the-blue-note-january-february-2005

JAZZY SPIRITUALITY ❘ BONO SINGS THE BLUES ❘ TRAGEDY VS. NIHILISM

MODERN REFORMATION THE BLUE NOTE: CAN YOUR FAITH FACE THE MUSIC?

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14, NUMBER 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2005, $6.00

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THE BLUE NOTE: CAN YOUR FAITH FACE THE MUSIC?

18 Singing the Blues with Jesus As people who possess eternal riches in Christ, we are often exhorted to live with contentment, a cheerful heart and a contagious smile. But when tragedy strikes, how are we to cope?

In the Apostle John’s account of Lazarus’ death, we learn that Jesus was not afraid to grieve the loss of a friend.

Scripture is clear: Jesus wept. Why does the gospel give us the permission to feel pain?

by Michael Horton Plus: Memento Morte: Remember Death

26 An Example of Suffering and Endurance The Book of Job is known for its theme of suffering. Contrary to expectation, Job’s upright standing before God as patriarch and priest did not immunize him from pain. God did not immediately remove his pain. The author teaches us to see Job not only as an example of suffering believer, but also as an example of a persevering saint.

by Hywel Jones

31 Ain’t It Hard? Suffering and Hope in the Blues Like many of the Psalms, blues music may seem little more than a poetic expression of despair.

However, there is hope expressed in its realistic, tell-it-like-it-is lyrics. The author offers fresh connections between the blues and Scripture, leaving us with a new appreciation for both.

by William Edgar Plus: Bono, the Bible, and the Blues COVER PHOTO B Y BRAND X PICTURES/GETTY IMAGES

In This Issue page 2 | Letters page 3 | Between the Times page 7 | Speaking of page 11 Preaching from the Choir page 12 | Council Counsel page 14 | Ex Auditu page 15 We Confess page 38 | Reviews page 39 | Always Reforming page 44

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MODERN REFORMATION Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton Managing Editor Eric Landry

Happy Pills

I

’m just a hair’s breadth away from clinical depression. At least, that’s what I learned last

night while watching the commercials on television. If I had a bad thought, any sense

of sadness, the desire to be by myself, or the need to withdraw from activities I usually enjoy

I can call a toll-free number or visit a website or ask my doctor for more information on medication to bring me back to my normal funloving self. It would all be slightly humorous if it weren’t for the fact that each of us knows someone who suffers from a real mental health disorder and these ads come close to trivializing the pain that they feel every day. Madison Avenue is tapping into a very modern sensibility: suffering is bad and must be avoided at all costs. Previous generations, while being far from masochistic, did at least recognize that in this life there would be sorrow and only fools tried to live otherwise.

What is true for society, generally, is also true for the church. The Dutch Reformed liturgy for the baptism of children has included the phrase, “this life, which is nothing but a constant death” since the sixteenth century. But such a sentiment would be rare at most baptisms (infant or otherwise) in our churches today. Is there room in contemporary Christian circles to talk about suffering and sadness? Or are we creating a church culture that has no time or patience for tears? Perhaps the question shouldn’t be, “can your faith face the music?” but “does your faith ever face the music?”

Reformed theologian and editor-in-chief Michael Horton takes us first to the grave of

Next Issues: March/April: Evangelism May/June: In Search of Fathers July/August: Loving Life: Liberty Without License September/October: Does Jesus Like NASCAR? November/December: First Aid for Burnout

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Lazarus, Jesus’ friend, and reminds us of the tears God shed in the face of Lazarus’s death.

Jesus turned his grief into resurrection glory so that our own grief doesn’t lapse into despair. The daily suffering that burdens many loved ones leads some to recall the “patience of Job,” but Presbyterian minister and professor Hywel Jones tells us that Job was far more than an example of patience under duress. Job was also an example of a persevering saint, whom God upheld through the crushing trials in his life. The Bible’s stories of suffering and loss are the raw materials for that uniquely American art form: the Blues. Presbyterian theologian and musician William Edgar traces the development of the Blues both historically and lyrically as the songs move from suffering to hope, from Saturday night to Sunday morning. Also in this issue is a Free Space sidebar from U2’s Bono on the Psalms, highlights from the Book of Common Prayer, and a chart detailing the difference between tragedy and nihilism.

With the New Year we begin our fourteenth year of publication and we have redoubled our efforts to address your important, everyday questions about God, this world, and your life in it. We’re eager to know how the magazine is meeting that goal, so we’ve included a survey in this issue for your feedback. Feel free to send it back to us by mail or fill it out online. We value your input. And, as always, feel free to contact us at info@modernreformation.org with any questions, concerns, or ideas.

Department Editors Brian Lee, Ex Auditu, Reviews Shane Rosenthal, Between the Times William Edgar, Preaching From the Choir Staff ❘ Editors Ann Henderson Hart, Staff Writer Alyson S. Platt, Copy Editor Lori A. Cook, Layout and Design Celeste McGhee, Proofreader Brenda Choo, Production Assistant Contributing Scholars David Anderson Charles P. Arand S. M. Baugh Gerald Bray Jerry Bridges D. A. Carson R. Scott Clark Marva Dawn Mark Dever J. Ligon Duncan Richard Gaffin W. Robert Godfrey T. David Gordon Donald A. Hagner John D. Hannah Gillis Harp D. G. Hart Paul Helm C. E. Hill Hywel R. Jones Ken Jones Peter Jones Richard Lints Korey Maas Mickey L. Mattox Donald G. Matzat John Muether John Nunes John Piper J. A. O Preus Paul Raabe Kim Riddlebarger Rod Rosenbladt Philip G. Ryken R. C. Sproul Rachel Stahle A. Craig Troxel David VanDrunen Gene E. Veith William Willimon Paul F. M. Zahl Modern Reformation © 2004 All rights reserved.

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their own responsibility of wise and scripturally driven discernment.

Harry Pinkall Hamburg, Germany

As a European who closely watches the campaign for the presidential elections in the United States I am sometimes stunned of how much American evangelicals take it for granted that a good Christian’s only choice can be to vote Republican. My amazement might have to do with the cultural difference in understanding certain labels, e.g. while a “liberal” politician in the US generally may stand for more government the opposite is true in Germany. For Europeans it is hard to find fair and balanced comments about the President and the candidate; way too often the political camp of a commentator predestines the direction of his output and the general picture you get is one of mutual scorn and even hatred on the sides of the respective supporters. Yet once again I was pleasantly surprised by the matter-of-factness which the writers of MR used to get some scriptural truths straight (September/October 2004, “The Christian Voter’s Guide”). It’s comforting for me to see that not everybody joins the ideologistic wailing and gnashing of teeth, but that there are Christians that are bold enough, intelligent enough, sensitive enough, and, most of all, spiritually thinking enough to not join the choir of those who think and declare it’s a sin to vote for the “wrong” man but instead remind the readers of

Never before have I so happily received a Christian’s voter guide than when I received the latest issue of MR (September/October 2004, “The Christian Voter’s Guide”). Quite a stimulating departure it was from the Biblical Scorecard I had just received through e-mail, in which I learned that not only is John Kerry an abortion-having, gay-marrying apostate, but that he also hates Mel Gibson. Yes, Mel Gibson. Sadly, my synopsis is only slightly less fantastic than the quality and veracity of information that was offered on that scorecard. So thank you, MR, for your most thoughtful and biblically-based analysis of the upcoming election and the world in which we live. By no means will I ever again have to consider my vote for president based upon the candidates’ opinion of the guy who was in Lethal Weapon. Snarky commentary aside, I thank the Lord our God for your publication and affiliated radio program, White Horse Inn. May the Lord bless and sustain your efforts!

Andrea Reyes Los Angeles, CA

As a present day Anabaptist, I felt a need to respond to “Ministers of God for Our Good: God’s Gift of Civil Government” by David VanDrunen (September/October 2004, “The Christian Voter’s Guide”). It was an inaccurate portrayal of early (sixteenth century) Anabaptists. Contrary to his description, the Anabaptist sect was not made up of anti-government fanatics and anarchists. In fact, what VanDrunen says about the early Christians is also true of the Anabaptists. The Anabaptists were also a persecuted minority, who nevertheless exemplified respect for and obedience to civil authority, as long as civil mandates did not contradict New Testament teaching. There is a

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notable exception. Unfortunately, this exception seems to be the only Anabaptist history Dr. VanDrunen is aware of. The exception is the “Munster Rebellion,” in which a group of Anabaptists usurped control of the city of Munster and forcefully defended it. This lasted for about one year, after which the city fell to the regional bishop’s army, and so ended the “Munster Rebellion.” Far from being typical of the Anabaptists, this was an extreme aberration and very disheartening to Anabaptists in general. For a fair and informed summary of sixteenth century Anabaptist belief, I recommend “Radical Discipleship,” a chapter in Bruce Shelley’s Church History in Plain Language.

James Swartz Harrisonburg, VA

David VanDrunen responds: Thank you to Mr. Swartz for his comments. He is certainly correct that not all Anabaptists were anti-government fanatics and anarchists. My comments about the Anabaptists were incidental and not intended as a comprehensive description of them. My main point was to highlight that Reformers such as Calvin often set forth their own views over against those of the Anabaptists, the more radical of whom they certainly had in mind.

Such Anabaptists provided a useful contrast to their own high view of law and order.

In his article, “Can a Christian Be a Yankee’s Fan?” (September/October 2004, “The Christian Voter’s Guide”), Neil MacBride states, “Because neither party has a corner on the truth, it’s as unwise for Republicans to seek God’s stamp of approval for their pet issues (e.g. abortion, gay marriage, school prayer) as it is for the Democrats to do so for theirs (e.g. civil rights, social welfare, economic justice).” I think “God’s stamp of approval” (or disapproval as the case may be) comes from his Word and God’s position is clear regarding the murdering of babies and homosexuality. While these may be “pet” issues they most certainly are not “petty” issues. In the past, Wilberforce, et al, saw the injustice of slavery carrying “the stamp of God’s (dis)approval” and made it a pet issue to right a wrong under the current Democrat pet issue of civil (human) rights.

We can disagree on the means that will bring about the end of abortion or slavery for instance, but as Francis Shaeffer said, God is there and he is not silent even on issues that are labeled pet politics.

Randy Thompson Colorado Springs, CO

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Neil MacBride’s apologetic for the Democrats is illogical (“Can a Christian be a Yankees Fan?” in September/October 2004, “The Christian Voter’s Guide”). A Christian is neither a Democrat or a Republican. A Christian is someone who has been born again and is in the process of sanctification (becoming “Christ-like”). That is not a political orientation, but a spiritual orientation. MacBride claims to be a “Reformed, confessional Evangelical” and a Democrat. That is a label that has no meaning unless the person also provides a definition of the label and states exactly what he believes regarding Scripture, Christ, grace, faith, justification, etc. Only then is one able to evaluate the individual’s claim. Does he abide by 1 Corinthians 10:31 and do everything in his position with the Senate Subcommittee in line with this passage of Scripture and accept the consequences of proclaiming Christ and his glory as he works in the “temporal” (state)? Or as one works on government policies is this outside the “all” of 1 Corinthians 10:31? MacBride also uses the “red herring” of asking what position would Jesus take on the policy issues of welfare reform, global warming, or Third World debt relief.

These are issues which are not clearly defined in Scripture (which is God speaking to us); however, there is one issue where one should be able to see clearly what Jesus would do and that is the government policy regarding the murdering of the unborn. Scripture establishes a position directly opposite the position of the Democratic Party. If a self-proclaimed “Reformed, confessional Evangelical” is unable to determine what Jesus would do on a policy issue to protect the most vulnerable in our society, then this person needs to go to Scripture and hope he will be enlightened by the Holy Spirit. Any political party which will not protect the most vulnerable in our society can also decide the next group in society to leave vulnerable.

Donn Sickles Via Email

Neil MacBride responds My essay sought to make two basic points: (1) the church (including ministers and church officers acting in their ecclesiastical capacities) should never serve as the arm of either political party; and (2) neither political party should claim for itself God's endorsement of itself or its policy platforms.

That's not to say that God doesn't approve of Justice or disapprove of Injustice. I think the challenge is ascribing to God his "stamp of approval" for specific policies seeking to implement

underlying moral imperatives. Clearly, for example, all believers know that Scripture calls us to extend compassion to the orphan, widow and alien, Exodus 22:21-22. Stated differently, God cares deeply about the plight of the orphan, widow and alien.

Yet the parties often differ considerably on the best way to extend justice to these (and other) marginalized groups. What I meant in my essay in stating that its "unwise" for either party to seek God's "stamp of approval" for their favorite issues is not that God doesn't "care" about the first principles behind those issues (e.g., Justice), only that in most instances we can't be sure that God endorses one party's particular response to that issue.

I think that abortion is by far the most complex and controversial public policy issue that Christians confront. Christians will not (and need not) be monolithic in their views on this issue.

While all Christians should be pro-life, not every Christian believes abortion is murder. Some Christians note that Lev. 21:22-25 was interpreted for much of Church history as indicating that the loss of the unborn fetus was a property loss to the father, while an injury to the mother was treated as a capital offense. Other Christians strongly disagree, citing Psalm 22 and 139, and argue that ensoulment occurs at conception. Christians from both sides agree that abortion is a tragedy but disagree over whether it should be strongly discouraged or outlawed outright. Both read the same Scripture, pray to the same God, affirm the same gospel, yet come to very different conclusions on the specific prescription to address this issue. Thus, it's generally ill-advised for either party to assert that God only supports their preferred means to address shared ends. Though God clearly loves Justice, Isaiah 61:8, I'll never claim that he has endorsed my party's temporal policies to pursue it, let alone that he's a "singleissue" voter who cares only about the key concerns of my party. To do otherwise constitutes bad theology and dangerous religion.

I saw a familiar sign in the picture “Christ’s Home” found in the “Between the Times” section of the current issue (September/October, “The Christian Voter’s Guide”). Christ’s Home is a very old non-profit, Christian haven for homeless children. It was founded by Christians and dedicated to being a home where children and needy families are introduced to Jesus. The organization has two facilities, one in Paradise, Pennsylvania and one in Warminster, Pennsylvania. Many children have come to know Jesus as Savior, have been placed in Christian

homes, and some have been cared for by staff and volunteers through their entire childhood. I suppose when one knows the history and the valuable contributions of “Christ’s Home” the comments intended to be funny lose their humor.

Douglas Hallman Snydertown, PA

I never thought I’d see the day. I’m referring of course to Gerald Bray’s “On My Mind” column (September/October 2004, “The Christian Voter’s Guide”). There are two, obvious problems: First, since when is the gospel about anything I do? Bray says, “The message of the gospel is ‘choose life’” What happened to the good news being about the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, for sinners?

Second, and this is so ridiculous as to (almost) not even warrant mentioning, I smoke cigarettes and do not appreciate being placed in the same group as homosexuals and those “who have hymned the delights of opium or cannabis.” If the good news of the gospel has anything to do with (my) cessation of smoking, then I’m damned.

Greg Myers Anaheim, CA

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Pop Goes Kabbalah According to the Associated Press, Madonna was recently included in a list of “the most powerful and influential Jews in America.” The list was released in a November edition of The Forward, a weekly Jewish publication that annually discloses the names of the top 50 Jews in American life.

Creating an extra space for the popstar, The Forward placed Madonna at number 51 “for making Kabbalah a worldwide trend.”

And a worldwide trend it is.

Other celebrities who have gone starry-eyed for this mystical form of Judaism include Demi Moore, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, as well as many others. They can be seen at countless Hollywood parties wearing the trademark “red string bracelet,” which is said to offer protection from evil forces and negative energy. Indeed, it is hard to turn the pages of a popular magazine without seeing some reference to the new fad. When the London Times ask Madonna if it was the “madness of fame” that motivated her interest in Kabbalah, the pop-star replied, “There’s a need to be beautiful and successful, yes, but that is not just reserved for celebrities...That pressure to be beautiful, to be successful, to be rich, to be thin, to be popular, it’s everyone’s pressure.”

The former “Material Girl,” is so into this new spiritual outlook that she apparently no longer refers to herself as Madonna, but by her new religious name, Ester. Her old name, however, is the one that appears on the cover of Yehuda Berg’s new book, The Power of Kabbalah, along with her endorsement, “No hocus-pocus here. Nothing to do with religious dogma, the ideas in this book are earth-shattering and yet so simple.”

Indeed, Berg’s book is curiously simple, with most every chapter appearing no longer than a page in length. However,

the book most certainly does have a good deal of religious dogma. For example, there is the chapter titled ”The Art of Becoming God,” which perhaps helps to explain Madonna’s interest. After all, where else is one to go when tediously bored with super-stardom?

Berg’s book also reveals the Kabbalist dogma that the Bible is not so much a book to be read as it is a hidden code, and “like any complex code, it requires deciphering and deeper understanding.” Thus, the Bible has a “subatomic level far beneath the surface level of the literal text.” For example, “the code term ‘Adam and Eve’ actually pertains to the one Vessel—which is itself an infinite conscious force known as the Desire to Receive.” Another misconception most of us have is with the Ten Commandments. Apparently, according to Kabbalists, “God does not command.” The Ten Commandments are to be understood as a “code for the ten dimensions and spiritual energy and Light that dwells in the 99 percent reality.”

The ethical thrust is no less inspiring. Berg writes, “We are a species of receivers, as in, ‘What’s in it for me?’ And that’s okay. That was the Creator’s intent.” Surely that will help Madonna to be nicer to her pilate instructor and team of hair stylists. There is also a healthy dose of practical insight for daily living to be found in the book, such as the knowledge that “before the emanations were emanated and the created were created, the exalted and simple Light filled the entire existence, and there was no empty space whatsoever.” That’ll get you going in the morning.

Perhaps, however, we have all been had. Perhaps Berg’s book should not be read on the surface level after all, but

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purely on the subatomic. One can almost begin to hear the distant words from the old Twilight Zone episode, “It’s a cookbook, it’s a cookbook!”

Losing Their Religion: Religious Decline in the U.K. The London Times recently reported that “the end is nigh for religion” in the United Kingdom. Carol Midgley’s front page story argued that within 30 years spirituality will eclipse Christianity in England. “More and more people,” she writes, “describe themselves as ‘spiritual,’ fewer as ‘religious’ and, as they do so, they are turning away from the Christian Church, with its rules and ‘self last’ philosophy, and looking inwards for the meaning of life.” One person interviewed stated, “My biggest criticism of Christianity at the moment is that it is very verbose...You don’t get a chance to be your silent self.”

The article reports that twice as many people polled “believe in a ‘spirit force’ within than they do an Almighty God without,” and that two thirds of young adults in the U.K. (18 to 24-yearolds) have a stronger “belief in their horoscopes than in the Bible.” And while twenty years ago, 11% of the population regularly attended church, the figure now in England is a mere 7.9%. Conservative Christians from a number of theological traditions, according to the Times article, “are adamant that New Age spirituality is merely a new form of gnosticism which turns the proper order upside-down by putting human beings in the place of God.” However, the data suggests this new trend toward spirituality may “prove more significant than the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.”

The article presents the demise of the village church in the town of Dent as a symbol of the new situation. Once the church was a vibrant part of the community, but “over the years apathy crept in and the congregation declined until it was down to one.” Finally, the church building was sold to a meditation group, which refurbished the property. Now, according to the Times, the place is flourishing. Elizabeth Forder, director of the new meditation centre commented on the differences between Christianity and the new Spirituality: “I was brought up a Christian, but it held no real meaning for me. I would class myself as a universalist, believing that all religions offer the same end. At its simplest, meditation is giving the body and mind a very deep level of rest, freeing us to be ourselves.” The Times also interviewed a resident from nearby Kent who summarized the situation this way: “A onehour service on a Sunday? It’s not really enough time to address your self-esteem issues, is it? I didn’t find any help in the churches. I found it in a 12-step programme. That was the start of my personal journey.”

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STATS Born-Again Christians on the Foundation of Morality 50% 25% 20% 12% 12% 10% 10% 9% 2%

Believe that morality is absolute Believe moral principles are based upon the Bible Do whatever feels right Believe in moral codes from a variety of religious sources Follow morality taught by parents Make moral choices based on whatever will minimize conflict Make moral choices based on whatever will produce the best outcome Follow moral principles based on feelings or life experiences Believe that laws and public policy dictate morality

Adapted from George Barna’s, Think Like Jesus (2003).

The article also captured the concerns of Rev. Brian Maiden, Pastor of Parr Street Evangelical Church in Kendal, who explained that “the people of Britain have been inoculated with a dead, mild form of Christianity, which has given them resistance to the real thing. It has been diluted with human philosophy.” What sort of message would one hear at this pastor’s church? “The message here is traditional Protestantism. We teach the message of the Gospels and that there will be a Judgment.” Rev. Maiden was also clear in his critique of the new spirituality, “To try to find the solution in oneself is bound to fail because human nature is fallen.” He concludes by saying, “Christianity isn’t about us trying to make ourselves better people. It is about God trying to do something for us 2,000 years ago which redeemed people.”

A New Kind of Church in the Heartland A new church by the name of Crossroads Fellowship was recently formed in Jackson, Missouri. It advertises itself as “A Contemporary Baptist church,” and according to their brochure, this means that they are “taking a modern approach to doing church.” And when they say modern, boy do they mean business!

The children’s ministry is called G-Force, the logo of which looks like it would better suit the body of a skateboard than an ecclesiastical function. How is it advertised? “This ain’t your Grandma’s Sunday school!” What exactly was wrong with Grandma’s Bible class is not discussed, but this program is apparently like “Sunday School on steroids!” It offers, among other things, fun, drama, music, and lesson oriented games.

Preteens, we are told, can have it their way. “They can attend GForce if they want, or they can go to Contemporary Worship.”

Of course Crossroads Fellowship has a terrific youth pastor who is not only “incredibly talented,” but is also advertised as having “a really cute and talented wife.” The young are carted away and bombarded with a “full slate of activities” such as trips, retreats, Centrifuge (whatever that is), “and all the other exhausting stuff students love to do.” “They go deep with Jesus, and have a great time doing it!” Well, it certainly sounds very deep.

Adults get to be a part of a “cutting edge” worship service that involves “drums, guitars, keyboards–the works!” Now if I’m not mistaken, I’d say that the statute of limitations has expired with regard to the use of the phrase “cutting edge” relating to drums in church. I mean, 1970, perhaps, but 2004?

Crossroads Fellowship uses “video, drama, object lessons–all the tools.” Yeah, all the tools that John Dewey proposed in the 1920s, when he argued that texts weren’t important, only “learning activities.” “Sure, we’ve come from a Baptist background,” the brochure mentions in passing, “but it’s a new attitude on a historic foundation.” Translation: it’s okay to wear jeans on Sunday mornings.

Summing up the work at Crossroads, we are told, “Contemporary means we are living in the now, and we intend to stay there.” I’m not sure exactly what this means; perhaps it’s related to a policy of their’s against time-travel? The summary continues, “when today’s cutting edge is tomorrow’s tradition, we will move on with the edge. This is a church that changes.”

But hasn’t the “contemporary church” thing already become a tradition? Haven’t we seen this in church after church that has adopted the attitude of upbeat commercial pop-culture, thinking that’s the only way to be relevant? Isn’t it time to “move on”? Perhaps today’s church really is at the crossroads.

Advertising Wizards Use Cult-like Persuasion In November 2004, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired a Frontline episode titled, “The Persuaders,” taking a look at the ubiquitous nature of modern advertising. The interesting part of this story was that brand managers and advertising executives were unabashedly open about their tricks of the trade. And most interestingly of all was the revelation that Madison Avenue has taken some tips from the world of the cults.

Marketing specialist Douglas Atkin says in this documentary that in contemporary marketing culture, the

essence of brand managing is “to create a whole meaning system for people through which they get identity and understanding of the world.” If this sounds more like a religious or philosophical statement than a sales pitch, it’s because it is.

Atkin later reasoned that if people were using “cult-like devotion” toward various products, “why not study cults, why not study the original, and apply that knowledge to brands.”

By interviewing devotees from Hare Krishna to Harley Davidson, Atkin and his team tried to figure out was the central draw of cults, or of products with a cult-like following.

And at the end of his research, Atkin concluded that “whether they are joining a cult or joining a brand, they do so for exactly the same reasons. They need to belong, and they want to make meaning.” Therefore the marketing specialist’s job is to figure out how to communicate through the medium of advertisements, a sense of meaning and a sense of belonging.

Frontline’s correspondent, Douglas Rushkoff, then insightfully comments that that’s the design of emotional branding, “to fill the empty places where non-commercial institutions, like schools and churches, might have once done the job.”

The program also interviews Naomi Kline, author of No Logo, who admits that “when you listen to brand managers talk, you can get quite carried away in this idea that they actually are fulfilling these needs that we have for community and narrative and transcendence, but in the end it is, you know, a laptop and a pair of running shoes.” Kline went on to say, “They might be great, but they are not actually going to fulfill those needs, which serves them very well, because of course that means you’re going to have to go shopping again.”

“The Persuaders” is available on DVD through PBS. You can find it, along with another excellent Frontline program on advertising and youth culture released in 2001 titled “The Merchants of Cool” at www.shoppbs.org.

SUM + of the = TIME

13.8Percentage of Americans who, when asked about their religious affiliation, answered “none,” according to a 2002 survey by the National

Opinion

Research

Center. The organization’s records indicate that this percentage has more than doubled in just over a decade, for in 1991 the percentage of non-religious Americans was listed at 6.3.

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Trouble in the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod?

On October 17, 2004, the congregation of Pilgrim Lutheran church of Decatur, Illinois voted by an overwhelming majority to pull out of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS), according to a report in Christian News. With close to a thousand members, Pilgrim Lutheran is the largest congregation to leave the LCMS since 1974.

Among the primary reasons cited for pulling out were, (1) the denomination’s failure to condemn the syncretism displayed

by District President David Benke in a post 9/11 joint prayer service at Yankee Stadium with Muslim, Jewish and Hindu clerics, (2) the widespread abandonment of traditional Lutheran liturgy, and (3) the perceived move toward women in eldership roles.

Pilgrim’s withdrawal came just at a time when confessional LCMS laymen and clergy were coming together to meet in Chicago to discuss some of these very issues. Titled, the “Confession and Christ’s Mission Free Conference,” this gathering included approximately 500 registrants from 36 states and featured Lutheran speakers such as Kurt Marquart, and former LCMS Vice President Daniel Preus, among others.

In his main address at the conference, Marquart got right to the point by asking the question, “Is the Missouri Synod still an orthodox church, or is it heterodox?” He answered the question by making a distinction between a ship that is sinking and one that has merely sprung a few leaks. In Marquart’s assessment, the analogy that best fits the LCMS is the latter, rather than the former. Nevertheless, he was clear that the leaks were serious and had to be dealt with.

First off was the issue of the syncretistic prayer at Yankee Stadium, about which Marquart commented, “If this HinduBuddhist-Jewish-Islamic-Christian mix was not a joint service then there is simply no such thing as a joint service.” He also commented on the issue of liturgy and worship in the LCMS: “On the one hand there is a populist ‘church-growthist’ rejection of the Augsburg Confession, which states that only properly called pastors are to administer the Word and the Sacraments; on the other hand there is a Romanising clericalism, which holds that ordination by the laying on of hands is a divine institution...Both of these extremes must be rejected.” Marquart concluded by saying that “Mission without doctrine is humbug. Before we attempt to turn the world upside down, as did the apostolic church, we must first let God turn our Synod right side up.”

In his presentation at the conference, Daniel Preus argued that the Missouri Synod was indeed “going through very troubling times.” These days, he said, “the way we go about

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theology is more intent upon the arrival at consensus than it is about arrival at God’s revealed truth.” Preus suggested that the LCMS was being attacked on a number of fronts, but especially on the issue of worship: “It is under attack when the Lutheran liturgy is gutted of its Christocentric content and replaced with songs, prayers and messages that focus on our piety and love for God rather than on His love for us through Christ.”

Though he admitted that in 2004 some congregations had left the LCMS, and that others still were considering doing so, he agreed with Marquart that now was not the time to leave.

The Lighter Side Got Wimpy Worship?

Does your worship service leave something to be desired? Are you feeling weak and wimpy, like a bowl of soggy cereal on Sunday mornings? Well, now there's something new called Power Praise! Only a few services with Power Praise will leave you feeling like a super-hero! So put some pep back into your Sunday, and don't let wimpy worship leaders ruin your week.

Speaking of...

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f we insist on visible proofs from God, we may well prepare the way for a permanent state of disappointment. True faith does not so much attempt to manipulate God to do our will as it does to position us to do his will. As I searched through the Bible for models of great faith, I was struck by how few saints experienced anything like Job’s dramatic encounter with God. The rest responded to the hiddenness not by demanding that he show himself, but by going ahead and believing him though he stayed hidden.

— Phillip Yancey

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he very fact that faith looks to a power beyond itself means that it is continually subject to loss of control. So if you’re looking to get control of all your problems, forget Christianity. If you’re looking for success, happiness, or freedom from pain, forget Christ. The way of Christ is the cross, and the cross spells weakness, poverty, failure, death.

— Mike Mason

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hen you go through a trial, the sovereignty of God is the pillow upon which you lay your head.

— Charles Spurgeon

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t is good for me that I was afflicted that I may learn Thy statutes.

— Psalm 119:71

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ow little it takes to make life unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman’s laugh.

— H. L. Mencken

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Gospel Jazz

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eceived wisdom has it that there are two quite distinct genres: gospel music (with

Paramount Studios in 1935, is a precursor to the modern its venerable forebear, the Negro spiritual) and jazz (with its earthy ancestor, the video clip. In fact, it was the first time a film completely blues). The one is for church, the other for Saturday night. In practice, this integrated music into a screenplay without the use of categorizing makes a certain amount of sense. But dialogue. It contains four segments, The Laborers, with the truth is not quite so simple. Did you know that workers rhythmically stowing cotton bales onto a the great pianist Billy Taylor had composed a sacred boat; A Triangle, featuring the as yet undiscovered suite? Did you know that Duke Ellington considered Billie Holiday singing the blues; the mournful A his spiritual music to be his most important work? Hymn of Sorrow, a sort of church service where the Were you aware that Dave Brubeck had written more congregation is in grief; and finally Harlem Rhythm, a praise music than any other kind? Have you ever joyful celebration, featuring the great dancer Snake heard Mary Lou Williams’s Mass? (Maybe you Hips Tucker. The film superimposes scenes of Duke haven’t heard of Mary Lou Williams! She is the first composing at the piano, the Ellington orchestra, lady of jazz piano, in a league with Earl Hines, Art melodramatic incidents from African-American life, singers and dancers, all to the compelling sounds of Tatum, and Errol Garner.)

Jazz is an amalgam of styles from the African- jazz. Ellington’s message goes well beyond a American heritage. The genre affords collective description of the oppression of his own people. It improvisation, the rhythm of swing, and the was about the suffering, the sin, and the guilt of all distinctive modal sounds of folk music. In its mankind. According to one of his biographers, Janna background are work songs, marching bands, biblical Steed, Duke had actually wanted the Hymn last, tunes, blues, ragtime, and a number of others. The because he had “put into the dirge all the misery, church is the major institution that enabled slaves to sorrow, and undertones of the conditions that went endure and emancipated blacks to define their identity, with the baby’s death.” But the studio prevailed and and so it is no surprise that it is the major musical underplayed this stark reality by ending the Symphony source for them. And while it is sadly true that a on an upbeat.

In his last decade, Duke composed three Sacred wedge has often been driven between so-called “secular” music like jazz and so-called “sacred” music Concerts. The first performance was at Grace like gospel, there is considerable overlap to be found Cathedral in San Francisco. It opened with In the in the work of many artists. Because the ingredients of Beginning, God, which won a Grammy award the next both kinds of music are not that different, the year. It also features the haunting “Come Sunday,” combination is natural. And because the sacred- with its double-time version, “David Danced Before secular dichotomy is misplaced anyway, numerous the Lord with All His Might,” which includes a live musicians have discarded the boundary line altogether. tap dancer. The music to “Come Sunday” had been Where can we find the best gospel jazz? Right at written much earlier, in 1943, without words. It was the beginning. Louis Armstrong played many gospel put to words in 1957 by Mahalia Jackson. The tunes during his career. One of his best albums is marvelous refrain, “Please look down and see my called The Good Book. Perhaps the most thoughtful people through,” captures the feeling of the song. pioneer is Duke Ellington. The nine-minute film, Although the Baptist Ministers Conference of Symphony in Black: A Rhapsody of Negro Life, from Washington panned the concert as “worldly,” Duke’s

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intention was to take the creative possibilities of jazz and wed them to the purposes of worship. These were oratorios, not liturgical pieces. The second was rendered in 1968 in New York City to an audience of around six thousand. It combined praise and meditation. The third was written in the last year of his life, 1973, and centers on prayer and the theme of love. There is a clear progression in these three pieces from a more preached style to an inward spirituality.

Jazz musicians have continued to exhibit a love for gospel music down through the decades.

Sometimes, as it was with John Coltrane, spirituality becomes the main theme. More often musicians dedicate individual albums to gospel music. Monty Alexander’s The River combines hymns and gospel with the jazz idiom. It features “Renewal,” Monty’s deep song about revitalization. Virtuoso acoustic and electronic bass player John Patitucci spreads Christian music throughout his recordings. Check out the song “Communion,” in his album by the same title, all of it dedicated “To my Lord, Jesus Christ, whose mercy endures forever.” The legendary pianist Hank Jones together with bassist Charlie Haden have a CD called Steal Away, featuring spirituals, hymns, and folk songs, all with a jazz flavor. The extraordinary younger pianist Cyrus Chestnut has published Blessed Quietness, which includes “Jesus Loves Me,” and “Holy, Holy, Holy,” whose harmonies (changes in jazz jargon) are tailormade for jazz. The list goes on.

I am not quite sure all of this means gospel jazz is going to be a recognized genre, or be admitted to a category in Billboard or in the record stores. To some extent this music simply represents Christian expressions within the larger realm of jazz. And, naturally, much of it has roots in the spiritual, in hymns or in gospel music, which are already established forms. So perhaps we do not need to coin a new label to describe what amounts to a fusion of traditions. What really matters is to recognize that jazz and Christian music are not only compatible, but connected throughout the history of jazz.

Jazz came out of the church. Why should the church be taken out of jazz?

Resources—Reviews Colleges or seminaries have different approaches to music and the arts. Three of them demand our attention here. In the Reformed camp, the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship should be pointed out.

The September/October issue of Reformed Worship magazine contains a very thoughtful review centering on various worship topics, including music.

The magazine is actually one of the publications sponsored by the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, a department of both Calvin College and

Calvin Theological Seminary, in Grand Rapids. The Institute sponsors various publications, including the Worship Sourcebook, and hosts events such as conferences, courses, and workshops. In music they feature such events as “Music and the Arts in Christian Worship,” an intensive, weeklong course in the summer. See their website for more information: http://www.calvin.edu/worship/educate_events/curri culum/music_arts.htm.

A bit less focused is Fuller Theological Seminary’s “Music and Arts” program. Less focused only because they seem to patronize several arts and musical fora, including the Fellowship of Artists for Cultural Evangelism (FACE), and such interesting programs as the Global Consultation on Music and Missions.

Local professor of ethnomusicology, West Africa specialist Roberta King is an advocate of creating worship music in local cultures. Fuller helps promote initiatives, such as Performing Art and Missions Studies from the All Nations Christian College in the United Kingdom, and the Asian School of Music, Worship and the Arts. See their site: http://disciplethenations.org.

Finally, interesting things are happening at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. They have a Center for Christian Music, which is designed for church musicians. Their goal is to “assist you in attaining the knowledge and skills to serve joyfully through music.”

In addition to offering courses and degree programs, they feature lectureships, publications, and symposia.

Their Hearn Symposium on Christian Music is a biennial conference hosted by the Center, and created to address various issues in Christian music, to explore the relation of music and culture, and to investigate the relation of leaders to the Christian music industry. See http://www.baylor.edu/christian_music/index.

Music for Epiphany A number of marvelous hymns are appropriate for the season of Epiphany. Chief among them is “The People Who in Darkness Walked,” adapted by John Morison from Isaiah 9:2–7, best sung to the tune Dundee, from The 150 Psalms of David of 1615. The Scottish Psalters borrowed many tunes, including this one, from the Geneva Psalter. A fauxbourdon rendering (using parallel sixth chords, often for psalmtones, sometimes as a descant above the congregation’s tune) from the Psalmes of David in Prose and Meeter, 1635, is particularly moving. The third stanza is a reflection on the Incarnation: “To us the promised Child is born, to us the Son is given; him the tribes of earth obey, and all the host of heaven.”

William Edgar (Dr. Theol., Universite de Genève) is Professor of Apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia, PA) and an accomplished musician.

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Paul F. M. Zahl

Fencing the Table What does Paul mean in 1 Corinthians 11:28, when he instructs the members of the church to “examine” themselves before taking communion?

From PAUL F. M. ZAHL

Dean and President Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry Ambridge, PA

Council Counsel is a column featuring questions from our readers and answers from the Advisory Council of Modern Reformation.

If you have a question you would like answered in this space, please send it to CC@modern reformation.org

This issue of examining yourself or of the elders “fencing the table” is an important one today with many Christians. In fact, it always has been a big issue. We are talking about discipline in the local church, and how it affects the list of those qualified to receive the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion.

This is also an old issue. It goes back to the Puritans, especially to the Scottish and American Puritans. It goes back to the reformers, who had reacted fervently to the “cheap grace” polity of the late medieval Catholic sacraments. And it really goes back to St. Paul, who advised his readers: “Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink the cup” (1 Cor. 11:28).

Incidentally, John Wesley, that Arminian but holy man, fell afoul of the point when he “fenced the table” in 1736 in Savannah in order to prevent Sophy Hopkey and her father from receiving the sacrament. Bad move! He failed to tell the vestry that his offer of marriage had been turned down by Sophy and that he was just terribly hurt and dismayed. You don’t fence the table to screen a personal grievance.

So the fenced table has a long history. What is the issue? It is this: Christian ministers wish to do everything in their power to elevate the importance of the death of Christ as signified in Holy Communion. “Therefore, if any of you be a blasphemer of God, a hindrance or slanderer of his Word, an adulterer, or be in malice, or envy, or in any other grievous crime; repent you of your sins, or else come not to the holy Table” (exhortation preceding the Celebration of Holy Communion, 1928 Book of Common Prayer).

Moreover, in our present American cultural context, with its collapsing of almost all explicit standards and practices, ministers are more pressed than ever to demonstrate the gravity and

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importance of Christ’s Atonement, its cost and its glory, before an essentially hostile outside world.

Can we not all see the appeal of fencing the table?

I do, although I fear it can also be carried too far.

Bishop J. C. Ryle, like St. Paul with his epistle to the Corinthians, argued, “Treat the people in church as if they are what they claim to be: sincere, repentant Christians. Impute to them sincerity.” Regard them as the saved, although we all know that every parish family contains the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Yearn for them, preach the converting gospel to them, and trust the Holy Spirit to bring them to repentance. Surely none of us would wish to shut out a repentant sinner. Of course there are cases of extreme hypocritical and public sinning. Don’t bless those. But such public cases are pretty rare, at least in most parishes. I can see the bishops’ point in the current Roman Catholic controversy over denying the sacrament to politicians who publicly and passionately declare themselves in disagreement with their church. But again, such cases are obvious—a no brainer!

I myself welcome everyone to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion, provided they have said the General Confession from the heart (and who really knows that for sure?), provided they have heard the sermon of Christ’s converting grace, and provided the Communion Prayer spells out the awesome nature of the gift. (Plus maybe I’ll show them the DVD of Mel Gibson’s movie.) After all that, only a bona fide heel will come forward to receive, and God can handle the occasional Ananias and Sapphira.

Now tell me if you disagree. There are those in the Reformed tradition who would. I think I know where they are coming from and against what forms of cheap grace they are reacting. But read again 1 Corinthians 11:31: “[I]f we judged ourselves truly, we should not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are chastened so that we may not be condemned along with the world.” I am glad for him to fence the table.

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Exodus 34:1–9

Can God Be Among Us?

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ow religious do you want to be? Not as religious, perhaps, as an Islamic

the Lord’s own voice forbid them to make idols. In direct terrorist. Most Americans manage very well to keep religion within their disobedience, they had Aaron make a young bull of comfort zone. Some of your friends, however, may have just enough gold.

To provide the precious metal, they took off evangelical memories to make them vaguely their gold earrings. Moses uncomfortable. Perhaps that describes your own came down the mountain From feelings right now. with the Ten EDMUND P. There is one place where the question cannot Commandments the Lord CLOWNEY arise, namely, standing in the presence of the Lord. had written on tablets of Israel knew fear when the people stood before God at stone. He heard the orgy of Mount Sinai. The Lord had delivered Israel from celebration going on below.

Egypt that he might bring them to a rendezvous at He destroyed the idol and Trinity Presbyterian Mount Sinai. In clouds and fire God came down on cried, “Who is on the Lord’s Church the mountain. The earth shook at the presence of the side?” Only Moses’ own Charlottesville, VA tribe, the Levites, responded Creator. The Lord spoke the words of his covenant to the summons. All the law from the mountaintop. Terror drove the people other tribes were not on the back. Standing far off, they sent word to Moses: “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God Lord’s side but were against him!

God had said that he would destroy these rebels speak to us, lest we die” (Exod. 20:19, ESV).

God heard their request, and Moses went up and make another nation of Moses’ descendants.

Sinai to receive God’s words. Moses was gone for In anguish, Moses pleaded with the Lord to spare more than a month, receiving God’s instructions them for the sake of his own name among the for the priesthood and for the worship and life of nations. The Lord said that Israel had sinned Israel. God gave his own plan for the tabernacle, deliberately. They were a “stiff-necked people” the tent of his dwelling. The Lord’s tent would be (Exod. 32:9; 33:3, 5). The term describes a horse set up where the cloud of God’s glory rested. The or donkey that cannot be directed by a bridle. It twelve tribes were then to camp around the tent of takes the bit in its teeth and plunges on in the the Lord. In front of the tabernacle, on the east, direction it has chosen. the Levites would stake down their tents. The After Israel’s rebellion with their idol, the bull of other tribes would be arranged under their tribal gold, God said that he would not live in their midst. and family standards all around the Lord’s dwelling. It was too dangerous for them. His fearful holiness The Lord would dwell in the midst of his people. might break out to obliterate them in an instant.

God said that he would go before them as the Crisis and Compromise: God at a Distance Angel of the Presence, drive out the Canaanites, and (Exod. 33:1–3) give Israel the Promised Land. Sometimes this has While Moses was gone on the mountain, the been misunderstood. It has been supposed that God people rebelled against the Lord. They had heard was substituting an angel, rather than going himself.

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But this is not the case, for the Angel is not just one of the hosts of heaven. The Angel of the Lord is here an appearance of the Lord himself. This Angel is just as dangerous in his fearful holiness as the Lord, for he is an appearance of the Lord. “Beware of Him and obey His voice; do not provoke Him, for He will not pardon your transgressions; for My name is in Him” (Exod. 23:21, NKJV). The Angel bears God’s name; he is God the Son. The point God is making here is that he would not go in the midst of Israel, dwelling in his tent in the center of their camp. Before the Lord gave the tabernacle plan to Moses, the place of meeting with God had been a tent pitched outside the camp. The Lord would meet with Moses at the doorway of that tent. There he would speak to Moses, “mouth to mouth.”

To many suburbanites, that arrangement might seem ideal. They wouldn’t like to have God too close—surely not at their office, and perhaps least of all at home. Yet they do not want to lose all touch with God. One never knows when he might be needed. Let God dwell in a church at a convenient distance, with a clergyman as his receptionist. How close would you like God to be? How close is he?

For Moses, God must be among his people, dwelling in their midst. If God would not go among them, what was the use of going to the land at all? The Israelites preferred the diet of Egypt.

They remembered the fish they caught in Egypt, and the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic in their diet there. They tired even of manna from heaven, and were not yearning for the milk and honey of the Promised Land. The point of going to the land of Canaan was not the produce of cows and bees, it was the presence of the Lord among his people there.

The Lord would go before them, to be sure. He would drive out the Canaanites and give Israel the land. But if he were not to be among them, how would the God of Israel be different from the gods of the pagans? We dare not forget this great distinction between the Qur’an of Mohammed and the Books of Moses. Moses mourns and the people of Israel mourn when they hear that God, because of their sin, would go before them but not tent in their midst. The Allah of the Qur’an is the Great God, but he is God at a distance, the God above, not the Lord in the midst. Moses says that if God will not go in their midst, there is no point in their going.

The supreme blessing of the Lord is his tent in the center of theirs: “Let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them” (Exod. 25:8, NKJV).

The prayer of Moses to the Lord burns to the heart of fellowship with the present Lord. Moses cries out desperately for two blessings: first, Moses

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wants to know the Lord. He asks to know the name of the Angel of the Lord who will be sent with him (Exod. 33:12). Hearing that name, he will be shown the Lord’s deeds—“show me now your ways” (Exod.

33:13, ESV). Second, Moses also asks that he will be shown the Lord’s glory. God answers both prayers, first by proclaiming his name to Moses: “Yahweh, Yahweh El, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in grace and truth” (Exod. 34:6, NKJV, using the Hebrew names of God). This is the name Moses heard at the burning bush. It is the name God used in declaring the Ten Commandments: “I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exod.

20:2, ESV, using the Hebrew name of God). It is the name John uses in reference to Exodus 23, when he says, “The Word became flesh and dwelt [“tabernacled”] among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14, ESV).

Moses also saw the glory of God. The Lord hid him in a cleft of the rock and covered him with his hand until he had passed by, and Moses saw his back. When Jesus the Son, who is the glory of the Father, appeared on the Mount of Transfiguration, Moses appeared there with him. Then he could look, not at the back of God, but on the glory that shone from the face of Jesus. He saw on earth the glory of the face of God the Son, who alone can reveal the Father.

In response to the prayer of Moses, God said that he would go in the midst of his people. In his prayer of thanksgiving, Moses repeats the words God had spoken. God had said, “You are a stiffnecked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you” (Exod. 33:5, ESV). Moses prays, “Let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people” (Exod. 34:9, ESV).

Some translations change “for” to “although.”

Surely Moses can’t be asking that God go in the midst because they are stiff-necked sinners! But Moses repeats the words of the Lord exactly. Then he adds, “and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.” The Lord must go in the midst precisely because Israel is a stiff-necked people. They need the presence of the Lord, who is full of grace and faithful to his oath-bound love.

Gracious Renewal: God in the Midst God renews his covenant by giving his tabernacle to Israel. He will indeed take up residence in his own tent among his people. The plan of the tabernacle as God’s dwelling has at its core the Holy of Holies, the room a perfect cube divided by a curtain from the Holy Place. God’s holy dwelling needs insulation form the unholy camp of sinners around it. The

whole courtyard is walled around by a curtain.

Another veil separates the Holy Place from the court.

Yet another veil screens the Holy of Holies, where only the high priest may enter, once a year, on the Day of Atonement.

Yet the tabernacle also symbolizes the way of approach to the Lord. The worshiper may enter the courtyard, approach the altar of burnt offering with a sacrificial animal, confess his sins with his hands upon the head of the substitute, and kill it. The rituals differ with the form of the sacrifice, but the priest ascends the huge altar to carry out the offering. The priest again purifies himself at the laver, the basin of water in front of the tabernacle.

Priests also may enter the Holy Place, where they deposit and remove the bread of God’s presence.

Wine is also placed on that table. On the left side off the tabernacle as the priest enters, there burns the seven-branched lampstand, and in front of the veil of the Holy of Holies stands the altar of incense, symbolizing the prayers of the people of God. On the day of atonement, the high priest enters the Holy of Holies to sprinkle the ark of the covenant with the sacrificial blood. The ark, made of wood but covered with gold, had a lid of solid gold. On either side of the lid were cherubim of gold, their wings spread over the mercy seat, the center of the golden cover. That center was an empty throne.

No image could be placed there, but not because there could be no image. God had made man in his image but commanded that Israel make no image of him, nor bow down in worship to such an image.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation [image] of his being” (Heb. 1:3, NIV). The empty seat of the throne of God in the tabernacle was reserved for Jesus Christ, who is the image of God (2 Cor. 4:4).

God’s fierce jealousy against images was his jealous love of his only Son. Jesus could accept worship on earth, because he was one with his Father in heaven.

As the letter to the Hebrews teaches us, the worship at the tabernacle foreshadowed the true tabernacle in heaven, the pattern for the symbolism on earth that pointed to Jesus. We do now come in worship to the heavenly Holy Place.

There the festival assembly of saints and angels gather where Jesus is. His blood paid the price of our sin that we might come to him in worship.

God’s grace and mercy were on display in the covenant symbolism of the tabernacle and temple.

Jesus Christ brings the reality of it all. The Lord said to Moses, “I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I

will have compassion” (Exod. 33:19, NKJV). The goodness that the Lord proclaimed to Moses came in Jesus (Exod. 34:6; John 1:14). Jesus is the one with “clean hands and a pure heart” who can ascend the hill of the Lord (Psalm 24). He is also the returning Lord who calls for the gates to open at his return. Jesus ascends to heaven, his redemptive work on the cross finished, and death conquered.

Moses, in his prayer of thanksgiving for God’s forgiveness, did not ask that God give Israel their inheritance in the land. He prayed that God take them as his inheritance, the treasure of his love.

The glory of the New Covenant fulfills the symbols of the Old. In Jesus we have the true tabernacle. Jesus said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” He spoke of the real temple of God, his dwelling in the flesh of his incarnate Son. The name that God proclaimed, his own covenant name, is now proclaimed as the name of Jesus, the name to which every knee will bow.

Philip said to Jesus at the Last Supper, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us” (John 14:8, NKJV). Jesus’ answer was also a rebuke, “have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father, so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” (v. 9, NKJV).

In the power of the Spirit, we do behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus (2 Cor. 3:18–4:6).

In Christ we have been made God’s inheritance, sealed with the Holy Spirit, marking God’s possession of us, and our possession of him (Eph. 1:13–14).

Can God dwell in the midst of us? Yes! In Christ we are made temples for the dwelling of Christ (1 Cor. 6:19), and the church becomes his dwelling, for the church is the body of Christ (1 Cor. 6:15; Eph. 2:20–21). Beyond all our understanding, God not only pours out his love in our hearts but is personally present in the Spirit. Union with Christ means personal attachment and fellowship that binds the church in one in Jesus. Now and forever, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

Edmund P. Clowney (D.D. Union Theological Seminary) is professor emeritus of practical theology at Westminster Seminary California and currently serves on staff at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville, Virginia.

This sermon has been excerpted from Preaching Christ in All of Scripture, by Edmund P. Clowney (copyright © 2003, pp. 95–101), which was recently reviewed in our pages. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois 60187, www.gnpcb.org.

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T H E B L U E N O T E | Can Your Faith Face the Music

Singing the Blues With Jesus t was my turn to preach in chapel. I was given John 11:1–44 at the beginning of the semester, and since, in God’s providence, it was just two days after my father finally died after a long year of tremendous suffering, we held a memorial service in conjunction with chapel that day. I had long been impressed with Jesus’ raising of Lazarus and commended it to our seminary community, as well as family and friends, gathered for different reasons but each with his or her own challenges in life.

America likes winners, not losers; triumph, not tragedy. Friedrich Nietzsche and Ted Turner have argued that Christianity is for losers, but pop Christianity in America has been trying desperately to convince everybody that this just isn’t the case. Become a Christian and you’ll be unfailingly happy, upbeat, in charge, with health, wealth and happiness; self-esteem, victory over debt and bad marriages and families. Meanwhile, we put our elderly, the terminally ill, those caught in the cycle of poverty, and others who remind us of our mortality where we can’t see them or at least where our lives do not ordinarily intersect when we do not intend them to.

Unlike the old churchyards through which one passed on the way to Sunday services, our churches today are likely to avoid contact with the tragic side of life. We call death “passing away,” we change the name “graveyard” to “cemetery,” with euphemistic names (Forest Home) that also sound, eerily enough, like the names of the convalescent hospitals they were in before they “passed.” They are not the dead among us, awaiting the Resurrection, but those who have “crossed over” and have thereby been

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good enough not to have done something more disturbing and unpleasant, such as dying. Or at least if they die, they do not hang around.

Often, before we can really feel the force and pain of sin and death, we are told to be happy and look on the bright side. One church-growth guru cheerfully announces that we have gone from having funerals to memorial services to “celebrations,” not realizing that this is a fatal index of our inability to face the music, whether we’re talking about the tragedy of sin itself or the suffering, death, and ultimate condemnation that it brings in its wake.

Why is it that in our churches—in the preaching that avoids sin, suffering, the cross, and death, in the music that is always upbeat and seems so alien to the “blue note” that one finds in the Psalms, in the church growth that always targets the upwardly mobile suburbs, and in the “celebrations” that cannot seem to come to grips with the tragedy of death and the common curse that has invoked it—we seem to follow the world in refusing to face the music?

We aren’t morbid when we take sin, suffering, and death seriously as Christians. Rather, we can face these tough realities head-on because we know that they have been decisively confronted by our captain. They have not lost their power to harm, but they have lost their power to destroy us.

This biblical piety is not morbid because it doesn’t end at the cross, but it also doesn’t avoid it. It goes through the cross to the Resurrection. This is why the Christian gospel alone is capable of refuting both denial and despair. The hope of the gospel gives us the freedom to expose the wound of our human condition because it provides the cure. We see this in John’s remarkable retelling of the story of Lazarus’s resurrection.

The Death of a Loved One azarus, along with his sisters, was a close friend of Jesus, we learn especially from verses 1–16. I’ve walked that short distance between Bethany and Jerusalem in roughly an hour.

We might say that it was the ancient equivalent of a suburb, and Mary, Martha, and Lazarus had made their home a base for Jesus’ Jerusalem-area mission.

“It was that Mary who anointed the Lord”— that is, the prostitute who met the only person whose love was greater than her sin. Jesus was entreated to come to his ill friend’s side when Mary identified him to Jesus as “he whom you love” (v. 2). The assumption here is that Jesus and Lazarus are so close that all Jesus needed was an announcement of his condition. Surely Jesus would come running.

Their plea for Jesus was not wrong, but shortsighted in its motivation. They were appealing to

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him for the healing of Lazarus, while Jesus anticipates using his friend’s death as an opportunity to signify his person and work. It is not about Lazarus, but about Jesus: “I am the resurrection and the life.” Again we think of the difference between the theology of glory and the theology of the cross. It is not wrong to anticipate glory—both God’s and our own participation in it, but the problem comes when we think that our own immediate concerns are ultimate. God must provide for us or our loved ones in such and such a manner if he is really our friend. Mary and Martha knew that Jesus could heal their failing brother, and simply assumed that, given his love for Lazarus, Jesus would want to.

Here we return to that conundrum: Is God both sovereign (able to heal) and good (willing to heal)?

If the healing doesn’t occur, one of those affirmations comes into question, we reason. If Jesus really loves Lazarus, he’ll come quickly. “God, if you really care about me __________ ”—fill in your own blank. In the thick of trouble, this is not so bad a response. In fact, it is a sign of faith on their part: God can and will heal. Rather, the problem is in the timing and the terms. “It is for the glory of God,” says Jesus, “so that the Son of God may be glorified through it” (v. 4).

In terms of the unfolding plot, Lazarus is a character in Jesus’ story, not vice versa. The glorification of the Son as the Messiah is the real “show” here, as was the case with all of the miracles. They are signs, not ends in themselves.

Jesus deliberately delays his return to Bethany two more days. What could have been happening in the sisters’ minds during these two agonizing days? They had no idea that Jesus was going to do something far greater than they had asked him to do. With the wisdom and data at their disposal, they could only have been utterly depressed at the apparent lack of response on Jesus’ part. Jesus, of course, had acted promptly before: in the healing of Jairus’ daughter (Luke 8) or in the raising of the widow’s son in the middle of the funeral procession (Luke 7). How callous could he be if he healed perfect strangers but would not rush to the aid of one of his closest friends?

Out of love for Lazarus and his sisters, Jesus finally decided to go to Bethany. “The disciples said to him, ‘Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?” He tells them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him,” to which the disciples (no doubt concerned about their own safety—see verses 7–16) reply, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” “Then Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to

him.’” Nobody—the disciples, Lazarus, Mary, or Martha, nobody but Jesus, knew why Jesus had allowed Lazarus to die in the first place, especially if all along he was going to visit him eventually. It was all palpably confusing to their experience. It simply did not make sense.

Jesus’ cryptic remark, “for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe,” could not be discerned this side of the events in Bethany. It could only be clear to them after the completion of the episode, not within it. This is a crucial point for our own application in such circumstances. From their perspective, in terms of their own experience, the sisters (and Lazarus in his final hours) and the disciples would have logically concluded that Jesus, whom they had seen as perfectly capable of healing, was simply callous. He was uninterested, unconcerned. Their experience was not irrational or illogical, but rather incomplete and so inadequate to sit in judgment upon God’s ways. Just as the disciples could not recognize what God was going to do through the cross, nobody could understand why Jesus had allowed his friend to die.

Lazarus had to die in order for the greater miracle to occur. There is something more important than the healing of his friend. Jesus knew the great work that he would accomplish in the power of the Spirit when he came finally to Bethany. It is like Elijah pouring water on the fire-pit, just to make sure that God’s glorious power will be manifest. As the greater Elijah, Jesus was engaged in a cosmic contest between Yahweh and the serpent. That was the larger story behind all of these other stories.

The Confrontation with His Loved Ones (verses 17–27) fter a four-day interval between Lazarus’ death and Jesus’ arrival in Bethany, Martha displays the sort of frustration that one would not have expected a woman of her day to show toward a man in public, much less a rabbi.

Yet after scolding Jesus for his tardiness—“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” she immediately adds, “But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you” (vv. 21–22). Martha’s faith in Jesus is unfailing. He can still turn things around—even after her brother’s entombment: “Even now . . .” (v. 22).

It is important to see how Martha here reflects that combination of heart-wrenching disappointment and faith that we find in the Psalms. She does not believe that even death has the last say in the presence of Jesus, which is thus far more faith than we have seen in the disciples. Martha’s theology is right: as a Pharisee, she believes in the resurrection

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of the dead. But it’s like Philip saying to Jesus, “Now show us the Father,” with Jesus’ reply, “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:8–14). In fact, the scene there is similar. There, Jesus announces that he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Not simply someone who can lead to truth and life, but the Truth and Life in person.

Philip asks for something more, but Jesus replies, “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (v. 9).

Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life. He is the source of life beyond the grave. Jesus replies, “Your brother will rise again” (v. 23). “Do you believe this?” Jesus presses her to commit herself not just to the theological question of resurrection of the dead, but to him as the Resurrection and the Life! To claim to be “the Resurrection and the Life,” as “the Way, the Truth and the Life,” is to claim nothing less than equality with the Father. So now the stakes of Martha’s confession are raised considerably. In the presence of witnesses, she is called not only to confess that Jesus can raise the dead—as Elijah had done. Jesus calls upon her to acknowledge that he is himself the God upon whom Elijah called. He not only can give life; he is Life. That is a very large step. One of the marvelous clauses here is, “though he may die” (v. 25). It is one thing to halt the processes of decay and death, quite another to bring someone back to life. Jesus declares of himself, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (v. 26).

Now Jesus is not simply asking Martha to confess that Lazarus will live, but that those who trust in Jesus Christ—even though they die, will be raised to never die again. It’s no longer about Lazarus per se. Jesus is calling Martha into the circle of that cosmic trial between Yahweh and the serpent, calling her to be a witness (the Greek word for witness being the same for “martyr”). Lazarus’ resurrection will be a sign—proof, in fact—of that reality to be inaugurated with Christ’s own Resurrection from the dead. Even though people will still die despite the arrival of Messiah, they will not remain dead forever but will be raised in the likeness not of Lazarus’ mortal body, still tending toward death, but in the likeness of Christ’s glorified body.

We recall that many centuries earlier, in the midst of his agony, Job cried out, “I know that my Redeemer lives and that in this flesh I shall behold God” (Job 19:25). And on the witness stand Martha, racked with myriad thoughts and feelings of desperation and hope, brought Job’s exclamation up-to-date: “She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is

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coming into the world’” (v. 27). That is the big event in Bethany this day. Without discounting the resurrection of Lazarus still to come in the story, we cannot forget that, as with all of Jesus’ miracles, the most amazing thing is the reality that the sign merely announces and the confession that it draws from our lips. This is the faith that perseveres through the countervening evidence of his experience. And it is Martha’s as well. They do not know why God has allowed this or that temptation, trial, disaster, or pain, but the confession is the main thing: “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”

The Resurrection of the Loved One ary, who had been sitting in the house, joins Martha at this point (vv. 28–32).

Perhaps even more despondent than Martha both at her brother’s death and her beloved Master’s apparent failure either to care enough or to be powerful enough, Mary, the one who had lavished Jesus’ feet with her expensive perfume, has to be called out to the scene by her sister (“The Teacher has come and is calling for you”).

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Furthermore, upon meeting Jesus she reiterates the charge, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (v. 32). Martha is not to be blamed here, but to be respected for having brought her doubts as well as her faith to the Savior. Living in denial of tragedy, too many Christians live schizophrenic spiritual lives: outwardly smiling and brimming with trust and joy, but inwardly filled with doubts and anger. They often do not know where to turn, but Martha, like Job and the psalmist, says, “To God, of course.”

Bring him your doubts, frustration, and even anger.

He can handle it. Remember the cross and Godforsakenness of the Beloved: God, too, knows how to sing the blues.

Jesus’ own soul now begins to be drawn into turmoil as he sees the mourners and recognizes the wake that death leaves. Suddenly, he finds himself one of the mourners. Here he is not simply a miracle worker who walks on the sea and calms the storms, but a man who is suddenly overtaken by troubled emotions. His own love for Lazarus and his hatred for death overwhelmed him even though he knew what he was about to do.

It is in verses 33–35 that we capture a glimpse of

Memento Morte:

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udging by much of the art and literature, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe was fairly morbid. Amid all the optimism of the Golden Age, an entire genre grew up called memento morte, which involved meditation on suffering and death. This is not surprising given the fact that about half of Europe’s population in some parts had succumbed to the Plague: Few of one’s children would live to adulthood, and as late as the 1660s, London was devastated not only by a resurgent plague but a fire that reduced much of the city to ashes. It is no wonder that Albrecht Durer, a famous woodcutter preoccupied with memento morte, was also a close friend of Luther’s and that so many poets and artists could so richly evoke the tragic sensibility of Calvin with which they identified: “This life is a constant death.”

In Jewish, Catholic, and older Protestant service books there are prayers for wartime, natural disasters, epidemics, a sick child, those in bereavement, travelers, and prisoners. In Puritan families, the body would normally be placed in an open casket in a central living space until the funeral itself. Children would ask about its meaning. Ministers visiting those on their deathbed

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would ask them directly, Are you prepared to die?, while some wrote eloquently and wisely on the art of dying well. But this is not likely to become part of the reality TV fare of evening entertainment.

The Book of Common Prayer has a service for the burial of the dead—not the burial of the deceased or the resting, the departed, or those who have, in the now widely adopted parlance of Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy, “passed on,” but the dead. It begins with the glorious promise of future resurrection.

But then the psalmist is cited: Lord, let me know mine end, and the number of my days; that I may be certified how long I have to live. Behold, thou has made my days as it were a span long, and mine age is even as nothing in respect of thee; and verily every man living is altogether vanity. For man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain; he heapeth up riches, and cannot tell who shall gather them. And now, Lord, what is my hope? Truly my hope is even in thee. When thou with rebukes doest chasten man for sin, thou makest

what the writer to the Hebrews meant when he said that Jesus was made like us in every respect: Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

(Heb. 4:14–16) And here at his friend’s tomb—even moments before he knew he would raise Lazarus, we see his anguish of soul in the presence of sin’s most gruesome banner: death. He did not come with a cheerful homily on how better off Lazarus was now that he had “slipped the bonds of earth” or “sloughed off his mortal coil,” for these are pagan views that would never have been countenanced by the Hebrew mind. There was no “celebration,” where mourning was considered out of place.

Already emotionally unhinged by Mary’s weeping at his feet, Jesus came to the tomb, and we read those two words that deserve their own verse: “Jesus wept” (v. 35). The bystanders were not sure what to make of it. “See how he loved him!” said some. “But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?’” (v. 37).

But let’s pause for a moment at the remarkable report, “Jesus wept.” Jesus here overthrows the various pagan conceptions of life and death that are as prevalent in our day: stoicism and sentimentalism.

Some influences are more Stoic in orientation.

Famous for the stiff upper lip, the ancient Stoics believed that the best souls were those who were completely free of emotion. Stirred neither by friendship nor treachery, the Stoic aimed at perfect rest. If one depended on others, he or she would soon be disappointed. In order to avoid disappointment, one should resolve never to develop attachments, except to oneself. Utter freedom from desire would make the soul a fortress against distress. For them, as for Greek thought generally, death was a liberation from the body, which was after all the seat of emotion—that weak part of

Remember Death his beauty to waste away, like as it were a moth fretting a garment: every man therefore is but vanity. Hear my prayer, O Lord, and with thine ears consider my cry; hold not thy peace at my tears: For I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were. O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength once more before I go hence and be no more seen. (Psalm 39) Passages of hope are then recited, from the Psalms, Gospels, and Epistles, affirming the resurrection of the body and the free justification of all who trust in Christ. Then comes the sober prayer: O God, whose days are without end, and whose mercies cannot be numbered; make us, we beseech thee, deeply sensible of the shortness and uncertainty of human life; and let thy Holy Spirit lead us through this vale of misery, in holiness and righteousness, all the days of our lives: That, when we shall have served thee in our generation, we may be gathered unto our fathers, having the testimony of a

good conscience; in the communion of thy church; in the confidence of a certain faith; in the comfort of a reasonable, religious, and holy hope; in favor with thee our God, and in perfect charity with the world. All which we ask only through Jesus Christ our LORD. This piety grew out of the rich soil of biblical realism, moving back and forth between the tragedy of sin and death on the one hand and the triumph of God’s grace in Christ on the other.

Historians have judged that periods of great prosperity usually have little interest in the theology of the Reformation, with its grim view of sin and utter dependence on God’s grace, while periods of crisis often allow more honest questioning. Perhaps to the extent that our malls and entertainment can no longer keep at bay the realities of rapidly spreading disease, genocide, and terrorism, that preaching, worship, and outreach will be most relevant that once again deals most directly with the truth of sin and death.

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human nature that would drag the soul down into the messiness of the world. By contrast, Westerners such as myself are often astonished to the point of embarrassment to witness Jews and Palestinians mourning their dead with wails and desperate gestures, but this is the culture from which Jesus came and he was not embarrassed by it.

Sentimentalism, as I’m using the term here, refers especially to the romantic philosophers, poets, artists, and theologians who emphasized the heart rather than the intellect as the proper seat of human dignity. Far from resisting emotional expression, sentimentalism celebrates it. Yet, unlike the romantic movement itself, sentimentalism in its contemporary degenerate but pervasive form seems capable of wearing only a happy heart on its sleeve. Ironically, although sentimentalism seems like the opposite of stoicism, they share

face of eventual death. One attracts visitors, family, and friends who cannot keep themselves from holding and doting on the little ones, while the other draws visits more often than not out of a sense of duty.

We do not enjoy spending a lot of time with those who are suffering, especially with those who are dying. At least for those closest to us, we do not mind being there for the farewell, but too often it is just too long. For many, both the aged sufferer and his or her family, there are just too many verses to sing. I know this firsthand from living my teen years, when our family cared for fifteen elderly residents. Each Christmas my mother would write letters to area churches asking for groups to bring some holiday cheer and the same two churches made the annual appearance, neither of them evangelical despite the fact that most residents or their children were members of various large While the Stoic realizes that to abandon negative emotions one must banish evangelical churches in the area. Even more difficult, all emotions, the sentimentalist believes in admitting only the good emotions, especially in retrospection, is the fact that each year my always looking on the bright side of life. parents would buy presents for the residents and write the name of their children on some intriguing parallels. They both seem intent it, since some would not be receiving even a phone on avoiding the messiness of life—particularly, the call from them. I recall in a couple of instances tragic aspect. They want to ignore the bad news, even elders of a big church in town who had simalthough their solution is different. While the ply dropped their parent off, all the while holding Stoic realizes that to abandon negative emotions themselves and their church up as “pro-life.” The one must banish all emotions, the sentimentalist setting of the sun is not as beautiful as its rising, as believes in admitting only the good emotions, anyone close to the end can tell you. always looking on the bright side of life.

As yet another sign of our culture’s inability to One sympathy card I saw has a line from handle death, we often hear, “Death is a natural Thoreau: “Every blade in the field, every leaf in the part of life.” This assumes the “cycle of life” forest, lays down its life in its season as beautifully approach to reality. According to this picture, life as it was taken up.” Even more troubling was the and death are just two sides of the same coin. maxim of my father’s convalescent hospital that However, the biblical picture could not be more was unfortunately enshrined in giant tapestries opposite: life everlasting was the goal of creation in hanging in various parts of the complex. With the beginning; death is the curse for human sin. It scenes from childhood to old age, walking toward is part of the Fall imposed on humanity as a result a sunset, it read, “The setting of the sun is as beau- of disobedience, not an inevitable circumstance to tiful as its rising.” However well-intentioned the be taken in stride. Death stands against God, maxim may have been, I wondered at how offen- against the world, against life, against hope, against sive this must have been to many who were suffer- possibilities. ing there, as their lot was trivialized.

So now we return to Jesus as he crumples at his Compare for just a moment any experience you friend’s grave: “Then Jesus, deeply moved again, might have had with the joy of childbirth, family came to the tomb” (v. 38). Look at Jesus’ face, hear and friends standing around to celebrate this new his scream here. “Deeply moved” hardly captures life, with the declining years, months, and days of the emotion of the original language: enebrimesato, a person’s life. One stage is full of hope in a way meaning to snort like a horse in anger; “troubled,” that the other simply cannot be made to be. The etaraxen, meaning agitated, confused, disorganized, former is attended with high expectations for one’s fearful, surprised, as when Herod was “troubled” by future, the other with talk of prolonging life in the the wise men (Matt. 2:3); or when the disciples

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were “troubled” and “cried out in fear” when Jesus walked on the sea (Matt. 14:27). Now it is Jesus who is thrown off his horse, as it were. The Lord of Life, he by whom and for whom “all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities” (Col. 1:16), now found himself overtaken by grief. More than grief, in fact: anger. And why not? There he stood face to face with “the last enemy” he would defeat in his crusade against Satan. And he “wept.”

The marvel in this scene is that Jesus responds thus even though he knows that he will shortly raise Lazarus from the dead. One would expect his countenance to reveal a knowing grin that invites the crowd to anticipate his miracle, but all it shows is anguish. How much more are we allowed to weep when such an interval exists between the death of loved ones and the final Resurrection!

Theologically, it is the appropriate response to death—not simply because of our own sense of loss or our mourning for the survivors who are dear to us, but because of the loss to the beloved who has died. We do not grieve “as others do who have no hope” (1 Thess. 4:13), but we do grieve. Death is not a benign passageway to happiness, but a horrible enemy attempting to keep us in the grave.

Death’s sting has been removed, but its bite remains. It does not have the last word for believers, but it remains the believer’s antagonist until the Resurrection of the body. The good news is never that one has died, but that death has been ultimately conquered by the Lord of Life. At the graveside, neither optimism nor pessimism; sentimentalism nor stoicism, tell us what is happening here. Only Jesus’ cross and Resurrection define the event for us.

Martha trusted Jesus when she moved the stone at his command. Perhaps she had even heard and recalled Jesus’ promise, “For the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear his voice and come forth” (John 5:28). Jesus’ own Resurrection will be the “firstfruits of those who sleep” (1 Cor. 15:20), but this resurrection of Lazarus is in a sense the prelude to that great inauguration of the last day. This is the climactic sign because “the last enemy is death” (1 Cor. 15:26).

Conclusion he good news in all of this is that “the last enemy is death.” This means that Jesus accomplished everything in his mission on earth for our complete redemption and glorification. “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.” That is the bad news. “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our

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Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15:56). Triumph at last outruns, outspends, outstrips tragedy. But it does so at a painful cost.

Death is not a portal to life. Death is not a benign friend, but a dreaded foe. It is not a natural part of life, but the most unnatural part of life you could imagine. But in his death and Resurrection, Jesus crushed the serpent’s head, vanquishing the “last enemy” of every believer.

This last enemy will one day be overcome for believers in the final resurrection of the dead, but that is because it has already objectively been vanquished in the Resurrection of our Living Head.

Look at him and see what the whole harvest will be like in the end! In Christ, the end has already begun. The Head will not live without his body.

The shape of the future is already present.

Lazarus was raised, but he died. His body thus raised for a time continued where it left off in its surrender to decay and death. One day, mourners would gather again at Lazarus’ tomb, but this time with no expectation of resurrection until the last day. And yet, precisely because of that confidence, precisely because Lazarus’ next funeral occurred this side of Easter, they would not mourn that day as those with no hope. After all, word would have reached them by then—perhaps some of them had even been witnesses—of the greater Resurrection of Jesus himself, which would take a stand against death on its own territory, so that those united to him by faith will not remain dead. Their bodies will be raised to worship in God’s renewed sanctuary.

Death is still an enemy, not a friend, but it is “the last enemy,” and it is already defeated so that now death is not God’s judgment upon us for our sin but the temporal effects of our participation in Adam’s guilt. And because the guilt and judgment are removed, we can both cry out with our Lord in troubled anger at death and yet also sing with the Apostle, “Where O death is your sting?

Where O hell is your victory?” (1 Cor. 15:54–55).

What we need again is a church that can sing the blue note in a way that faces the real world honestly and truthfully, recognizing the tragic aspect of life as even more tragic than any nihilist could imagine, while knowing that the one who raised Lazarus is now raised to the right hand of his Father, until all enemies—including death, lie in the rubble beneath his feet. ■

Michael Horton (Ph.D., Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and the University of Coventry) is Professor of Apologetics and Theology at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California).

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T H E B L U E N O T E | Can Your Faith Face the Music

An Example of Suffe “S

uffering is the badge of all our tribe” are the words of Shylock, the Jew, in Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice. Although he spoke insincerely, what he said was not devoid of truth.

But now that Jesus, the Messiah, has come all who believe in him are the people of God in a world of fallen mankind, and suffering is their badge, too. Jesus said that this would be the

case when he called on all would-be disciples to take up their cross (Matt. 16:25). As Jesus “learned obedience through what he suffered” (Heb. 5:8), so do they—although he had a unique task which is not passed on to them. But “no servant is greater than his master” (John 13:16; 16:20).

James, the Lord’s brother, wrote about this to fellow-Jews who believed in Jesus as God’s Messiah and who were consequently being oppressed (see James 2:6–7; 5:1–6). He encouraged them to be steadfast (1:2–3, 12), to “hold the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ” (2:1) in a worthy manner and, like a farmer who waits through dry seasons for rains to mature the crop, to wait patiently and, not discontentedly, for the Lord’s coming (5:7–10). He then referred to the Old Testament prophets who “spoke in the Lord’s name” as providing “an example of suffering and endurance” and he appeals to his readers’ knowledge that such are blessed of God. It is at this point that he makes a specific reference to Job who, although he was not a descendant of Abraham, exemplified such endurance and obtained such blessing. James knew that he was not telling his readers something new because he could remind them that they had “heard” of “the steadfastness of Job” and that they had “seen” “the end of the Lord.”

Where and how, we might wonder, had they heard and seen these things? The answer must be that it was from the book that bears his name, from their religious upbringing and doubtless from Christian teaching, too. By what he says about Job, James therefore indicates how Christian peo-

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ple should think about endurance in suffering. We will try to gauge the greatness of Job’s endurance by means of a review of his sufferings and of the Lord’s compassionate intervention.

Job’s Costly Endurance o suffering is easy to bear. The suddenness and successiveness with which blows can fall, coupled with an increase in their severity, or resumption after an interval and their prolongation, cumulatively form one massive, insupportable burden. The account that we have of Job’s afflictions in the opening two chapters of the book include all these features. The seemingly ordinary expression “There was a day” (1:6, 13) introduces what was extraordinary in Job’s experience, and the echoing expression “Again there was a day” repeats the like but with an extra note of foreboding. There had never been a day like it before in Job’s life, and there would be others that were worse. The recollection of his previous days only served to increase his grief (29:2–30).

The loss of all his animals and almost all the servants—those who survived the calamities only being spared to bring him the terrible news— amounted to total impoverishment. Then came the news of his children’s deaths—and what are crops, animals and servants to children—those precious sons and daughters for whom he had prayed? By that report a far heavier blow fell on his already battered spirit. But so far his body is left unscathed— but not for long. His health is now removed by a disease that would deprive him of all human socie-

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ering and Endurance ty and solace, including even that of his wife whose remark is perhaps “the unkindest cut of all” as she urges him to curse God so as to be cut off by him.

Yet Job “did not sin nor charge God with wrong” in all these reversals. Just as he had not sinned so as to deserve those calamities, so he did not sin just after they befell him. He maintained his faith in God, receiving “evil” from him in exactly the same spirit of thankful worship as he had received “good,” and encouraged his wife to do the same. Such endurance was costly and hard. Being human, he was grief-stricken (1:20).

Soon he has to cope with his three particularly close friends (19:21) and over some length of time.

They were kind, wise, and good. They met voluntarily, traveled to bring him comfort when they heard of his circumstances, and so they spoke to him about God. But their instinctive reaction when they saw him and their protracted silence as they sat with him conspired to increase his already great bitterness. But soon they are at loggerheads with each other, and that augments his anguish still further.

Death had crossed his path in the case of his animals, servants, and beloved children. We have noted how he responded to that, but bereavement cannot be shaken off overnight. Death is then mentioned by his wife in connection with God’s judgment as a way out from his current plight, and once more he can react vigorously against that. But in the week of silence and sickness since the friends arrived it seems that the reality of death has been very present to his thoughts because when he next speaks (chapter 3), death is everywhere, and it is seen as something to be desired. This points to his suffering having reached another dimension.

Mental anguish is added to physical pain and to social ostracism. The mind has its own deep recesses and self-starting processes that can be

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beyond human knowledge and control and especially when the body is racked with discomfort. In the silence, Job desires death because he has become engulfed by a darkness of soul. Thoughts can be harder to cope with than sores, and a vent must be found for the anguish. He despises life and complains bitterly that he cannot be deprived of it yet; but strangely, he never thinks of ending it himself. From now on he is alone and in the dark.

This darkness is deepened by a number of factors. The first is that little spiritual light (knowledge) had been given to him before he entered into it. The period of Job’s history in which this book is set is the patriarchal period. This can be seen from the fact that 1) his wealth is indicated by flocks and herds; 2) he acts as priest for his family and household and makes offerings of the earliest sort; and 3) the names he uses for God are generally pre-Mosaic (though he does use the divine name once, see 12:9). In addition, 4) his age compares with that of Jacob who lived 130 years less than his father, Isaac (see Job 42:16 and Gen. 47:9).

In thinking about Job we are therefore to think of the amount of revealed truth that God had disclosed to the patriarchs as being the sum total of what Job could know—and probably he knew less than that. There is no reference to the Mount Sinai revelation, but Adam’s sin is referred to in 31:33.

The murder of Abel may be alluded to in 16:18, but that is probably reading too much into a figurative expression. The point, however, is that Job lacked so much of God’s truth which was calculated to illumine and calm the minds of the people of God. The light that the Hebrews had in their houses in Egypt when all the land was engulfed in darkness, and the help of the prophets when they were later in Babylon was completely unknown to him—as was their emancipation from both places. We must always bear this in mind lest we judge Job too harshly, as his friends did (4:4–6). If we are interested in being severe then we ought to berate ourselves, we who not only know of Egypt and Babylon but Calvary and the promises that God will never forsake his people!

The second factor is, of course, that Job is completely unaware of what had transpired in God’s heavenly court. There, the Satan (the arch-opponent of the Lord and his people) had impugned the honor of each by depicting them as being in reality consumed with self-love rather than genuine love for each other. This distortion was but a reflection of himself and it was a lie—an all-out anti-gospel lie. God gives because he loves and not so that he might get; humans love not because of what they have been given but because they have been so loved. Satan’s lie was of such magnitude

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that it could not be allowed to stand. It was the antithesis of grace—both in the giver and the recipient.

Thirdly, and in order to expose its falsehood and demolish its appeal—for God is intent on destroying Satan’s works in the interests of his people’s good and not only of his own glory—he allows Satan to turn Job’s world upside down. As God’s honor had been previously advanced by Job’s evident and consistent piety, the genuineness of that piety had to be manifested as publicly.

Consequently, instead of Job’s world being one in which God smiled and Job served—almost an Eden, it became a kind of concentration camp, a black hole of meaninglessness and an inferno of rage. It is a world in which God has turned against Job without just reason, refuses to explain his action, indeed refuses to speak to him at all, and instead keeps on hounding him to death. This is the antithesis of Eden; it is a kind of hell. This being so (or seeming to be so, for in the dark things are not what they seem), why should Job continue to serve God? For Job not to renounce such a God is fortitude indeed.

In addition to this prison and the monster jailer presiding over it that Satan has fabricated, he has one further weapon to use. It is the friends. Just as he had struck by repeated events in the opening chapters and then by way of speech through what Job’s servants and his wife had said, so now he uses the friends’ interpretation of those events to put further pressure on Job. And what unending pressure! They repetitively tell him that calamity has befallen him because he has sinned, and then offer him restoration if he will only acknowledge that he has been a hypocrite all along! This endless interrogation is Satan’s master stroke (or his last throw) because if he can get Job to admit that he has sinned and to do penance to get God’s blessing, then Job’s testimony to God and God’s endorsement of him are just lies. The glory of God and of his grace to man that produces godliness would be shattered. So the deluded friends hammer away at Job and Job, completely oblivious of what is afoot, hammers back at them and even at the God he knew rather than grasp at a blessing for himself.

This is indomitable faith even though it is mixed with sin. Job will be reproved for calling God to account by both Elihu and the Lord himself, but that is not the focus of this essay. Our attention is on Job’s endurance against numerous and overwhelming odds—and from a position of weakness.

He was engaged in an unequal battle against an unknown foe. Unaware of the immense honor bestowed upon him in being named God’s champion against Satan, he was fighting the Lord’s battle

blindfolded and unarmed. But there were two nonnegotiables in his mind and spirit. He could not give up on the God he had known although he no longer understood him; nor would he give in and believe that he himself was a hypocrite in order to get a restoration of an idyllic past. There must be a resolution of the real facts of the situation. If only God would appear to defend himself against Job’s accusations and to defend Job against the accusations of his friends. If only there was someone who could intervene and bring God and Job together once more…. He would wait and not give up.

Job’s Precious Endurance rom what has been said it might seem as if Job was left unaided in his struggle with the powers of darkness. That is not the case. The Lord boasted of him to Satan and had his eye on him all the time. Throughout his struggle he was graciously though unconsciously supported by God, and occasionally was given some glimmers of light as he pioneered his way toward God. His very persistence in addressing God by way of appeal and accusation and also arguing with his friends and rejecting their counsel is a manifestation of his being upheld by God. It was not only dark thoughts that could spring up in the mind unbidden, but thoughts that inspired hope, even if it was only faint hope.

His meditation on the possibility of life after death in chapter 14 is an example of God’s being near to him although he could not see him. He soliloquizes, “Why should a lopped tree sprout again and man, God’s special creation, not be restored to life after death? Will God not desire to renew fellowship with the human he has made?”(14:13–15). He entertains the thought but does not reach certainty, and his hope subsides.

Then immediately after appealing to the earth not to cover his blood, he becomes confident that there is someone near God who will vouch for him (16:19–20). Finally and climactically, when he is sure that he is about to die, he is given to know that his “kinsman-redeemer lives” who will ensure that Job will see God again on his side. This is a sovereign intervention in a situation where Satan seems dominant. It is, as James says, great compassion. (There are such moments in the life of the afflicted believer when faith seems at breaking-point only for it to be mightily refreshed again by a God who steps in to sustain and endorse the endurance of his people.)

Job has found solid ground under his feet. His outlook clears and he sees that the argument of his friends that suffering is always traceable to sin is a paper tiger for the wicked do not always suffer

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(chapter 24). He gains the ascendancy in the argument and reduces his friends to silence (and with them Satan, the accuser). Job has triumphed for God and godliness over Satan.

But the narrative does not end there and proceed to Job’s restoration, for God has not completely triumphed. This is because in the course of maintaining his spiritual integrity (not his sinlessness) Job has not given him due honor. That gives rise to a subplot in the story and to the intervention of Elihu, a divinely sent messenger who paves the way for the Lord’s appearing. He rebukes Job for his overweening pride and tells him that God has a benevolent design in his use of suffering. This note is not struck before in the book. It reduces Job to silence.

God therefore had his own purpose in allowing Satan to test Job. This is what James calls “the end of the Lord.” It was to show great compassion and mercy and to bless Job more than he had previously done. When the Lord appears it is to judge and to save as James declares (5:9 and 11). He humbles Job for his outspokenness but still owns him as he did before the trials began, calling him “my servant.” Surprisingly, God says that Job has spoken what is right about him whereas the friends have not. This probably refers to the issue that was at the center of the debate between Job and his friends, namely whether God was punishing Job on account of his sin or not. God is saying that Job is not a hypocrite and further exalts him by telling the friends to go to him as to a priest and that he will accept Job’s prayer for them. It is striking that Job prays for them before he is restored and that it is as he prays for them that he is restored. True piety is not self-centered. Satan’s lie is exposed, and Job is not only restored to all that was taken away from him but given twice as much in the way of external proof of God’s favor as he had before.

He has gained in every way in humility before God, assurance of his mercy and in love for his friends. Everyone wins—except Satan.

Job’s Prophetic Endurance n light of the fact that James brackets Job with the prophets, we may ask “Is Job among the prophets?” Well, does he not speak “the word of the Lord” in the same sort of way as other saints like Abel who “though he died, still speaks” through the inscripturated record of his faith (Heb.11: 4)? Job is such a prophet. And what is he saying? He is asserting that it is endurance that precedes “the end (coming) of the Lord.”

Job is therefore a study of the kind of valiant endurance that Christians should display before the Lord’s coming in compassion and mercy. This is

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Definition

TRAGEDY

NIHILISM

A drama in which the protagonist is overcome by a force or circumstance stronger than him or herself. The protagonist is often brought to his or her tragic end because of his or her own flaws. The term “tragedy” may also be applied more broadly to any serious plot ending in catastrophe.

From the Latin nihil, or nothing, not anything, that which does not exist. It appears in the verb “annihilate,” meaning to bring to nothing, to destroy completely. Thus “nihilism” is the belief in nothing.

“Tragedy” is a term used to describe a particular genre of literature.

Nihilism is the philosophical position that there is no intrinsic value or meaning to life, the denial of any grounds for objective Truth; the rejection of all ideas of reality. Therefore, the traditional values of society are unfounded. Nihilists often claim that the prevailing values of their society are so bad that it would be best to destroy them.

“Nihilism” is often associated with skepticism.

Discipline

Literature and the Arts

Philosophy

Key Figures

Aristotle (384-322 BCE)

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Aristotle defined tragedy as “the imitation of an action that is serious” and featuring “incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish the catharsis of such emotions.” Because Aristotle claimed that the purpose of tragedy is the purgation of pity and fear in the audience, tragedy was a necessary component for the health of society. By seeing the protagonist brought low by his own hamartia, or tragic flaw, the audience is left feeling not depressed but relieved, or with a compassionate understanding for the fallen hero. That is to say, by watching a tragic play, the observer is taken out of selfish or individualistic viewpoints and connected to the larger concerns of humanity.

Nietzsche claims that there is no order to the world, except that which we give it. However, we fool ourselves into thinking that these structuring values come from God. Nihilism for Nietzsche, then, is the recognition that there is no God and thus no objective Truth. The weak individual may fall into despair in the face of nihilism, the “overman” (Übermensch) will see in this recognition the possibility of locating the source of value in himself. Nihilism thus presents the overman with the opportunity of shaping the world in his own image.

“For the plot [of a tragedy] ought to be so constructed that, even without the aid of the eye, he who hears the tale told will thrill with horror and melt to pity at what takes place.” (Aristotle, Poetics, XIV)

“Nihilism is … not only the belief that everything deserves to perish; but one actually puts one’s shoulder to the plough; one destroys.” (Nietzsche, The Will to Power).

Quotes

Jennifer Hardy Williams (Ph.D., University of California, Irvin) is a lecturer at the University of California, Irvine. Her dissertation, “Ghosts in the Machine: Modernism’s Religious Other,” analyzes the use of religious tropes in the fiction of Søren Kierkegaard, Joseph Conrad, and Gertrude Stein.

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T H E B L U E N O T E | Can Your Faith Face the Music

Ain’t It Hard?

Suffering and Hope in the Blues n a famous review of Richard Wright’s Black Boy in 1945, Ralph Ellison eloquently describes the blues as a form:

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The blues is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one’s aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near comic lyricism. As a form, the blues is an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically.

We should add that the blues is a performance.

The “lyricism” of this extraordinary genre is best expressed in a musical rendering. Whereas in many cases of the word–music combination the words are simply added to the music, or the music

sets the words, in the blues words and music go together in a common lyric. As such, the form emanates from the deepest recesses of the soul.

Lyric does that when it is authentic. Thus it brings the “aching consciousness” to the front of the memory in order to transcend it.

While indeed the blues lyric may be autobiographical, it also articulates a worldview.

Not that the blues cannot be purely instrumental.

Often, it is. Yet even without the voice, one “hears” the cry and the passion of the song in the subtext. Take, for example, Louis Armstrong’s “West End Blues.” Known as the greatest recordings of classical jazz ever made, the Hot Five and Hot Seven sessions (1926–28) are beyond any category previously set down. The lineage of this music goes back to New Orleans, back to Louis’ boyhood. By the time of these recordings there were actually six musicians in the Hot Five, including Zutty Singleton on drums, and the great Earl Hines

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on piano. His broken chords and delicate improvisations were the perfect dialogue with Armstrong’s strong cornet.

The “West End Blues,” was recorded June 28, 1928, in a Chicago studio, under the Columbia label. Columbia had just purchased the legendary Okeh record company. It is one of the great peaks in Louis’s art. A Clarence Williams composition unremarkable on its own, in the hands of these musicians it becomes a “tapestry of pain, joy, and transcendence through musical artistry,” a sort of tragic drama with Shakespearean depth (Bergen).

There may indeed have been strong personal elements in its background. Louis Armstrong had just lost his beloved mother, who died of what they used to call hardening of the arteries at age 41.

Mary Albert Armstrong, known as Mayann, had grown up in the oppressive Jim Crow era of Reconstruction, and yet she had a fun-loving, spontaneous spirit: “God bless you, my son, and thank God I lived to see my son grow up to be a big successful young man,” she said to Louis in her dying moments.

The funeral itself was a metaphor for the black aesthetic. Moving from the slow dirge to the final release of the interment, there was a sense of

Ellison’s “jagged grain” moving toward transcendence, illustrated in the sequence, and in the music that went with it. The blues embodies this funeral journey, at least the first part.

The immediate precursor to the blues was the work song. For field hands, railroad workers, and cotton-pickers, the most elemental form of work music was known as the “holler,” a mournful shout which would echo in the workplace. These cries could be heard hundreds of feet away. According to one witness in 1853, on a railroad project, “One raised such a sound as I had never heard before, a long, loud, musical shout, rising, and falling, and breaking into falsetto, his voice ringing through the woods in the clear, frosty night air, like a bugle call. As he finished, the melody was caught up by another, and then another, then by several in chorus” (Charters).

One of the typical work songs that directly fed into the blues is “John Henry.” Apparently, in the 1870s, there was a famous competition between the “steel drivin’ man” John Henry and a steam drill.

It was during the construction of the “Big Bend Tunnel” on the C. and O. Railroad. Myth and reality blend, and there are many versions of the story line. One of them has it that John Henry beat the

Bono, the Bible In the spirit of our occasional “Free Space” interview section, the editors offer this piece by U2’s Bono on the Psalms, the blues, and the comfort of grace. We make no claims to Bono’s orthodoxy, but we find his own words strangely familiar to many of the other sentiments presented in this issue. This piece originally appeared as the introduction to Selections from the Book of Psalms: Authorized King James Version (Pocket Canons), copyright © 1999 by Bono. It is used here by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. (The ellipses are original.)

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xplainingbeliefhasalwaysbeendifficult.Howdoyouexplainaloveandlogic attheheartoftheuniversewhentheworldissooutofwhack?Howaboutthe poeticversustheactualtruthfoundinthescriptures?Hasfreewillgotus crucified?Andwhataboutthedodgycharacterswhoinhabitthetome,known asthebible,whoclaimtohearthevoiceofGod?Youhavetobeinterested,but isGod? Explaining faith is impossible…Vision over visibility …

Instinct over intellect … A songwriter plays a chord with the faith that he will hear the next one in his head.

One of the writers of the psalms was a musician, a harp-play-

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er whose talents were required at ‘the palace’ as the only medicine that would still the demons of the moody and insecure King Saul of Israel; a thought that still inspires, if not quite explaining Marilyn singing for Kennedy, or the Spice Girls in the court of Prince Charles…

At age 12, I was a fan of David, he felt familiar … like a pop star could feel familiar. The words of the psalms were as poetic as they were religious and he was a star. A dramatic character, because before David could fulfill the prophecy and become the king of Israel, he had to take quite a beating. He was forced into exile and ended up in a cave in some no-name border town facing the collapse of his ego and abandonment by God. But this is where the soap opera got interesting, this is where David was said to have composed his first psalm - a blues. That’s what a lot of the psalms feel like to me, the blues. Man shouting at God – ‘My God, my God why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me?’ (Psalm 22).

I hear echoes of this holy row when un-holy bluesman Robert Johnson howls ‘There’s a hellhound on my trail’ or Van Morrison

steel hammer but died in the process. The hero became a figure of defiance. Mississippi John Hurt sang the “Spike Driver Blues” in 1928, exclaiming, “This is the hammer that killed John Henry, but it won’t kill me, but it won’t kill me . . .” the blues is about lament and defiance, all at once.

With the great W. C. Handy (1873–1958), the blues were somewhat crystallized. One standard form he helped define was the twelve-bar blues. In the key of C, this would mean four bars in the tonic (C, or home-base), two in the subdominant (F, or away from home), four back through the tonic to the dominant (G, or ready to go home), then two in the tonic (C, home-base). Although this is one of the most basic patterns found in Western music, there is African ancestry in the particular way the pattern is articulated. The harmonies, the tensions, the rhythms display a fusion between this ancestry and various kinds of folk music and spirituals. For example, the so-called “blue note” bends the tone, the way one might stretch a string on the guitar, producing a soulful sound. The words follow the three-part harmony but are in the form of AAB. For example, Handy’s most recorded number is the “St Louis Blues,” about a woman whose man left her for somebody else.

I hate to see that evening sun go down Oh, I hate to see that evening sun go down Because my baby has done left this town.

Though more polished than some of the songs from the Mississippi Delta, when interpreted by Bessie Smith or another great African-American vocalist, this song is the quintessence of the blues.

It combines the sadness of lost love with the veiled defiance of a victim strong enough to mock the oppressor: “If it weren’t for the jewels, and all that store-bought hair, that man of mine wouldn’a gone nowhere, nowhere.” Behind the theme of lost love is the abandonment of black people by white oppressors. And behind that, a question: “Why, O Lord?”

One of the reasons for the strength represented in the blues is that it bespeaks the courage of African-American people as they learned to resist oppression. The major place where such a spirit was nurtured was the church. Here the slaves and former slaves heard the good news of the emancipation and forgiveness of Christ. They heard the story of the Jews and the early Christians. Both in the preaching and the singing, these stories were heard and became their meta-narrative. The King

e, and the Blues sings ‘Sometimes I feel like a motherless child’. Texas Alexander mimics the psalms in ‘Justice Blues’: ‘I cried Lord my father, Lord eh Kingdom come. Send me back my woman, then thy will be done’. Humorous, sometimes blasphemous, the blues was backslidin’ music; but by its very opposition, flattered the subject of its perfect cousin Gospel.

Abandonment, displacement, is the stuff of my favourite psalms. The Psalter may be a font of gospel music, but for me it’s in his despair that the psalmist really reveals the nature of his special relationship with God. Honesty, even to the point of anger.

‘How long, Lord? Wilt thou hide thyself forever?’ (Psalm 89) or ‘Answer me when I call’ (Psalm 5).

Psalms and hymns were my first taste of inspirational music. I liked the words but I wasn’t sure about the tunes – with the exception of Psalm 23, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’. I remember them as droned and chanted rather than sung. Still, in an odd way, they prepared me for the honesty of John Lennon, the baroque language of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, the open throat of Al Green and Steve Wonder – when I hear these singers, I am recon-

nected to a part of me I have no explanation for … my ‘soul’ I guess.

Words and music did for me what solid, even rigorous, religious argument could never do, they introduced me to God, not belief in God, more an experiental sense of GOD. Over art, literature, reason, the way into my spirit was a combination of words and music. As a result the Book of Psalms always felt open to me and led me to the poetry of Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon¸ the book of John… My religion could not be fiction but it had to transcend facts. It could be mystical, but not mythical and definitely not ritual …

My mother was Protestant, my father Catholic; anywhere other than Ireland that would be unremarkable. The ‘Prods’ at that time had the better tunes and the Catholics had the better stagegear. My mate Gavin Friday used to say: ‘Roman Catholicism is the Glamrock of religion’ with its candles and psychedelic colours … Cardinal blues, scarlets and purples, smoke bombs of incense and the ring of the little bell. The Prods were better at the bigger bells, they could afford them. In Ireland wealth and Protestantism [ C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 3 4 ]

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James Bible was practically memorized by those who attended. The church was both a “structure of plausibility” in which a worldview was made plausible and a protection against the cruel outside.

Here is how Sylvia Frey and Betty Wood put it: The passage from traditional religions to Christianity was arguably the single most significant event in African American history. It created a community of faith and provided a body of values and a religious commitment that became in time the principal solvent of ethnic differences and the primary source of cultural identity. It provided African Americans with an ideology of resistance and the means to absorb the cultural norms that turned Africans into African Americans. The churches Afro-Christians founded formed the institutional bases for these developments and served as the main training ground for the men and women who were to lead the community out of slavery and into a new identity as free African American Christians.

In a parallel universe to the church, the realm of entertainment was a regular feature of African-

went together; to have either, was to have collaborated with the enemy, i.e. Britain. This did not fly in our house.

After going to Mass at the top of the hill, in Finglas on the north side of Dublin, my father waited outside the little Church of Ireland chapel at the bottom of the hill, where my mother had brought her two sons …

I kept myself awake thinking of the clergyman’s daughter and let my eyes dive into the cinema of the stained glass. These Christian artisans had invented the movies … light projected through colour to tell their story. In the ‘70s the story was ‘the Troubles’ and the Troubles came through the stained glass; with rocks thrown more in mischief than in anger, but the message was the same; the country was to be divided along sectarian lines. I had a foot in both camps, so my Goliath became religion itself; I began to see religion as the perversion of faith. As to the five smooth stones for the sling … I began to see God everywhere else. In girls, fun, music, justice but still – despite the lofty King James translation – the Scriptures.

I loved these stories for the basest reasons, not just the New Testament with its mind-altering concept that God might reveal

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American life. The relation of the two was complex. At times amusement was frowned upon and described as sinful, or “of the world.” At other times, many close connections could be observed.

In truth, the two existed in a symbiotic connection.

To be sure, the blues were sung outside the church.

But they were more than mere entertainment, because they expressed deeply felt convictions about life, its contradictions, its joys, its hardships.

Indeed, the blues are remarkably close to the spiritual in every way, except that its subject matter is more about troubles with life than about heavenly solutions. Were it not for the ending, the great spiritual “Nobody Knows the Trouble I See” would be a blues (“Nobody knows, but Jesus”). Were it not for its irony, “Preachin’ the Blues,” by Bessie Smith, would be a spiritual.

The interdependence runs even deeper. The Wisdom books of the Bible often use the poetic device of parallelism in order to set up a tension and then either resolve it or drive it further forward. The stark realism of the Book of Ecclesiastes is rendered in places by this poetic device: A good name is better than precious ointment, and the day of death than the day of birth.

It is better to go to the house of mourning

himself as a baby born in straw poverty – but even the Old Testament. These were action movies, with some hardcore men and women … the car chases, the casualties, the blood and guts; there was very little kissing.

David was a star, the Elvis of the bible, if we can believe the chiseling of Michelangelo (check the face – but I still can’t figure out this most famous Jew’s foreskin). And unusually for such a ‘rock star’, with his lust for power, lust for women, lust for life, he had the humility of one who knew his gift worked harder than he ever would. He even danced naked in front of his troops … the biblical equivalent of the royal walkabout. David was definitely more performance artist than politician.

Anyway, I stopped going to churches and got myself into a different kind of religion. Don’t laugh, that’s what being in a rock ‘n’ roll band is, not pseudo-religion either … Show-business is Shamanism: Music is Worship; whether it’s worship of women or their designer, the world or its destroyer, whether it comes from that ancient place we call soul or simply the spinal cortex, whether the prayers are on fire with a dumb rage or dove-like desire … the smoke goes upwards … to God or something you

than to go into the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.

Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

(Eccles. 7:1–4) This ironic description of life under the sun could well be a blues in the Old Testament! It is a call, not to pessimism, but to facing up to reality. It is the dark side of the coin of hope. The blues uses the same poetic device to drive home a feeling or an observation.

Nehemiah “Skip” James was an elusive figure among blues singers in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He hailed from Jackson, Mississippi, and was quite at home in the church as well as in the tough world of performance.

When the Depression set in, he sang about hard times and then stopped singing until much later. His music was introspective and ruminating. He played both guitar and piano, and his voice was most versatile.

The “Cypress Grove Blues” captures the same irony and realism of the Book of Ecclesiastes using the poetic device of parallelism.

I would rather be dead and six feet in my grave, I would rather be dead and six feet in my grave, Than be was up here, honey, ‘treated this a-way.

And the old people told me, baby, but I never did know, The old people told me, baby woman, but I never did know, ‘The Good Book declare you got to reap just what you sow.’

When your knee bone achin’ and your body cold, when your knee bone’s achin’ and your body cold, Means you just gettin’ ready, honey, for the cypress grove. (This blues was originally recorded on Paramount, and reissued on Skip James: Early Blues Recordings 1931, Biograph BLP 12029.)

Neither in form nor content is the connection of the blues to Wisdom literature fortuitous.

It would be easy to conclude that this type of music is without hope or redemption. But this is far from the case. The realism of the blues does not stand opposed to hopefulness, but to sentimentali-

replace God with … usually yourself.

Years ago, lost for words and forty minutes of recording time left before the end of our studio time, we were still looking for a song to close our third album, War. We wanted to put something explicitly spiritual on the record to balance the politics and the romance of it; like Bob Marley or Marvin Gaye would. We thought about the psalms … ‘Psalm 40’ … There was some squirming. We were a very ‘white’ rock group, and such plundering of the scriptures was taboo for a white rock group unless it was in the ‘service of Satan’. Or worse, Goth.

‘Psalm 40’ is interesting in that it suggests a time in which grace will replace karma, and love replace the very strict laws of Moses (i.e. fulfil them). I love that thought. David, who committed some of the most selfish as well as selfless acts, was depending on it.

That the scriptures are brim full of hustlers, murderers, cowards, adulterers and mercenaries used to shock me; now it is a source of great comfort.

‘40’ became the closing song at U2 shows and on hundreds of occasions, literally hundreds of thousands of people of every size and shape t-shirt have shouted back the refrain, pinched from

‘Psalm 6’: “’How long’ (to sing this song)”. I had thought of it as a nagging question – pulling at the hem of an invisible deity whose presence we glimpse only when we act in love. How long … hunger? How long … hatred? How long until creation grows up at the chaos of its precocious, hell-bent adolescence has been discarded? I thought it odd that the vocalising of such questions could bring such comfort; to me too.

But to get back to David, it is not clear how many, if any, of these psalms David or his son Solomon really wrote. Some scholars suggest the royals never dampened their nibs and that there was a host of Holy Ghost writers … Who cares? I didn’t buy Leiber and Stoller … they were just his songwriters … I bought Elvis.

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ty. So often the music of white people responds to troubled times with escapism. The blues is stark and realistic, but not hopeless. The blues tells us how to live on earth in order to prepare for heaven. Living down here makes no sense unless there is a heaven to give it meaning.

John Storm Roberts makes the point that white ballads often have a moral, whereas black songs simply state the facts, albeit with a theological subtext. The point may be exaggerated,

O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear?

Or cry violence! and you will not save? (Hab. 1:2)

The Lord will not always answer in the terms we would have preferred. His answer to Habakkuk was at first confusing: judging the Israelites by the means of the violent Chaldeans. But ultimately, he was asked, as are we, to believe that God’s good answer would come in God’s good time: “wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay” The reason this is important is that the Bible never pretends that evil and (Hab. 2:3). Still, unless we can face our troubles with suffering are easy. But it gives them meaning. honesty, we will not be in line for the particular way in which God does answer us.

Truth is the highest virtue but there is something to it. The Dixon Brothers, in the blues. The foremost blues singer of the Old a white group, sang “Wreck on the Highway,” Testament is surely Job. While his suffering with the words, “I saw the wreck on the highway, appeared to him to have no purpose, he was vindibut I didn’t hear nobody pray.” In contrast, the cated in the end by a God who owed no accounts black song, “Frankie and Johnny,” starkly states, to him, but who nevertheless is incapable of injus“this story has no moral, this story has no end, tice. Harold Courlander collected songs from the this story goes to show that there ain’t no good nineteenth-century African-American repertoire, in men.” Consider the lament over the kid- including early versions of the blues with a biblical hue: napped Lindberg baby: Oh who would steal a baby out from his little bed?

The world is full of trouble, trouble, Oh Lord have mercy on us folks!

No sanctimonious finger-pointing, yet a strong recognition of original sin, says Roberts.

The reason this is important is that the Bible never pretends that evil and suffering are easy. But it gives them meaning. God’s revelation never underestimates the power and the cruelty of the trials wrought by a fallen world. But it tells us he is in control. Indeed, we should not be surprised by the attacks (1 Pet. 4:12). Intellectually, we may balk at the doctrine of original sin, but descriptively, as Blaise Pascal suggested, it is the best thing going, because it accounts for what we observe and feel.

At the same time, while no rational explanation for the possibility of evil in God’s world is offered in Scripture, yet on every page it defines that evil as being against God’s holy law. Evil is transgressive.

We human beings are the authors of evil, although ultimately God himself must have ordained it for his purposes. But we dare not go there, nor guess what those purposes might be. So evil surrounds us, like the dust of death. Even the godly prophets could ask, honestly,

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Old Job said, good Lord, Whilst I’m feeling bad, good Lord, I can’t sleep at night, good Lord, I can’t eat a bite, good Lord, And the woman I love, good Lord, Don’t treat me right, good Lord.

Yet Job did not simply receive pity and comfort from the Lord. Rather, he had to be told to trust in his sovereign ways, however lacking in rational sense they may appear. No wonder black people identified with Job and many other biblical figures who experienced suffering! Like them, they could sing the blues and preach the blues. As Jon Michael Spencer observes, “That from their blues podium singers preached and confessed the truth appears to have provided them with a sense of divine justification.”

Of course, there is more than just truth telling to the sense of divine justification. The blues refuses either to blame God for oppression or to endure it passively. Rather, the blues typically suggests taking a journey. Consider the “road” motif which frequently characterizes the blues. Reflecting on the songs of Floyd Jones, “Dark Road” and “On the Road Again,” Justin O’Brien describes this journey as both an exile and a refuge. We can endure our

suffering when we know that we are on a journey with God as our guide.

Among the most comforting words in the New Testament are Paul’s to the Corinthians, on the subject of affliction. “No temptation has overtaken you,” he says, “that is not common to man” (1 Cor. 10:13). The blues often reflect on the universality of suffering. “In the world, you will have tribulation,” says the Lord Jesus (John 16:33). How is that a comfort? Back to the realism of the blues. It is the beginning of an answer for us. We are not in this alone, or by chance. We are not experiencing something unusual, or unique to us. We cannot say that no one understands our plight. But the answer does not end there. It promises, “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability.” Blues singers sing about hardship and about the strength to climb the mountain and defy the oppressor. God is faithful; he is in charge. But still, the final comfort is this: “but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” How can this be?

Because God is faithful. How can he be faithful?

First, because that is his nature. But second, because of Jesus Christ, who himself endured so much hardship so that we might be delivered. “But take heart,” Jesus tells the disciples, “I have overcome the world.”

May we reverently put it this way? Jesus sang the blues in his life, and on the cross. “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Was there ever a more heart-rending blues? This song is from Psalm 22, the cry of the poor, “O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest” (22:2). In the New Testament it is the cry of Jesus. But then, because of his sinless obedience, he triumphed over death in the resurrection. Now he is the sweet singer of Israel, who praises God in the midst of the congregation of the people he has saved (22:22). His mourning and ours have been turned to dancing and rejoicing. The blues have become gospel song! ■

and British Caribbean to 1830 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), p. 1; John Storm Roberts, Black Music of Two Worlds (Tivoly, NY: Original Music, 1972), pp. 156–7; Harold Courlander: Negro Folk Music, U.S.A., New York: Columbia University Press, 1963; Jon Michael Spencer, Blues and Evil (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993), p. 59; Justin O’Brien, “The Dark Road of Floyd Jones,” in Living Blues, 58 (Winter 1983–4), p. 5.

Example of Suffering and Endurance [ C O N T I N U E D F R O M PA G E 2 9 ]

what we believe the book is about. It depicts an individual believer undergoing trial, triumphing over it, and being gloriously honored. By extension, it is a book about the perseverance of the saints, of the church militant, and about the day when Christ, the kinsman-redeemer of his people, returns in glory.

Job on the ash heap in Uz is an Old Testament counterpart of John in prison on the island of Patmos. He depicts all the suffering saints of the Most High awaiting the inevitable and approaching return of the Lord as judge of his foes and of Satan, and as the vindicating deliverer of his people. ■

Hywel Jones (Ph.D., Greenwich University School of Theology) is professor of practical theology at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California) and an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church of Wales.

William Edgar (Dr. Theol., Universite de Genève) is Professor of Apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia, PA) and an accomplished musician.

In the preceding article, Dr. Edgar has quoted from the following: Ralph Ellison, “Richard Wright’s Blues,” in Shadow and Act (New York: Vintage, 1972), p. 78; Laurence Bergen, Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life (New York: Broadway Books, 1997), p. 305; Samuel B. Charters, The Country Blues (New York: Rinehart, 1959), p. 22; Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood, Come Shouting to Zion: African American Protestantism in the American South

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We Confess…

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hat is thy only comfort in life and death? That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.

How many things are necessary for thee to know, that thou, enjoying this comfort, mayest live and die happily? Three; the first, how great my sins and miseries are; the second, how I may be delivered from all my sins and miseries; the third, how I shall express my gratitude to God for such deliverance.

Questions 1 and 2, Heidelberg Catechism (1563)

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his infallible assurance doth not so belong to the essence of faith, but that a true believer may wait long, and conflict with many difficulties before he be partaker of it: yet, being enabled by the Spirit to know the things which are freely given him of God, he may without extraordinary revelation, in the right use of ordinary means, attain thereunto. And therefore it is the duty of everyone to give all diligence to make his calling and election sure; that thereby his heart may be enlarged in peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, in love and thankfulness to God, and in strength and cheerfulness in the duties of obedience, the proper fruits of this assurance: so far is it from inclining men to looseness.

Chapter XVIII, “Of the Assurance of Grace and Salvation,” Westminster Confession of Faith (1647)

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hristians should be exhorted to be zealous to follow Christ, their Head, through penalties, deaths, and hells.

And let them thus be more confident of entering heaven through many tribulations rather than through a false assurance of peace.

Martin Luther’s 94th and 95th Theses (1517)

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Faithful Hearing

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or a long time, we’ve known that the reformers had a high view of preaching,

“Hellenistic” (Greek) ways of thinking are notoriously grounded in the conviction that God creates and redeems by speaking words. We dangerous, but Webb is correct to see the stark are saved by hearing, not by seeing (Rom. 10:17). We’ve also been learning from difference on this point.

While Greeks thought in both secular and Christian sources that terms of vision (even thinking was a kind of our modern culture has been seeing), Scripture talks a lot about hearing. God systematically bent on suppressing cannot be fully grasped, as in a gaze, but can only hearing of any kind. But for the first time, be heard as he condescends to us. at least to my knowledge, we have a This is not just a brief for the Reformation, remarkable treatment of the “theology of however, and Webb’s analysis is critical as well as sound” (theo-acoustics) that weaves both appreciative at helpful points. This section is of these together with simultaneously priceless even just for the quotes from Luther and sweeping and careful analysis.

Calvin on the preached Word as God’s very Word.

Long recognized as a scholar in the This point is often lost even in our own circles field of rhetorical theory and theology, these days, not only in “seeker” circles where the Webb begins this work by attending to public reading and preaching of Scripture often both our calling as pastors and the play second-fiddle to activities regarded as more current context. We are called to witness “dramatic” and “impactful” (usually visual), but in to a noisy world, he says. The sermon conservative circles where the original drama of has fallen on hard times, as all such activities hearing God’s Word can be subverted by an requiring patient listening have suffered. Why is it exclusive emphasis on the written text and the The Divine that Scripture places so much emphasis on the ear individual’s silent reading of it. He also offers an Voice: Christian rather than the eye as the medium of God’s intriguing analysis of different approaches to Proclamation relationship with us? Drawing critically on the theological rhetoric by pairing Erasmus, Luther, and the work of Jesuit scholar Walter Ong, Webb analyzes and Calvin with modern theologians. the relation of orality (i.e., that which is spoken) to In the Enlightenment, however, orality was not Theology of print and other forms of communication. He only subverted by print but by a return to the Greek Sound weaves together fascinating asides on the “stage- priority of seeing over hearing: universal reason,

by Stephen Webb fright” of the prophets and apostles who spoke for grasping and gazing on its object, replaced Brazos Press, 2004 256 pages (paperback), $24.99 God and the history of preaching in America. confidence in hearing the truth. Romanticism Readers of this magazine will not be surprised at offered its own version of this thesis, and in the the observation that the book gets really modern era the “devocalization of the Word” has interesting when he reaches the Reformation as “an perhaps reached its climax. Webb contrasts the event within the history of sound.” That is exegesis of Philo, Origen, and Augustine, influenced because, as Webb recognizes, the reformers by the Greek (Platonic) tradition, with the reformers recovered the biblical emphasis on hearing over and Barth with exceptional clarity and nuance. seeing. Contrasting “Hebraic” (biblical) and But this is also an eminently practical book.

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Web talks about Christian worship as more akin to community theater than the movie theater, with subtle and learned agility. Like community theaters, the church is local and aural. We have to be listeners. On the other hand, movies and much of modern megachurch worship surround us with a “Babel” of sounds that drive out the Word or at least make us less capable of hearing it. In times past, Protestants at least saw music, for example, as a means of conveying the Word, but regardless of intention, the relative thinness of praise music (echoing the priority of ephemeral musical noise over the lasting enrichment and edification of “sound words” in the culture) often leads to “wordless music.” This betrays the church’s similarity to the movie theater or the mall (music targeting the emotions directly, without going through the mind) than to community theater.

This is not however another diatribe against contemporary worship. It’s a lot more than that, and if it achieves a wide readership it will help to make such diatribes unnecessary. It goes beneath these “worship wars” by giving us a rich theological and cultural analysis of proclamation and sound that is explicitly Trinitarian and Christ-centered.

Modern Reformation readers will have some questionmarks along the way, but they are far overshadowed by the author’s extraordinary grasp of some of the most pressing issues facing us as pastors, elders, teachers, worship committees, and worshipers in the postmodern era. It has to be at the top of the “must-read” list for 2005.

Dr. Michael S. Horton Westminster Seminary California Escondido, California

The Devoted Life: An Invitation to the Puritan Classics Edited by Kelly M. Kaic and Randall C. Gleason InterVarsity Press, 2004 300 pages (paperback), $19.00 I initially approached this collection of essays on “classic Puritan works” with the dread of pending disappointment, fearful that no such collection could do justice to breadth and scope of the movement. I was, however, pleasantly surprised

by The Devoted Life. The essays gathered here introduce “some of the very best literature” from the Puritan period, “a distilled list of texts worthy of the layperson’s time.” The editors offer these as a portrait of a life devoted to Christ, highlighting the

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Christian experience of communion with God, individual and corporate spiritual revival, biblical preaching, and the sanctifying work of the Spirit.

One of the obvious strengths of the collection is the quality of the contributing authors—many prominent, reputable scholars in Puritan studies are represented here (J.I. Packer, Leland Ryken, Sinclair Ferguson, Richard Lovelace, Joel Beeke), as well as some lesser-known, yet promising, researchers. Another strength is the selection of which Puritan works to identify as “classics.” It would, I suppose, be impossible to generate a list which would satisfy every interested person, but I questioned the inclusion of only one or two at the expense of others. My only real quibble is the omission of anything from the Westminster Assembly, certainly a defining highpoint of Puritan life and thought.

As with all such collections, the individual pieces vary in terms of quality and approach to the material. Nearly every essay provides a short biography of the Puritan author, offering the reader an inspiring glimpse into twenty different faithful lives, and, in keeping with the stated goal of introducing these works to a modern audience, most include an overview of the classic work, its impact on contemporary and future generations, and its value for the reader today. The best essays also interact with modern critical scholarship: did William Ames’ voluntarism fall outside Reformed orthodoxy? Was Thomas Goodwin’s separation of justification and assurance a radical departure from the reformers’ position? A few of the essays provide helpful insight into the historical context of their respective works: the pastoral concerns in England underlying Richard Baxter’s Reformed Pastor, the familial events giving rise to Anne Bradstreet’s poetry, and the impact and questions surrounding the revivals in Jonathan Edwards’ Religious Affections.

The introductions to The Letters of Samuel Rutherford and John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress motivate one to read the works themselves, and the essay on John Milton would serve well as a reading guide to Paradise Lost. Unfortunately, not enough of the essays deal either with critical scholarship issues or the original context of the writings; many simply summarize the content of the book in question, leaving the reader to wonder if they should bother reading the original at all.

One of the more disappointing aspects of this collection is the opening essay where the editors attempt to discuss the nature of the Puritan movement. Under, I suppose, the guise of “evenhandedness,” the editors begin the essay by recounting the common caricatures of the Puritans throughout the ages. Yet the very presence of the

book belies their own acceptance of these caricatures, and merely mentioning them without criticism or assessment perpetuates the pejorative stereotypes. Their attempt to offer a definition of “Puritan” is also unsatisfying: spurning either a theological definition grounded in the postReformation Reformed movement, or an ecclesiastical one emphasizing conflicts with the established Church of England, the editors propose “a more inclusive definition”—so inclusive, in fact, as to be applicable to Christians throughout the ages. The history of the Puritan movement is adequately summarized in a dozen or so paragraphs, and a list of seven characteristics well describing the core Puritan values and beliefs is briefly discussed. The concluding essay by Richard Lovelace links the Puritan movement with the revivals of the following centuries.

Two final complaints: first, the version of the volume I read (provided before press) still needed some significant editing—too many typos are present, the formatting is annoyingly inconsistent, and some essays could have benefited from an economization of the prose. The second is almost inexcusable in a collection with seeks to introduce these texts to the layperson: the authors often cite editions which are inaccessible to the common reader. Even when a modern version (albeit, frequently abridged or “modernized”) is available (as with the works by Edwards, Boston, Goodwin, and Owen) the essays often refer to an edition published in the Puritan’s collected works. Finding any copy of John Howe’s “classic” published in the last century or more might well be impossible. As the stated goal is to direct the layperson to these texts, this problem should not have occurred.

These shortcomings, however, do not negate the overall quality and value of this volume. In general the essays successfully express the depth of devotion typified by the Puritans and inspire the reading of the texts. The editors have done a great service by highlighting these particular works, and our congregations should be exposed to their riches.

Rev. Henry Knapp First Presbyterian Church Beaver, Pennsylvania

The Rebirth of Orthodoxy

by Thomas C. Oden HarperSanFrancisco, 2003 212 pages (hardcover), $24.95 The Rebirth of Orthodoxy is a personalized and popularized distillation of Thomas Oden’s core theses and scholarly insights in a realm in which he has but few equals. In short, the book is an introduction to the study of what Oden calls “paleo-othodoxy,” i.e. the ‘orthodoxy’ that “holds steadfast to classic consensual teaching, in order to make it clear that the ancient consensus of faith is starkly distinguishable from neo-orthodoxy.” This book is also something of Oden’s spiritual autobiography, and indeed it even contains an explicit and frank account of his own “return to orthodoxy” in part two.

“A spiritual crisis has followed in the wake of the modern scientific era,” declares Oden’s opening line. The author’s assessment of the intellectual, moral, and societal damage inflicted by Freudian, Marxist, and Nietzschean ideologies is hotly critical but wonderfully wordsmithed. And although some will charge that Oden does not substantiate his charge that “modern chauvinism” (i.e. post-Enlightenment rationalism) is responsible for the breach through which heterodoxy, heresy, and narcissistic attitudes pour into sacred and secular societies, much of what he does say about the failure of modernity and the collapse of Enlightenment ideologies has been so well documented elsewhere that to reiterate such things would only be gratuitous given his present proposal.

In the chapters that follow his eulogy for “modern chauvinism” Oden does a superb job recounting the value of history: the history of Israel, the real history of Jesus of Nazareth, and the history of the early Christian Church. This is a means to introduce the topic of remembering orthodoxy as that integrated biblical teaching as interpreted in its most consensual classic period, namely, the immediate post-apostolic period and the time leading up to and through the formulation of the great creeds of Christianity.

Here tradition has a profound and substantial role not merely in the faithful recollection of Scripture but also the composition and canonization of Holy Writ. Evangelicals must take note: the Bible did not descend out of heaven in some Qur’anic fashion. The reality of Scripture is bound up with the reality of the Christian community. Tradition has a sacred and indispensable place in Christianity, like it or not.

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Oden provides ample discussion to explain “Why Orthodoxy Persists,” arguing (among other things) that it is cross-culturally agile, that God’s sovereign grace is covenantally secure, and, significantly, because the Holy Spirit works to enable consent from generation to generation. He then compares the ecumenical success of Classic Christian orthodoxy with the failures of modern liberal ecumenism, which he believes can be attributed to its neglect of classic Christianity. A driving theme concerns ecumenical progression toward greater creedal unity. It is in the ancient ecumenism that contemporary efforts at ecumenism must find its model, its wisdom, and its substance. Here Oden is thoroughly convincing, especially when he speaks out of the depths of his ecumenical experiences on both sides of the centrist’s fence.

Part two begins with a pithy summary of evidences for the rebirth of orthodoxy, which is immediately followed by Oden’s intriguing personal odyssey. The remaining chapters provide avenues of introduction to “Rediscovering the Earliest Biblical Interpreters,” “Strengthening the Multicultural Nature of Orthodoxy,” marking and defending orthodoxy boundaries of doctrine and praxis, reshaping mainline denominations through the recovery of orthodox beliefs, and, finally, “Rediscovering the Classic Ecumenical Method.”

Unfortunately, this book does suffer from some organizational problems that detract from its overall effectiveness. For example, Oden waits until nearly halfway through the book to provide his own born-again experience from the left-wing of Methodism into orthodox belief. Later still is his documentation of orthodox ecumenism’s rebirth.

Both items should have come earlier so as to provide the reader a horizon for interpreting the movement of the first three chapters and to telegraph the direction and purpose of succeeding chapters. Notwithstanding the book’s structural curiosities, The Rebirth of Orthodoxy’s several accommodating tables, efficient endnotes, and a good index round out an invaluable text that must make its way into every thinking Christian’s hands and even a good number of ones who need to start thinking.

Dr. John J. Bombaro Dickinson College Carlisle, Pennsylvania

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Worship Reformed by the Word

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raw water from the true source and fountain, that is, …diligently search the

have an architecture for kneeling, even though we’d Scriptures.” Martin Luther’s wise counsel is no less apt today that it was when love to do that eventually.

But for the time being, we he first gve it, for by constantly turning to the Word of God, we can have stand for prayer. Not to be legalistic about it—people confidence that the Spirit will bring reformation to do sit for prayer in the Bible—but primarily they’re our life and practice. standing or kneeling.” Also, they have tried as a Perhaps the nearest point of contact with this body to free people as much as possible to use their process in the life of the believer is the Sunday hands in worship. Pastor Robertson said that as he worship service. It is here first and foremost that was preaching through the Psalms, he tried to the believer will behold the light of Scripture challenge the congregation. “Let’s respond to God forming and informing their actions. Not only is like the psalmist does in worship.” As a part of that, the Word of God necessary for true worship, but then, he began asking the entire congregation to also it is in worship that the believer will either be stretch out their hands corporately to receive the encouraged to, or dejected from seeking the glory benediction, just as a child receives a gift.

Another question that the elders at Covenant of God in their eating, drinking, or whatever they do. Though what are some of the ways in which have asked is, How are we to come to worship? the Scriptures may continually conform our “We’ve tried silence,” said Pastor Robertson, “but we’re not very good at that. We either can’t keep Sunday worship service?

This was the question asked of George ourselves quiet before worship, or it just seems Robertson, senior pastor of the Covenant dead and austere.” So, in recent weeks, they have Presbyterian Church (PCA) in St. Louis, Missouri. looked to the Psalms again. The conclusion they Pastor Robertson has been at Covenant for came to is that, “Jewish people sang Songs of fourteen years, in which time he and the other Ascent as they came to the temple. So we pick a elders have continually sought better ways of theme of worship, the music director picks songs that meet that theme, and we sing those as we’re answering this question, with varied responses.

One of the central answers to this question coming in to worship.” pertains to the overarching structure of the For more information Upon first glance, all of these practices in worship worship service itself. “Our worship is dialogical,” may seem like small things, hardly worthy of any on these or other said Pastor Robertson, “God calls and his people mention. Though when the one being adored is the practices, contact respond.” At Covenant, this response of God’s God of all creation, our Redeemer and King, then Covenant people is substantiated through elements such as hardly may it be said that there is anything of little Presbyterian Church corporate confession of sin, catechism recitation, significance in the delight of his praise. at 2143 North Ballas Road, St. Louis, singing, and prayer. From this structure, then, all Missouri 63131 or other questions flow. by phone at (314) Some of the issues that arise from this structure The quotation from Martin Luther was taken 432-8700 or via involve man’s physical response in worship. “We’ve from William Hazlitt, ed., Martin Luther’s Tabletalk: email at pastor@ asked other questions,” said Pastor Robertson, Luther’s Comments on Life, the Church, and the Bible (Fearn, covenantstlouis.org “such as what is our posture in prayer? We don’t Scotland: Christian Heritage, 2003).

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