (see Isa. 63:16; 64:8; Jer. 31:9), but no individual Israelite in Jabez’s time would be likely to call God “Father” in prayer. Addressing God as “Father” is a New Testament privilege that accompanies the post-resurrection release of the Holy Spirit who then witnesses in the hearts of God’s New Covenant people that they have become God’s children by means of Christ’s finished work (see Rom. 8:14–17; Gal. 3:26–27). At the same time, it is one of this book’s crowning ironies that, in spite of Howard Hendricks’s recommendation of it to those who long to live their lives in Christ, it really says nothing about Christ and his cross. Those who open this book without knowing what the gospel is will close it having become no wiser. It does not recognize that God’s greatest blessing to human beings is not “more influence and responsibility” but reconciliation with himself through faith in Christ’s work. Some readers may come away with a vague sense that they should make a “decision for Christ,” but they will not have been told what making such a decision really means. So What Does this Book’s Popularity Tell Us about American Evangelicalism? The Prayer of Jabez’s popularity tells us that American evangelicals are not like the noble Bereans, who, even as they received Paul’s message with great eagerness, “examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true” (Acts 17:11). It suggests that appeals to experience— and not careful study of the Scriptures—have become the evangelical touchstone for theological truth. It shows that American evangelicals too quickly assume that they, like Wilkinson’s Jabez, were born for something extraordinary. They no longer believe that “godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Tim. 6:6). It also confirms that American evangelicals like creeds that put them in the driver’s seat. Wilkinson’s God will shower us with “unclaimed blessings” if only we ask. By merely uttering a “simple, believing prayer” we “can change what happens [to us] one minute from now.” All we have to do is “reach for an extraordinary life.” Our fates are in our hands, then. Nothing hinders us from reaching for this life; nothing keeps us from obtaining “what we really want”—namely, “to become wholly immersed in what God is trying to do in us, through us, and around us for His glory.” God is waiting for us to pray this prayer, for then his power to bless us “suddenly finds no

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obstruction” in our unwillingness. We enable him to do more and more in and through us through praying it again and again. We must ask him to bless us each day, or we will not get all that he wants to give. Praying this prayer releases God’s power to accomplish his will because it gives to him “the only part of His expansion plan that He will not [Himself] provide”—our loyal hearts. Of course, Scripture does direct God’s people to give him their whole hearts (see Deut. 6:5; 10:12; Matt. 22:36–38). It promises us that if we draw near to him, then he will draw near to us (see James 4:8; cf. 2 Chron. 15:2). It instructs us to ask and seek and knock so that we will receive and find and have doors opened to us (see Luke 11:9–10). It urges us to present our requests to God (see Phil. 4:6). And it links God’s blessing his people to their giving to him their whole hearts (see 1 Kings 8:48–49; 2 Chron. 15:10–15; Ezra 8:22). This is all part of the give-and-take of living in personal relationship with God. And so Wilkinson is not wrong to stress the part that our wholehearted prayers play in our receiving God’s blessings. Yet he fails to balance this truth with other biblical truths—and so his book plays to our sinful human tendency to think better of ourselves than we should. For Scripture makes it clear that even our loyal hearts are part of what God himself provides. Since the fall, every human being has been born spiritually dead (see Eph. 2:1–3) and indeed a slave to sin (see John 8:34; Rom. 6:15–22). We live to gratify the cravings of our sinful nature and are naturally objects of wrath (see Eph. 2:3). It is only through his mercy that God has chosen to make some of us alive in Christ (see Eph. 2:1–5; Matt. 13:11). He has sent preachers to proclaim the gospel to us (see Rom. 10:8b–17; 1 Pet. 1:23–25) and he has moved our hearts to believe what we have heard (see John 6:25–65, esp. vv. 44, 65; 2 Thess. 2:13–14). In the final analysis, then, it is God who enables us to give ourselves to him (see John 6:65; Phil. 2:13); and not we who enable him (see 1 Cor. 4:7; 15:10). Indeed, this is an essential part of the gospel; namely, that in these New Covenant times, because of what Christ has done on the cross (see Jer. 31:31–34 with Heb. 7:11–8:12), God does for us what we are helpless to do for ourselves (see Rom. 5:6–11). God does command us to repent and turn away from all our offenses and get a new heart and a new spirit (see Ezek. 18:30–31). But in his mercy he also gives what he commands. The gospel involves God’s declaration, “I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them. I will remove from them their heart of stone and give

them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws” (Ezek. 11:19–20). In fact, in Ezekiel God flanks his command “get a new heart and a new spirit” on both sides with his promise: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you” (Ezek. 36:26; see 11:19; Jer. 32:39). According to Scripture, we are not the masters of our own fate. We are not in the driver’s seat. God is not just “watching and waiting” for us to make the right choices and give ourselves loyally to him. For our sin hinders us from giving ourselves wholeheartedly to God. If we choose to be reconciled to God, then even that choice has its origin in him. Wilkinson’s book does not hug close to the shore of Scripture and thus does not acknowledge these great truths. Although it intends to spur us on to lives of faith that glorify the Christian God, its failure to be truly biblical means that it actually distracts us from focusing on the true blessings that God has given us through the work of his Son, Jesus Christ. Those blessings are not tangible success in our earthly lives. They do not necessarily include an expansion of our ministries, nor are they inevitably marked by God’s giving us more influence and responsibility. Such blessings are, it seems, what the Corinthians sought—and what the Apostle Paul condemned (see 1 Cor. 4:8–16). God’s true blessings are the intangible (see Col. 3:3), Spirit-attested (see Rom. 8:16; 2 Cor. 1:18–22) blessings of reconciliation with him through Christ and of receiving the ministry of reconciliation (see 2 Cor. 5:16–21)—the ministry of proclaiming the gospel of God’s gift of righteousness that human beings receive only through faith in Christ’s work. It is distasteful to criticize a fellow Christian’s book this thoroughly. Yet there is good reason to fear that Wilkinson’s book is encouraging many to think about God and the Christian life in ways that are insufficiently biblical. May God himself keep his people from falling prey to this book’s inadequate theology. Mark R. Talbot Associate Professor of Philosophy Wheaton College Wheaton, Illinois

SPEAKING OF

arriage, within the Christian tradition, is to serve a healing purpose.

is,

among other things, a divine ordinance

intended to bring our wayward desires and passions under control, intended to begin to shape them in accord with the patterns of God’s faithfulness. To be sure, the need for human fulfillment is not to be ignored, but we know at least this much about authentic humanity. It must be a growing up into Christ. Maturity is measured by the full stature of Christ, who was faithful in every circumstance of life, who sought not his own fulfillment but went the way of the cross, and who, in so doing, was vindicated by the Father. The way to human fulfillment in a sinful world may be more indirect than many people today believe, . . . [but] understanding of human fulfillment [must] be shaped sufficiently by the truth that one finds life by losing it.

— Gilbert Meilaender, The Limits of Love (1992)

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O R U M I N A T I O N S

N F R O M

A L L I A N C E

Y O F

C O N F E S S I N G

E V A N G E L I C A L S

N C O U N C I L

D M E M B E R S

Gerald Bray

Still an Evangelical?

he theological controversies of recent years have raised a number of important

differences over the doctrines of election and questions about the identity of conservative, Reformation-minded Protestants, predestination. From that day to this, there has never but perhaps none is more complex or emotional than the use of the term been an evangelical church, or even a confession of faith, “evangelical.” Those outside the Protestant fold which all evangelicals can accept as definitive of have no problem; for them, a conservative their movement. And yet, to those outside the Protestant may be described as an evangelical in evangelical fold, they are a breed apart. What much the same way as those of the Roman defines evangelicals to the outside world is the fact obedience are described as Catholic, or those of that these are people who know they are saved. the Eastern Churches as Orthodox. Every other orthodox Christian doctrine is shared Evangelical identity is more of a problem within the with some or all non-evangelicals, but the doctrine movement, because it has come to embrace such a of assurance is unique. We know that we are going wide range of theological options. For example, is it to heaven, because we have been born again to necessary to believe in inerrancy? Or what about eternal life in Christ. GERALD BRAY Now this doctrine is not merely odd in charismatics? And then there are always people like the Seventh Day Adventists. Calvinists and ecumenical terms; it is positively rejected by many Anglican Professor Arminians both inhabit the landscape, not to mention who call themselves Christians. How, they ask, can of Divinity Baptists and paedo-Baptists. Episcopalians jostle for a anyone know for sure what his eternal destiny will Beeson Divinity place at the table alongside Presbyterians and be? Is it not the worst form of pride to presume that School somehow we have heaven “in the bag,” as it were? Congregationalists. Is there a common core here? Samford University Historically speaking, Evangelicalism can be Why lead a moral life if there is no chance of Birmingham, Alabama defined as that blend of pietism and orthodoxy that falling away from redemption? Objections like took root in the eighteenth-century Church of these abound, yet even a cursory glance at the England. Its origin can even be dated precisely, to Bible will show us that this teaching lies at the very the evening of 24 May 1738, when a dispirited heart of the gospel message. Nothing can separate John Wesley felt his heart strangely warmed as he us from the love of God. In biblical terms, faith listened to a nonconformist minister in Aldersgate without assurance of salvation is not faith at all—it Street Chapel in London. Soon revival was in the has been totally emptied of its content. air, and a generation later there were thousands of Because of this doctrine I still call myself an new churches and believers on both sides of the evangelical. I am not happy with the doctrinal Atlantic and in all the traditional denominations. relativism which has entered evangelical circles, Methodism had not yet come to birth, but it was nor do I believe that we have to accept everyone well on the way to doing so, and it was only who wishes to use the label. But the core Wesley’s personal opposition to separatism which conviction of assurance remains—and it matters. It delayed its emergence for so long. is, in short, the way that the doctrine of Yet this history also teaches us that almost from justification by faith alone makes itself felt in the beginning, the evangelical revival was divided, everyday experience. I know that I am saved, and when to their mutual sorrow, John Wesley and as long as I have that knowledge, I am happy to be George Whitefield discovered that they could not called an evangelical by those who see it as the real cooperate in evangelism because of their divide that sets me, and those like me, apart.

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Today’s Issues Booklets The Today’s Issues series takes aim at the problems confronting today’s Church with concise, articulate presentations of evangelicalism’s doctrinal distinctives. What Makes a Church Evangelical? James M. Boice—What Makes A Church Evangelical? examines how a return to these tenets can overcome worldly compromise within the evangelical church. BWMCE

Evangelicals, Catholics and Unity Michael Horton—Evangelicals, Catholics and Unity explores whether Protestants and Catholics can reach a genuine unity in a shared understanding of the Gospel. B-HO-14 Pleasing God in our Worship Robert Godfrey—Pleasing God in Our Worship discusses biblical worship and instructs Christians on restoring God to His proper place as the center of our worship experience. B-GO-2 Justified by Faith Alone R.C. Sproul—Justified by Faith Alone explains the biblical doctrine of justification and why it is so essential to saving faith. B-SPR-42 Reforming Our Worship Music Leonard Payton—Reforming Our Worship Music gives several examples to guide Christians in establishing a biblical approach to worship music. B-PAY-1 Preaching for God’s Glory Alistair Begg—Preaching for God’s Glory outlines what makes for compelling biblical preaching. The booklet offers suggestions for how to ensure that a congregation is being not only fed, but spiritually nourished. B-BEGG-5 Christ Alone Rod Rosenbladt—Christ Alone moves us toward a return to the doctrine of Christ alone as the only means to salvation in a culture that says such singlemindedness is intolerant. B-ROS-1 Is Jesus the Only Way? Philip Ryken—Is Jesus the Only Way? confronts several questions dealing with the

nature and saving grace of Jesus Christ. The four essential beliefs which Christianity refuses to abandon are explained in clear, everyday terms. Ryken answers not only the “whats,” but also the “hows” and “whys” that prove Jesus is the only way. B-RYKE-2 Why God’s Word Is All We Need Gene Edward Veith—It’s on nearly everyone’s shelf, and the best-selling book of all time. And yet the Bible goes unread and unheeded by so many. In this passionate, personal booklet is a call to return to reading the Bible and heeding the Bible. A call to regard God’s Word as our one and only authority in faith and in practice. B-V-5 To God Be the Glory John Hannah—In a time when so many are seeking a reason to live, this booklet offers a concise understanding of God’s desire to restore His nature to us, renewing our souls, so that we may reflect His glory in our works, our actions, our very being. B-HANN-1

The Grace of Repentance Sinclair Ferguson—Repentance is not the action of a single moment, but a characteristic of a Christian’s entire life. When we see what we truly are—innately, inescapably sinful—we know our deep need for God’s abundant grace. This booklet will help you examine your own state. B-FER-11

The Signs of True Conversion Mark Talbot—In this definitive booklet, the scriptural signs of true conversion are discussed—as is the order of salvation and discerning authentic faith from the counterfeit. B-TALB-1

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The White Horse Inn The White Horse Inn is a nationally syndicated radio program, challenging listeners to be a voice for reformation. The White Horse Inn derived its name from a Cambridge pub where the English reformers read the banned works of Martin Luther. This 26 minute show gained instant success for its combination of wit, wisdom, and provocative discussion of various theological topics.

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