The Evangel by Modern Reformation

The Evangel

Anglicans and the Gospel | by Gerald Bray

Bad News and Good News: The Gospel According to Luther | by Robert Kolb

What Is the Gospel? A Baptist Perspective | by Michael A. G. Haykin

Evangelicals and the Evangel Future | by Michael Horton

VO L . 31 , NO. 2

March/April 2022 M O D E R N R E FO R M AT I O N

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Contents

I. RETRIEVE

Modern Reformation March/April 2022 Vol. 31, No. 2

08 B IBLE STUDY

| Personal Sanctification Is by

II. CONVERSE

20 G LOBAL THEOLOGICAL FOR UM

| The Four-

Legged Stool: An African Contribution to Intercultural Reading | by Elizabeth Mburu 24 E SSAY

| Anglicans and the Gospel

| by Gerald Bray 28 E SSAY

| Bad News and Good News: The Gospel

According to Luther | by Robert Kolb 34 E SSAY

| What Is the Gospel? A Baptist

Perspective | by Michael A. G. Haykin 40 P OEM

| Safer | by Meaghan Cronin

44 E SSAY

| Evangelicals and the Evangel Future

III. P E R S UA D E

| by Michael Horton I V. ENGAGE

56 P OEM

| Guiding Light | by Jim Stone

57 P OEM

| Imagine Believing | by Jim Stone

58 B OOK R EV IEWS 05 F RO M THE E D ITOR

| by Joshua Schendel 68 B AC K PAGE

| Fellowship for the

A Companion to the Theology of John Webster | edited by Michael Allen and R. David Nelson The Flesh of the Word | by K. J. Drake From Christ to Christianity | by James R. Edwards Union with Christ | by Jordan Cooper

Furtherance of the Gospel | by Michael Horton

Endsheet illustration by Raxenne Maniquiz

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M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N

From the Editor

N T H E L AT E 1 5 2 0 S , Martin Luther wrote a letter to Henry VIII of England in which he responded to the king’s charges of “detestable heresies.” Henry was particularly outraged by Luther’s notion of “evangelical liberty,” by which he thought Luther was calling for a freedom from all law. To Henry VIII, Luther was the “man of lawlessness” (apparently, he hadn’t read Luther’s 1523 treatise On Secular Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed). Luther responded by assuring King Henry that none of his writings were in support of anarchy but solely written “in the cause of the gospel.” In this letter, Luther confirmed that: [He taught] none other thing but that we must be saved by faith in Jesus Christ, Son of God, who suffered for us, and was raised again, as witnessed in the gospel and the epistles of the apostles. For this is the head and foundation of my doctrine, upon which afterward I build and teach charity toward our neighbor, obedience unto the heads and rulers of countries, and finally to crucify the body of sin, like as the doctrine of Christ commands. Our English term “gospel” originates from the Old English “godspel,” which itself is probably a combination of “gòd” (good) and “spel” (tidings). Thus “gospel” is the English translation of the Greek εὐαγγέλιον, which was transliterated into Latin as evangelium. Hence in English, “evangel” is synonymous with “gospel.” For Luther, the “head and foundation” of his doctrine was the “evangel.” This is why, as Michael Horton points out in his essay in this issue, Luther preferred that he and his followers not be called “Lutherans” (as the Roman Catholics pejoratively referred to them) but as “evangelicals.”

In our own day, the term “evangelical” is a tough one to pin down, and there are various ways to define what we mean by it. In many of those definitions, the “good news” of the evangel has nothing to do with it. In this issue, therefore, we’re asking “What hath evangelicalism to do with the evangel?” and taking a particularly historical approach to finding the answer. In our Converse section, Gerald Bray (Anglican), Robert Kolb (Lutheran), and Michael Haykin (Baptist) reflect on the following question: “What is the gospel, how do we recognize it, and judge whether we are being faithful to it?” Then, in the Persuade section, Michael Horton discusses where evangelicalism currently stands with respect to the gospel. This issue also includes an interesting example of the extent of Reformation writings, beginning with a portion of Lutheran Georg Aemelius’s poem “The Four Evangelists” (1539), translated by Casey Carmichael. Zach Purvis entertains with more marginal notes from Luther—this time from his reading of Melanchthon. And there is much more besides. Join us, then, in considering what that ancient writer to Diognetus called “the sweet exchange, the incomprehensible work of God, the unexpected blessings, that the sinfulness of many should be hidden in the one righteous person, while the righteousness of one should justify many sinners!”

Joshua Schendel Executive Editor

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Vol. 31, No. 2

Retrieve Learning from the wisdom of the past

March/April 2022

B I B L E ST U DY

Personal Sanctification Is by Faith by S. M. Baugh

(January/February 2022), I made the case that in Hebrews 12:14, the “holiness” required to see God does not refer to our personal sanctification or holiness, but to the consecration obtained by faith in Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice. The point of that discussion, as well as this one, is to illustrate how one exegetes the Bible. The goal of exegesis is very simple: to understand a passage in its various contexts. It is basically a matter of judgment as to how much weight to put on the various contextual factors when examining a particular passage. As exegetes, the center of our focus is always what a biblical author is precisely saying in the target passage. In light of this, one could read my last article and imagine that I deny the Christian’s need for personal holiness. In fact, this is a fairly typical charge against those who teach and preach the biblical doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone. It is said that this Reformation teaching undermines the need for Christians to pursue personal holiness. Nothing could be further from the truth! The requirement for personal holiness is clearly and repeatedly taught in other places in the Bible. If we want to discuss personal sanctification, we ought to turn to passages besides Hebrews 12:14—and we wouldn’t have far to go! In verses 7–11 of the same chapter, the author to the Hebrews addresses their need to persevere in pursuit of personal sanctification. For this concept, the author never uses the term properly rendered “sanctification” or “holiness”; instead he uses a term like “righteousness”—expressed, for example, in his happy phrase “the peaceable fruit of righteousness” (Heb. 12:11). Yet in looking at Hebrews 12:7–11, we find that our personal growth in righteousness is the outcome of God’s own working to discipline us as his own beloved children, not as those who are illegitimate or objects of his displeasure. One is reminded here of the great benediction at the end of the letter: that the God of peace might be “working in us that which is pleasing in his sight” (Heb. 13:20; see also John 15:1 or Eph. 2:10). IN MY PREVIOUS ARTICLE

***

God’s Working in Us God’s direct supervision of our sanctification lies behind one of the classic statements of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which asks “What is sanctifica-

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tion?” and answers “Sanctification is the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness” (WSC Q&A #35). The operative phrase here is “the work of God’s free grace,” which can be compared to the confession’s statement on justification two questions earlier where justification is said to be an “act of God’s free grace” (WSC Q&A #33). Justification is a single act of God, but our sanctification is his work that signifies a lifetime process only to be concluded when we are raised to new life in the image of the risen last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45–49). But again, while we strive to grow in holiness, the key element is ultimately our Father’s own working in us “to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13). This leads us to a complex but brilliant Pauline passage: Romans 6:1–13. The main point I hope to establish from here is that our sanctification is by faith. ***

The Context of Romans 5–6 As we approach Romans 6, two things have proven particularly helpful to understanding Paul’s oftentimes difficult writings (2 Pet. 3:16). First, one needs to evaluate the broad contours of his discourse, especially when he inserts a long tangent into the middle of his argument. This is the case for our passage (Rom. 6:1–13). Let’s pause to see how this works. When we arrive at Romans 6, Paul had just been developing an argument for justification by faith alone in Christ alone, the second Adam and our covenant head (Rom. 5:1–21). But after chapter 5, he suspends further development until chapter 8, when he picks up the thread again. (He actually signals this in Romans 8:1 with two Greek particles, which for him have the meaning: “Now, back to the point of what I was saying before . . .”). To test this, read directly from Romans 5:1–21 and then skip to 8:1 and pick up reading. You will see how nicely this fits together. (You can do the same, for instance, with Eph. 3:1 and 3:14 where vv. 2–13 are an aside.) This makes Romans 6–7 a rather long parenthetical section. It is actually not considered unusual by ancient standards and was quite common for authors of the era. For example, the historian Polybius has many long digressions of this sort that seem rather endless when reading him. Second, Paul often writes precise, closely reasoned lines of thought, which can easily lead readers astray when they misunderstand the exact question he is addressing in a passage or try to apply the text to their own questions. There are, of course, applications to be found from Paul’s writing, but this is only possible after understanding the narrow issue that he is focused on. To interpret a passage in Paul, find the implied question he is answering. In our passage, he helps us perceive the question by asking it himself: “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” (Rom. 6:1 ESV). The question stated in Romans 6:1 is very interesting. When you read it in context, Paul himself anticipates the objection to justification by faith alone. He

The Westminster Shorter Catechism, 1646/47

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has just been expounding on the righteousness of Christ imputed to his people as a free gift by grace through faith. Then he asks the virtual question: Does this lead to antinomianism (i.e., lawlessness)? If we teach salvation by faith alone, doesn’t this lead believers to simply live in sin afterward? There are many objections to this conclusion, which Paul explicitly denies. “By no means!” (ESV) is a strong denial: “Never!” or more loosely, “Are you kidding? No way!” (Rom. 6:2). Then, in Romans 6:2–13, he develops an answer for why we cannot continue in sin after putting our faith in Christ. Paul concludes that our sanctification is as much by faith as is our justification. ***

Sanctification by Faith in Christ

Baptism Scene, third century (fresco); Catacombs of San Callisto, Rome, Italy (Index Fototeca / Bridgeman Images)

Paul begins by explaining how abandonment to sin is impossible for those who trust in Christ with the truth that Christ’s death to sin (v. 10) is our death to sin (v. 2b). When he died, we died (vv. 3, 5, 8); when he was crucified and buried, we were crucified and buried (vv. 4, 6; cf. Gal. 2:20; Eph. 2:1–6). Therefore, we are “dead to sin” (v. 2) because he is dead to sin (v. 10). Christ Jesus committed no sin, but our sin became his by imputation: “For our sake he [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). We are therefore no longer enslaved to sin or need to obey its orders (Rom. 6:6–7; developed in vv. 15–23). The connection between Christ and his people is real, as our substitutionary mediator (also called “our covenant surety” in Heb. 7:20–22). Our death in Christ is represented in our baptism into his death (Rom. 6:3–4; cf. Col. 2:12). Express this connection positively and you have justification: Christ’s righteousness is our righteousness leading to eternal life as a free gift by faith (e.g., Rom. 5:15–17; 6:23). Accordingly, Christ’s resurrection is our resurrection (Rom. 6:4, 7). His resurrection may be in the past and ours in the future, but ours is as if it had already happened because the basis of our resurrection took place in Christ two thousand years ago. We now have eternal life in resurrection glory in him (v. 5). These truths are the key to sanctification by faith. It is faith in Christ—trust that he died and rose for us so that we have died in him and will be raised in him (v. 8)–which leads us to grow in holiness. Notice how Paul cements this in our faith and our certain knowledge: “we believe . . . we know” (vv. 8–9). These are not vague surplus ideas to Christianity, but its very heart. This is our faith: “We have died with Christ,” and so “We believe that we will also live with him” (v. 8). The next step inevitably follows: We died with Christ “in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (v. 4). This is our sanctification by faith through God’s working, which

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Paul expresses in another place: “We are his creation, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should start walking in them” (Eph. 2:10; my trans.). ***

Conclusion Paul draws his answer to the question posed in Romans 6:1 to a conclusion in verse 11: “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (ESV). This word consider is also translated “reckon” in other versions. Our faith in Christ leads us to reflect upon ourselves in a new way. Just as we know that God “reckons” us to be righteous in Christ in our justification, so we reckon ourselves to be alive and able to walk in the good works God has prepared for us. This reckoning is an act of faith. To grow in holiness, we start by “reckoning” the truth about ourselves in Christ flowing out of our foundational faith in him. We are not merely imagining these things to be true of us; they are true of us because of our link by faith to Christ and the truth found in him. Just as he no longer lives to (imputed) sin (v. 10), accordingly we too have been freed: “But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life” (Rom. 6:22 ESV). Only after we have absorbed these truths and truly believe them can we heed the Lord’s exhortation to us to grow in sanctification: “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies. . . . Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life” (Rom. 6:12–13 ESV). S. M. Baugh (PhD, University of California, Irvine) is Professor Emeritus of New Testament at Westmin-

ster Seminary California in Escondido.

March/April 2022

R E F O R M AT I O N R E S O U R C E S

“The Four Evangelists” by Georg Aemelius Excerpted from Biblicae Historiae translated by Casey Carmichael

Georg Aemelius—or Oemler in German—(1517–69) was a Lutheran theologian and botanist. His father was a friend of Hans and Margarethe Luder, Martin Luther’s parents. After studying theology at Wittenberg, Georg worked in school administration in various places throughout Germany. The following translation is a portion of his Biblicae Historiae, magno articifio dipictae, or A Beautifully Illustrated Biblical History, first published in Frankfurt in 1539. The portion translated here is of the four Gospels.

Matthew, who was conquered by love of wealth in a shameless way, Was a tax collector of people who passed by. Taking up the sweet commands of Christ who calls, He deserves to be a companion of eternal divinity. And when he had already seen very many miracles, God having been assumed through the high stars, He began to describe the descent of Christ with a pen, Who drew out genealogical trees from his own nation of Jesse. And running through the long origins of former kings, He enumerates the ancient grandfathers through a series. Hence the angel is added to him with shining wings. He sincerely composed a work on the blood of Christ. And since he teaches that Christ was begotten in a mortal body, He bears the face of a human body.

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Mark the Evangelist I leave behind heavenly dogmas with rich words, And they sing Christ with a nobler tongue, Mark brings together immense labor with full brevity, And what sings in a confined space sings with the mouth. The lion gnashing its flashing teeth looks back, Writing of Christ, he foreshadows the kingdoms of power. Mark asserts abridgments of the history of Christ, And with brief words he conveys very many deeds. Moreover, others sing these miracles with full cheeks, Conveying in a narrow space, he brought several objects together in his heart. Cheerful brevity is also useful for the reader, And has the name of elegant simplicity. Mark takes up the acts of Christ in a short account, And the succinct little book has long deeds. Perhaps he thought what is brief to be more delightful, Hence he gave the acts of the Lord to be read with brief words. And since he conveys the miracles of the triumphant Christ, He has the royal sign of the lion victor. Luke the Evangelist Luke began to depict Christ from tender childhood, And he preaches the acts of the infant of God. The bull lying down near him with winged body Bears the sign indicative of the virgin birth. This first fully bound fast to the manger in the stable, He saw the bodies of the one who was born as well as the mouths of God, And the inaccessible divinity, venerated under tender members, Pressed certain ground on bended knee.

March/April 2022

Therefore, he adds this witness as aged antiquity, So that he proves with pleasure what he sings. Luke makes mention of Christ being born in a very small cradle, And of the chaste virgin by miraculous act. The bull is added, on divinely bended knee, The wings hanging down, carried, which both circle. He, God, chaste with himself to the bearer from the womb. He, having become man by assuming a body, Is deserving of lying down at the stable full of heavenly assurance, A kneeling body presses the cold ground. Hence it is added to the poet who sings in the sacred cradle, So that the cow, which he sees, may testify to the work.

Since he paints the heavenly cradle so well with the thumb, You could call Luke a painter by right. What first was accustomed to give educated medicine to the sick, Expresses the infant God with the holy right hand, He thought to write heavenly gifts—a greater work— And to promote true riches in human matters. Christ brings this to all people with a most acceptable victim. He is portrayed by the sacred cow. He also saw the cradle of the Lord being born, So that we may believe those things, he is a witness. John the Evangelist While he sings the eternal divinity with an elevated heart And God is born with the highest begetter, Lofty John is carried through the highest clouds And takes himself far from the mortal world. We see certain heavenly things flying through certainty, Birds, which rejoice in the bright light of the sun.

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When he describes the life of the Lord and other public acts, Lest he relieve himself with a very serious beginning, John is raised into heaven where his mind has been carried, And remaining a long way off he sings of higher things, Namely that an inseparable divinity rules the world, Which is eternal and lacks an end and beginning. And as He was born with the supreme power of the most high father, God began to live in human flesh. He who lifting the harmful crimes of the experienced world Came under fatal suffering, as gentle as a lamb. When he opens such things with wings actively lifted high, He flies over the houses’ high ceilings and throughout the world. These blue eagles are lifted on high. It is clear where Apollo flashes in the bright world.

John, in the most pleasing care of the living Lord Carried in the lineage of the old house of Zebedee. Another enters, and abandoning earthly deeds, Sings high words about the threefold deity. This bird flies into the heavenly clouds with an exalted body, Carries the fiery lightning bolt above. This latter person was the one who writes heavenly words, And he was an exile of Patmos. Casey Carmichael (ThD, University of Geneva) is the translator of the Commentary on the Epistle

of St. Paul the Apostle to the Ephesians by Robert Rollock (1555–1599), recently published by Reformation Heritage.

March/April 2022

R E F O R M AT I O N O U T TA K E S

Luther’s Marginal Thoughts on Melanchthon by Zachary Purvis

to his Wittenberg colleague Philip Melanchthon. He had just finished reading Melanchthon’s latest manuscript, published in 1538 as On the Authority of the Church and the Writings of the Ancient Fathers. As he thumbed through it, he told Melanchthon that his head swirled with thoughts of Aristotle and his chest, in turn, with indigestion. What made him dyspeptic was the manuscript’s material cause. In Aristotle’s philosophy, the stuff out of which a thing is made is the material cause. For example, timber is the material cause of a house, or marble is the material cause of a sculpture. “The material cause! So much paper has been consumed by you!” he complained. “Several times you filled one sheet with only three words, crossing out all the letters in between.” Luther’s comment about the length of the document and the logic of Aristotle is a bad joke—the kind that appeals only to seminarians. (Though, it also helps bust the pernicious myth that Luther rejected Aristotle wholesale.) In truth, he came up smiling from each inky page. Few texts of the period stated so clearly whether and in what sense the fathers and councils of the church could be considered sources for Christian doctrine. In fact, the answer to that question represented one of Luther and Melanchthon’s greatest collaborations: soon Luther finished his own work on the nature of the church, and both men intended their tracts to be read together. But Luther’s feeble punchline is also striking. For almost no one wrote more than Melanchthon; certainly no one did with such careful deliberation. Melanchthon’s name calls to mind a lost world of Renaissance and Reformation learning. He was both a great humanist and a great reformer. He first appeared in print in 1510 when he barely a teenager and enrolled at the University of Heidelberg. He never stopped writing. He authored some of the most important books in the early modern period on Latin and Greek grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, and history; influential studies in physics, psychology, and astronomy; the first summary of Protestant theology in his Loci communes and the first Protestant commentaries on Romans (five on the book alone), 1 and 2 Corinthians, and the Gospel of John; the Augsburg Confession and its defense in the Apology—and so much more. When he died in 1560, he left behind some ten thousand letters, reflecting an extensive network of correspondents and a remarkable degree of LATE IN 1538, MARTIN LUTHER WROTE

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influence. Even his critics relied on his methods and results. It is little wonder he is called praeceptor Germaniae, the “teacher of Germany.” Melanchthon believed that his exacting scholarship had utility and value in practical life, using it to find footholds when neck-deep in university affairs, church reform, and political conflict. He wrote with the conditions of his own time firmly in mind. When he produced the Latin translation of Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone, for example, he told his close friend Joachim Camerarius, “Not only am I translating Antigone; I am also living it.” Like the protagonist in the play, he felt himself pulled by every political leader—at the time, the German princes and the French and English kings—who expected him to find solutions to intractable problems; yet he was bound ultimately to God. Similar scenarios played out in his turbulent life time and time again. In the manuscript On the Authority of the Church and in other discussions of the topic, Melanchthon demonstrated how to read the church fathers: not to construct a theology or slavishly follow the ancients’ conclusions but to understand them as Testimonia Patrum, testimonies or witnesses of the fathers to the truth. This did not diminish the importance of the early church. In fact, it does quite the opposite. Learning from the church’s past strengthens one’s own witness to the truth of Scripture and its effects. Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam and many others had freely admitted—even emphasized—that the writings of the fathers could be obscure and contradictory. To read them well required skill, sensitivity, and nuance; it was hardly a dispassionate pursuit. To claim their support on a great many issues, moreover, involved every rhetorical tool. Yet Melanchthon ensured that the theology of the Reformation always insisted on its foundation in the Bible and its continuity with the church catholic. When Luther feigned anger over the reams of paper that Melanchthon devoured, seemingly without restraint, perhaps he also remembered how in 1519 during the important Leipzig debates that pitted him against the skilled Roman Catholic Johann Eck, a rather young Melanchthon had passed him paper notes crammed with citations from theologians in the early church that helped bolster the Wittenberg position. We do not know. But we do have ample material evidence, richly marked with edits and ink blots, that show in fine detail exactly how Melanchthon labored over each word he wrote: for clarity, precision, and practical benefit. He was as scrupulous as he was prodigious—and for good cause. 3

Zachary Purvis (DPhil, University of Oxford) is lecturer of Church History at Edinburgh Theological

Seminary.

Martin Luther to Philip Melanchthon, Dec. 28, 1538, in Melanchthons Briefwechsel. Kritische und kommentierte Gesamtausgabe. Texte, ed. Heinz Scheible et al. (FrommannHolzboog: Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1991–), 8, no. 2132. Martin Luther, “On the Councils and the Church, 1539,” trans. Charles M. Jacobs and Eric W. Gritsch, in Luther’s Works, vol. 41, ed. Eric W. Gritsch and Helmut T. Lehmann (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 3–178. Melanchthon to Joachim Camerarius, Oct. 1534, in

4. 5.

Melanchthons Briefwechsel . . . Texte, 6, no. 1505. Augsburg Confession, Art. 20. See, e.g., Erasmus, Opus epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterdami, ed. P. S. Allen et al., vol. 8 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906), 377–82. Mickey Mattox, Richard J. Serina Jr., and Jonathan Mumme, Luther at Leipzig: Martin Luther, the Leipzig Debate, and the Sixteenth-Century Reformations (Leiden: Brill, 2019).

Melanchthon’s 1539 treatise

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Converse Discussing from perspectives of the present

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GLOBAL THEOLOGICAL FORUM

The Four-Legged Stool: An African Contribution to Intercultural Reading by Elizabeth Mburu

in a Western (or other) context be transferred to an African audience without taking the differences in context into account? Or is there room for philosophies and methods of interpretation to be contextualized to meet the needs represented in that part of the world? Given the specific needs on the continent—needs that relate to social, economic, political, and theological aspects—a hermeneutical approach from Africa should raise some questions that a hermeneutic from a different community would not. This implies that an African hermeneutic will have some distinctives from its Western counterpart. In what follows, I will develop what I’ll call the “Four-Legged Stool Model” for hermeneutics, in which some of those African distinctives come to the foreground. SHOULD A HERMENEUTICAL APPROACH

***

The Four-Legged Stool Model In recent times, African scholars have promoted inculturation readings of the text. Van der Watt summarizes this general method as follows: It is a hermeneutical program of reading the text, since explicatio and applicatio tend to overlap. It is acknowledged that the reader is emerged in a particular culture . . . has certain views of reality . . . experiences reality in certain ways . . . and brings all this subjective complexity by way of synthesis to the reading process. A process of “reading with” is preferred to a “reading from above.” . . . It is therefore not a matter of understanding the text primarily within its original context, but understanding the text within the present context of the readers within their reading processes—the text must address the reader. 1

These inculturation readings (which I refer to as intercultural hermeneutics)— particularly those by Justin S. Ukpong, Ukachukwu Chris Manus, Jean-Claude Loba-Mkole, and Cornel West—provide a foundation for the method used in this paper, the Four-Legged Stool Model. This model fills two gaps. First, it recognizes that the contexts of author, text, and reader cannot be collapsed, as so often happens in intercultural hermeneu-

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tics. All three stand in a context that must be interrogated. The two horizons of meaning and significance must be kept distinct. Second, like the intercultural approaches cited above, it recognizes that African culture (material and nonmaterial) is a significant tool for the interpretive process. This includes the techniques that enable us to interpret the various genres of African literature (oral as well as postcolonial). However, this model goes further by considering the worldviews represented by readers. These are valid and form an essential interpretive bridge. This model uses readers’ contexts as a starting point, thereby moving them from the known to the unknown. This model has five steps: while these steps are distinct for analytical purposes, there is an understood overlap between them; each step must necessarily enhance the others until it achieves a greater precision in meaning and understanding, much like the so-called hermeneutical spiral in Western hermeneutics. 2

L E G 1 : PA R A L L E L S TO T H E A F R I CA N C O N T E X T ( T R A D I T I O N A L A S W E L L A S M O D E R N )

This first leg primarily involves identifying parallels between the biblical text and our theological and cultural contexts. It is a bridge between the two contexts that allows us to do two things. First, it enables the listener to begin to understand the biblical text from a familiar position. These “shared mutual interests,” as Ukachukwu calls them, orient the listener as to how to hear and interpret the story and forms the basis on which the narrator earns the right “to be heard.” Second, it allows us to examine ourselves so that we can correct any faulty assumptions that may hinder the interpretive process. An accurate reading of the text demands that as the listener steps into the text, the text is also being urged to confront the perspective of the listener—an inter-dynamic process that ensures that no faulty assumptions interfere with interpretation. This leg therefore guides us in identifying both points of contact as well as differences with the biblical context. L EG 2 : T H EO LO G I CA L C O N T E XT

The second leg is the theological context. Many scholars have noted that Africans tend to be very “religious,” even in modern/postmodern Africa. More specifically, the spiritual dimension of life is always a factor in Africans’ interaction with the realities around them. This implies that in Africa biblical hermeneutics is inseparable from theological reflection, as the emphasis is generally to address contextual realities within our culture. Because of this orientation to life, an understanding of the theological emphases of the text therefore provides the foundational data for readers, orienting their approach to the interpretation of the text. At the same time, this inseparability lends itself to the fusion of the two horizons, meaning that some tentative points of application will already begin to present themselves at this stage. Since this model recognizes a distinct separation in the two horizons, application at this point can only be tentative. 3

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L EG 3 : L I T E R A RY C O N T E XT

The third leg is the literary context. Here one identifies the genre, literary techniques, language used, and the progression of the text as it unfolds, as well as its relation to surrounding texts. Much of the Bible is narrative, for example. As such, there are certain additional rules that apply from African literature. The characteristics of African stories provide us with an interpretive “key.” African stories exist in two distinct but interconnected “worlds.” The first is the world of the agents of communication, which has two main features: the narrator and the listener. The integrity, authority, and intention of the narrator are crucial. In African storytelling, narratorial intent and determinacy of meaning is taken for granted. The second feature relates to the listener. The listeners—whether children, youth, or adults—play an essential role. Listening in Africa is therefore not a passive affair. It is holistic or active and involves community listening, visualization, enthusiastic responses, and so forth. The second is the world of the story, which is concerned with what happens within the story itself. The features that contribute to the world of the story include: plot, which tends to move the story forward in a cyclical linear fashion; setting, which has to do with the temporal, spatial, and worldview contexts; literary devices such as repetition, figurative language, symbolism, etc.; interplay of narration and dialogue; narratorial comments; narrative time; characterization; a nondirect approach (i.e., no clear identification of the “moral” of the story by Western standards); and vividness. In interpreting stories, then, one must understand how these two “worlds” function and interact to communicate the artistry and meaning of the story. Both “worlds” help to move the story forward to its conclusion. 4

L E G 4 : H I S T O R I C A L A N D C U LT U R A L C O N T E X T

The final leg is the historical and cultural context. In addition to theological and literary concerns, Africans try to make sense of our lives in relation to the historical and cultural contexts in which events occur. African literature is no different. It is informed and shaped by sociocultural, political, and economic conditions within the continent. Thus any interpretation must consider these crucial factors. This means that behind-the-text issues provide crucial data in the interpretive process. If authorial intent and determinacy of meaning is to be taken seriously, then we must “enter into” the author’s world and allow this world to provide the parameters that guide our understanding. While some aspects of this context will already have been uncovered in the previous legs, it is here that a more in-depth analysis is carried out. This not only confirms the preliminary conclusions surrounding this context, but it also provides more depth so that we can arrive at the most probable meaning of the text.

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Finally, we have the seat. These four legs together reveal the probable meaning as intended for the original listeners. The seat is where we derive significance. The important feature of meaning, as distinct from significance, is that meaning is the determinate representation of a text for an interpreter. One implication of this is that the listener cannot thrust personal assumptions on the story or adjust the meaning to one’s own context in a postmodernist kind of way. Even though we, the listeners, become part of the story, we do not make the story “in our image” but allow it to guide us to its true shape and form. Significance, on the other hand, is the application to the context of the listener expressed in terms that we understand in our own African society. This last step is therefore only a confirmation of the tentative application of the text as uncovered in the legs above. Application is two pronged. Culture-bound truths are relative and directly applicable only in the specific biblical context. Transcontextual truths, on the other hand, are absolute and apply to any culture at any time in history. In application of culture-bound truths, one should look for a general principle that communicates the essence of that specific truth. Application of transcontextual truths is more involving. When transcontextual truths are expressed as a principle, they may be applied directly. However, application of transcontextual truths may be more complicated when they are not expressed as principles. One must account for the listener’s engagement with both worlds. Therefore, these transcontextual truths must be deculturized from the biblical cultural forms and then reculturized into specific African cultural forms to fit African society. 6

Elizabeth Mburu (PhD) is the regional coordinator of Langham Literature in Africa and the current

chair of the Africa Society for Evangelical Theology. She serves as the New Testament theological editor and the coordinator for the Africa Bible Commentary Revision Project. Mburu is an associate professor at Pan Africa Christian University and author of Qumran and the Origins of Johannine Language and Symbolism and African Hermeneutics. She is from Kenya.

J. G. Van der Watt, 2015, “Johannine Research in Africa, Part 1: An Analytical Survey,” In die Skriflig 49(2), Art. #1928, 14, http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ids.v49i2.1928. Grant Osborne, The Hermeneutical Spiral: A Comprehensive Introduction to Biblical Interpretation (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010), 22–23. Gerald West, “African Biblical Hermeneutics and Bible Translation,” Interacting with Scriptures in Africa, ed. Jean-Claude Loba-Mkole and Ernst R. Wendland (Nairobi: Acton, 2005), 4.

This might be compared to external and internal elements in Western literature. See David Howard Jr., An Introduction to the Old Testament Historical Books (Chicago: Moody, 1993), 49–55. Naomi Kipury, Oral Literature of the Maasai (Nairobi: East African Educational, 1983), 10. Adapted with some changes from Seto’s model on contextualizing in the Asian society. See Wing Luk Seto, “An Asian Looks at Contextualization and Developing Ethnotheologies,” Evangelical Missions Quarterly 23 (April 1987): 138.

To explore these issues in hermeneutics further, read Dr. Mburu’s book African Hermeneutics

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Anglicans A N D

THE GOSPEL

G E R A L D B R AY

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“Woe Is Me If I Preach Not the Gospel!” (1 Cor. 9:16)

T. PAUL’S HEARTFELT EXCLAMATION of his calling before God has echoed down through the ages. The Christian church in all its many forms is called to preach the gospel—that is its purpose. There are many subsidiary activities that the church engages in, such as education, health care, and social justice. But the one constant factor that grounds the church is preaching the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Without this, the church has no purpose. If it loses its message, it will rapidly dwindle into irrelevance, if not complete nonexistence. But what is the gospel? How do we recognize it and determine whether we are being faithful to it or not? Anglicans (Episcopalians) are just as concerned with this question as other Christians, but our history gives it a special resonance. At the time of the Reformation, England was the only country in the world where it was illegal to translate the Bible into the language of the people. That was because one hundred and fifty years earlier, John Wyclif (1328–84) had initiated a reform movement in the church that made Bible translation (and reading) central to its platform. As a result, English society was upturned and both church and state had to respond. They did so by banning translations of the Scriptures and subjecting the clergy to a licensing process that was designed to weed out troublemakers. Thus, in the early sixteenth century when the Reformation spread from Germany to England, it arrived in a country that was unprepared for it. King Henry VIII (1509–47) broke with the papacy not because he became a Protestant, but because he wanted his marriage annulled and the pope would not oblige. England therefore found itself as a “Protestant” country with no Protestants in it! However, there was a small number of people who had read Martin Luther and his colleagues who were gradually persuaded of their teachings. England’s break with Rome gave these men the opportunity to preach that people are justified before God by faith in Jesus Christ and that no amount of human effort can earn their salvation. As this message sank in, the structures and worship patterns of the church changed to accommodate them. The English Reformers knew what they had to do: preach the gospel of justification by faith alone to their people and explain to them what it means. To achieve their aim, they not only translated the Bible but also produced a number of supplemental teaching aids. In order to help any clergy who had difficulty with preaching, they produced a set of ready-made sermons called “Homilies.” They also developed English-language liturgies that eventually became the Book of Common Prayer (BCP), the most characteristic feature of classical Anglicanism. At the heart of the Prayer Book is the Lord’s Supper, which reenacts the

“ Ye that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins, and are in love and charity with your neighbors, and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God, and walking from henceforth in his holy ways: Draw near with faith, and take this holy sacrament to your comfort; and make your humble confession to Almighty God.” —Excerpt of the Exhortation from the Book of Common Prayer

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dramatic events surrounding the death of Christ on the cross and brings the Reformers’ message home. To read the service in the BCP is to come face-to-face with the gospel as the English Reformers believed it should be taught in their churches. In its standard form, the Lord’s Supper begins with the Lord’s Prayer, followed by a plea that the hearts of the worshipers will be cleansed by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, so that they might approach the Table in the right frame of mind. After that comes the Ten Commandments, the summary of the law of God that establishes the standard he expects from his people and from which we have all fallen away. We then move on to further prayer, readings from the Bible, the recitation of basic Christian doctrine in the Nicene Creed, and the sermon, which was placed at this point in order to emphasize that true preaching is the exposition of Scripture filtered through the framework of the church’s trinitarian and christological doctrine. After that, we pray for the church, asking God to bind us together in unity by giving us his grace to live as we ought and receive his instruction in a humble spirit. Next there is the Exhortation, a somewhat lengthy warning from the minister about the solemnity of the Lord’s Supper. Although the Reformers made this Exhortation compulsory, for generations now it is usually passed over in silence; in modern liturgical revisions, it is omitted altogether. The result is that the heart of the Supper has been torn out and worshipers no longer receive any real guidance about what they are supposed to be doing. All that is left is the Invitation, which presupposes the Exhortation and must be recognized as a direct challenge to the congregation. In it, we find all the essentials of true Christian worship: first, we must repent of our sins—sincerely, not superficially; second, we must show love and charity to those around us; third, we must determine to lead a new life; and fourth, we must order our behavior according to God’s commandments—what Reformed theology has traditionally called the “third use of the law,” meaning that God’s commands are not merely a condemnation of our sinful ways but also a blueprint of instruction for leading the Christian life, or what has traditionally been known as “sanctification.” The rest of the service works out these principles step by step; taken together, they inculcate the gospel in our hearts and minds. It will not all sink in at once. We do not always feel the urge to pray, and it is easy for familiar words to become monotonous to those who have learned them by heart. But it is also true that this kind of discipline implants a deep and instinctive knowledge in the mind of the recipient; and that as time goes on, the words and their meaning sink more deeply into the soul. Liturgy is notsomething for amateurs to dabble in, as a search for ever-new excitement, but a spiritual program designed for leading the new life we have been invited to share. It is through the filter of this self-discipline, taught by the BCP, that questions concerning the gospel and its message are raised and discussed among Anglicans. We start with repentance, the indispensable foundation of all Christian experience. Repentance follows on what the Bible calls “conviction of sin” (John 16:8). Without that, no salvation is possible because the need for it is not recognized.

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Sin is not to be confused with unhappiness, frustration, or low self-esteem, as it often is in the modern world. Sin is disobedience to the commands of God, which incurs guilt on our part. We repent because we are guilty, and we seek forgiveness from God for the same reason. If we do not come to him with a repentant heart, we are wasting our time. Worse, we are in effect mocking the gospel message by demonstrating that we do not understand what it is. The second stage involves love and charity toward our neighbors. This sounds easy, but in fact it is very difficult—perhaps the most difficult part of the entire exercise. Yet it is a fundamental part of the famous Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:23–24). It is also a reminder to us that the gospel is not a private affair between an individual and Jesus, but a public commitment that involves reconciliation with other people as well as with God. For a variety of reasons, such reconciliation is not always possible—those with whom we have fallen out may not be readily accessible or may be unwilling to reciprocate. Although to be in love and charity with our neighbors does not always lead to reconciliation, we still need to be open to it and not seek vengeance for wrongs that have been done to us. The third stage is that we must intend to lead a new life. In the modern world, this has become a stumbling block for many. Today, we are constantly being told that we must accept people as they are, because that is what Jesus supposedly did. Like many things, that is a half-truth. For example, Jesus “accepted” the woman caught in adultery, and although he did not condemn her, he did not bless her behavior either. His message to her was “Go and sin no more” (John 7:53–8:11). Struggling against sin is never easy, and Christians have a harder time of it than others because they have a clearer understanding of what sin is. But the gospel demands that it be struggled against. Failure to preach the gospel of the transforming power of God is to deprive people of access to that heavenly gift and to betray the gospel. Finally, the gospel message is that in Christ and by the power of his Holy Spirit, we can follow the commands of God and walk in his holy ways. The gospel is not a temporary fix for an essentially insoluble problem. The Reformers rejected the medieval system of confession and penitence because it was an endlessly repeated cycle with no real hope of deliverance. Sinners were not set free from the burden of their sins; they were locked into a system where they had to keep returning to the priest, seeking more grace to pay for the wrongs they had committed; hence the insistence in the BCP’s Words of Institution that the offering of Christ on the cross was “a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world.” Nothing more and nothing else is required. This is the heart of the gospel and the heart of Anglicanism. You can believe the gospel without being Anglican, but you cannot be Anglican without holding to the gospel that the BCP so clearly and comprehensively sets out before us in the Lord’s Supper. Gerald Bray is research professor of Divinity at Beeson Divinity School, Samford University, Birming-

ham, Alabama.

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Bad News A N D

Good News: The

GOSPEL According to

LUTHER by

R O B E R T K O L B

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HE BAD NEWS, as Martin Luther continually reminded himself and others, is that I am a sinner. Inevitably, I intractably doubt, disregard, or dismiss God’s speaking to me from the pages of Holy Scripture, defying his will and demanding to go my own way. That, Luther knew, leads only to death. The good news is that my Creator has come into human flesh and blood, skin and bones. Jesus, the eternal word made flesh, died to eliminate my defiance and doubt of God. Jesus rose from death to restore my identity in God’s sight as his beloved child (Rom. 4:25). Although Luther recognized that Scripture and general usage have several definitions for the words law and gospel—and he used them all—he employed the terms as a team in tandem as a hermeneutical principle. In this team, “law” designates God’s plan for human life and his expectations of his human creatures. “Gospel” presents and pronounces God’s saving plan for his own act of re-creation in reconciling sinners to himself. This sensitivity to the distinction of God’s expectations and God’s gift of forgiveness, life, and salvation informs the Lutheran view of human life still today. Because taking God’s expectations seriously continually reminds us of the little flaws and failures of our daily performances—to say nothing of some massive gaps between his good plan and what we produce in any given hour—we need the good news of rescue and restoration. According to Luther, this good news comes in the form of a person, Jesus Christ, and in the form of the attitude of our Creator toward us: even while we were yet sinners, he showed us favor (Rom. 5:8). Good news comes in the form of his promise to us; in the form of its contents or impact, forgiveness of sin, life, and salvation; and in the form of God’s communication of the promise and its benefits in oral, written, and sacramental media. Luther did not believe that “when you’ve said, ‘Jesus,’ you’ve said it all.” He did believe that the good news of the restoration of truly human life depends solely on what the incarnate Second Person of the Holy Trinity accomplished in his death and resurrection. The story of God’s saving intervention in human history includes Jesus’ birth as the son of the Virgin Mary, his life of service lived in conformity with God’s eternal design for human living, his suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension, his continuous mediation for his people, and his return at the end of this age. Paul focused on the heart of that story when he summarized Christ’s mission of rescue and restoration in Romans 4:25. By dying on the cross, Christ lifted sin from sinners and, as Paul followed up in Romans 6:3, through the practical consequences or effect of his death, he buried our sinful identity in his tomb, and was raised for the restoration of the 1

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righteousness of sinners. In Romans 6:4, as Luther read it, God also raises up his people to walk in Christ’s footsteps. Luther described this rescue and restoration in terms of justification, the gift of righteousness. In the restoration of the Edenic relationship with our Creator, we are passive. We receive our identity as God’s children as we received the gift of life from our parents, without asking, without condition. But as earthly parents have expectations of their children who receive life from them free of charge, Luther insisted that God expects those restored to being his children through the gospel to behave as his children by conforming to his design for life. In contrast to the passively received righteousness or identity as God’s child that defines our relationship with him, he expects us to be truly righteous in our relationships with his other creatures—human and nonhuman—and to act as his children. This active righteousness in no way determines our relationship with God, but he does call us to turn back to him and his design for life as expressed in his law because Christ has restored us to his family. Luther thought that the concept of “satisfying the law” alone too weakly expressed the full glory of Christ’s saving work. He did insist, nonetheless, that Christ satisfied the law’s demand for the death of sinners (Rom. 6:23a). In the mystery of God’s plan made before the foundations of the world (Eph. 1:3–11), he substituted himself for sinners under that judgment. His substitutionary death for the sins of the world cleared sin from the record of those who trust his promise or pronouncement of forgiveness. Luther also describes Christ’s saving action in terms of resurrection victory over death, sin, Satan, and every evil. Luther’s Large Catechism describes his resurrection in dramatic terms as a jailbreak, in which Christ bursts into the devil’s prison and frees those held captive there. Luther also compares the gift of Christ’s resurrection as a parallel to God’s creating the world out of nothing, out of chaos, as Jesus rescues his people from the nothingness or chaos of their sin. Luther found that passages describing baptism as a new birth as a child of God presented the origin of our new creaturely status (2 Cor. 5:17). He, and especially his colleague Philip Melanchthon, also relied on the mediating voice of Christ as he daily pleads the case of sinners before the Father’s throne. Luther’s Small Catechism presents Christ’s death and resurrection as his regaining possession of what had belonged to God but came into Satan’s possession, so that his people might be “his own”—members of his family as in Eden—and “live under his rule” so that they may have the joy and peace of “serving him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness.” The good news is that God has done all this for his human creatures. As Luther wrote, God’s creative goodness brought the world into existence, “out of pure, fatherly goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness” on our 2

The Garden of Eden by Izaak van Oosten (between 1655 and 1661)

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part. Jesus died and rose for those who are totally dependent on the Creator, who had alienated themselves by finding false sources for their identity, security, and meaning. Luther redefined “grace” so that it was no longer simply an enabling factor the Holy Spirit gives to sinners to enable them to perform works that make them look good in God’s sight. For Luther, Scripture asserts that grace is God’s attitude of favor, love, mercy, and steadfast lovingkindness that he bestows upon his people in and through Christ. The good news is that this divine favor regards Christ’s substitution for sinners as sufficient for him to disregard their sin. Luther knew that since what God thinks and says determines reality, God’s favor to us delivers the realities of forgiveness of sins. His forgiveness does not merely return us to some neutral spot between himself and Satan; it restores the Edenic relationship of love and trust that constitutes the heart of our humanity. Forgiveness—the absence of sin— means the restoration of life itself. Luther coupled the forgiveness of sins and the restoration of life as salvation itself, the return of Edenic shalom, the totally harmonious relationship of those who trust in him with their Creator. The good news is that God has promised this restoration to those who trust his promise of forgiveness and life. Luther deepened the understanding of the word promise. Since promises guarantee something in the future, we sometimes dwell on not yet having what has been promised. Luther argued that because God has made these promises and he does not go back on his promises, believers can have confidence in what he promises. When he says that we belong to his family, we are truly his children here and now. The future may seem clouded by the mystery of the continuation of sin in the world, but the crystal-clear promise of the Creator and Re-creator cuts through that fog. Christ has claimed us as his own. We are his. When we stray from and transgress his plan for our lives, he condemns us with the law in no uncertain terms. The mystery of the continuation of sin and evil in the lives of the faithful cannot be rationally mastered; it must be addressed in its existential manifestations through properly distinguishing law and gospel. The good news is that God makes that promise through effective use of tools he has fashioned out of selected elements of his created order—his own incarnate flesh and blood, human language that pronounces forgiveness and life, the expression of the promise joined with the signs of water and of bread and wine. As a student of certain disciples of the fourteenth-century thinker William of Ockham, Luther believed that God is truly the Almighty Creator and that he is able and free to plan any program for saving sinners. He also believed that God is comfortable being present in his created material order, using it as he deems best. Because God reveals himself as a God who loves conversation and community, God arranged for the gospel—the proclamation of the gospel as kerygma (Rom. 1:16)—to actually exercise his power, delivering good news to his human creatures, and effecting it in their lives on earth. Luther found great comfort in God’s approach to him through the church, the people of God, whom God calls to bring his promise to those caught in the web of their own sinning and their suffering the sins of others. He trusted that 8

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word from God that had been spoken over him at the baptismal font as the Holy Spirit’s action to assure him that Christ’s empty tomb provided him a clear path into God’s eternal presence. He rejoiced in hearing and delivering Scripture’s promise into the congregation of members of Christ’s body, the church, receiving the promise that Christ’s body and blood had been given for us. Luther delighted in sharing these words of forgiveness and life in his family circle and among his friends. Thus in his Smalcald Articles (1537), he labeled his summary of the “guidance and resources against sin” that God provides as “gospel.” As a multimedia communicator, he engaged his people through preaching, absolution, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and Christian conversation conveying Christ. Forty years later, Lutheran theologian Jakob Andreae wrote in the Formula of Concord, 9

For everything that provides comfort—everything that offers God’s favor and grace to those who have transgressed the law—is and is called the gospel in the strict sense. It is good news, joyous news, that God does not want to punish sin but to forgive it for Christ’s sake. Accordingly, all repentant sinners should believe in, that is, place their trust alone in, the Lord Christ, who “was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification” [Rom. 4:25]. “For our sake he became sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” [2 Cor. 5:21]. He was made our righteousness [1 Cor. 1:30]. 11

Therefore, Andreae confessed, we rejoice in this good news that in his gracious favor God gives to us on the basis of Christ’s death and resurrection in the form of his promise conveyed in his word in oral, written, and sacramental forms. There is no better news. Robert Kolb is mission professor of systematic theology emeritus at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. He

is the author or coauthor of numerous books, including The Genius of Luther’s Theology, Luther and the Stories of God, Martin Luther: Confessor of the Faith, and The Christian Faith: A Lutheran Exposition. Kolb is coeditor of The Book of Concord (2000 translation). He has lectured at more than forty educational institutions on five continents and at many ecclesiastical gatherings. Since 1996, he has been a guest lecturer at Lutheran Theological College in Oberursel, Germany.

Robert Kolb and Charles P. Arand, The Genius of Luther’s Theology: A Wittenberg Way of Thinking for the Contemporary Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 149–59. Ian D. Kingston Siggins, Martin Luther’s Doctrine of Christ (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970). D. Martin Luthers Werke (Weimar: Böhlau, 1883–1993), 21:264. Luther’s Works (Saint Louis / Philadelphia: Concordia / Fortress, 1958), 57: 283.

The Book of Concord, ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), 434–35. 6. Jonathan D. Trigg, Baptism in the Theology of Martin Luther (Leiden: Brill, 2001). 7. Book of Concord, 355. 8. Book of Concord, 354–55. 9. Kolb and Arand, Genius, 161–203. 10. Book of Concord, 319. 11. Book of Concord, 585. 5.

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W H A T

I S

the

GOSPEL? A

BAPTIST Perspective

by A .

M I C H A E L G .

H AY K I N

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HE ENGLISH PURITAN SEARCH for the New Testament’s pattern or blueprint of how to “do church” formed the matrix of Baptist origins in the first half of the seventeenth century. Of the two Baptist communities that emerged in this era—the General Baptists, who were Arminian, and the Particular Baptists, who were Calvinistic—the latter were far more numerous and influential in shaping later Baptist history in the transatlantic world. A helpful reminder of the links between the Particular Baptists and other Puritan bodies of this era (e.g., the Presbyterians and Independents) is the Particular Baptist employment of the Westminster Confession (1647) in the 1670s to craft what is undoubtedly the most significant confessional document in Baptist history, the Second London Confession of Faith (1677/1688). This confession also highlights a few theological issues that set these Baptists apart from their Puritan cousins, including their commitment to baptism as the immersion of only believers. ***

Immersion and the Gospel According to the article dealing with baptism in this confessional statement, this “ordinance of the New Testament” was “ordained by Jesus Christ, to be unto the party baptized, a sign of his fellowship with him, in his death and resurrection; of his being engrafted into him; of remission of sins; and of giving up unto God, through Jesus Christ, to live and walk in newness of life.” While these Baptist pioneers never considered the practice of believer’s baptism to be a primary issue of salvation—they rejoiced in and benefited from the preaching and writings of their fellow Puritans, for example—they did see it as a public and conscious avowal of gospel truth. In baptism, believers declare their union with Christ, who has purchased their justification through his death and resurrection. As a mode of baptism, however, immersion was considered by many in the seventeenth century as outré and even risqué. By and large, seventeenth-century Baptists did not have access to indoor baptisteries and thus had to employ rivers, lakes, and ponds for the rite. This not only violated the Anglican commitment to the church building as the sacred space where such activities belonged, but it also raised questions in the minds of Puritans like Richard Baxter about the health risks that plunging people under water entailed. And there were even some who scurrilously maintained that the administration of believer’s baptism by immersion promoted sexual immorality, as men and women were required 1

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to be baptized in the nude! Baptists were not deterred, though, from seeing in the immersion of a believer a visible portrayal of the blessings of the gospel. By the second decade of the eighteenth century, there were some two hundred and twenty Particular Baptist congregations in England and Wales, and a dozen or so in Ireland. 2

***

A Hyper-Calvinist Gospel and Baptist Declension

John Gill (1697–1771)

The first few decades of the eighteenth century, though, proved to be a time of declension for the Particular Baptists as well as the other bodies that had emerged from Puritanism—namely, the English Presbyterians and the Independents, or Congregationalists. By the middle of that century, the Presbyterians as a denomination had almost totally succumbed to the scourge of Socinianism and in essence denied the gospel. The Independents and Particular Baptists fared better in that they retained their commitment to Christian orthodoxy, but for a variety of reasons, both groups had become largely stagnant and lacking in spiritual vitality. To a great extent, this was also true of the state church, where moralism was preached, not the gospel. In the 1730s, there were a number of key conversions of Anglicans such as George Thomson of Cornwall and George Whitefield—who became the greatest evangelist of the era—Howel Harris and Daniel Rowland in Wales, and the Wesley brothers, John and Charles, who were central to the onset of the evangelical revivals. It is reckoned that when these men and others began to preach the new birth and justification by faith alone, such gospel truths had not been heard from most Anglican pulpits for the best part of sixty years. Initially, far too many Particular Baptists were untouched by these revivals, for they had wrongly come to identify their form of ecclesiology with gospel vitality. Many of these Particular Baptists had also come to regard the gospel as encapsulated in the statement that Christ died for his elect. Under the impress of being marginalized in British society as well as possibly the rationalism of this era (the “Age of Reason”), these Baptists embraced a form of Calvinism known as hyper-Calvinism. Hyper-Calvinism rejected the free offer of the gospel to all and sundry, so as to bring the glory of God in the conversion of sinners to the fore and to emphasize that salvation was supremely a divine work. In the hands of an able theologian like the London Baptist leader John Gill, hyper-Calvinism was grounded in his view that the elect were not only chosen from eternity past to believe the gospel, but they had also been eternally justified. Preachers who imbibed Gill’s perspective often lacked his theological finesse; and in their preaching, they essentially told

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men and women to wait on God, who would in due course make it clear to them that they were children of God—if they were indeed among the elect. Conversion became the introspective realization that one was elected and justified from eternity past, and not the Spirit-enabled turn of the human will in faith toward a crucified Savior. Lest we judge Gill too harshly, we need to remember that he played a vital role in the preservation of biblical orthodoxy, for he was firmly committed to the fact that foundational to the gospel was the doctrine of the Trinity. If Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit do not share the same being as God the Father—what we call Nicene Trinitarianism—then God’s salvific work is scuppered, for only God can save sinners. When Presbyterian authors were relegating the Trinity to the dustbin of history, Gill was rightly insistent that Jesus Christ is “the eternal Son of God by ineffable filiation” and that the Spirit is likewise wholly divine. In the succinct words of the Victorian Baptist preacher C. H. Spurgeon: “A gospel without the Trinity!—it is a rope of sand that cannot hold together.” 3

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Andrew Fuller and the Gospel It was not until the 1770s that the tide began to turn for the Particular Baptists in England as they too experienced a tremendous revival. In this turning of the tide, it became imperative to address both theologically and practically the rejection of the free offer of the gospel—a hallmark of preaching during the Reformation, the Puritan era, and evangelical revivals. While there is clear evidence that a good number of Baptist churches in the west country of England (the southwest of the island) had never bought into Gill’s hyper-Calvinism, the author usually credited with being instrumental in the recovery of a fully biblical gospel is Andrew Fuller, whom Spurgeon once described as “the greatest [Baptist] theologian” of his century. Fuller grew up in the Particular Baptist Church in Soham, Cambridgeshire, under the ministry of a classic hyper-Calvinist, a pastor named John Eve, whose preaching, in Fuller’s words, “was not adapted to awaken [the] conscience” and who “had little or nothing to say to the unconverted.” Nevertheless, in the late 1760s, Fuller began to experience a strong conviction of sin, which issued in his sound conversion in November 1769. He was baptized the following April and joined the Soham church. Over the course of the next few years, it became evident to the church that Fuller possessed definite ministerial gifts. Thus, after Eve left the church for another pastorate, Fuller was formally inducted as pastor on May 3, 1775. Due to the fact that John Eve’s preaching was essentially the only homiletical model Fuller had ever known, he initially preached like him and failed to urge the unconverted to come to Christ. Increasingly, though, he was dissatisfied with hyper-Calvinist reasoning and its perspective on the gospel and evangelism. In Fuller’s words, he came to realize that his preaching was defective in many respects, for it “did not quadrate with the Scriptures.” Pondering the preaching 5

Andrew Fuller (1754–1815)

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of Christ—particularly as portrayed in the Gospel of John, by the apostles in the book of Acts, and in the works of the New England divine Jonathan Edwards—led Fuller to realize that the heart of the gospel is that Christ died for sinners as sinners and, on that basis, all are to be urged to come to Christ for salvation and life. Fuller’s well-thought-out understanding of the gospel and how it should be preached is probably best found in The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, which first appeared in 1785, followed by a second edition in 1801. While there are substantial differences between the two editions in a few areas, such as particular redemption, the work’s major theme remained unaltered. “Faith in Christ is the duty of all men who hear, or have opportunity to hear, the gospel,” Fuller rightly argued. This epoch-making book sought to be faithful to the central emphases of historic Calvinism, while at the same time attempting to leave preachers with no alternative but to drive home to their hearers the universal obligations of repentance and faith. 8

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The Globalization of the Gospel Among Fuller’s close friends was William Carey, who would become the iconic missionary figure of the nineteenth century. It was on the necessity of the free offer of the gospel that had been hammered out by Fuller that Carey built his case for the corollary that gospel-believing churches in England had a duty to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. As missiologist Harry R. Boer has observed, “Fuller’s insistence on the duty of all men everywhere to believe the gospel played a determinative role in the crystallization of Carey’s missionary vision.” When Fuller, Carey, and their friends began to think along these lines, gospel-believing churches were mostly to be found in western Europe and along the Atlantic seaboard in North America. Pioneering Protestant missions to Africa, Asia, and the Americas had been undertaken by Pietists in Halle on the North Sea and German-speaking Moravians earlier in the eighteenth century. Although Fuller and Carey built upon their work, it is one of the quirks of church history that Carey has been remembered as the “father of modern missions” and not the Halle Pietists or the Moravians. Fuller’s theology of the gospel—which came to be known as “Fullerism” in his lifetime—and the revival that impacted Particular Baptist life in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries thus provided a solid foundation for the globalization of the gospel by what had once been a marginalized Christian denomination. 9

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A Concluding Word Since Fuller’s day, Baptists have been shaped by a passion to evangelize and take the gospel to the ends of the earth. They are certain that the gospel inevitably entails an activist mindset, one that takes to heart Jesus’ words in Mark 16:15,

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“Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation” (CSB). Concomitant with this commitment to evangelism is an ecclesial conviction that, though it is not regarded as necessary for salvation, is nonetheless considered a highly significant expression of the gospel. Those who have fled to the crucified and risen Christ for salvation should be baptized in the Triune Name and in obedience to the dominical command, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19 CSB). Michael A. G. Haykin is chair and professor of church history at The Southern Baptist Theological Semi-

nary, Louisville, Kentucky.

1. 2.

A Confession of Faith 29.1 (London: John Harris, 1688), 97. The Presbyterian soil in Scotland proved to be impervious to the Baptist plant till the late eighteenth century! John Gill, “Letter to John Davis,” March 7, 1745. John Davis was the Welsh pastor of the Baptist Church in the Great Valley, Devon, Pennsylvania. This letter is found in the Minute Book of the Church for that time period. C. H. Spurgeon, “The Personality of the Holy Ghost,” The New Park Street Pulpit (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1856), 1:29. This remark by Spurgeon is cited in Gilbert Laws, Andrew Fuller: Pastor, Theologian, Ropeholder (London: Carey Press, 1942), 127.

Andrew Gunton Fuller, “Memoir,” The Complete Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, rev. Joseph Belcher, 3 vols. (1845; Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1988), 1:2. Gunton Fuller, “Memoir,” The Complete Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, 1:17. For further reading on Fuller and “Fullerism,” see Peter J. Morden, Offering Christ to the World: Andrew Fuller (1754– 1815) and the Revival of Eighteenth-Century Particular Baptist Life (Carlisle, Cumbria, UK; Waynesboro, GA: Paternoster Press, 2003); and Michael A. G. Haykin, Reading Andrew Fuller (Peterborough, ON: H & E, 2020). Harry R. Boer, Pentecost and Missions (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1961), 24.

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POEM

Safer by Meaghan Cronin

If I stand still enough, I start to hope I’ll make myself an empty space—once girl, now gone. I’ll be no threat, no haunting rope or loaded gun. I want to live unfurled and light, a soft and hurtless thing, no sledge to wield against the world. I paint myself in plumes—but even feathers have their edges. The blades are always pointing out. I shelve these weapons, do my best to hold them safe— along the handle, blades away from me, to face the floor and no one else. I wish myself away. I chafe, I swarm like bees. I’d rather turn to rust—disintegrate and fall to earth. If I am small enough, I will be soft.

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Persuade Thinking theologically about all things

Evangelicals A N D

THE E VA N G E L FUTURE by

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NVITED TO GIVE A PLENARY address in Wittenberg on the weekend of the Reformation’s quincentenary (October 31, 2017), I took my teenage son on a tour of Martin Luther sites along the way. I’ll use this travelogue as a way of exploring what it means—or at least meant—to be an “evangelical.” ***

We visited the cell of the Erfurt monastery in which Luther, the Augustinian monk, searched passionately— and for the most part, in vain—for a gracious God. “Just love God,” his confessor counseled, but Brother Martin was not just an overly scrupulous monk. He was not even looking for a gracious God; he was looking for the real God, whoever he might be. Yet the more he read the Bible, the further he felt from this God. It was not God’s mercy, love, and grace that first struck him, but God’s righteousness, holiness, and justice. As a theology student, Luther had been taught that “God will not deny his grace to those who do what lies within them.” Following Scotus and Ockham, his teachers thought they were making salvation more accessible. Take even the smallest step and God will accept it. Contrition (sorrow for sin) isn’t necessary, just attrition (fear of judgment). The sacrament of penance isn’t required, as long as you love God above all else in your heart. “Love God? I hate him!” That was where such teaching drove Luther. After all, “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself ” was Jesus’ summary of the law. Happily, there was Johann von Staupitz, head of the German Augustinian Order and Luther’s mentor. “If it had not been for Dr. Staupitz, I should have sunk in hell,” Luther recalled. True to the order’s namesake, Staupitz directed the anxious monk outside himself to the wounds of Christ, to God’s grace in election, forgiveness, and the preservation of his people. It was a stroke of genius in 1508 when Staupitz sent Luther to teach the Bible at newly established Wittenberg University. As he lectured on the Psalms, Romans, and Galatians, however, he was as much the student as the professor. We mark October 31, 1517, as the beginning of the Reformation, but Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses say nothing about the justification of the ungodly. Luther found the traffic in indulgences to be scandalous in its misrepresentation of God as a banker who can be quite literally be bought off. More than that, God is remote, outsourcing the management of the “treasury of merits” to a church with unlimited power to set the terms for human destiny beyond the grave. Beginning 1

St. Augustine’s Monastery Erfurt, Germany

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with the first of his famous theses, Luther protested that the sale of indulgences threatened repentance with no mention of justification. You could reduce your purgatorial sentence in the morning and then stop by the whorehouse at night. In 1520, through the assistance of Philip Melanchthon, Luther came to clearly understand that God justifies the wicked by Christ’s “alien righteousness.” The only person who fulfilled the law completely, from the heart, was the incarnate Son, Jesus Christ. For the early Luther, however, the example of Jesus’ complete surrender to God’s righteousness was only more “law.” The righteousness of God condemned. It offered no relief to transgressors, no bending of the rules, no time off for good behavior. It was not that Luther’s teachers and the pope’s traveling salesmen like Tetzel were too legalistic. It was that they were antinomian: they set aside God’s law for their own vain and indeed villainous propitiations. They did not take God seriously. They kept changing the rules of the game in order to manage both God and the people, imagining that they made the path to justification easier. Luther, however, took the righteousness of God revealed in the law with utter seriousness. The righteousness of God condemns everyone without exception, because “no one is righteous, no not one” (Rom. 1:18–3:20). Then he discovered in Romans 3:21–31 Paul’s shift from the law to the gospel, from the righteousness of God to the righteousness from God. Sinners are declared righteous not because of some “legal fiction,” but by the imputation (crediting) of Christ’s fulfillment of the law to all who are united to him through faith alone. This justification is a gift bestowed, not a goal to be achieved. 3

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Our next stop on the Luther trail was Wartburg Castle, where a superb exhibit on the Reformation had attracted scores of tour buses.

Wartburg Castle Eisenach, Germany

In 1521, having presided over the Diet of Worms, Emperor Charles V decreed that the now-excommunicated Reformer was to be regarded as a heretic and hunted down as an outlaw. On his way back to Wittenberg from Worms, Luther was cleverly “abducted” by the elector of Saxony, Frederick III. Throughout the rest of that year, Wartburg was what Luther called “my Patmos,” where he translated the New Testament into German. In his absence, however, Wittenberg took a radical turn. Andreas von Karlstadt, his associate from the beginning, had come to reject the baptism of infants and encouraged popular insurrection against the secular authorities. Wittenberg was set on fire by violent spirits. Ransacking churches, Karlstadt appealed to the holy wars of the Old Testament and his own inspiration by the Spirit. For Luther and other Reformers, “enthusiasm” (literally, “God-within-ism”) is the nadir of idolatry. Locating authority within, as if the deepest self were a spark of divinity, renders the individual the source of the law and the gospel. “Adam was the

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first enthusiast,” Luther said, by turning away from the external word of God that judges and justifies. Wittenberg became a seedbed of radical Anabaptist sects, such as the Zwickau prophets, who claimed the imminent return of Christ to institute a millennial reign. It would be nothing less than a restoration of the golden age of the church from the book of Acts. Luther finally returned after pleas from the city council, and he immediately set about restoring order through the peaceful preaching of the word. 4

I will preach, but I will force no one; for faith must be voluntary. Take me as an example. I stood up against the Pope, indulgences, and all papists, but without violence or uproar. I only urged, preached, and declared God’s Word, nothing else. And yet while I was slumbering or drinking Wittenberg beer with Philip Melanchthon and Amsdorf, the Word inflicted more serious damage on popery than prince or emperor. I did nothing, the Word did everything. . . . Do you know what the Devil thinks when he sees men use violence to propagate the gospel? He sits with folded arms behind the fire of hell, and says with malignant looks and frightful grin: “Ah, how wise these madmen are to play my game! Let them go on; I shall reap the benefit. I delight in it.” But when he sees the Word running and contending alone on the battlefield, then he shudders and shakes for fear. The Word is almighty, and takes captive all hearts. 5

These radicals, however, were not interested in Luther’s evangelical message; they wanted to establish a Spirit-led commonwealth where the millennial reign of Christ would replace both church and state. The Reformation therefore was not only opposed by the Roman Church but also by radical Protestants. As John Calvin told Cardinal Sadoleto, “We are assailed by two sects: the Pope and the Anabaptists.” Both claimed an ongoing apostolic office, boasting in continuing revelations. “In this way, both separate the Word from the Spirit and bury the Word of God in order to make room for their falsehood.” The greatest of these falsehoods was the anathematizing of the gospel itself by a reliable group carefully selected by the pope. Meeting in 1546, the sixth session of the Council of Trent decreed the following: 6

If any one says that by faith alone the impious is justified . . . let him be anathema. CANON IX.

CANON XI . If any one says that men are justified, either by the sole impu-

tation of the justice of Christ, or by the sole remission of sins . . . let him be anathema. CANON XII. If any one says that justifying faith is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ’s sake; or, that this confidence alone is that whereby we are justified; let him be anathema.

Andreas von Karlstadt (1486– 1541) was one of the radical reformers Luther ended up having to oppose in Wittenburg

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CANON XV. If any one says that a man, who is born again and justified, is bound of faith to believe that he is assuredly in the number of the predestinate; let him be anathema. CANON XVI. If any one says that he will for certain, of an absolute and infallible certainty, have that great gift of perseverance unto the end, unless he have learned this by special revelation; let him be anathema.

If any one says that the justice received is not preserved and also increased before God through good works; but that the said works are merely the fruits and signs of Justification obtained, but not a cause of the increase thereof; let him be anathema.

CANON XXIV.

If any one says that, after the grace of Justification has been received, to every penitent sinner the guilt is remitted, and the debt of eternal punishment is blotted out in such wise, that there remains not any debt of temporal punishment to be discharged either in this world, or in the next in Purgatory, before the entrance to the kingdom of heaven can be opened (to him); let him be anathema.

CANON XXX.

A sixteenth-century map of the city of Trent, where the Council of Trent took place

CANON XXXII. If any one says that the good works of one that is justified are

in such manner the gifts of God, as that they are not also the good merits of him that is justified; or, that the said justified . . . does not truly merit increase of grace, eternal life, and the attainment of that eternal life, if so be, however, that he depart in grace, and also an increase of glory; let him be anathema. While “Lutheran” was a sectarian label coined by papal opponents, Luther insisted instead on the moniker “evangelical,” from the noun euangelion (gospel, “good news”). It was the recovery of the gospel that distinguished this cause from the works-righteousness and mystical “enthusiasm” of the pope on one side and the Anabaptists on the other. ***

Finally, we drove into Wittenberg, where a bronze Luther continues to preach in the center of the city square, facing the Castle Church. Packed with tourists, the plaza resembled a Renaissance fair with all sorts of food, drink, trinkets, and costumed musicians. Banners festooned the broad alleys proclaiming the five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation. Standing in Wittenberg on Reformation Day, I discerned no sign of the actual message that changed the world—until we joined a modest gathering of believers inside a hotel ballroom.

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In contrast with the mainline World Communion of Reformed Churches, the World Reformed Fellowship consists of church bodies committed to the inerrant Scriptures and to the creeds and confessions as subordinate standards. Here, there were no reporters or dramatic historical reenactments. Though slight in comparison with all the activity outside, representative leaders had been sent by their churches from places that would have been completely unknown to the Reformers. Two Anglican archbishops from Africa attended, representing more than the total of communicant members in the Church of England. The largest confessional Reformed denomination in the United States is the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), with 384,000 members. Sister churches abroad include the Presbyterian Church of Brazil (650,000), the Evangelical Reformed Churches of Christ in Nigeria (6 million), and South Korea, where Reformed and Presbyterian believers number around 10 million. Though located in the capital of the world’s most populous Muslim nation, the Evangelical Reformed Church in Indonesia has reached millions throughout the region with the gospel. Analogous figures could be provided for confessional Lutherans: for example, 100,000 in Kenya and the same number in Papua New Guinea. And even mainline denominations in the majority world are more orthodox today than the European, British, and American churches that spearheaded the modern missionary movement. Taking its stand on the authority of Scripture, salvation through Christ alone, and the teachings of the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Global Anglican Future Conference (CAFCON) represents about 35 million regular church attenders, mostly in the Global South, while 800,000 attend church on an average Sunday in the Church of England—the great majority of these attending evangelical parishes. As we looked around at one another’s faces, singing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” it was difficult to hold back tears of joy, even as we wept for the land of the Reformation and the declining light of the gospel across Europe and North America. ***

Evangelicals and the Evangel Today During the 1990s, I learned just how easily respected evangelical leaders could surrender the doctrine of justification. The project known as “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” (ECT) claimed agreement on the gospel regardless of differences over justification. In the face of growing secularism, so it was thought, Roman Catholics and evangelicals need to stand together. To be sure, I argued, wherever I could: on the Trinity, the dignity of all people created in God’s image, original sin, the need for Christ’s atonement, the return of Christ, and the resurrection of the dead. But to affirm that we agree on the gospel entails that justification solely by Christ’s imputed merits is not essential to the good news. Defending his signature of ECT, a good friend, mentor, and justly esteemed Reformed stalwart even called the imputation of Christ’s righteousness “the fine print.”

Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg in 1836

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According to the current Catholic Catechism, “justification is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man.” Justification is therefore regarded as a process of becoming actually and intrinsically righteous. The first justification occurs at baptism, which eradicates both the guilt and corruption of original sin. Due entirely to God’s grace, this initial justification infuses the habit (or principle) of grace into the recipient. By cooperating with this inherent grace, one merits an increase of grace and (one hopes) final justification. So while initial justification is by grace alone, perseverance and final justification depend also on the works of the believer, which God graciously accepts as meritorious. Since the progress of believers in holiness is never adequate to cancel the guilt of their actual sins, they must be refined in purgatory before being welcomed into heaven. Most recently, the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999), including representatives of the Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation, achieved a consensus sufficient to justify the announcement that the condemnations of the sixteenth century no longer apply to the partner in dialogue. Subsequently, the other mainline bodies—Reformed, Anglican, Methodist, and Baptist—joined their Lutheran counterpart in announcing reconciliation on the Reformation’s chief point of division. In my view, the Joint Declaration did not achieve the results many have claimed, and as Eberhard Jüngel judges, “The understanding that allegedly has been reached rests on ground which proves at places quite slippery.” On the Lutheran side, the confessional doctrine of justification was surrendered at crucial points, particularly the conflation of faith and love and therefore justification and sanctification. On the Roman Catholic side, soon after the statement was released, the Vatican followed up with disclaimers and even corrections of the Declaration, noting that it does not have any binding status. Yet these differences seem irrelevant when one considers that Protestants today default to the same religion of the human heart. On the five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, Pew Research conducted a poll that led to the conclusion that the Reformation is basically irrelevant today. A majority of Protestants in the United States (52 percent) say that both good deeds and faith in God are needed to get into heaven, a historically Catholic position. These Protestants also split on sola scriptura (Scripture alone): again, a slight majority (52 percent) say that Scripture is not the sole norm for faith and practice. Just 30 percent of all US Protestants affirm both sola fide and sola scriptura. Only 44 percent of US evangelicals affirm both. Evangelicalism has always been a mixed bag, but it had a fair number of informed leaders rooted in Reformation traditions. I have always appreciated the courageous labors for the gospel by the pioneers of the modern missionary movement. Most of these leaders in fact were energized by Calvinistic and Lutheran confessional convictions. In contrast, consider the following verdict: “The gospel preached and the doctrine of salvation taught in most evangelical pulpits and lecterns and believed in most evangelical pews is not classical Arminianism but 7

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semi-Pelagianism if not outright Pelagianism.” This is not an exaggerated Calvinist screed; this is the judgment of my friend and Arminian Baptist theologian Roger Olson. Sociologist Christian Smith has documented that the working religion of most Americans today is “moralistic, therapeutic deism.” The justification of the ungodly has never been an essential doctrine in American evangelicalism. The central emphasis is conversion—the transformation of individuals from sinner to saint and of sinful societies into virtuous ones. For the most part, doctrine gets in the way, which is why even evangelical theologians are often found reinventing doctrines we share with Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy, such as the Trinity. American Protestantism has been obsessed with defining itself against Rome, to the point of embracing an Anabaptist fanaticism that downplays even the formal ministry of word and sacrament. This nineteenthand early twentieth-century fear of “papalism” had more to do with politics and cultural hegemony of WASP (White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant) culture than of a concern to defend the chief article of the gospel. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s assessment at the end of his American tour, that the United States was “Protestantism without the Reformation,” aptly sums up American evangelicalism. So now here we are, after five centuries. Is the Reformation over? Clearly, Rome has not moved an inch toward the gospel. Instead, both Rome and Protestantism have moved farther away from it in the direction of semi-Pelagian, if not outright Pelagian, confidence in humanity to save itself. Peter Wehner’s recent article in The Atlantic bears the headline, “The Evangelical Church Is Breaking Apart.” In it, he writes, “For many Christians, their politics has become more of an identity marker than their faith” and quotes a Presbyterian pastor as saying, “We have forgotten the cross.” 16

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Conclusion I have spent a lot of space focusing on my own context of American evangelicalism because it’s where I come from. God has included American missions in his mighty work. Yet often in our effort to get the gospel out, we fail to get the gospel right. Pragmatism, consumerism, self-help moralism, and the prosperity gospel are among the human-centered messages and strategies we have developed and exported. The underlined part of the Great Commission is “Go!” As a nation of immigrants, we have learned to travel light. The strength of this is evident in the enormous spread of Christianity through technology and a vast parachurch network across denominational lines. Yet the weakness is evident in the shallowness and sometimes erroneous teaching that result in superficial and artificial conversions. Although accountability to creeds and confessions and to visible churches may slow us down, this enables us to bring God’s word faithfully to the nations. As the articles in this issue attest, the best evangelism and discipleship emerge not when we adopt a lowest-common-denominator approach but when, out of the depths of our own confessional traditions, we declare the same gospel.

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So, is the Reformation over? It all depends. Any parent of teenagers today knows that “justification” is more existentially real than ever. Many of the younger generations tend to find their identity in social media, where their “likes” and “followers” become a measure of their worth. It is not God’s verdict, but that of their peers that condemns or justifies. Also, according to the CDC, 1.38 million Americans attempted suicide in 2019 and 50,000 were successful. In addition, 841,000 died of drug overdose. It’s time to challenge the “theology of glory,” as Luther called it, with the “theology of the cross.” At least Rome and the Reformers shared a world in which heaven and hell hung in the balance, one in which Christ would arraign all before his bar. This common horizon made the Reformation debates relevant. Today, people still feel guilty but they don’t know why or what to do about it. We continue to find ways to “suppress the truth in unrighteousness”—even to the point of idolatry or even atheism—but is this not a base effort to evade an objective and therefore condemning evaluation of our life? Friedrich Nietzsche came closer than many preachers today with his character the “Ugliest Man” in Thus Spake Zarathustra. The God who beholds all, “men’s depths and dregs,” had even “crept into my dirtiest corners,” said this character. “On such a witness I would have revenge—or not live myself. The God who beheld everything, and also man: that God had to die! Man cannot endure it that such a witness should live.” But the price of this evasion is steep, even if only in existential terms. “Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself,” Sartre asserted, and bears “the entire responsibility for his existence squarely upon his own shoulders.” That is an astonishing doctrine. Is it any wonder that we would rather be accountable for this burden to ourselves rather than to an external authority who has the power— and the right—to judge us? Is not such secularized Pelagianism (as if the heresy itself is not already secularized enough) the incubator of so many of our anxieties? Robert J. Lifton, a psychiatrist and pioneer in brain research, observes that the source of many neuroses in society is a nagging sense of guilt without knowing its source. The anxiety is “a vague but persistent kind of self-condemnation related to the symbolic disharmonies I have described, a sense of having no outlet for his loyalties and no symbolic structure for his achievements.” I interpret this theologically as suggesting that there is no external law to measure oneself by or an external gospel through which one becomes rescripted in Christ. “Rather than being a feeling of evil or sinfulness,” he says, “it takes the form of a nagging sense of unworthiness all the more troublesome for its lack of clear origin.” Preachers who want to appeal to the felt needs of people today assume that they already know what they need: our job is simply to show that Jesus is the answer to their questions. Deep down, though, they know that superficial diagnoses will not suffice. We don’t even know the right questions until the law arraigns us before God’s bar. No longer pretending, giving excuses, or blaming others, we are called to account. The preacher’s job is to show people that their felt needs aren’t their real needs. It may be that the justification of the ungodly is not on everyone’s radar. But when has the question “How can I be saved?” ever been a common 20

“ The God who beheld everything, and also man: that God had to die! Man cannot endure it that such a witness should live.” —Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)

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question of the average person? Regardless of whether this was an urgent question for Jews of the Second Temple period (and it was), it was evidently provoked repeatedly by the preaching of Jesus and the apostles as they exposed human guilt, corruption, and death, pointing to Golgotha and the empty tomb as its solution. Jesus upbraided the religious specialists for refusing him because they “trusted in themselves that they were righteous” and consequently missed the whole point of their own scriptures. Evidently, the apostle Paul did not find a ready audience for his message either, reporting that most Jews found it “a stumbling block” and most Greeks found it simply “foolishness.” The greatest threat to the gospel came not from external forces but from within the churches themselves, as Paul’s stern warning to the Galatians made clear. Yet it is precisely in its foolishness that the gospel is “the power of God unto salvation for all who believe.” Let us never lose our confidence in that gospel. Let us never take it for granted, assuming it is something we already know. No better than anyone else, we can only echo Luther’s dying words: “We are all beggars. That is most certainly true.” Michael Horton is editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation and the J. Gresham Machen Professor of

Systematic Theology at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido.

Scott Hendrix richly develops this point in Martin Luther: Visionary Reformer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015). 2. Quoted in Roland Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1950), 53. 3. On Melanchthon’s role in this story, see R. S. Clark, “Iustitia Imputata Christi: Alien or Proper to Luther’s Doctrine of Justification?,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 70:3/4 (July/ Oct 2006), 269–310. 4. Luther, “Smalcald Articles” III.4-15, http://bookofconcord. org/smalcald.php. 5. Luther, Werke, Erlangen ed., 28, pp. 219, 260. 6. Calvin, “Reply by John Calvin to Cardinal Sadoleto’s Letter,” in Selected Works of John Calvin: Tracts and Letters, ed. Henry Beveridge and Jules Bonnet, 7 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983), 1:36. 7. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (New York: USCCB, 1995), 492, quoting the Council of Trent (1574): DS 1528. 8. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 482. 9. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 483. 10. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 486–87. 11. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 268. 12. Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church, Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 10–11. 13. Eberhard Jüngel, Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith, trans. Jeffrey F. Cayzer, 2nd ed. (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), xxxix. The chief critic of the Joint Declaration when it appeared, Jüngel (who has also been long engaged in ecumenical discussions) wrote this entire book as a way of clarifying the Lutheran doctrine. 14. Joint Declaration, 18, with the section titled “Justification as Forgiveness of Sins and Making Righteous” (my emphasis). In the act of justification, faith is defined as love (32). The document acknowledges (22) that it is still the Roman Catholic position that while concupiscence remains in believers, it is not properly called sin (hence, the denial of “simultaneously justified and sinful”). Further, “When Catholics affirm the ‘meritorious’ character of good works, they wish to say that, according to the biblical witness, a reward in heaven is promised to these works” (25). Whatever is said further to 1.

qualify this, nothing of traditional Tridentine theology has been changed. Thus, “The teaching of the Lutheran churches presented in this Declaration does not fall under the condemnations of the Council of Trent” (26), only because they are not the teachings that Trent condemned. In other words, the LWF essentially adopted the Roman Catholic position on these traditional differences. This is not to say that there are no impressive points of agreement in which to rejoice, but the Declaration takes the classic Roman Catholic side on the points that have been church-dividing. 15. See http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/ chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_01081998_ off-answer-catholic_en.html. Retrieved August 14, 2017. 16. Roger Olson, Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2009), 30. He has reiterated more recently, “I have agreed with my Calvinist friends (like Mike Horton) that American Christianity is by-and-large Semi-Pelagian,” https://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2011/02/ american-christianity-and-semi-pelagianism/. 17. Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). 18. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Protestantism without the Reformation,” in No Rusty Swords: Letters, Lectures and Notes, 1928–1936, ed. Edwin H. Robertson, trans. Edwin H. Robertson and John Bowden (London: Collins, 1965), 82–118. 19. Peter Wehner, “The Evangelical Church is Breaking Apart,” The Atlantic, October 24, 2021. 20. https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/deaths/index.html. 21. Friedrich Nietzsche, “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” in The Philosophy of Nietzsche, trans. Thomas Common (New York: Random House, n.d.), 207. 22. Walter Kaufman, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre (New York: Penguin Random House, 1975), 291. 23. Robert J. Lifton, The Protean Self: Human Resilience in an Age of Fragmentation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 101. 24. Robert J. Lifton, “The Protean Self,” in The Truth about the Truth: De-confusing and Re-constructing the Postmodern World, ed. Walter Truett Anderson (New York: Putnam, 1995), 133.

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Vol. 31, No. 2

IV.

Engage Understanding our time and place

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POEM

Guiding Light by Jim Stone

When angels come to comfort in the night— eternal constellations on display— the darkest time beholds a guiding light that those who grieve in solitude might imagine white wings wafting tears away. When angels come to comfort in the night redemption overcomes a pauper’s plight and redemption is an easy price to pay. The darkest time beholds a guiding light for falling angels fallen in full flight in search of that redemptive place to lay. When angels come to comfort in the night the faithful are enchanted with delight; in gratitude rejoice aloud to say, “The darkest time beholds a guiding light!” Once unenlightened, chastened by the sight, a solitary seeker falls to pray. When angels come to comfort in the night the darkest time beholds a guiding light.

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POEM

Imagine Believing by Jim Stone

I can imagine believing that I Will see you again in all of your ways, Will know the grace of God in which you died, Will feel angelic arms in which you lie; But cannot believe it, as doubt betrays— So I imagine. Believing that, I Trace my disbelief to lack of proof and try To recollect, again recount the ways To know the grace of God. The night you died And saw to heaven right before my eyes— An invitation worth the end of days! I can imagine believing that I Have seen in your ascendance to the sky The consequence that only faithful praise Can know. The grace of God in which you died— A revelation in the face of pride. With no redeeming character to play, I can imagine believing that I Will know that grace of God the day I die.

Book Reviews

A Companion to the Theology of John Webster edited by Michael Allen and R. David Nelson EERDMANS | 2021 | 366 PAGES (HARDCOVER) | $50.00

JOHN WEBSTER HAS BEEN CALLED “the theologian’s

theologian” for his incisive style and project of “theological theology,” which responds to the revelation of the Triune God in faithful speech and action. Theology in the hands of Webster is always a vital act, coram Deo, marked by astonishment and joy paired with intellectual precision. As Kevin Vanhoozer notes in the foreword, “When [theologians] are together en famille, they read Webster” (xiii). While Vanhoozer is knowingly exaggerating here, there is something to this statement. Over the past twenty years, there has been a growing sense in the Anglophone theological world that John Webster was not only doing some of the most interesting work, but that his path of theological theology seemed to be the way forward. Many eagerly awaited his projected five-volume systematic theology, which felt assured to be a monumental publication in dogmatics. His untimely passing in 2016 was mourned throughout the theological world, even by those who knew him only through his writings. It is a rare event and high honor for any theologian to be deemed significant enough to have a companion reader that lays out their career and scholarly contributions, even more so immediately after their death. This work, edited by Michael

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Allen and R. David Nelson, is not only in honor of Webster, but it is also the first sustained scholarly engagement with his work. A companion to Webster is particularly useful, given the form of his theological contributions. While Webster wrote several books (especially Holiness and Holy Scripture), his preferred genre was the theological essay. The contributors have successfully assembled the various threads from Webster’s corpus to weave a more complete tapestry of his theological project. This volume, which offers seventeen chapters with a foreword and epilogue, presents its readers with a thoroughgoing introduction to Webster’s life and thought. After opening with a brief academic biography, it is divided into two parts. The first discusses Webster’s theological development across his academic career, and the second expounds his understanding of and contribution to significant theological loci. The work also presents the most comprehensive and up-to-date bibliography of Webster’s corpus. The contributions come from some of the leading theologians who are attempting a revival of dogmatics for the twenty-first century. These include Michael Allen, Matthew Levering, Fred Sanders, Katherine Sonderegger, and many others. David Nelson’s epilogue is of particular interest. By looking at Webster’s original project proposal and indications in his later work, Nelson offers insights into the systematic theology that might have been had Webster lived. The project of theological theology is the unifying feature across these essays, as it was in Webster’s own thought over the past twenty years. Webster’s main thought was to center the doctrine of the Triune God as the ground for all knowledge of God himself, his acts, and his will. As Fred Sanders in his essay on Webster’s Trinitarianism writes, “All other doctrines orbit this doctrine, and it orbits none” (155). The various essays of this volume bring this theme out with reference to different theological loci. For instance, the doctrine of Scripture must be grounded in the Triune God’s perfections and presence

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with his people (ch. 7). The doctrine of salvation can only be seen clearly when grounded in the Triune life as the font of grace, which experiences no lack in itself or need of the creature but loves in freedom. As Ivor Davidson notes, for Webster, “the whole economy flows in free mercy from the nature of the triune God himself ” (231). The contributors spin out these ideas essay after essay, demonstrating the verve of Webster’s work to ground all theology in God as the source, object, and ultimate end of the intellectual and spiritual task of theology. As quoted repeatedly throughout this companion, Webster envisioned theology as all-inclusive and focused. In “What Makes Theology Theological?” in God without Measure: Working Papers in Christian Theology, vol. 1 (London: T&T Clark, 2018), Webster writes: Theology is a comprehensive science, a science of everything. But it is not a science of everything about everything, but rather a science of God and all other things under the aspect of createdness. (214–15) In a companion of this type, variability in the quality of entries is to be expected. But considered overall, this companion amply succeeds in laying out a treatment of the theology of Webster that will both inform those unfamiliar with him and aid in the scholarly approach to his theology. Part I on Webster’s theological development will likely be of main interest to the latter group, but this section offers the most comprehensive account of Webster’s academic trajectory available. The chapters treating Webster’s contribution on specific doctrines are well executed, if sometimes hindered by Webster’s paucity of specific interactions on a given topic. The chapter on salvation, for instance, does not discuss the nature of sin or the atonement, since Webster did not offer sustained treatments of either. The companion has two stand-out essays. The first by Fred Sanders on Webster’s view of the Trinity is indispensable in understanding the

heart of his theology. Sanders’s expertise in Trinitarian theology and clarity of writing facilitates an effective bringing together of Webster’s abundant commentary on the Trinity that is diffuse throughout his works. Katherine Sonderegger’s entry on Jesus Christ, however, shines above the rest, owing to the magisterial nature of the subject and the ambition of treatment. She not only gives an expert exposition of Webster’s Christology in Trinitarian perspective, but she also situates him in relation to modern theological trends. The essay argues for the power and freshness of Webster’s approach and suggests paths for future development. Also, her almost lyrical theological style functions well to bring out Webster’s ideas. As she summarizes, “Jesus Christ is the radiant self-communication of God” (219). John Webster’s theology was a gift to the church in his unpretentiousness and incisiveness to invoke a desire to know the Triune God and all things in relation to the Triune God. For those looking for an introduction to Webster’s theology and contribution, this companion is a sure and steady guide. As I am sure every contributor would say, however, don’t read this instead of Webster—read it only to read him better. There are certain figures whose full message and subtlety can be appreciated only through reading and rereading. Begin with Webster’s Holiness and Holy Scripture, and then let this companion guide you deeper into his work. In many ways, this volume is an encouragement to the reader not only to pick up Webster but to pick up where he left off—to develop a proper theological theology where he was prevented by mortality, and to popularize his insights for the sake of the church and to the glory of the God he served. K. J. Drake (PhD, Saint Louis University) is Sessional Assis-

tant Professor of History at Redeemer University in Ancaster, Ontario. He is the author of The Flesh of the Word: The extra Calvinisticum from Zwingli to Early Orthodoxy (Oxford University Press, 2021).

The Flesh of the Word: The extra Calvinisticum from Zwingli to Early Orthodoxy by K. J. Drake OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS | 2021 | 336 PAGES (HARDCOVER) | $99.00

WE LIVE IN AN AGE OF rapid technological advance-

ment. One could perhaps be forgiven for using the weary term “unprecedented” to describe it. The expanding abundance of easily accessible information about nearly everything has had a revolutionary impact on nearly everything, including the once crusted and stodgy field of historical theology. Armed with internet access and login credentials to a good academic library, today’s historical theologian need not fear a pandemic. Primary and secondary sources abound in digital form. It seems that just about every text from and about the past is accessible online. One result of this new academic world order is the proliferation of publications, not only about past theological minutiae but also about lesser-known theologians of the past. It sometimes seems like historical theology majors on mere trivia. The extra Calvinisticum—the doctrine that the incarnate Son of God is not limited to his human nature—once seemed like a piece of historical-theological minutiae. In the twentieth century, there was an approximately fifty-year stretch in which the topic garnered precisely one scholarly monograph and two academic articles. In the last fifteen years alone, by contrast, the extra Calvinisticum has been the subject of four book-length studies and about a dozen academic articles and essays. The latest of these books is K. J. Drake’s The Flesh of the Word, appearing in Oxford’s Studies in Historical Theology series. Drake’s work is the fruit of careful research into early modern christological debates, and also undoubtedly of the readily available digital sources related to those debates. Whether the extra Calvinisticum is really a point of theological minutiae,

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however, gets to the heart of Drake’s concern in this book. Previous studies of the extra generally fall into one of two groups: those that mine Calvin’s articulation and use of the doctrine, and those that survey the breadth of the Christian tradition for appearances of it. In contrast to both approaches, Drake drills down into sources from the early Reformation era—especially the works of Ulrich Zwingli—and examines the doctrine as a flash point in christological disputes between the Reformed and the Lutherans. Drake contends that the extra Calvinisticum was not a point of mere theological minutiae, nor even a sideline issue in the Reformed and Lutheran christological debates of the sixteenth century, but rather that “it was the crux of both the eucharistic debate and christological debates” between these traditions (11). In this endeavor, Zwingli is Drake’s touchstone, which serves to reorient the historical discussion away from Calvin and to make sure the “Calvin against the Calvinists” historiography of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries remains mostly dead. As Drake affirms, scholars have long noted that the doctrine known by the unusual name extra Calvinisticum (the “Calvinistic extra” or “Calvinistic addition”) originally was neither Calvinist nor an addition. The doctrine is catholic, and its basic form is clearly articulated in the works of patristic, medieval, and Reformation theologians— Lutherans excepted. The basic form of the doctrine is that “the human nature of Christ does not confine the divine nature nor expand to its metaphysical dimensions” (203). Put positively, the person of Christ exists beyond (extra) his human nature even while incarnate and even after his ascension. As the fifth-century theologian Cyril of Alexandria vividly remarked in a letter to Nestorius, The flesh [of the Word] was not changed into the nature of Godhead and . . . neither was the inexpressible nature of God the Word convert-

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ed into the nature of flesh. . . . [E]ven when a baby seen in swaddling clothes at the bosom of the Virgin who bore him, he still filled the whole creation as God. (Letter 17, Wickham ed.) Definitions are important in any argument, and this is especially the case in Drake’s argument that the extra was central to the sixteenth-century eucharistic and christological debates. He notes that the basic form of the doctrine, as articulated above and as found in patristic and medieval sources, “seems to stand on its own without further explication” (203). That is, the basic doctrine is not bound to the Reformation and post-Reformation christological conflicts. Drake’s argument about the centrality of the extra, however, is based on an expanded definition, which he draws from Calvin’s Institutes and the Heidelberg Catechism, and which includes a Reformed notion of the communicatio idiomatum—namely, that the properties of the divine and human natures in Christ are attributed to Christ’s person and not transferred between the natures (14–16). We should be quick to note that there is nothing wrong per se with using this expanded definition of the extra, particularly since Drake develops it from the sixteenth-century sources themselves. And yet such an expansive definition—with robust, built-in accounts of the hypostatic union and the communicatio idiomatum—perhaps contributes to an equally expansive account of the extra’s place in the interconfessional debates. To put it another way, if the doctrine of the extra Calvinisticum is as broad as the traditional definition of the hypostatic union, then the extra shows up almost every time Christology is discussed. To be clear, Drake does not see the extra everywhere, but there are moments when phrases like “Chalcedonian logic” and “the logic of the extra” seem to be synonymous (240, 277, 278) and where treatments of the communicatio idiomatum and the ascension in, for example, Peter Martyr Vermigli, are considered to be expressions of the doctrine of the extra when instead one might say

that Vermigli is simply expounding the doctrine of incarnation. Such definitional challenges are not unique to Drake’s work. They are, in fact, endemic to all studies of the extra Calvinisticum, including my own. Quibbles over definitions aside, Drake should be commended for two points in particular: his detailed exposition of sources in sixteenthcentury Christology, and his repeated emphasis that the Reformed defense of the extra served to defend the true humanity of Christ and thus the gospel itself. Regarding the first point, arguably the most significant contribution of Drake’s study is the attention he gives to Zwingli, whom Drake credits with being “the first theologian in the Reformation to articulate the extra Calvinisticum” (19). Hence, Drake reorients the historical discussion of the extra toward Zwingli as a Reformed theologian in his own right and as the fountainhead of Reformed christological emphases and polemics. The exposition of Zwingli’s Christology also serves the second point: the Reformed saw the extra as protecting the gospel by protecting the doctrine of Christ’s true humanity, specifically against Lutheran claims that the hypostatic union resulted in the omnipresence, multivolipresence, or ubiquity of Christ’s body. Thus Drake concludes, “The deepest theological motivation of the extra is soteriological since it secures the distinctive qualities of both the human and the divine natures of Christ, which Zwingli understands as necessary for human salvation” (38). In effect, the extra is an expression of the ancient christological axiom that what Christ has not assumed is not healed. If Christ’s human nature partakes of the divine attribute of omnipresence, it ceases to be a true human nature like ours, and hence our human nature, which is persistently localized in one place, is not saved in the incarnation. To give the Lutherans their due, Drake treats the reader to a thorough review of the original clash between Luther himself and the early Reformed theologians at the Marburg Colloquy of 1529. His review of the colloquy highlights one

thing we already knew quite well: Luther was a man not easily persuaded to change his mind. Arising from Marburg is the picture of an exasperated Zwingli, who probably felt like banging his head on the table where Luther scrawled Hoc est corpus meum (“This is my body”), his central prooftext for ubiquity. More significant, however, is Drake’s conclusion that Marburg revealed divergent understandings of the use of reason, the interpretation of Scripture, and divine power between these two main streams of Protestant thought. The story really doesn’t change much in the decades after Marburg, as Drake demonstrates through his exploration of the more extensive and technical arguments of Vermigli and the unsung French Reformed theologian Antoine de Chandieu. While Vermigli has received a lot of attention in historical theology in recent decades, Chandieu still remains in the shadows. Drake’s exposition of Chandieu’s 1585 treatise on the true human nature of Christ brings the Reformed arguments for the extra into the era of early orthodoxy, and it fills out the historical picture of the extra, which, as Drake puts it, must be seen as developing in “dialectical relationship” with the Lutheran doctrine of ubiquity (203). Drake concludes his study by noting a few ways the Reformation controversy spilled into areas beyond Christology and eucharistic doctrine, and he suggests some ways the extra might lead us to deeper theological reflection in our day. In this regard, the theological import of Christ’s ascension deserves mention as one area that has suffered relative neglect in contemporary theology. As Drake notes, the extra might be a spur to consider Christ’s ascension in more depth (288). In the end, The Flesh of the Word stands as the most significant study of the early modern Reformed account and development of the extra Calvinisticum. Drake succeeds in demonstrating that the extra is “not a piece of theological trivia” (285). Rather, it is a doctrine deserving of the detailed attention it has received in both the Reformation era and our own.

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Andrew M. McGinnis (PhD, Calvin Theological Seminary)

is a research fellow at the Junius Institute for Digital Reformation Research and the author of The Son of God beyond the Flesh: A Historical and Theological Study of the extra Calvinisticum (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014).

From Christ to Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the Church in Less Than a Century by James R. Edwards BAKER ACADEMIC | 2021 | 320 PAGES (PAPERBACK) | $27.99

A STRANGELY DISJOINTED PIC TURE emerges for those studying the earliest forms of Christianity. On the one hand, we have the New Testament descriptions of the ministry of Jesus and his earliest followers, portraying “the Way” as largely composed of rural itinerant Jews. On the other hand, less than a century later, the writings collectively known as the Apostolic Fathers describe a body of primarily urban Gentiles who called themselves Christians throughout the Roman world. Yet both movements claimed to follow Jesus of Nazareth while standing as heirs of his message. How was such a transformation of the Jesus movement possible? And why did the scope and form of those following Jesus change so much in such a short time? These are the questions James R. Edwards addresses in From Christ to Christianity. Standing in the oft-mentioned but rarely addressed gap between New Testament studies and church history, Edwards argues that while the content of the Jesus movement stayed the same, during the first one hundred years after Jesus, the form of his church adapted in order to reach the wider Greco-Roman culture of the era. While the christological center of Jesus’ person and ministry kept the church’s message

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focused on the news of salvation in Christ, the church’s missional emphasis transformed the form and approach of the movement, resulting in what Edwards calls the “most creative era in the entire history of Christianity” (xxvi). Thus the church was able to adapt and extend into the Gentile world through incorporation and institutionalization at a time when it was largely powerless, disparate, and lacking central organization. In short, the seemingly radical changes to the form of Christianity during this period flowed from a desire to organize the witness of the church in ways that would further the mission of the church. To trace this transformation, Edwards devotes chapters to a dozen of the most influential changes during the first Christian century, with each chapter tracing the transition from New Testament standards to the situation at the time of the Apostolic Fathers. Some subjects will be familiar to anyone familiar with the character of early Christianity, such as the spread of the movement from Jerusalem, the transition from synagogue to church, and the “parting of the ways” between Judaism and Christianity. Yet Edwards also examines other sometimes neglected subjects, such as the changes from communication in Hebrew to Greek, from Apostolic to Episcopal leadership, from Sabbath to Sunday, and from scroll to codex. Overall, Edwards paints an informed picture of this era that simultaneously frames the scope of the transformation of Christianity, while also offering pushback on dichotomous thinking that creates too clean a picture of these changes. More than just a treatment of a particular aspect of early Christian development, this volume takes an overarching approach and attempts to trace every major transformation of this period. Because of this, no one issue is exhaustingly examined. Such forays into these issues advances Edwards’s thesis but may leave some readers desirous of deeper engagement. Such limits are, of course, inevitable components of historical inquiry. Edwards’s greatest strength resides in how he sets the table and describes the key events

and characters of this transformative period. His command of relevant scholarship for each of the subdisciplines discussed puts this volume in meaningful conversation with other voices engaging this period. One downside to this approach, however, is that some chapters merely whet the appetite or raise more questions about the development being traced. For this reason, this volume is perhaps best suited for those with some prior understanding of New Testament literature and the writings of the Apostolic Fathers. Aside from the recurring concept of missional adaption to the culture, Edwards remains less clear at times on why adaptive changes occurred within the Jesus movement. An apologetic for a change without corruption model is at work throughout this volume, which is a welcome variation from classic Protestant approaches to early church history. However, it is not immediately evident why Edwards comes to this conclusion, apart from his overarching thesis of Christian adaption without captivation to cultural mores. Furthermore, as is often the case with those treating this historical period, Edwards at times finds himself relying heavily on nonperiod descriptions. Particularly in certain early chapters, there is heavy reliance on historically later figures such Irenaeus, Origen, and Eusebius. This is not necessarily a problem so much as a reflection of some historiographical decisions and the reality that any historical reconstruction of these early years must work with what limited material exists. That being so, there sometimes seems to be less a case from the Apostolic Fathers as a case about the era of the Apostolic Fathers. In later chapters, however, any concerns with this approach recede as the testimony of the Apostolic Fathers moves front and center. Finally, Edwards offers only brief remarks on the significance of this study for today. Not every historical study lends itself to practical application, nor should it. Still, the final pages of this book speak of the parallels between the earliest church and the church of today, yet without any

sort of explication of what that might mean for today’s church. One is left wondering what sort of meaning we might make of this period of church history. At the very least, this seemed an appropriate spot to advance the call for continued investigations into what the Apostolic Fathers reveal about this critical period. Some reevaluation of the historiographical models oft used to study this period might have been useful, as Edwards adopts a model of creative adaptation that stands as a helpful third way between the sometimes sloppy models of corruption and natural development. Overall, any concerns with Edwards’s work are far outweighed by the value that his scholarship and cumulative approach bring to those studying earliest Christianity. This contribution to the conversation around the history of the church will be a helpful read for anyone interested in the early development of theology and practice, as well as those more generally interested in the contributions of the Apostolic Fathers. The transition from the Jesus movement to the church may be confusing and disjointed, but From Christ to Christianity brings some welcome clarity and cohesion to this fascinating time in the history of the faith. Jacob J. Prahlow is lead pastor of Arise Church in Fenton,

Missouri. He holds a MATS in the New Testament and Early Christianity from Saint Louis University.

Union with Christ: Salvation as Participation by Jordan Cooper JUST AND SINNER PUBLICATIONS | 2021 | 241 PAGES (PAPERBACK) | $24.00

WITH HIS UNION WITH CHRIST , Jordan Cooper adds a

second publication to his “Contemporary Protestant Scholastic Theology” series. This publication

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is projected to be volume six in the overall series, by which Cooper is attempting to rejuvenate seventeenth-century Lutheran Scholasticism, a high point of Lutheran orthodoxy and piety as he sees it. But more broadly, Cooper argues for Classical Protestantism: its use of traditional philosophical categories, its thoroughgoing metaphysical realism, its catholicity, and its practice. Here one finds similarities to other Protestant ressourcement (“return to the sources”) efforts in recent years, say, in Michael Allen and Scott Swain’s Reformed Catholicity or in the renewed interest in Mercersburg Theology. This Classical Protestant ethos permeates Cooper’s volume on union with Christ. Cooper upholds forensic justification and imputed righteousness, while arguing that “Christ’s union with humanity is not only that of federal headship... but an ontological reality which impacts all of humanity” (90). Though focusing primarily on the Lutheran tradition of which he is a part, Cooper interacts with key Reformed perspectives and some Catholic and Orthodox theologians, noting areas of alignment and departure on issues related to union with Christ. The book begins with a literature review, most pointedly dealing with developments in Lutheran scholarship connected to union with Christ. Significant attention is given to Tuomo Mannermaa and the Finnish school, which in Cooper’s view “revitalized an essential theme in Christian theology which has been unfortunately neglected by many in the contemporary church.” Yet Cooper also notes how “Mannermaa’s view results in a conflation of justification and union with Christ, which are certainly related concepts, but distinct” (47). He then provides a philosophical review of sorts, arguing that “the loss of a robust concept of union with Christ is largely due to shifts in philosophy” (90). After a discussion of the perennial question of realism and nominalism (90–98), Cooper falls decidedly on the realist side of this debate, arguing that:

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Christ is not simply linguistically related to other people, nor is his connection with other persons merely conceptual. It is an objective, universal, and ontological connection. It is historically with the loss of realism that the incarnation is no longer a central saving event for Protestant thought. (97) For Cooper, while aspects of relational or linguistic ontology can provide insights regarding the nature of God’s performative word that does what it says, and the nature of man as an “I-in-relation,” he finds such views incomplete. Cooper then unpacks three aspects of union with Christ that he finds in Lutheran orthodoxy: the objective union, formal union, and mystical union—all of which bump up against a variety of ongoing contentious issues. He maintains that the redemptive-historical reality of the incarnation creates an objective union between Christ and humanity. For the objective union of Christ with humanity to be applied personally, “one must first be united to Christ in faith,” which Cooper identifies as the formal union of faith (223). This necessitates his engagement with a variety of sources on the relationship between union, faith, and justification, another area hotly debated. Cooper argues that: Justification does not occur initially to the individual with faith; instead, the verdict of justification was placed upon Jesus at his resurrection. It is through faith that one is formally united to him, and thus to justification, resulting in objective justification being subjectively appropriated by the believer. (165–66) Third, Cooper contends for a mystical union, as he explains: “Through faith, the believer is justified and also participates in the divine nature” such that “this union is real, spiritual, and mystical.” He then enters fraught territory, incorporating language usually used in trinitarian discourse:

It involves an interpenetration of essences through a perichoretic relationship between the triune God and the human subject . . . wherein there is no conflation of natures with one another, though the divine nature restores and renovates the human person. (217) For anyone looking to dig deeper into union with Christ, Cooper’s book deserves consideration as part of that investigation as he makes a case that “the forensic nature of justification as well as the participatory reality of union with Christ . . . is most consistent with Scripture” (222). Cooper’s style is eminently readable and not overly polemical—a true gift indeed. He comfortably moves from philosophy to theology, from Reformed to Lutheran sources, from Eastern to Western Christendom. In Union with Christ, readers from a variety of denominations will find much that is thought-provoking and devotional. Cooper’s synthesis of the extra nos reality of forensic justification with the intra nos reality of the unio mystica is encapsulated in his evaluation of the Finnish school: [The] problem in the Finnish proposal on union is in its identification between Luther’s idea of justification and that of union with Christ. . . . Such a conflation of these two soteric realities is not necessary, for when the great exchange is properly understood, the forensic nature of justification as explained by the Formula of Concord and a real-ontic union with Christ are both confessed. This unified soteric approach brings together the centrality of forensic justification with Mannermaa’s emphasis on an intimate and mystical union between the believer and Christ, which results in ontological transformation. (143) Such talk of “ontological transformation” might make descendants of the Reformation nervous, but Cooper’s case for this being part of the historic church’s heritage merits further thought.

Such a position also offers a rich sacramental element to life that is missing in much of modern Protestantism. One of the challenges in a book such as this is the attempt to straddle the academic-popular line. Periodically, further argumentation using additional key primary and secondary sources would have been helpful; too much is assumed at points. For instance, when Cooper uses perichoresis to describe the relationship between the Trinity and human nature, he drops a bombshell but leaves much to sort out. Similarly, some consequential arguments seem to hinge on a few quotes from one author. For example, is Gregory of Nazianzus’s statement that the “unassumed is the unhealed” as clear as Cooper suggests regarding Christ and a fallen nature? And then, using T. F. Torrance as a main source to validate the non-assumptus will give some readers pause. These quibbles aside, the great mystery of the incarnation and of our union with Christ in his life, death, and resurrection will give energy and sustenance to the Christian life until its final fulfillment in the eschaton. This is not some-

March/April 2022

thing just in our heads or in our hearts. It is real— objectively in the historic Christ-event, and subjectively made ours through the spoken and sacramental mysteries of word and water, bread and wine. Cooper’s work helps this reality sink in, and his final words are apt: A fully formed Reformational spirituality is not defined solely by extrinsic relations between God and humanity in the legal act of justification, but it also includes the sharing of the believer in the divine nature, which leads to the formation of character and intimacy with God, leading to eternal communion with him. (232–33) Joshua Pauling teaches high school history and was educat-

ed at Messiah College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Winthrop University. In addition to Modern Reformation, Josh has written for Areo, Front Porch Republic, Mere Orthodoxy, Public Discourse, Quillette, Salvo, and The Imaginative Conservative. He is also head elder at All Saints Lutheran Church (LCMS) in Charlotte, North Carolina.

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March/April 2022

Fellowship for the Furtherance of the Gospel by Michael Horton

for American Protestantism was put forward based on an “evangelical creed.” In his essay “In Behalf of Evangelical Religion,” Princeton theologian B. B. Warfield observed that the new confession being proposed “contains nothing which is not believed by Evangelicals,” and yet “nothing which is not believed... by the adherents of the Church of Rome, for example. There is nothing about justification by faith in this creed.” But then again, he observed, there is nothing in the statement about the Trinity, the deity of Christ and the Holy Spirit, the atonement, or sin and grace. I N 1 9 2 0, A “ P L A N O F U N I O N ”

Is this the kind of creed which twentiethcentury Presbyterianism will find sufficient as a basis for co-operation in evangelistic activities? Then it can get along in its evangelistic activities without the gospel. For it is precisely the gospel that this creed neglects altogether. Fellowship is a good word and a great duty. But our fellowship, according to Paul, must be in “the furtherance of the gospel.” What in Warfield’s day was true of the attempts at uniting of the majority of mainline Protestants is in our day true of evangelicalism. The National Association of Evangelicals is united today by a statement of faith that affirms nothing that is distinctively evangelical (see www.nae .net/statement-of-faith). Although there are two points on the necessity of the Holy Spirit’s work

in regeneration and sanctification (affirmed also by Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions), no mention is made of justification. Even where it agrees with the catholic consensus churches of the Reformation, it is superficial and inadequate in comparison with the ecumenical creeds. None of this means that ecumenism is at an impasse. On the contrary, the honest recognition of remaining differences is the starting point for genuine dialogue. Ironically, at the very time that some evangelicals are disregarding central Reformation distinctives for a “let’s all get along” kind of ecumenism, many in the confessional Lutheran and Reformed traditions are revitalizing interest in being catholic (in the ecumenical, not Roman, sense), while also being more alert to any threat to central Reformation emphases. Much of what has passed for ecumenism in evangelicalism over the past fifty years has been borne on the wings of neglect. We are now seeing the results of this neglect. On the Christian Left, moral, social, and political action, not the proclamation of Christ’s alien righteousness, seems now to be the church’s mission. Yet the same emphasis is found on the so-called Christian Right, with Müntzer-like insurrectionists storming the US Capitol carrying crosses and Bible verses taken out of context. Apart from the specific policy prescriptions, liberals and conservatives in the United States share the common legacy of Bonhoeffer’s assessment of “Protestantism without the Reformation.” May God grant a modern reformation. Michael Horton is editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation

and the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido.

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Articles inside

BACK PAGE

BOOK REVIEWS

ESSAY | Anglicans and the Gospel

POEM | Safer | by Meaghan Cronin

REFORMATION OUTTAKES | Luther’s Marginal Thoughts on Melanchthon | by Zachary Purvis

POEM | Imagine Believing | by Jim Stone

FROM THE EDITOR

ESSAY | What Is the Gospel? A Baptist

ESSAY | Bad News and Good News: The Gospel According to Luther | by Robert Kolb

REFORMATION RESOURCES | “The Four