the-incarnation-nov-dec-2016 by Modern Reformation

MODERN REFORMATION VOL.25 | NO.6 | NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2016 | $6.95

The

Incarnation PA RT

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FEATURES

GETTING TO THE CORE The Campaign for Core Christianity is a media-based initiative to challenge the

28 The First Christmas Carol

growing message of Christless Christianity. This media campaign focuses on a biblical

BY SCOTT E. CHURNOCK

response to the most fundamental questions about the Christian faith.

36 The Glorious Condescension of the Incarnation

52 What Are You Looking For?

BY NANA DOLCE

B Y M I C H A E L S. H O R T O N

C O R E C H R I S T I A N I T Y. C O M

MODER NR EFOR MAT I ON.OR G

42 Incarnational Ministry and the Unique, Incarnate Christ B Y J. T O D D B I L L I N G S

V O L .2 5 | N O.6 | N O V E M B E R- D E C E M B E R 2 0 16

FEATURES

GETTING TO THE CORE The Campaign for Core Christianity is a media-based initiative to challenge the

28 The First Christmas Carol

growing message of Christless Christianity. This media campaign focuses on a biblical

BY SCOTT E. CHURNOCK

response to the most fundamental questions about the Christian faith.

36 The Glorious Condescension of the Incarnation

52 What Are You Looking For?

BY NANA DOLCE

B Y M I C H A E L S. H O R T O N

C O R E C H R I S T I A N I T Y. C O M

MODER NR EFOR MAT I ON.OR G

42 Incarnational Ministry and the Unique, Incarnate Christ B Y J. T O D D B I L L I N G S

EAR CANDY FOR DAYS

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DEPARTMENTS

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

BOOK REVIEWS

“A Woman’s Place”

BY ERIC LANDRY

R E V I E W E D B Y L AU R E N R . E . L A R K I N

“The Experience of God” REVIEWED BY CARL R. TRUEMAN

INTERVIEW

Where I Am, You May Be Also 70

J O H N J. B O M B A R O A N D M I K E B R O W N O N THE REAL PRESENCE OF CHRIST

19 C H R I S T & C U LT U R E

Nobody’s Perfect—So What? BY LEON M. BROWN

GEEK SQUAD

Whose Incarnation Is It Anyway? BY LIONEL WINDSOR

T H E O LO GY

B A C K PA G E

American Idol, American Culture, the Christian Church, and Your Bible Study

Jesus’ Speech to His Fearful Followers

B Y M A R K L . WA R D, J R .

B Y M I C H A E L S. H O R T O N

You can get your fill of theology everywhere from the car to the treadmill.

COVER ILLUSTRATION BY OWEN GENT

Previous White Horse Inn broadcasts are available for download or streaming 24 hours a day. Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton Executive Editor Eric Landry Managing Editor Patricia Anders Associate Editor Brooke Ventura Marketing Director Michele Tedrick Design Director José Reyes for Metaleap Creative, metaleapcreative.com Review Editor Ryan Glomsrud Designers Ashley Shugart, Harold Velarde Copy Editor Elizabeth Isaac Proofreader Ann Smith Modern Reformation © 2016 All rights reserved. I S S N - 1 07 6 -7 1 6 9 M o d e r n R e f o r m a t i o n ( S u b s c r i p t i o n D e p a r t m e n t ) P.O. B o x 4 6 0 5 6 5 E s c o n d i d o , C A 9 2 0 4 6 ( 8 5 5 ) 4 9 2- 1 6 74 i n fo @ m o d e r n re fo r m a t i o n .o rg w w w. m o d e r n re fo r m a t i o n .o rg S u b s c r i p t i o n I n fo r m a t i o n U S 1 Y R $ 3 2 . 2 Y R $ 5 0. U S 3 Y R $ 6 0. Digital Only 1 YR $25. US Student 1 YR $26. 2YR $40. Canada add $10 per year for postage. Foreign add $9 per year for postage.

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EAR CANDY FOR DAYS

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DEPARTMENTS

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

BOOK REVIEWS

“A Woman’s Place”

BY ERIC LANDRY

R E V I E W E D B Y L AU R E N R . E . L A R K I N

“The Experience of God” REVIEWED BY CARL R. TRUEMAN

INTERVIEW

Where I Am, You May Be Also 70

J O H N J. B O M B A R O A N D M I K E B R O W N O N THE REAL PRESENCE OF CHRIST

19 C H R I S T & C U LT U R E

Nobody’s Perfect—So What? BY LEON M. BROWN

GEEK SQUAD

Whose Incarnation Is It Anyway? BY LIONEL WINDSOR

T H E O LO GY

B A C K PA G E

American Idol, American Culture, the Christian Church, and Your Bible Study

Jesus’ Speech to His Fearful Followers

B Y M A R K L . WA R D, J R .

B Y M I C H A E L S. H O R T O N

You can get your fill of theology everywhere from the car to the treadmill.

COVER ILLUSTRATION BY OWEN GENT

WHITEHORSEINN.ORG/ARCHIVES

MODER NR EFOR MAT I ON.OR G

LETTER from the EDITOR

with humble shepherds the only witness to God’s intrusion into human history. Even though this story of beginnings doesn’t quite fit the narrative arc of our own lives, it is central to who we are now and what will become of us in the new creation. First, because God took on human flesh and drew near to us in the person of his Son, we must recognize the value and dignity of our humanity. Second, because Jesus ascended bodily into heaven and sits at God’s right hand in the flesh, we can have confidence that our full humanity and personhood is destined for restoration and recreation in the new heavens or the past year, each issue of Modern and the new earth. To put it another way, the Reformation has followed the theme, incarnation of the Son of God—the beginning “The Story of God’s People.” We began of Jesus’ story—gives us confidence that each by retelling the stories of key characters of our stories will reach its happy conclusion. in the Old Testament, showing how their indiWe’re honored once again to feature an amazvidual stories pointed forward to the life and ing line-up of authors to teach us about the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. Then we explored incarnation. We’d love to hear from you as you key moments in the life of Jesus and showed how work your way through this issue. Let us know those key moments become part of our shared what you think via twitter.com/modref or at life in Christ: the beginning of Facebook.com/modrefsocial. our spiritual life when our sins are In just a few short weeks, we kick exchanged for the righteousness off our 25th Anniversary Year! As of Christ (July/August); the resurpart of our celebration, we have “ IN JESUS, GOD rection power and hope that allows par tnered with Hendrickson HAS RETOLD us to participate even now in the Publishers to produce a new book, heavenly life of God (March/April); The Reformation Then and Now: ALL OUR Christ’s heavenly reign by his ascen25 Years of Modern Reformation STORIES.” sion that gives our life purpose and Articles Celebrating 500 Years of direction (May/June); and, most the Reformation, which will be recently, the anticipation of the life released in January 2017. We’re to come in the new heavens and new earth that grateful to God for sustaining us as a voice for drives us forward in mission and ministry today confessing Protestants for the last quarter cen(September/October). Hopefully, by now, you tury. We’re also grateful to you, our subscribers have seen the marvelous truth that in Jesus, God and partners, who give us opportunities to has retold all of our stories: Jesus is the second spread our work here and overseas by your gifts Adam, the true Israel, the faithful Son, and in and subscriptions. If you would like to give a him our lives find meaning and fulfillment. Christmas gift subscription to a friend or colNow, with this last issue of the year we conleague, please visit modernreformation.org/gift clude the series, but it seems oddly out of place. for all our latest offers. After all, the Christmas story centers on the beginning of Jesus’ life: the eternal Son of God takes on human flesh and is born of a virgin, ERIC LANDRY exec utive editor

INTERVIEW

Vol. 25 No. 6 Nov/Dec 2016

Where I Am, You May Be Also John J. Bombaro and Mike Brown on the Real Presence of Christ

he cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” (1 Cor. 10:16)

In 1 Corinthians 10, the apostle Paul reminds us that through the Communion meal we have fellowship with the risen Christ. Although the Reformed and Lutheran branches are divided on exactly how this takes place, both believe in the real presence of Christ. Long-time friends and bons vivants John J. Bombaro (senior minister, Grace Lutheran Church in San Diego, California) and Mike Brown (pastor, Christ

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United Reformed Church in Santee, California) wandered over to their local watering hole to discuss how Christ is present to believers in his resurrection body today. They were kind enough to record the following conversation for posterity. BOMBARO: One of the things I really appreciate

about your position, Mike, is that it strives to be deeply biblical. Your Eucharistic theology is strongly Trinitarian; that is to say, it includes the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It isn’t just about the Spirit, and it isn’t only exclusively about Jesus. There’s a sense in which anytime we’re talking about the sacraments, there has to be a Trinitarian component that’s present, and that’s obviously an important point of agreement between both of us.

LETTER from the EDITOR

INTERVIEW

Vol. 25 No. 6 Nov/Dec 2016

Where I Am, You May Be Also John J. Bombaro and Mike Brown on the Real Presence of Christ

MODER NR EFOR MAT I ON.OR G

INTERVIEW

In our previous conversations about this, you’ve emphasized that our union with Christ is not ideal or nominal—that is to say, it’s not in our head. This isn’t just sort of a titular thing—“Oh, I’m having a union with Jesus”—but it’s real and true in accordance with the incarnational existence of Christ. It’s at that point where we have agreement. But then we want to talk about what happens when we’re actually engaged in the Holy Communion—how it is made manifest and so on. Before we start, I want to say that I lament in my tradition, as in your own to varying degrees, that many of our churches for various reasons will not make Holy Communion available to people at least weekly. If there’s nothing that Christ desires more than to be intimate with his people, then I have a responsibility equally not only to be reading the Scriptures and imparting the word through the sermon, but also to be providing the true body and blood of Christ in Holy Communion. BROWN: Absolutely. In fact, Calvin said it should

be served at least weekly, if not every time the word is preached. I think what it really comes down to is this: What do you believe the Christian receives in the Lord’s Supper? The nature of the sacrament should determine the frequency. Some believe it helps us think about what Christ did, and it is partially that. Jesus says, “Do this in remembrance of me” (1 Cor. 11:24). It does cause us to reflect upon what happened. If it’s only that, then I could see how we should have this only once a month or once a year. But if the Lord’s Supper is more than that, if we’re actually receiving the body and blood of Christ in the sacrament and it is doing something for us, if we are communing with Christ who is now the pneumatikos or life-giving Spirit, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:45, then why wouldn’t I want to have this more frequently? So we have to start there. Is this a true means of grace, or is it something else? BOMBARO: If it is a true means of grace, then the deeper we reflect upon our sin and sinfulness,

“I think what it really comes down to is this: What do you believe the Christian receives in the Lord’s Supper? The nature of the sacrament should determine the frequency.”

the greater our need will be for the remedy of that. In the Supper, Jesus explicitly says that it is given for the forgiveness of sins. We don’t go and get our lives right and then come to the Supper. Our lives are made right through communion with himself; he’s the sum total of the benefit. Though there is a remembrance aspect to it, it is also the pay dirt of the new covenant itself. The new covenant is the self-giving of Christ, who provides for us redemption, salvation, justification, and glorification. As Simeon said as he held the child Jesus in his arms, “Behold the salvation of God.” We have to go to where Christ will be present, doing for us what we need most: forgiving us and strengthening us in our faith. BROWN: That’s right. As Reformed people, we

often put everything in covenantal context, so we would see it as part of the covenant renewal ceremony. God meets with his people in the Divine Service on the Lord’s Day, condescending to us in these means, which we need to help secure our perseverance in this life. God grants us sanctifying grace so we can press on in the Christian life. At first he gives us his law, of

Vol. 25 No. 6 Nov/Dec 2016

course, and tells us that we have not met his standard; but then he gives us his gospel in the preaching of the word, showing that he himself has met that standard for us in the person and work of Christ. Then, in giving his covenant promises, he attaches a covenant sign along with that, which is the Supper. This is something we see him doing throughout redemptive history, and he does that with his people every Lord’s Day as we gather together on Mount Zion. BOMBARO: Our pastors and priests should be

more emboldened, because they are called and ordained to stand, speak, and act in the stead of Christ and with his authority. Christ desires to be close and intimate with his people, to speak to and touch them. I’ve had a parishioner say to me, “If you’re going to withhold anything from me, withhold your sermon, because that seems to be more subjective than the objectivity of Holy Communion where I’m getting the pure unadulterated word and sacramental presence of Christ himself.” Of course, this was said a bit tongue in cheek, but I think there’s an element of truth there. We should no more withhold this

sacrament from people than we would withhold the reading of the Scriptures or the sermon itself. The higher view we have of the sacrament, the more we will desire it and have a devotion to it. I think both of us have mentioned in our correspondence with each other the lack of devotion to the Eucharist there is in the church presently. What do you attribute that to? BROWN: I see a lot of this going back to something

like Charles Finney’s “New Measures,” in which we look for something that we think is going to be more practical, something that would give us more of a bang for our buck. If we’re hoping to see something in people, if it’s numbers we’re interested in, let’s face it—the Lord’s Supper isn’t going to give us that. If it’s excitement we want, the Communion meal isn’t going to produce the kind of excitement a rock concert would in church, or a light or puppet show or drama. In many cases, we see the Communion meal replaced with something we think is going to be more practical or give us a greater experience. But we have to go back to what God has designed. If we’re meeting with the Lord with

“Our pastors and priests should be more emboldened, because they are called and ordained to stand, speak, and act in the stead of Christ and with his authority.”

MODER NR EFOR MAT I ON.OR G

INTERVIEW

“I think what it really comes down to is this: What do you believe the Christian receives in the Lord’s Supper? The nature of the sacrament should determine the frequency.”

Vol. 25 No. 6 Nov/Dec 2016

“Our pastors and priests should be more emboldened, because they are called and ordained to stand, speak, and act in the stead of Christ and with his authority.”

MODER NR EFOR MAT I ON.OR G

INTERVIEW

his means, on his terms, receiving his promised blessings, then we have to go with word and sacrament. It’s as simple as that. BOMBARO: The fact of the matter is that we live

amid mundane life. I’m not living on the pinnacle or the zip line or the bungee cord; I’m living in the daily grind of work, of coming home to chores, and that sort of thing. We don’t have to go to the Himalayas and assume the lotus position and chant our mantra in order to find God; he makes himself known to us plainly and regularly in the grind of ordinary life. He does so by means that are meaning-laden in Scripture and part and parcel of our everyday. He is not the hidden, distant God who occasionally breaks through; he is the ever-present One for us in specifically this: bread, wine, water. When Jesus was living on earth, he wasn’t in the holy places or palaces; he was over there in Peter’s house, he was in the synagogue. He wasn’t in the inner sanctum of the temple in Jerusalem; he was out among the people in the ordinary. That’s the nature of this self-giving God.

BROWN: And he looked very plain. As Isaiah said,

he didn’t have any kind of special beauty that we would desire him (Isa. 53:2). He wasn’t levitating six inches off the ground and glowing with a halo. He looked like anybody else. God has his hand so deep in his creation, so much in the ordinary, as you put it, that we shouldn’t be surprised he appointed something like word, water, wine—the ordinary things—as means of his grace. Every culture recognizes that taking a bath makes you clean. As clearly as this has been made known to us in ordinary life, regardless of your socioeconomic status, or what kind of education you have, we can see how Christ’s blood also washes away our sins. It’s the same with bread and wine: as these nourish the body, so Christ nourishes the soul. God has given us things that are simple, plain, ordinary. A worship service isn’t extraordinary; it’s extraordinary that we meet with God. Although the worship service itself—hearing the word and receiving the sacrament—can be boring, it is absolutely necessary, as necessary as it is for our bodies to eat a meal or to

“He is not the hidden, distant God who occasionally breaks through; he is the ever-present One for us in specifically this: bread, wine, water.”

Vol. 25 No. 6 Nov/Dec 2016

drink water. Go without those things and you die. Likewise, we have to have these means that God has appointed. BOMBARO: There should be a level of comfort

among family and in the presence of our Father and Christ our brother, yet not the element of radical informality that indicates disrespect or self-aggrandizement. What do you do in your parish to heighten the drama, to draw attention to the profundity of what’s taking place—namely, that the king is present through these ordinary means? How do you signal that this moment is unlike any other in our week, when we realize we ought to be circumspect and reverent because the king is coming here in a powerful way to extend the royal scepter to absolve us of sin and of guilt?

“Christ should be present in the preaching of the gospel, providing pastors preach Christ and not themselves or something else.”

BROWN: In our church, we follow the historic lit-

urgy. There’s a call to worship, an invocation, a salutation, and singing from psalms and hymns. We have a reading of the law, corporate confession of sin, absolution, confession of the faith; we hear the word preached in law and gospel, and immediately after we receive the Communion meal. As that meal is administered to the people, they come forward to receive the elements, return to their seats, and the service concludes. The whole service is linked together, almost like a meal would be linked together in every single course so that it’s not just haphazardly thrown together. The sermon fits with the selected psalms, always leading up to this point of receiving the Lord’s Supper. To return to something you said earlier, John, even if the sermon failed, even if it became something the minister didn’t get quite right, there’s almost a safety net, if you will, in having the Lord’s Supper. You can’t mess that up too much. Christ should be present in the preaching of the gospel, providing pastors preach Christ and not themselves or something else. The Lord’s Supper is built into the liturgy that Christ meets with his people in this way.

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BOMBARO: I love that. Even if pastors talk in

the sermon about a favorite book or recent movie, completely fumbling the ball in terms of expounding the Scripture, at least the people receive the unadulterated body and blood of Christ in the words of institution.

BROWN: There’s the gospel. B O M B A R O : In the Lutheran church we have what’s called the Halt Gottesdienst, the High Divine Service, where God is the active agent. The two high points in the Divine Service are the reading of the gospel and partaking in Holy Communion. The bridge between them is the sermon. I’m to take the gospel lesson that illuminates Christ as our Savior, redeemer, king of the world, and then bring God’s people to the Table where he is present. It’s the climax of the Divine Service whereby we have been absolved and forgiven by Christ himself and faith has been strengthened. We are then sent back out into the world, having met with the king, having received his word and his benediction. We’re strengthened for the fight once again.

INTERVIEW

his means, on his terms, receiving his promised blessings, then we have to go with word and sacrament. It’s as simple as that. BOMBARO: The fact of the matter is that we live

BROWN: And he looked very plain. As Isaiah said,

“He is not the hidden, distant God who occasionally breaks through; he is the ever-present One for us in specifically this: bread, wine, water.”

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drink water. Go without those things and you die. Likewise, we have to have these means that God has appointed. BOMBARO: There should be a level of comfort

“Christ should be present in the preaching of the gospel, providing pastors preach Christ and not themselves or something else.”

BROWN: In our church, we follow the historic lit-

MODER NR EFOR MAT I ON.OR G

BOMBARO: I love that. Even if pastors talk in

INTERVIEW

BROWN: We’re in full agreement with you here.

The Divine Service has the kind of liturgy in which God speaks to his people and his people respond, and the central part of it is the word leading to sacrament.

BOMBARO: When all the outside world says that God is not real, he’s not here, the last place where this ought to be said is within our own churches. How would you encourage pastors in your tradition to bring Holy Communion back as a fixed feature within the Divine Service or within the worship service itself? BROWN: First, I would encourage them to read our

confessions. Article 35 of the Belgic Confession is pretty clear in that we believe we receive the body and blood of the Lord in the Lord’s Supper. Why would we want anything less than having it frequently? The Heidelberg Catechism questions 75–79 are also helpful. I would also ask where in the New Testament do we find this idea of monthly (or, sadly, less than monthly) communion, which has become common in so many Reformed and evangelical churches? It seems to me when you read of the disciples’ steadfast continuation in the breaking of bread

“If we really believe Christ is showing up in this extraordinary and incarnational way, then there should be nothing we desire more than to be in his presence.”

and the prayers, they were breaking bread in the Communion meal every time they met for worship on the Lord’s Day (Acts 2:42). There’s nothing in the New Testament to give us the idea that it was less than weekly, so I would challenge people to think about that. If what we receive is the body and blood of Christ, then why wouldn’t we have that every week? BOMBARO: That’s a good point. I think there’s an element of pietism that has crept in too, which has pushed Holy Communion out to the periphery of Christian devotion. There are practices we can master on our own that are equal, if not superior, to that of attendance to the Holy Communion, whether it be your quiet time or your Life Application Bible, or your cappuccino ministry—whatever it may be. One local megachurch we are both familiar with offers Holy Communion as a separate “ministry” (it’s listed just under the Zumba ministry), which may occur once or twice a year there. Now, part of it is that if we really believe Christ is showing up in this extraordinary and incarnational way, then there should be nothing we desire more than to be in his presence and to know he actually welcomes us. If you have any sort of concerns about where you stand with God, then knowing you’ve sinned against him in thought, word, and deed and have refused to do what he’s said, and done what he’s said you may not do, this is where you’re comforted. It is here that he says, “Welcome to my Supper. This is for the forgiveness of sins.” BROWN: It’s not for good people; it’s for bad people. BOMBARO: Nothing would reinforce that more. If we walk through the Divine Service, through the invocation of his name and his presence, the reading of the Scriptures, the confession, the absolution of our sins, and the Scriptures expounded where God’s grace has been extended to us because of and through Jesus Christ—if after all of that there’s any doubt, then he asks us to come to his banqueting table. He places it

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“Once they begin to understand what the Communion meal is and the assurance to their faith it brings them over time, they never want to go back [to doing it less].”

between our teeth and pours it down our throats, sending us then away with this message: My peace is with you. BROWN: It’s so beautiful, because you can’t get

more personal than that. People are always seeking this, saying, “I want a personal relationship with the Lord.” How can you get more personal than Christ saying, “Here’s my body, here’s my blood. Put it in your mouth, eat, drink.” We have to see the tenderness and kindness of our Lord who condescends to us in that way so we can receive Christ himself, the whole Christ, in the Communion meal. I find it interesting that many people who begin attending our church (after having been at another church) think Communion seems too frequent and redundant. But once they begin to understand what the Communion meal is and the assurance to their faith it brings them over time, they never want to go back. I’ve never heard anybody say, “Gee, I wish we did it less.”

BOMBARO: People have said to me, “When you do it too frequently, it loses its significance—it’s not special enough anymore.” I explain that this is like telling your wife the next time she wants to bond with you in a marital act, “Sweetheart, we just do

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this too frequently. This just isn’t meaningful anymore.” This is evocative of Holy Communion—his body entering our body, his blood entering our blood and comingling with it in a life-making act. This is spiritual eroticism of the bridegroom with his bride. It can’t be too frequent. BROWN: That’s where we’re in agreement, John, at least as far as we go in our Lutheran and Reformed confessions (we can’t speak for everybody in our traditions). What we receive was never a matter of debate between Calvin and Luther. What we receive is nothing less than the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. It breaks my heart that we have so many people in my tradition who flinch when they hear this; that what we receive is the true and natural body and blood of Jesus Christ in the Supper. BOMBARO: During my days in the evangelical church, we would sing about the blood of Christ. But then I wondered, when I would ever actually come in contact with this blood of Christ that takes away the sin of the world? The plain and obvious answer from John 6 and 1 Corinthians 10–11 is in Holy Communion. There I am in union with the blood that takes away the sin of the world, which is the great declaration in

INTERVIEW

BROWN: We’re in full agreement with you here.

The Divine Service has the kind of liturgy in which God speaks to his people and his people respond, and the central part of it is the word leading to sacrament.

“If we really believe Christ is showing up in this extraordinary and incarnational way, then there should be nothing we desire more than to be in his presence.”

Vol. 25 No. 6 Nov/Dec 2016

“Once they begin to understand what the Communion meal is and the assurance to their faith it brings them over time, they never want to go back [to doing it less].”

between our teeth and pours it down our throats, sending us then away with this message: My peace is with you. BROWN: It’s so beautiful, because you can’t get

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INTERVIEW

Holy Communion: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” In our tradition it’s followed with “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.” There is the presentation of his body and blood, and that’s it. The peace of the Lord be with you. This is our peace: his body and blood. BROWN: As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10, “The

cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the body and blood of Jesus Christ?” That’s important to understand. I say each week in the words of administration that this is not for perfect people: don’t allow your weakness of faith or your failure in the Christian life to keep you from this Table; it is given to us in order to increase our faith in Christ by receiving the body and blood of Jesus Christ. It’s important that we understand that we’re communing or participating in the very blood of Jesus Christ. I think where our disagreement has been historically is the “how” and the “where” it’s received, but definitely not in the “what.” BOMBARO: We would say that the power is not

in the priest; what the priest has is authority. The authority that’s been given to me is to speak the words of Christ, and it is the word of Christ that has power through the Holy Spirit. Just as there was an incarnational working of the Holy Spirit with respect to the Son of God in forming him in the womb of the Virgin Mary, so too the Holy Spirit is powerfully present when the word of God is spoken in Holy Communion. This has always been the Lutheran position. But at that point we would say there is an objectivity, an external reality to which our faith is to conform; what is received is something outside of us coming into us—namely, the objective presence of the body and blood of Christ, along with these elements of bread and wine. There we have the difference. What’s of interest to me is an explanation of a couple of terms you had used. In one place you say that it’s received by faith, whereas it seems to me that Paul is saying that it’s received by these

elements. In another place you say it’s received in faith. Now there the Lutheran links arms with you and says, “Amen, brother, yes,” that it is received in faith. He is present not by faith but objectively so by the bread and wine through the power of the Holy Spirit. BROWN: That’s a good and fair question on the prepositions. As I understand my tradition or confessions, I don’t think we would have a problem with using either one of those. I don’t think we mean anything different, and we would confess a certain objectivity to the sacraments. In other words, what I receive in the Communion meal is nothing less than the crucified body and shed blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is only received in faith. My faith doesn’t make the Communion meal the body and blood of Jesus Christ, but it is in faith or by faith that any benefit is received. When Christ was crucified on the cross, some people saw him only as a crucified criminal. Other people confessed that this was, in fact, the son of God. Nevertheless, he was crucified there on the cross objectively, and that’s something that could not be denied. The question of whether or not you receive any benefit from that crucifixion really comes down to whether or not you receive him in faith.

BOMBARO: We’re in agreement there. I don’t

want to offer an unfair caricature, but I was saying in my response that my faith does not make Christ any more present than whether someone believed that the man walking down the streets of Nazareth was in fact the Son of God—he was objectively there, whether you believed it or not. You are called to conform to that reality, and that’s what we’re saying about the Eucharist.

B R O W N : I would be in full agreement, and I think the Reformed tradition would be in full agreement with you there. The bigger difference between Reformed and Lutheran views is in the elements themselves: Is Christ in his body and blood received on earth or received in heaven? Or is it in this age or in the age to come? We believe that we receive nothing less than the crucified body and shed blood of Christ. This is a great mystery. It is a mystical union how Christ—in his incarnation, in his body and blood—is joined with his church on earth. It is one of the great three mystical unions in the Scriptures, the others being the hypostatic union and the Trinity. We can’t fully explain all this; nevertheless, we confess that when we receive Communion, koinonia (1 Cor. 10:16), it is the body and blood of Christ, but not that he has descended to earth in any way. BOMBARO: So the philosopher in me wants to

“It’s important that we understand that we’re communing or participating in the very blood of Jesus Christ.”

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latch onto a term you used, “a certain objectivity.” What is the Reformed understanding of that “certain objectivity”? When I talk about objectivity, I’m talking about externality; that is to say, with these elements, present along with them, there’s real blood, there’s real wine— there’s no question about that. But along with this bread and wine are the transformed body and blood of Christ, which is the Lutheran understanding. When you say “a certain objectivity,” are you saying there’s an overlap of the dimension we call “heaven and earth” in the sense that there’s a manifestation of Christ’s body and blood with respect to these elements?

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“This is a great mystery. It is a mystical union how Christ—in his incarnation, in his body and blood—is joined with his church on earth.”

BROWN: When I say “a certain objectivity,” I’m

saying it is objective in the sense that we receive Christ and his body and his blood. My faith doesn’t make that true. My faith is only the channel to receive the benefits of that.

BOMBARO: This is an important point, Mike, because we’re in agreement there. Lutherans would also say that our faith does not impact in any way the objectivity of the presence of Christ with respect to our Eucharist. That is by his own doing and promise and by the power of the Holy Spirit in terms of the words of institution. The benefits exactly are appropriated by faith. BROWN: Whether “by” or “in,” we would see those as the same. The difference for us, I suppose, is that we believe the elements—the bread and the wine—are still bread and wine; they are not transformed in their substance. Rather, when we receive the sign in faith, we receive the benefits of the body and blood of Christ that are

INTERVIEW

BOMBARO: We’re in agreement there. I don’t

“It’s important that we understand that we’re communing or participating in the very blood of Jesus Christ.”

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“This is a great mystery. It is a mystical union how Christ—in his incarnation, in his body and blood—is joined with his church on earth.”

BROWN: When I say “a certain objectivity,” I’m

saying it is objective in the sense that we receive Christ and his body and his blood. My faith doesn’t make that true. My faith is only the channel to receive the benefits of that.

INTERVIEW

joined to the sign and cannot be separated. So they are distinct but not separate: sign and reality. That is, bread and wine, body and blood of Jesus Christ, if that makes sense. BOMBARO: I can’t believe I’m going to say this,

but this is where I think Paul Tillich is a bit useful. Tillich has a good study between sign and symbol. A sign is something that points to something other than itself. For instance, if we’re riding down I-15, and I show you a road sign that says, “San Diego 15 miles,” is that San Diego? Absolutely not; it’s pointing to something other than itself. A symbol, however, participates in the reality in which it also exemplifies, but not entirely. This is what I’m getting at in terms of a meaning-laden symbol. If I were to take you to the border of San Diego to a marquee that says, “Welcome to San Diego, America’s Finest City,” are you then looking at San Diego? The answer is yes, but not in its entirety. It’s sort of a now and not-yet kind of thing, or in different terms, it is a participation in it. This is what we mean by symbol: it goes beyond being a sign; it actually participates in it. The meaning-laden bread and wine bring forth the meaningfulness

of Christ’s self-giving in, with, and under, as we would say. Luther and Lutherans have no philosophy to articulate how Christ is really present in it; we just assert that Christ is present in the Eucharist. Luther likes to use this phrase in Latin: Spiritus Sanctus non est skeptitus, the Holy Spirit is not a skeptic. He makes assertions, so we just make the assertion without the explanation that Christ is, in fact, present with these symbols, not signs, as it were. BROWN: Looking at Belgic Confession 35, I don’t

think we would have a problem with what you’ve said on the difference between sign and symbol, in the sense that when we receive the Lord’s Supper on the Lord’s Day we receive Christ. We’re not just receiving a bare sign that points to reality, which would be Zwinglianism, ultimately. I could come to the Lord’s Supper and say, “Wow, bread and wine. This really reminds me of what Christ did on Calvary two thousand years ago.” It may or may not do that. As the Heidelberg Catechism points out in question 75, however, it does much more than that. It unites us with the body and blood of Christ in heaven. There is this objective reality taking place.

“This is what we mean by symbol: it goes beyond being a sign; it actually participates in it. The meaning-laden bread and wine bring forth the meaningfulness of Christ’s self-giving in, with, and under, as we would say.”

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BROWN: I think that it is a condescension to us in

“Christ meets us in the bread and the wine. The question that Calvin raises is simply where.”

that Christ meets us in the bread and the wine. The question that Calvin raises is simply where. He doesn’t deny that Christ meets us and that it is a great accommodation—bread and wine is about as accommodating as you can get. Calvin says that when God speaks, he uses baby talk to speak to us, and that the Lord’s Supper is one of his greatest speech-acts to us. It’s a visible word, but it really does commune with us. If he remains in heaven, is he any less present with us, if we’re joined to him by the Holy Spirit? If we come to the Supper recognizing his promise that in this we commune with the body and blood of Jesus Christ, is he any less present, or is the sacrament any less effectual than if he were present with us here on earth?

BOMBARO: I think that’s where it slips into an

The only difference, and it might be just a slight difference, is in our understanding of Christ in his body and blood right now, where he is located. We would see, in the Calvinistic and Reformed tradition, Christ at the right hand of the Father, where he remains until the last day. His divinity exceeds the bounds of his humanity, but it’s the Holy Spirit who ushers us to heaven where we are seated, as Paul says in Ephesians 2, in the heavenly places, so that we can commune and feast on the body and blood of Jesus Christ. We also have no philosophical category for how that happens. It’s a great mystery because, again, the union of Christ in his physical incarnational body with his church on earth is a mystical union—something we cannot rationally explain. BOMBARO: My point of critique is that it just

seems to be contrary to Calvin and his whole doctrine of divine accommodation where God condescends and comes to us, that it reaches its apogee in the incarnation itself, and that the Eucharist seems to be the promise of divine accommodation through the incarnation in Christ. Would you comment on that?

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element of discomfort for me, because I want to assert that Christ is objectively externally present in this way for us—that is, sacramentally present with the bread and the wine so that we can identify who he is and what he is specifically doing for us in this meal with all of the New Testament promises in that covenant. I’m going to have a little fun with physics here. If heaven permeates the totality of the spatiotemporal—that is to say, if heaven isn’t, as it were, spatially detached and dislocated from the totality of the time-space dimension in which we live and move and have our being—then is there any distance for Jesus to travel to be present in the Eucharist, whether it be in San Diego, Saskatoon, or Sheboygan at the same time?

BROWN: I always find it amusing when Lutherans

bring this up, because it is funny. Clearly God can do as he pleases. When he left, was it in a spaceship or what happened? We have to go back to Acts 1 when the apostles were gazing up at heaven. It was pretty amazing that they had just seen their Lord ascending.

BOMBARO: But your own Meredith Kline says

that this cloud is the cloud of presence. It’s the

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BROWN: I think that it is a condescension to us in

“Christ meets us in the bread and the wine. The question that Calvin raises is simply where.”

BOMBARO: I think that’s where it slips into an

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BROWN: I always find it amusing when Lutherans

BOMBARO: But your own Meredith Kline says

that this cloud is the cloud of presence. It’s the

INTERVIEW

Shekinah—the presence of God—with us. Christ being taken up into that cloud is the promise that he is not gone from us; he is present, ruling in the way he promised he would. The last thing he communicated to us was that he would be known in this Supper. BROWN: Indeed, and we wouldn’t disagree with that. But Kline would also say with our tradition that the divinity of Christ exceeds the bounds of his humanity, so that where he is present in his divinity does not necessitate his humanity to be present, because he still is a finite creature in his humanity, even though infinite God. BOMBARO: No distance travel—that’s what we

would say.

BROWN: No distance travel. We would still see a

notable absence from Jesus, however, as he said there would be in his Upper Room discourse in John 14–16: he would leave, but he would not leave us orphans. There would be a sort of trading of places between the incarnational Christ here on earth and the sending of the Paraclete, who would do certain things personally for us: lead us into all truth, point us to Jesus Christ, glorify Jesus Christ, convict us of sin and righteousness and judgment, which the Holy Spirit has been doing since Pentecost.

B O M B A R O : There is a difference, and you’re

right. But at the same time, I’ve opened up my discourse, saying that Christ himself made the promise never to leave us or forsake us: “Lo, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”

BROWN: He also said, “I am going away, but I will not leave you orphans—I will send you the Holy Spirit.” BOMBARO: And that was followed by, “He was

made known to them in the breaking of bread.”

BROWN: And when “he opened up the Scriptures”

to them.

BOMBARO: That was noted also. Both in word and

sacrament, his real voice and his real presence are with us in an objective kind of way. Here’s a quote from Luther that I think explains what he is getting at and what Lutherans are saying. It basically says that Christ does, as it were, ride in on the bread and wine. This is a quote from the Marburg colloquy, so he’s disputing with the Zwinglians here, not the Calvinists at this point: “When we baptize with water, we ought not to pay attention so much to what is said, but to him who speaks. Because God speaks, we must embrace the word.” He’s setting the stage here. He lives in the context of the kingdom, so when the king speaks, his word accomplishes what it says. Mind you, this is actually a stroke of genius on Luther’s part, because the Marburg colloquy takes place in the castle of Phillip of Hesse, one of the German princes. This German prince is thinking: Wait a minute; if Zwingli doesn’t believe God’s word accomplishes what it says when it’s spoken at the altar, how am I going to trust these people on the battlefield? Luther answers:

“There will be a last day when he visibly and physically comes, and all will see him, but now it’s under the auspices of the word and sacrament.”

So take for example a prince who gives orders to shoe a horse. A horseshoe is a lowly thing. There are many lowly things. To be hungry is a lowly thing. The command to baptize with water, we attribute not to the washing of the water but to the Holy Spirit. Concerning the element itself we are in agreement (namely, that it’s just water). We do not ascribe dignity to the bread, but to the word, and to him who speaks it: Jesus Christ. Just as when a prince sends his servant to shoe his horse, the piece of iron is given dignity by being attached to the horse’s foot. Give due honor to the cross, and it does many other things.

BROWN: And we would agree. When I go to the

So what Luther is saying is that when the king speaks regarding this bread and wine in this context, his word accomplishes what it says, and there should be no doubt. This is my body, this is my blood, and we would say that objectively speaking.

BOMBARO: Let me put it just slightly differently.

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Divine Service, I will receive the body and blood objectively when I receive the Lord’s Supper. The only difference is that I don’t believe that Christ descends from heaven to earth, but that we’re waiting for that descent Acts 1 says will happen in the same manner as he ascended. We do this somehow in some way that we cannot explain, by means of the Holy Spirit, who causes us to commune with the body and blood of Christ. Similar to how you can’t explain how you are still eating bread and drinking wine, and yet you’re receiving the Lord in his body and blood here on earth, we can’t explain how we’re receiving it in heaven.

You spoke about him descending. We don’t believe that there is a descent at all, and that’s because the nature of the kingdom is contiguous; that is to say, his ruling and reigning in heaven is also on earth, and particularly in the

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context of his church. There will be a last day when he visibly and physically comes, and all will see him, but now it’s under the auspices of the word and sacrament. BROWN: We would absolutely agree with that. BOMBARO: What I’m saying is there is a contiguousness with respect to his kingdom. He doesn’t descend to be present in the Eucharist because this is his kingdom. He is present in his kingdom, on earth as it is in heaven. BROWN: We would agree with that, but it would only be through the means, word and sacrament, that he provided to us; in that sacrament, his physical body and blood is not there locally, because it is ascended into heaven where it will remain until the last day at the Parousia. BOMBARO: The location of heaven is precisely

sacramental. The step further for us in terms of

INTERVIEW

would say.

BROWN: No distance travel. We would still see a

B O M B A R O : There is a difference, and you’re

right. But at the same time, I’ve opened up my discourse, saying that Christ himself made the promise never to leave us or forsake us: “Lo, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”

BROWN: He also said, “I am going away, but I will not leave you orphans—I will send you the Holy Spirit.” BOMBARO: And that was followed by, “He was

made known to them in the breaking of bread.”

BROWN: And when “he opened up the Scriptures”

to them.

BOMBARO: That was noted also. Both in word and

“There will be a last day when he visibly and physically comes, and all will see him, but now it’s under the auspices of the word and sacrament.”

BROWN: And we would agree. When I go to the

BOMBARO: Let me put it just slightly differently.

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sacramental. The step further for us in terms of

INTERVIEW

BROWN: We would say that there is no time-

“In the Eucharist, there’s a devotional embracing of the sacrament because Christ is self-giving in that act.”

Lutherans would be that objectivity, that externality, because there is actually no movement from heaven to earth; it’s contiguous, seamless. I once related it to a movie from the 1980s, Time Bandits. It’s a story about dwarfs who stole a map with windows on it that open up to different time periods. When these windows open up, the dwarfs jump through them. Next thing you know, they appear at the Battle of Waterloo or something to that effect. The sacraments are exactly like that: They are the windows of heaven opening up here on earth, so that there isn’t a descent but rather again the manifestation of the kingdom. BROWN: We would agree with that. BOMBARO: We actually have the same doctrine

with respect to the church. Luther said that the church and heaven are made manifest in the pure preaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments according to the gospel.

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continuum difference when we meet in the Divine Service—that we are meeting with the Lord himself. Of course it’s all still mediated by Christ; but at that moment, it is a holy operation God gives us where he meets with us on his terms—that is something completely different from anything else we experience during the week, and this is where we find Christ and his kingdom. The only difference is that in the Supper, we (the Reformed) would not see Christ physically present with the bread and wine; rather, we receive the physical body and blood of Jesus Christ in heaven somehow and in some way. That is the great mystery.

BOMBARO: Where you would experience something different in terms of Lutheran worship at that point is that Lutherans will worship and adore the Eucharistic Christ—the Christ who is present in the Eucharist. We bow, genuflect, make the sign of the cross, and receive these elements as if we were embracing Christ. As Luther said in one place, “If I receive the body of Christ in my arms it would be for the purpose of embracing it.” In the Eucharist, there’s a devotional embracing of the sacrament because Christ is self-giving in that act. BROWN: I think there’s more overlap than disagreement between the Reformed and Lutheran positions. BOMBARO: Because we both assert the real presence of Christ and the fact that in receiving him in his body and blood we are receiving what Christ desires to give his church, which is himself and therefore all the benefits of the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Oh that all the church believed, taught, and confessed this! It would be the strengthening of the church for all time. BROWN: The best thing any of us can do is to find

a church that proclaims Jesus Christ in law and gospel faithfully each week, providing us with his body and blood in the Lord’s Supper.

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Nobody’s Perfect—So What? by Leon M. Brown

oday, we are confronted by an invasion of morality that seeks to define right and wrong, good and evil, and justice and judgment without invoking the concept of sin, the narrative of the Garden of Eden, and the reality of an omniscient God. Books such as Good without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe and The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions are examples of such a hermeneutic. Right and wrong are nothing more than a decision collectively determined in light of a pain quotient or perceived damage. Good and evil are what we make them. Perfection is in the eye of the beholder, and imperfection is simply a disclaimer when things don’t go according to plan. After all, “nobody’s perfect.”

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While many things can be said about the culture’s wavering ideas of right and wrong and good and evil, the idea of imperfection is an interesting one. “Nobody’s perfect” is the mantra of those who are confronted with their deficiencies. And while the statement is true, it is a good bridge to help people cross into the narrative of the Bible, one that bespeaks sin, righteousness, and judgment. While I am unaware of the common grace origin of “nobody’s perfect,” biblically, the phrase finds its genesis in the Garden of Eden. No one is perfect because the first man, Adam, and his wife, later named Eve after the announcement of the good news, ate of the tree from which they were forbidden to eat (Gen. 3:1–7). Consumed by guilt and shame

INTERVIEW

BROWN: We would say that there is no time-

“In the Eucharist, there’s a devotional embracing of the sacrament because Christ is self-giving in that act.”

with respect to the church. Luther said that the church and heaven are made manifest in the pure preaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments according to the gospel.

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a church that proclaims Jesus Christ in law and gospel faithfully each week, providing us with his body and blood in the Lord’s Supper.

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Nobody’s Perfect—So What? by Leon M. Brown

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C H R I S T & C U LT U R E

and encamped by sin, their previous existential reality was eclipsed. The construct that the Triune God provided, which was an already/not yet paradigm implanted within Adam, was subverted. Adam knew; his wife knew; God knew. The implementation of a new idea (i.e., sin) into the original construct—humanly speaking—prompted the Lord to alert a search and rescue team. Interestingly, he both searched and rescued (Gen. 3:8–15). The biblical account of Adam and Eve’s disobedience provides the one and only narrative that adequately grants the suitable reason for our imperfection. “Nobody is perfect” is correct! A follow-up to that address is to ask the question “Why?” If the biblical answer is untenable to many modern hearers, how can Christians address the issue and biblically steer nonChristians to the God-ordained story? We must help non-Christians understand that imperfection, biblically speaking, isn’t the lack of symmetry in our feet and hands. Imperfection isn’t a haircut that does not meet our standards. Imperfection is a result of the fall. Although Adam and Eve were not all they could be prior to the entrance of sin (1 Cor. 15:50), they were created perfectly. Their hands may have been asymmetrical, but their hearts were perfectly aligned with their creator. However, when Eve was deceived (1 Tim. 2:13–14) and Adam disobeyed his God (Rom. 5:12), the result was disdain for each other and for their creator. The consequences are war between people, confusion about sexuality, and death. The result is imperfection. Imperfection is a biblical category that helps us align our thoughts with the grand narrative of the Bible. It helps us to ask the question “Why?” Regardless of our religious affiliation, we all see the destruction caused by ISIS; we all see natural disasters taking the lives of thousands; we all witness our loved ones ushered into eternity. Why? It’s because nobody’s perfect. That statement invites us to take people on a journey through the Scriptures, exposing sin and its effects, yet also providing the only remedy—Jesus Christ.

THEOLOGY

“Imperfection is a biblical category that helps us align our thoughts with the grand narrative of the Bible.” The next time you’re sharing your faith with someone, ask that person if he’s perfect. I can nearly assure you of the answer. After that, ask him to define perfection and why he’s not perfect. You might be surprised how “nobody’s perfect” opens the door for the entry of God’s word and his gospel. Take that person down the road of sin. Help him to better understand how his imperfection—that is, his sin—causes him to lust after women and objects. Pray that the Lord would cause him to see how his imperfection creates a heart bent toward hatred. Use of the category of imperfection can point him toward the reason for it (i.e., sin). Morality isn’t what we make it. Good and evil aren’t defined according to our own standards, and perfection and imperfection are not limited to how well we perform on an exam. God defines these categories. Since these are words we often use (i.e., good, evil, perfection, imperfection), a witnessing encounter is closer than you think. People are curious. They are searching for truth. It’s just a matter of where they’re searching. Will you help them to see that nobody’s perfect, including yourself, and let them know the reason why the Perfect One bore our sins in his body on that tree?

American Idol, American Culture, the Christian Church, and Your Bible Study by Mark L. Ward, Jr.

around the time that YouTube emerged as a musical force, and that’s probably no coincidence.

LEON M. BROWN is the pastor of Crown and Joy Presbyte-

op music isn’t my thing, so I never really watched an episode of American Idol—except once, when someone I knew personally landed in the top ten. But even pop-music holdouts like me can’t help seeing the headlines and the highlight videos; the show was a ubiquitous cultural presence. Until it wasn’t. The New York Times tells the tale:

rian Church in Richmond, Virginia. He is presently pursuing his PhD in Hebrew. He is the author of Words in Season: On Sharing the Hope That Is within Us (Gospel Rich Books, 2013). He is married and has two children.

The ratings declined, gently at first, and the “Idol” pop-star spigot began trickling dust. The show stopped producing big new stars

Authenticity is the desire to have an intimate, direct connection with another being, unobstructed by the layers of glitz

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The problem for “Idol” was not so much that reality TV went away—it’s still all over cable and the networks—but that “reality,” the cultural force of authenticity and disintermediation, had dispersed into social media.

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THEOLOGY

American Idol, American Culture, the Christian Church, and Your Bible Study by Mark L. Ward, Jr.

around the time that YouTube emerged as a musical force, and that’s probably no coincidence.

LEON M. BROWN is the pastor of Crown and Joy Presbyte-

The ratings declined, gently at first, and the “Idol” pop-star spigot began trickling dust. The show stopped producing big new stars

Authenticity is the desire to have an intimate, direct connection with another being, unobstructed by the layers of glitz

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THEOLOGY

“Some very conservative American Christians like to talk as if they stand entirely apart from American culture, which is kind of like a fish insisting to another fish (through bubbles) that he’s actually flying through the air.” slathered on by mainstream media juggernauts. Disintermediation is the removal of the middleman—in this case, Simon Cowell and his cohorts—in order to achieve that authenticity. In an entertainment-driven world full of celebrity handlers and auto-tune, regular people have both retreated to hipsterish irony and hungered for something real. American Idol—like Survivor two years before it—was supposed to provide the real: it was a talent competition that regular Joes (read: William Hung) could enter. The viewers voted for the winners—what could be more authentic, less intermediated?

AUTHENTICITY AND CULTURE YouTube stars have just as much overlaid glitz as the faces on the magazines in the checkout aisle—some of them are now showing up on those magazines themselves. You, the viewer, may be just as distanced from the person by the carefully crafted persona, but you don’t feel like you are. YouTube invites you literally into their living rooms to watch them jam or dish or kvetch or exercise or (my favorite) multitrack. Some very conservative American Christians like to talk as if they stand entirely apart from

American culture, which is kind of like a fish insisting to another fish (through bubbles) that he’s actually flying through the air. No, they are shaped by it too—no one can be a-cultural. Cultures are a result of God’s good creation. All food is ethnic food; all clothes and gestures and customs and institutions both express and form cultural identities—they communicate and consolidate. You might think, then, that Christians on the other end of the spectrum (those who explicitly set out to engage the culture for the sake of the gospel) would have an advantage over the self-professed cultural isolationists. At least the contextualizers are self-conscious—and hopefully therefore self-critical—about what they’re doing. But our most respected evangelical selfcritics don’t think so. Andy Crouch, author of the excellent culture-engagement manifesto Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (IVP, 2013), says, “The world has changed us far more than we will ever change it. Beware of world-changers—they have not yet learned the true meaning of sin” (200). Some Christians really do seem to act as if the fall cannot touch cultural forms; using those forms is for them no more significant than choosing among the thirty-one flavors of ice

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cream at Baskin Robbins. No music or dress or lingo is better than any other, only more or less useful for reaching a target demographic. If the cultural forces of authenticity and disintermediation are cool, then they’re good.

DISINTERMEDIATION AND THE LOCAL CHURCH That brings us to your relationship to the Bible and the church. Whether you’re closer to the isolationist or the accommodationist end of the spectrum, do you think it is possible that your church has escaped the two powerful cultural forces that brought down American Idol? If you’re reading this in Myanmar or Djibouti, perhaps so. But most of my readers are Westerners. “Escape” isn’t really possible, only resistance, co-opting, or wisdom. Among countless similarly incisive comments in his famous quartet of books, David Wells says in The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Eerdmans, 2008) that “churches that actually do influence the culture—here is the paradox—distance themselves from it in their internal life” (224). Now, when I raise the possibility of “distance” and “escape,” I don’t mean to imply that authenticity and disintermediation are entirely bad. They’re not; they’re partly good. Jesus struck an eternal blow for authenticity when he flayed the Pharisees for their hypocrisy in Matthew 23. And the Bible “disintermediates” to a degree— though he also gave us pastors, Jesus is the one true mediator between God and humanity; no more “priests” are necessary (1 Tim. 2:5). But when the search for authenticity, for the real, tempts us away from the real things God really gave us, cultural pressures become unhealthy. I mean that although “all are yours”— every YouTube pastor or WordPress blogger who has anything good to say is a gift from God for your benefit (1 Cor. 3:22)—you are still called to form real-life connections with the people

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of your local church. The church is the physical place where real people physically congregate to listen to real-time preaching from a real person who has been given genuine authority in your life (1 Pet. 5:1–5). The people in the pews around you will, like yourself, be inauthentic in some way (likely in many ways). You yourself are not a fully authentic Christian; we’re all fallen. But the people in your church are more real than the people on YouTube, and the life you live with and for them is more genuine than the growth you might gain from online preachers and bloggers. In Crouch’s latest book, Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing (IVP, 2016), he observes that social media can provide a meaningful opportunity for the vulnerable and powerless to “bear risk together rather than be paralyzed in suffering”— think Arab Spring. But, Crouch says, When the residents of the comfortable affluence of withdrawing use media to simulate engagement, to give ourselves a sense of making a personal investment when in fact our activity risks nothing and forms nothing new in our characters, then “virtual activism” is in fact a way of doubling down on withdrawing, holding on to one’s invulnerability and incapacity while creating a sensation of involvement. The irony of the “authenticity” demanded from and delivered by social media is that it’s not really authentic. It’s voyeuristic: the viewers get to feel like they’re in on whatever action is taking place, but they’re taking none of the risks necessary to really play a meaningful role in the life of another. They’re paying nothing for the intimate personal knowledge they are trying to gain. These voyeurs are not loving their neighbors; they’re being entertained by their faults without helping them bear their burdens. Neither is Facebook authentic. It’s common to point out that you don’t really know your nonlocal Facebook friends; you know their online personas. We all curate our personas carefully,

THEOLOGY

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THEOLOGY

selecting according to some principle of our own what to reveal and what to leave hidden. I know a bright, highly educated young mom who had to get off Facebook because the apparently perfect lives (and children) of other mothers was weighing too heavily on her spirit. I’m not denying that this public-image curation happens in real life; I’m only suggesting that it’s more difficult.

THE PILLAR AND GROUND OF THE TRUTH ABOUT YOU That’s one of the reasons I think good oldfashioned church attendance is so important in this culture of fake authenticity. Church friends are in one another’s homes, listening to one another’s prayer requests, and observing our mutual interactions. Church members were keepin’ it real before it was cool (and after). It’s partly through our sometimes boring, maybe even frustrating, face-to-face interactions that the church “attains to the unity of the faith, the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13)—something that’s hard to do by ourselves in the comfort of our swivel chairs. The cultural force of disintermediation— combined with an already strong American bent toward autonomy, antiauthoritarianism, and individuality—may push you so far that you think you don’t need a pastor or a church. You can just study the Bible on your own. But Paul says in that same passage of Ephesians 4 that your pastor(s) and elders, for all their flaws and all yours, are supposed to help edify, unify, and even perfect you until you are more like Christ.

AUTHENTICITY (WITH SOME MEDIATION) My wife and I just moved from an East Coast church of nearly one thousand people to a Pacific Northwest church of nearly fifty. We sit a lot

“I think good old-fashioned church attendance is so important in this culture of fake authenticity.”

closer to our new pastor, no matter where we are in the room, than we ever could in the big auditorium back East. We have both commented upon the authenticity “added” to our pastor’s message via the simple decrease in the amount of airspace between his face and ours. I’m not criticizing my old church in the least, only observing that we feel we are benefiting from this spatial proximity—we need the teaching and the influence of a pastor given to Christ’s body. We know the Bible better and love the Lord and our fellow church members more precisely because of his mediation. Even though, in a (limited) sense, he stands between us and the Bible, the divinely intended result is more faith, greater unity, and better knowledge. If the cultural pressures of authenticity and disintermediation could take down American Idol, then they can surely impact Christians and churches—for good and ill. We’ve got to embrace what is worthy in this cultural moment and yet distance ourselves from any force that would push us away from our God-ordained means of spiritual growth. Want authenticity? Go to church. MARK L. WARD, JR. (PhD, Bob Jones University) serves the church as a Logos Pro at Faithlife, makers of Logos Bible Software. He is the author of multiple high school Bible textbooks, including Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption (BJU Press, 2017).

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THEOLOGY

AUTHENTICITY (WITH SOME MEDIATION) My wife and I just moved from an East Coast church of nearly one thousand people to a Pacific Northwest church of nearly fifty. We sit a lot

“I think good old-fashioned church attendance is so important in this culture of fake authenticity.”

Vol. 25 No. 6 Nov/Dec 2016

TELL US YOUR STORY What have White Horse Inn and Modern Reformation meant to you, your family, or your church? Your stories encourage us in our work, and we’d love to hear them.

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THE FIRST CHRISTMAS CAROL

THE GLORIOUS CONDESCENSION OF THE INCARNATION

INCARNATIONAL MINISTRY AND THE UNIQUE, INCARNATE CHRIST

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THE FIRST CHRISTMAS CAROL

THE GLORIOUS CONDESCENSION OF THE INCARNATION

INCARNATIONAL MINISTRY AND THE UNIQUE, INCARNATE CHRIST

FIRST by SCOTT E. CHURNOCK

Christmas

Carol

illustrations by OWEN GENT

FIRST by SCOTT E. CHURNOCK

Christmas

Carol

illustrations by OWEN GENT

The Christmas season is a time for music. It would be difficult to think about the traditions surrounding this time of the year without having the familiar songs echoing in our ears. Unfortunately, a lot of mediocre songs have crept into the repertoire of this holiday season. “Frosty the Snowman” and “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” have nothing at all to do with the celebration of the incarnation of our Lord and Savior. Then there is “Little Drummer Boy,” a horrendously annoying song recounting an apocryphal nativity event. The relentless “pa rum pum pum pum” is enough to want to make you grab the drum out of the kid’s hands and smash it to bits!

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In spite of the “Little Drummer Boy” type of drivel, the Christmas season brings us some of the most glorious music the church has produced. We are used to having music everywhere we go—smartphones, iPods, and CDs make it possible for us to be constantly surrounded by music. Prior to our electronic age, the church was the primary place where music was heard. One of the great blessings of the Reformation was that the Reformers returned music to the people, as during the Middle Ages, only the choirs and priests sang. With the rediscovery of the glory of the gospel in the Reformation, all God’s people were able to unite their voices in singing with music to his glory. In Geneva, John Calvin sought out the best musicians for the church (though he had to fight with the town council to get their salaries paid!). Martin Luther wrote scores of hymns, many of which we still sing today. George Frideric Handel’s majestic oratorio Messiah, though not written as “church” music, was composed as an apologetic for the gospel. The libretto was written by Handel’s friend, Charles Jennens, who was a devout evangelical. Concerned about the spread of deism and Enlightenment thought, Jennens used his King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer to trace the Messiah’s birth, death, resurrection, and second coming, using both the prophecies of the Old Testament and their fulfillment of the New Testament. The gospel produces music by setting the redeemed heart singing! The Bible tells us that when God created all things by the power of his word, the angels of heaven sang together (Job 38:7). How much more appropriate it is that when the Word of God became flesh, his nativity was heralded by “choirs of angels” (Luke 2:13– 14) and by the recipients of his redeeming work breaking forth in songs of praise. This is what we find in the opening chapter of Luke’s Gospel. Luke here records for us two great songs, or psalms, of praise: one from Mary and the other from Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist. Some scholars have referred to these songs as “the last of the Hebrew psalms and the first of the Christian hymns.” These are the first Christmas carols, but they appear only

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in Luke’s Gospel. We might say that Luke was the first church hymnologist. One of the most interesting observations about these two songs is that both of them contain very little “original” material. Both are composed mainly of quotes from or allusions to the Old Testament. Mary’s song (Luke 1:46–55) is her response to the angel Gabriel’s announcement that she would be the mother of the Messiah. The song from the lips of Zacharias (Luke 1:68–79) is his response to the blessing of being chosen to be the father of John the Baptist, the forerunner of the Messiah. Both of these psalms draw upon the wealth of Old Testament prophecies and promises of the Coming One who would redeem his people from their sins. Mary’s song, often referred to as “The Magnificat” (from the Latin, “my soul magnifies”), recounts not only God’s promises to provide a redeemer in fulfillment of his covenant made with Abraham, but also her personal need for and faith in this Redeemer. In this song we get a marvelous glimpse into the heart and mind of this enigmatic young Jewish girl. We know she was a direct descendent of David (Luke 3:23–38), so the royal blood of the sweet psalmist of Israel flowed through her veins. Of course, by the first century, the royal house of David had fallen upon hard times, and this princess was a nobody from nowhere. Yet this obscure young girl was chosen by God to be the human mother of the long-awaited Messiah. She was not chosen for this privilege because of her beauty, position, or influence. Mary was a pious young woman who feared the Lord, and her response to the angelic visit displays her faith in and obedience to God’s word. There is only one reason why she was chosen by the Lord for this high honor: sovereign grace. Mary was a sinner who responded in faith to God’s gracious word, and we see this in the words of her song of praise. The first two chapters of Luke’s Gospel are familiar territory—the angel Gabriel appears to Mary, informing her that she would bear a son, conceived by the Holy Spirit, who would be the promised Messiah, the Son of God. In confirmation of this, Gabriel informs Mary that her cousin Elizabeth, advanced in years and barren,

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has conceived and is now in the sixth month of her pregnancy. She hurries off to Elizabeth’s house and upon entering the house is hailed by her cousin as being the mother of her Lord! Having heard this confirmation of the angel’s announcement, Mary sings a wonderful song of praise—a song of faith in God’s redeeming work as the fulfillment of his covenant promises, all of which come to fruition in the child she bears. Mary’s “Magnificat” is her song of faith—her faith rooted in the word of God. Mary rejoices in the fact that the Messiah whom she bears is coming not merely to save his people as promised in the types and prophecies of the Old Testament, but he is coming to save her as well. It is a wonderful statement of the character and nature of saving faith.

SAVING FAITH REJOICES IN GOD’S PERSON (LUKE 1:46–47) Some critics deny that Mary could have composed such a profound psalm. How could a teenager write something like this? If the teenager knew her Bible, as Mary did, she certainly could! This song exudes the Scriptures, and Mary evidences a heart and mind saturated with the word of God. When the time comes for her to express her praise to the Lord, her mouth speaks with what fills her heart: the word of God! She had obviously been taught the word, heard the word, and memorized the word. When Mary prayed, she prayed God’s word with a mind and heart held captive by it.

REJOICING IN GOD’S MAJESTY AND SALVATION “My soul magnifies the Lord.” Mary begins where we all need to begin in our prayers—with God himself: “My soul magnifies the Lord.” This is the theme of her song. The focus is upon the glory of God in the redemption of his people. Her soul is consumed with the glory, mercy, grace, and majesty of God. Though

she does not mention her son Jesus directly, she focuses upon God who gives the gift of a Redeemer and redemption. She has been given a great privilege to be the mother of the promised Messiah, but her concern is not to magnify herself or her blessing, but the greatness and glory of God. The truly important thing is not what God has done for us, but who he is. It is because of who he is, who acts in redeeming grace and mercy toward us. “And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” In typical Hebrew parallelism, Mary restates and amplifies what she has just expressed: “And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” Her entire being is praising God, soul and spirit. The glorious majestic God of Israel has come to save. Undoubtedly underlying her words are the many Old Testament statements of God coming to save his people in response to his covenant promise (possibly the words of Moses in Exodus 3:6–8). God’s “coming down” in salvation, foreshadowed in the Exodus narrative, has now come to fulfillment in his “coming down” from heaven in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He comes down to be the Savior of his people. Mary could have said, “My spirit rejoices in God my Rock,” or “my Helper,” or “my Deliverer.” Instead, she specifically refers to God as her “Savior.” The One who is coming through her will be her Savior; she acknowledges she is a sinner like everyone else and in need of salvation. Whereas Israel forgot the One who came in deliverance in the Exodus (Ps. 106:21), Mary rejoices in him who in mercy has come down to be her Savior. As she looks to the glory and greatness of her Savior, she sees nothing in herself that merits or contributes to her salvation, but she relies completely upon who God is and what he does. “For he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed.”

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“ONLY A SINNER WHO HAS EXPERIENCED SOVEREIGN GRACE, WHOSE HEART HAS BEEN HUMBLED, AND WHO HAS TURNED IN FAITH TO THE LORD WHO ALONE IS OUR REDEEMER CAN REJOICE IN HIS HOLINESS.”

Mary is the perfect example of how God lifts up “the humble and contrite who tremble at his word” (Isa. 66:2). She exalts the Lord as the one who “has looked on the humble state of His servant.” Here we see true faith that acknowledges that we deserve nothing from God and that we receive everything from him by grace alone. As James says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6). She continues, “For, behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed.” The coming generations will call her “blessed,” not because Mary is co-redemptrix with Christ, but because she is a fellow sinner who has been blessed by sovereign grace. “For he who is mighty has done great things for me.” Picking up language from the Old Testament, Mary continues her praise by referring to God as the “Mighty One.” The prophets of Israel

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frequently linked the description of God as the “Mighty One” with his redemption of his people, Israel (Isa. 49:26; 60:15–16). Mary here affirms that the Mighty One, who has repeatedly brought temporal deliverance to his people throughout Israel’s history, has now come in powerful salvation of his people. “And holy is his name.” When sinners come face to face with the infinitely holy God, it is a terrifying experience—the prophet Isaiah knew this well. When in a vision he saw God exalted in his holiness, he recognized his sinfulness and knew he was in trouble. In his own words, he confessed that he was “ruined” (Isa. 6:5 NASB). Yet here, Mary rejoices in the Mighty One whose name is “holy.” Only a sinner who has experienced sovereign grace, whose heart has been humbled, and who has turned in faith to the Lord who alone is our Redeemer can rejoice in his holiness. Here Mary

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“ONLY A SINNER WHO HAS EXPERIENCED SOVEREIGN GRACE, WHOSE HEART HAS BEEN HUMBLED, AND WHO HAS TURNED IN FAITH TO THE LORD WHO ALONE IS OUR REDEEMER CAN REJOICE IN HIS HOLINESS.”

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reflects the words of many of the psalms where praise is offered to our holy God who rescues us (Ps. 30:3–4; 103:1–4). “And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.” Here Mary’s praise goes out from her as an individual believer to all God’s people in general. The Lord’s gracious dealings with Mary are not unusual or out of the ordinary. What God has done for her in providing redemption is what he does for all generations. This is covenant language that takes us back to the words the Lord spoke to Abraham when he established his covenant with the one who would be the father of all who believe (Gen. 17:7). The covenant made with Abraham now comes to fulfillment in the child to be born to Mary. As the apostle Paul would write several decades later, the “offspring” promised to Abraham finds fulfillment in the Lord Jesus Christ: “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ referring to many, but referring to one, ‘And to your offspring,’ who is Christ” (Gal. 3:16). Though it is anachronistic to refer to Mary as a “Calvinist,” she was! She testified that salvation is all from the Lord alone. If anyone could claim merit, it was Mary—of all women who ever lived upon this earth, she was the one chosen by the Lord to be the mother of the Messiah; surely there was something in her to merit this honor. Yet she looked at herself and saw nothing but her sin and need of a Savior. All generations call her blessed, not because of anything she did or any merit she had, but because of God’s sovereign grace providing the Redeemer of his people through her and for her. “He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate;

he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.” It is interesting to note that as Mary continues her psalm of praise for God’s redeeming work, she now uses the past tense to describe God’s saving actions. She sees history unfolding in such a way that the great salvation that would be accomplished by Messiah had already happened! His saving work is so certain, she can speak of it as already having been completed. She sings the song of the dawn of the messianic age: with the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, God had already begun the full redemption of his people, the great reversal. The Son of God came to establish his kingdom rule with justice and might. This meant the ultimate overthrow of every proud nation and the humbling of every proud heart. Her words reflect themes that run throughout the Old Testament, emphasizing that salvation is totally God’s work and so certain that it can be spoken of in the past tense. In Mary’s praise, we hear the echo of Psalm 98:1–3. “Oh sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things! His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him. The Lord has made known his salvation; he has revealed his righteousness in the sight of the nations. He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.” When Mary sings her song, none of these saving acts of God have yet been accomplished, but so certain is God’s word that Mary is perfectly confident he will accomplish what he has promised. He will work out in history what he has promised in his word. He will bring about the great reversal in which the proud are humbled, the mighty are brought down, the humble exalted, the hungry are fed, and the rich are impoverished,

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“ AS THE APOSTLE PAUL WROTE ABOUT CHRIST, ‘FOR ALL THE PROMISES OF GOD FIND THEIR “YES” IN HIM. THAT IS WHY IT IS THROUGH HIM THAT WE UTTER OUR “AMEN” TO GOD FOR HIS GLORY’ (2 COR. 1:20).” doing it in an amazing way—through a baby born to a poor woman from Galilee. In Mary’s day, Rome ruled the known world with an iron boot, including Israel. The world seemed out of control for God’s people, and nothing in their experience gave any hope that the circumstances would change. Yet Mary looked at this child to be born to her, and she understood that God was at work upsetting the entire world system. She knew that God was in control, working out his purpose as he had promised and prophesied throughout the ages. It is this certainty in God’s providential work that has comforted, strengthened, and emboldened believers throughout the centuries. “He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.” In the closing words of her psalm, Mary sees the child she is bearing as the one who fulfills God’s covenant made with Abraham. She connects the redemptive threads of the Old Testament in a person, the Lord Jesus Christ. The fulfillment of God’s redemptive plan is a person who is the “seed of the woman” (Gen. 3:15), the “offspring”

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of Abraham (Gen. 12:7). The fulfillment of God’s covenant is a person. What is happening to Mary is nothing less than God fulfilling what he had promised centuries before, confirmed and expanded throughout the ages, and now coming to fulfillment. Faith rests upon God’s faithfulness to his word, not ours. It rests upon God’s promises, not ours. It is interesting that Mary never mentions Christ in this song, yet it is all about him. She sees all of the Old Testament coming to focus and fulfillment in the person of the child she bears. This song is all about the gospel! It is not about us or about what we do, but about the majestic themes of the Old Testament reaching their climax as God alone saves his people from their sins. Mary correctly saw that the heart of the Old Testament was the person and work of the Messiah to whom she would give birth; it is in that Messiah we see the fulfillment of God’s promises to redeem his people. As the apostle Paul wrote about Christ, “For all the promises of God find their ‘yes’ in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our ‘Amen’ to God for his glory” (2 Cor. 1:20). Mary’s song is the Christmas carol of every Christian. It is a beautiful and majestic song of salvation through God’s covenant faithfulness and fulfillment—the song of the gospel, the song of “the hopes and fears of all the years” being met in Christ at his birth. SCOTT E. CHURNOCK (MDiv, ThM) is pastor of Christ Pres-

byterian Church (OPC) in St. Charles, Missouri.

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byterian Church (OPC) in St. Charles, Missouri.

The

Glorious

Condescension

INCARNATION by NANA DOLCE

The

Glorious

Condescension

INCARNATION by NANA DOLCE

In the incarnation, we encounter the mystery J. I. Packer writes about in his classic book Knowing God, when he says that this was “the great act of condescension and self-humbling.” God the Son, coequal and coeternal with the Father, submits to the limits of flesh as Mary’s baby boy—and to his young mother, he must look for his food, his diapers, and his care. Amazing! This inspires praise as we encounter the gracious self-humbling of the King of kings—from the manger to the cross!

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“The Virgin sings a lullaby.” I was recently struck by this stanza while listening to William Chatterton Dix’s popular Christmas carol, “What Child Is This?” In these words, we find the virgin birth and the staggering reality of the incarnation. The lyrics speak of a young virgin, suddenly the mother of a baby (Luke 1:26–38; 2:1–21): a baby full of glory, a baby full of grace and truth (John 1:14), and a baby who is in fact the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, as he is described in the Nicene Creed. To this baby, the virgin sings a lullaby. This is what Packer calls “the great act of condescension and self-humbling.” For in the incarnation, God the Son, coequal and coeternal with the Father, is sung a lullaby. An astonishing thought! God became a dependent infant, needing to be soothed and cuddled, rocked and sung to sleep. This is Christ the Lord who “being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing” (Phil. 2:6–7). Surely, “nothing” here includes a baby without speech, helpless to do anything but lie where placed. Staring. Cooing. Fidgeting. Babbling. Although Christ “was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9). And who is poorer and needier than a baby? The One by whom “all things were created, things in heaven and on earth” is born a man (Col. 1:16). Without losing his deity, Christ submits to the limits of flesh as Mary’s baby boy. However, this great act of condescension and self-humbling is not limited to the manger— it stretches to the cross. “And being found in appearance as a man, Christ humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8). In short, Mary’s baby is born to die. The Scripture states that it pleased God “to crush him and cause him to suffer” (Isa. 53:10) and that “he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him” (Isa. 53:5). Jesus Christ, the unique God-man, suffers as the sinner’s substitute in judgment;

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his gruesome death satisfies the wrath of God against sin (1 John 4:10); his righteousness is credited to those who believe for their justification (2 Cor. 5:21); and his resurrection guarantees their glorious, eternal, and complete sanctification (1 Cor. 15:20–28). Mary’s baby is indeed the King of kings and the Lord of lords (Rev. 19:16)! The lowly babe swaddled in cloth has ascended and sits today at the right hand of God the Father (Mark 16:19). His name is above all others, and at its mention, all knees—in heaven, on earth, and under the earth—will bow (Phil. 2:9–10). He will come again in the fullness of his glory to judge the earth, perfect his church, and make all things new (Rev. 19:1–21). Let us then make every effort to remember the incarnation during this season and beyond. Think deeply of its truths. Gaze on the glorious mystery of the God-man, wrapped in pieces of cloth and placed in a trough. Be astounded by his humility and sing, not lullabies, but songs of adoration to the Mighty One who saves—the Babe, the Son of Mary! NANA DOLCE (MA, Theological Studies) was born in Ghana,

West Africa; she lives today in Washington, D.C., with her husband Eric and two daughters. She homeschools her children and is on staff at a local church. She blogs at www. motherhoodandsanctity.com. This article originally appeared on the Reformed African American Network (www.raanetwork.org) on December 18, 2015, and is reprinted here by permission of the author.

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Christmas The Word became flesh. Ultimate Mystery born with a skull you could crush one-handed. Incarnation. It is not tame. It is not beautiful. It is uninhabitable terror. It is unthinkable darkness riven with unbearable light. Agonized laboring led to it, vast upheavals of intergalactic space, time split apart, a wrenching and tearing of the very sinews of reality itself. You can only cover your eyes and shudder before it, before this: “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God…who for us and for our salvation,” as the Nicene Creed puts it, “came down from heaven.” Came down. Only then do we dare uncover our eyes and see what we can see. It is the Resurrection and the Life she holds in her arms. It is the bitterness of death he takes at her breast.

by FREDERICK BUECHNER

Christmas itself is by grace. It could never have survived our own blindness and depredations otherwise. It could never have happened otherwise. Perhaps it is the very wildness and strangeness of the grace that has led us to try to tame it. We have tried to make it habitable. We have roofed it and furnished it. We have reduced it to an occasion we feel at home with, at best a touching and beautiful occasion, at worst a trite and cloying one. But if the Christmas event in itself is indeed—as a matter of cold, hard fact— all it’s cracked up to be, then even at best our efforts are misleading.

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by FREDERICK BUECHNER

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I N CA R N AT I O N A L

MINISTRY

Unique,

Incarnate Christ

by J. TODD BILLINGS

I N CA R N AT I O N A L

MINISTRY

Unique,

Incarnate Christ

by J. TODD BILLINGS

This leads us to a question underlying the coupling of the term “incarnational” with “ministry.” What is the relationship between the one incarnation and the activity and ministry of the church? Should our ministries be guided by analogies between the incarnation and our own Christian lives?

The term

THE WORD MADE FLESH (AND DEED?)

“incarnational ministry,” like “missional” or “Emergent Church,” is used in a wide variety of ways. Sometimes “incarnational ministry” means ministry that crosses cultural barriers to be an embodied presence to people in need. At other times, it’s used to talk about culturally relevant analogies for the gospel. In still other contexts, “incarnational ministry” has become shorthand for affirming that intellectual assent to faith is not enough— faith needs to become embodied and “incarnate” in acts of love and service, as in the earthly ministry of Jesus. It is understandable if you find these different uses of the phrase puzzling. In its common evangelical usage, “incarnational ministry” often has surprisingly little to do with the unique incarnation of the Word made flesh in Jesus Christ. For instance, surely Muslim, Jewish, and other religious practitioners would affirm that faith should be made manifest in concrete, physical acts of love and service, but none of them would affirm the incarnation of the eternal Word made flesh in Jesus Christ.

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Missional blogger Timothy Cowin suggests that the incarnation is important for ministry because it teaches that “Jesus came to physically be with us,” to show the Father’s love to tax collectors and sinners, seeking not to retreat from culture but to “penetrate” it.1 The incarnation applies to us because “the missional church sees its mission as the same as the Lord’s.” For Cowin, the incarnation is about engaging in a set of inclusive and loving activities (as in the ministry of Jesus), since the mission of Jesus Christ is the same as our own. Although Cowin makes some legitimate points about the church’s calling to be in but not of the world, approaches like this one risk missing a profound truth of the gospel: that the incarnation is utterly unique. Whereas it may sound empowering for us to have the “same” mission as Jesus in the incarnation, there is a subtle but profound danger in this incarnational analogy. It is God alone who saves, and God alone saves through the Word that takes on flesh in Jesus Christ. The incarnation is not a pattern of activities that we copy. It’s not simply a truth that Jesus lived a self-sacrificial life, but that the eternal Word became incarnate in the man Jesus, who lived the righteous life of love and obedience. The incarnation is a reality without which the ministry of Jesus, his death, and his resurrection would have no significance for our salvation. As such, the incarnation is a central, constitutive truth of the gospel. Those who seek to recover the doctrine of the incarnation and its implications for our lives and ministries are right to want to emphasize its practical applications. We should not enter into ministry in a prideful way that looks down upon

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others rather than serving them; we should be mindful of the call to cross cultural barriers for the sake of the gospel. In order to explore this further, I will examine how the incarnational analogy has functioned in evangelical missiological circles. After this analysis, I will point to one area in which I think analogies can be made from the incarnation that do not compromise its uniqueness or centrality; finally, the article ends by drawing upon the wisdom of the Heidelberg Catechism in articulating the ways in which we participate in Christ and his mission, and the ways in which our mission remains distinct from that of Jesus Christ himself.

BECOMING ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN A common example of the use of “incarnational ministry” in missiological circles comes from a widely used textbook, Ministering CrossCulturally: An Incarnational Model for Personal Relationships, by Sherwood Lingenfelter and Marvin Mayers.2 Lingenfelter argues that the incarnation has profound consequences for cross-cultural ministry—Jesus came into the world as a “learner,” needing to learn about Jewish language and culture, and like a careful anthropologist, he studied the culture of his people for thirty years before he began his ministry. Although Jesus Christ was “in very nature God,” he identified with humanity and human culture, taking “the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Phil. 2:6–7). He not only completely identified with humanity but with Jewish culture in particular. Thus Lingenfelter sees the incarnation as the model for incarnational ministry, for Jesus was “a 200 percent person”: “he was 100 percent God and 100 percent Jew.”3 Lingenfelter goes on to make a direct analogy with our own ministry: we should seek to become 150 percent persons, becoming less like persons of our own culture and more like persons of the culture to whom we seek to minister (thus 75 percent of each culture). He has legitimate and pressing missiological concerns that underlie his use of the incarnational

The term

THE WORD MADE FLESH (AND DEED?)

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analogy—he has seen the tendency of Western missionaries to retreat to their safe missionary compounds, rather than approach the receiving culture with humility and respect. This action of distance (rather than humble engagement) distorts the message that Christian missionaries try to communicate. Thus the incarnation seems like an attractive analogy to inspire missionaries to acquire a posture of cultural humility. While I share the author’s practical missiological concerns, I think his close analogy between the incarnation and cross-cultural ministry is not the best way to address these concerns. It depends upon a questionable interpretation of Philippians 2 and a reduction of Christology to a problem of math. (How exactly is a “200 percent person” one person rather than “two sons,” as the ancient heresy of Nestorianism claims?) For our present purposes, I will focus upon two observations. First, Lingenfelter’s portrait of the incarnation tends to conflate the unique incarnation with our own process of learning about another culture. The deity of the Son is seen as a “culture” and the taking on of humanity as a second “culture” taken on in the incarnation. Thus Jesus, as the pioneer of our faith, shows us how to take on a second culture as well. But here is the problem: the divine nature is not a “culture,” and we cannot (and should not) see ourselves as analogous to the pre-incarnate Word that then takes on humanity. The deity of the Word won’t fit into the box of “culture,” because God is not a creature and culture is a characteristic of creaturely existence. Instead, God is the transcendent and mysterious creator of the universe. The truth of the incarnation is that in the eternal Word, this same transcendent God takes on the flesh of human beings for the sake of our salvation. Second, this doctrinal conflation can lead to a significant problem in practice: It can conflate the mission of Jesus with our own mission. While the author certainly doesn’t intend to promote a messiah-complex among missionaries, the close analogy between the incarnational as a culture-crossing action and our own culturecrossing action makes this a constant issue. I

recall times in which missionaries schooled in incarnational ministry told me they were “cheating” from the model if they gave something away to people in need, or if they presented any ideas not already inherent in the culture of reception. Behind this sense of “cheating” is the assumption that our identification with the culture is enough—that is our mission. While I agree that missionaries should seek to identify with the receiving culture, our identification with that culture is not itself inherently redemptive. We should identify with the culture so our lives offer an intelligible witness to the one Redeemer of peoples from all cultures, Jesus Christ. It is not enough to bear witness to Jesus as the model for crossing cultures. Jesus is much more than a model.4 Instead, we must be crystal clear about the fact that the incarnation is a unique event. Jesus Christ is central to the gospel because the incarnation is not something that happens in various forms to various persons. Jesus Christ is the one and only incarnate Word. There is redemptive power in the incarnation; apart from the incarnation, Christ’s obedient life, death, resurrection, and ascension would be of no use to us. Because of the incarnation, we know that it is none other than God himself who has sought us out and cleansed us from our sins. “In Christ” we know and have fellowship with God. If God and humanity were not united in Jesus Christ, then being “in Christ” would not be a locus of our communion with God. Indeed, if we are to make analogies between the incarnation and our own lives, it should point us to the reality that Jesus Christ is not a “200 percent person”—a being in which deity and humanity are framed competitively, as two persons smashed into one. Instead, the incarnation shows us how God’s action in our lives does not mean the evacuation of human agency but the empowerment of it. Christians often struggle with spiritual pride—we find it difficult to take a compliment in a way that does not give ourselves “spiritual bonus points” for our own faithful acts. We know we should give credit to God, but really, I was the one who performed that act of service and love, right?

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Ultimately, it is a competitive, nonincarnational view of divine and human work that creates this ambivalence. In the incarnation we see that true God and true humanity are brought together in one person, Jesus Christ. When we perform an act of love and service, we can give the Spirit the credit while still recognizing that this act is our own in a secondary sense. Why? Because as we become more like Christ by the Spirit, we are not becoming “less human” by becoming more like God. Our true humanity is being restored as the Spirit unites us to God in Christ.

THE UNIQUE INCARNATION AND THE WORK OF THE CHURCH If it is misleading to see the incarnation as an example of culture crossing or to conflate Christ’s mission and our own, then how do our lives and ministries participate in the Incarnate Christ and his mission? The Holy Spirit has united believers to the living Christ; thus it is important to think about the positive ways in which we participate in Christ. The Heidelberg Catechism (HC) is instructive on

this point—rather than taking the incarnation as the point of departure for how we participate in Christ, it speaks in terms of the three offices of Christ: QUESTION 31. Why is he called “Christ,”

meaning anointed?

ANSWER. Because he has been ordained by God the Father and has been anointed with the Holy Spirit to be our chief prophet and teacher who perfectly reveals to us the secret counsel and will of God for our redemption; our only high priest who has redeemed us by the one sacrifice of his body, and who continually pleads our cause with the Father; and our eternal king who governs us by his Word and Spirit, and who guards us and keeps us in the redemption he has won for us. QUESTION 32. But why are you called a

Christian?

ANSWER. Because by faith I am a member of Christ and so I share in his anointing. I

“ AS WE BECOME MORE LIKE CHRIST BY THE SPIRIT, WE ARE NOT BECOMING ‘LESS HUMAN’ BY BECOMING MORE LIKE GOD. OUR TRUE HUMANITY IS BEING RESTORED AS THE SPIRIT UNITES US TO GOD IN CHRIST.”

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meaning anointed?

Christian?

ANSWER. Because by faith I am a member of Christ and so I share in his anointing. I

“ AS WE BECOME MORE LIKE CHRIST BY THE SPIRIT, WE ARE NOT BECOMING ‘LESS HUMAN’ BY BECOMING MORE LIKE GOD. OUR TRUE HUMANITY IS BEING RESTORED AS THE SPIRIT UNITES US TO GOD IN CHRIST.”

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“WE BEAR WITNESS TO RATHER THAN OUR MATURITY AND IDEN TO CHRIST BUT AL JESUS CHRIST (ROM. WORD WHO RECON

am anointed to confess his name, to present myself to him as a living sacrifice of thanks, to strive with a good conscience against sin and the devil in this life, and afterward to reign with Christ over all creation for all eternity. Note how the HC does two things. First, it speaks about a profound union between believers and Jesus Christ. We are not lone-ranger Christians; we are profoundly connected to the living Christ: “I am a member of Christ and so I share in his anointing.” Its language is strong and unequivocal on this important connection. Second, note how our “membership” in Christ and “sharing” in his anointing are derivative of and subordinate to the living Christ. Christ alone is the “chief prophet and

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CHRIST THE REDEEMER SELVES; WE FIND OUR TITY AS ONES UNITED SO AS ‘SERVANTS’ OF 1:1), THE ONE INCARNATE CILES US WITH GOD.”

teacher,” our “only high priest,” and our intercessor to the Father. In our own person, we can do none of these things. The Son is a child of God by nature, but we are children of God by grace. This difference has profound consequences for ministry—we should not seek to simply “copy” Jesus as Cowin suggests. We belong to Christ; we are not Christ himself. We should be cautious about seeing ourselves as “the very presence of Jesus Christ in the world.” Our ministries should point to the Head of the body, not the body itself. Paul brings together these teachings of union with Christ, yet he points to Christ when he writes that God has made known his riches among the Gentiles in the mystery of “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” But, rather than follow up with an emphasis on our own redemptive action,

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Paul continues: “It is he [Christ] whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ” (Col. 1:27–28 NRSV). We are united to Christ in a profound way, yet we do not simply copy the action of the one Redeemer. We bear witness to Christ the Redeemer rather than ourselves; we find our maturity and identity as ones united to Christ but also as “servants” of Jesus Christ (Rom. 1:1), the one Incarnate Word who reconciles us with God. The answer is also instructive for thinking through the implications of the three offices of Christ—the difference between Christ as prophet, priest, and king, and how we in our own lives participate in those offices. First, we are “anointed” by the Holy Spirit to bear witness to Christ; that is, to “confess his name.” We are not

“WE BEAR WITNESS TO RATHER THAN OUR MATURITY AND IDEN TO CHRIST BUT AL JESUS CHRIST (ROM. WORD WHO RECON

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CHRIST THE REDEEMER SELVES; WE FIND OUR TITY AS ONES UNITED SO AS ‘SERVANTS’ OF 1:1), THE ONE INCARNATE CILES US WITH GOD.”

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“A LIFE OF GRATITUDE RECOGNIZES THAT WE ARE NOT OUR OWN BUT THAT WE BELONG TO JESUS CHRIST, AND THIS IDENTITY SHOULD TEMPER OUR ALLEGIANCE TO NATIONAL OR CULTURAL PRIORITIES THAT FUEL THE ETHNOCENTRIC TENDENCIES THAT COMPROMISE OUR WITNESS TO THE GOSPEL.”

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the great prophet and teacher, but we confess the One who is. Second, we offer our entire lives as “a living sacrifice of thanks” to “strive” against “sin and the devil.” Christ alone offers the perfect atoning sacrifice. Our own sacrifice is one of gratitude and thanksgiving, done with a “good conscience” because of the complete work of Christ our high priest. Finally, we “share” in the kingship of Christ by sharing in his resurrection and exaltation, looking to the day when we will “reign with Christ over all creation for all eternity.” Christ is the true prophet, priest, and king, and as members of his body we participate in those offices by professing Christ and his truth, loving God and neighbor in gratitude, and living in hope of our final resurrection, exaltation, and reign with Christ. We do participate in Christ’s “mission,” in a certain sense, but our “mission” is grounded in his salvific and redemptive work, not a direct replication of it.

THE INCARNATION AND THE WORK OF THE CHURCH In terms of Christian ministry, the result of this approach is one that gives central place to the church’s ministry of word and sacrament. We are not sent to go out and “take over the culture,” or to seek to be the Savior to those around us. Instead, we point to Christ, the Head, through the word of the gospel held forth in both word and sacrament. There is no human set of activities, no matter how loving or revolutionary, that can bring redemption—this comes through Jesus Christ alone, made possible by the Spirit’s work in uniting us to Jesus Christ. This approach toward Christian ministry overlaps, on a few key points, with some visions of incarnational ministry. As Lingenfelter suggests, we need to seek out relationships with those to whom we minister, displaying our faith in lives of humility and service, and to approach the culture in which we minister as thoughtful students. However, it is not necessary to draw upon the incarnation as a model for culture crossing in order to promote these virtues. These attitudes are the natural fruit of

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those who know they belong to Christ but are not Christ themselves: we present our lives as “a living sacrifice of thanks,” serving God and loving our neighbor in humility and gratitude. A life of gratitude recognizes that we are not our own but that we belong to Jesus Christ, and this identity should temper our allegiance to national or cultural priorities that fuel the ethnocentric tendencies that compromise our witness to the gospel. As a way of giving thanks to God, we are called to seek out relationships with those in need and move across cultural barriers that threaten to block our grateful witness to Jesus Christ, the One to whom we belong. In contrast to seeing incarnational ministry as the model for culture crossing, the HC directly counters our own messianic tendencies: we are not the Redeemer; we belong to the Redeemer. We are freed from manipulating those to whom we minister, because we do not need a list of spiritual accomplishments to please God. In the unique incarnation and the once-for-all sacrifice on the cross, we have been cleansed from our sins and filled with the Spirit who brings new life—we are now free to strive in good conscience against sin and the devil. Precisely because the incarnation is unique to the Incarnate One (and not those united to him), we are freed for humble, nonmanipulative witness and service for the sake of the gospel. J. TODD BILLINGS (ThD, Harvard University Divinity School) is the Gordon H. Girod Research Professor of Reformed Theology at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan. He is the author of several books, including Union with Christ, the winner of a Christianity Today Book Award, and Calvin, Participation, and the Gift, winner of a 2009 John Templeton Award for Theological Promise. 1 S e e h tt p ://t i m o t h y c o w i n .w o r d p r e s s .c o m / 2 0 0 7 / 0 5 / 0 8 / incarnational-ministry-the-way-of-jesus/. 2 Sherwood Lingenfelter and Marvin Mayers, Ministering CrossCulturally: An Incarnational Model for Personal Relationships, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003). Lingenfelter also uses the analogy in Teaching Cross-Culturally: An Incarnational Model for Teaching and Learning, coauthored with Judith Lingenfelter (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003). 3 Lingenfelter and Mayers, 17. 4 For further analysis of the biblical and christological issues raised in proposals such as Lingenfelter’s, see my article, “‘Incarnational Ministry’: A Christological Evaluation and Proposal,” Missiology: An International Review 32:2 (April 2004): 187–201.

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What by MICHAEL S. HORTON

YOU L O O K I N G F O R ? 52

What by MICHAEL S. HORTON

YOU L O O K I N G F O R ? 52

In The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis writes,

There are all sorts of ways we turn the conversation back to ourselves, especially in this selfie generation. We’ve always been selfobsessed; we just have better gear for it now. We can express ourselves, publicize ourselves, and project our own uniqueness to the rest of the world. We can update our Facebook profile and tweet our ephemeral gems to anyone and everyone who will listen. Even if it’s the story of the “nowhere man making nowhere plans for nobody,” it’s my story, not anyone else’s—other people are merely supporting actors in our life movie.

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The characteristic of lost souls is ‘their rejection of everything that is not simply themselves’. Our imaginary egoist has tried to turn everything he meets into a provenance or appendage of himself. The taste for the other, that is, the very capacity for enjoying good, is quenched in him except in so far as his body still draws him into some rudimentary contact with an outer world. Death removes this last contact. He has his wish—to lie wholly in the self and to make the best of what he finds there and what he finds there is hell. We’ve always been self-obsessed, but how does that look today? How does the problem manifest itself now, and what’s the solution? It’s not an incredibly groundbreaking diagnosis, but the problem is that our fixation on ourselves takes our eyes off of Christ. The solution, then, is to think about what it means to fix our eyes on Christ. Tragically, religion and spirituality provide a whole toolbox for avoiding Jesus. It’s a tragicomic irony that the religion section of the average bookstore offers more alternatives to fixing our eyes on Jesus Christ than any other area. Sadly, it’s also the case with many churches. There are two ways, particularly prominent in our own culture, in which we look away from Christ. The first is looking within, at Jesus in my heart—it’s not a public faith but a personal inward hunch. It’s not susceptible to reason and evidence; it’s an experience. A personal experience of Christ is certainly part of the good news of the gospel. Sometimes we can go too far in criticizing the subjectivistic dilution of biblical faith, undermining the whole notion that Jesus Christ does indwell us by his Holy Spirit. The Spirit isn’t opposed to the body—he doesn’t despise the physical or external; rather, he is the one who ties us to Jesus Christ and is the down payment on our bodily resurrection from the dead. For a lot of people, however, the gospel is simply inviting Jesus into their hearts. This assumes that the greatest problem we face in our lives is that Jesus is not in

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our hearts. Have you ever talked to people about this and said, “So I would like to ask you to invite Jesus into your heart. The good news is that you can invite Jesus into your heart.” Ostensibly, the problem is that he’s not there—asking him into your heart is the solution.

A STRONG AND PERFECT PLEA ME! Even in traditional evangelical piety we can make the gospel all about something that happens inside of us, such as “inviting Jesus into your heart.” It is wonderfully true that “through his Spirit” Christ dwells “in your hearts through faith” (Eph. 3:16–17). Indeed, the indwelling presence of the Spirit as the deposit guaranteeing our adoption and final redemption is part of the gospel’s good news. Paul makes that point clearly in Romans 8. Yet it makes no sense by itself, which is why the apostle spends the first three chapters on the problem (the whole world guilty in Adam, under the condemnation of the law) followed by four chapters on the solution—namely, Christ’s active obedience, propitiatory atonement, and justifying resurrection; election, the new birth, sanctification, and glorification. Strictly speaking, the gospel is not “what happened to me when Jesus came into my heart,” but rather the announcement of what happened to Jesus: “He was delivered over for our sins and was raised for our justification” (Rom. 4:25). Because of this good news about what happened outside of us, we are transformed from the inside out. We don’t want to downplay the reality of the New Testament teaching that we have a personal relationship with Jesus. “In the last days I will pour out my spirit on all flesh and they will know me from the greatest to the least.” There is a sense in which in the new covenant, we have a personal relationship with Jesus that was not experienced to that degree in the Old Testament, even by the great prophets. We should revel in that; it is a remarkable truth. But when we turn the gospel in its core into something that happens within us, it’s hard for us to continually look to Christ through all the vicissitudes of our

In The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis writes,

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earthly lives as the author and finisher of our faith. We may acknowledge him as the author, but it’s not long before we turn somewhere else (usually within ourselves) to find the answer. The gospel’s stability rests not on the fact that I have a relationship with Jesus (the experience of which waxes and wanes), but that he has a relationship with us that cannot change because it is grounded in a gracious election and redemption already accomplished by Christ. Then there are those on the margins of Christianity; those who invite Jesus into their hearts, not knowing anything else about the gospel. These are the “nones” (rhymes with “nuns”) who say, “I’m not religious but spiritual, growing exponentially year by year now.” For them, religion is about doctrines, creeds, rituals, and rules that people fight over, whereas spirituality is an inner light that is universal and eternal and binds us altogether. “Follow your heart; believe in yourself” is the mantra of twenty-first-century culture. G. K. Chesterton was insightful about the spiritual culture in England—the men who really believed in themselves were all in lunatic asylums:

of how God has saved me.”2 Have you any good news? That is the only question I ask of you. Exhortations can encourage, but they don’t ultimately help. We might think that going inward will insulate us from the wrath to come, but at the end of the day all we find there is hell, not heaven.

HE’S GOT THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS MY HANDS

When Jones talks about worshipping the God within, he ultimately means that Jones shall worship Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon; I don’t care, anything, rather than the inner light. Let Jones worship cats or crocodiles if he can find any in his street, but not the God within. Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards but to look outwards to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian is that a man isn’t left alone with some inner light, but definitely recognizes an outer light fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners.1

The second way we look away from Jesus is by looking not within ourselves but without ourselves—specifically, to those in need. There’s truth in this as well. Scripture does call us to look outside of ourselves to neighbors in need. Many of those who emphasize that exhortation were raised in the looking-within camp; they’re reacting against the narcissistic spirituality of their forebears and want to make the world a better place. They want to be less selfish and self-preoccupied. They’re right that Jesus didn’t come just to save souls; he came literally to save the world—he came to save people and their bodies. But instead of looking to Christ to return, instead of longing for his appearing, it’s almost as if he would ruin things if he came too soon. We have a lot of programs, and we plan big concerts and conferences, and it would kind of be a pity if he came right now. It’s certainly true that we’re called to follow Christ’s example of sacrificial love and humility, but we need to remember that we’re saved by the works of Jesus Christ alone. Thomas à Kempis, the fourteenth-century Dutch canon who was part of the Brethren of the Common Life (a lay spirituality movement that emphasized personal piety over doctrine), wrote a rather popular book on the subject, The Imitation of Christ. But he could never have imagined the day when Christians would talk about being the gospel. This is how one evangelical church website puts it:

J. Gresham Machen wrote, “What I need first of all is not an exhortation but a gospel, not directions for saving myself but knowledge

Jesus gave his life away, and invites us to do the same. Have you ever considered that what you enjoy doing might be a way

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God wants to use you to bless the world? From reading to a child to drilling a water well, God is already present and active and invites us to join him in his redeeming work in the world. Let [our church] help you live out your passion. The website lists opportunities to defeat poverty and build Africa’s infrastructure. To be clear, it’s not the motive or intent I criticize here—it’s quite true that we ought to use whatever gifts we possess for the glory of God and the service of our neighbor, and this church is right to encourage Christians to seek avenues through which to channel their talents for the benefit of others. It’s not their desire that’s problematic but the language they use to articulate it. We find this same kind of language across the board; language that describes us as active collaborators in Christ’s redemptive work, rather

than passive receivers of his gift. That’s what marks the difference between the gospel and no gospel at all. We have to hear the Lord address us regularly from his word—he has to call us out of the mess of the story we’re writing about ourselves, whether it’s about our inner spirituality or “living out” our spirituality. We tend to think we’re a lot like Jesus—living on the edge of banal daily life, doing extraordinary and countercultural things for him and his kingdom. But Jesus doesn’t say, “Come contribute to my victory.” He says, “I have said these things to you that in me you may have peace. In the world, you will have tribulation. But take heart, I have already overcome the world” (John 16:33). It’s liberating to know we don’t carry the burden of salvation on our weak and faltering shoulders. We can build a well in Africa or help our neighbor fix his carburetor. In Luke 12, Jesus doesn’t say, “Fear not, little flock, for you are coredeemer. Let’s go do it together.” No, he says, “Fear not little flock, for your Father has chosen gladly to give you the kingdom.” Consider the force of that statement: What makes the Father happy is to give you a kingdom as his dearly beloved child in Jesus Christ. We can live lives of sacrificial love and service, not because we’re redeeming, but in response to the redemption we have in him.

“ WE HAVE TO HEAR THE LORD ADDRESS US REGULARLY FROM HIS WORD—HE HAS TO CALL US OUT OF THE MESS OF THE STORY WE’RE WRITING ABOUT OURSELVES, WHETHER IT’S ABOUT OUR INNER SPIRITUALITY OR ‘LIVING OUT’ OUR SPIRITUALITY.”

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SERVANTS OF ALL If we don’t find heaven by looking at the divine within, and we don’t bring heaven down by living lives patterned after the divine example, then what do we do

HE’S GOT THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS MY HANDS

J. Gresham Machen wrote, “What I need first of all is not an exhortation but a gospel, not directions for saving myself but knowledge

Jesus gave his life away, and invites us to do the same. Have you ever considered that what you enjoy doing might be a way

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SERVANTS OF ALL If we don’t find heaven by looking at the divine within, and we don’t bring heaven down by living lives patterned after the divine example, then what do we do

with our salvation? How does the redemption of our hearts and minds through our union with Christ benefit anyone? People are looking for the right things; they’re just looking in the wrong places. They want transformation and a renewed creation; they rightly want the wonderful things that are the effects of the gospel. The trouble is that they’re confusing their own story with Christ’s. The apostle Paul says in Romans 6 that the deadend character in my life movie actually dies in this scene and is born again as a character in the story of Jesus. It’s good news that we aren’t the good news. Jesus is not Mini-Me; his nearness terrified Peter, who said, “Lord, depart from me for I am a sinful man” (Luke 5:8). When we understand that Jesus is God who took on flesh to save those who rebelled against him, only then can we understand what it means to call him a “friend of sinners.” The fact that Jesus refuses to be cast in our movie is good news for us. After Paul shows us that we’re saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, and that we are free from the guilt of our sins, he asks the question he knows we’re going to ask: “Shall we sin that grace may abound?” (Rom. 6:1). Some would answer, “Sure, God likes to forgive, I like to sin, it’s a perfect relationship,” as though Christ is the answer to guilt but not the answer to the dominion of sin. Others would say, “Well, if you do sin, you lose your salvation.” But that’s not the apostle Paul’s answer: “God forbid, how shall those who have died with Christ say that they aren’t raised with Christ to walk in newness of life?” He brings us back to the triumphant indicative; he uses a verb tense to indicate that this is a past, completed event. Just as Christ’s death at Golgotha happened in the past, so has our death with him, and just as he lives, so do we. We’re on the receiving end of his work, and there is a clear distinction between Redeemer and redeemed. Christ united himself to our humanity in the incarnation, and now the Holy Spirit unites us to Christ and gives us faith to cling to him. This is how our faith is fixed on Jesus Christ. Our story merges with his story, but his story (apart from the unique instance of

“CHRIST UNITED HIMSELF TO OUR HUMANITY IN THE INCARNATION, AND NOW THE HOLY SPIRIT UNITES US TO CHRIST AND GIVES US FAITH TO CLING TO HIM.”

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“CHRIST UNITED HIMSELF TO OUR HUMANITY IN THE INCARNATION, AND NOW THE HOLY SPIRIT UNITES US TO CHRIST AND GIVES US FAITH TO CLING TO HIM.”

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the incarnation) never merges with ours. Even then, he didn’t assume our story; he assumed our nature. We’ve been transferred from Adam’s family into the family of Jesus Christ; we’ve been transferred from the age that is passing away and have been united to our head, Jesus Christ. John Murray writes, We are not to suppose, however, that this transition means that sanctification can ever be divorced either in fact or in the development of its meaning from the justification on which it rests, and with which it is inseparably connected. If the mediation of Christ is always in the forefront in justification, it is likewise in sanctification.3 We have to turn to Christ not only when we wonder about the guilt of our sins, but also when we fret over the power of our sins, as we fight the daily fight in our Christian life. It’s so easy for us to look to Jesus when we feel guilty and look to him for justification. But when it comes to sanctification, we look inward and take our eyes off of Christ, or we look outward and say, “Now here are the ten ways I can redeem the world with Jesus.” The creation of the world was awesome: “Let there be light, and there was light.” But there was no resistance to that light; there was nothing to clean up, just the nothingness before the generation. Think about what God does in justification and sanctification: “Let this sinner be declared righteous. Let this corrupt person be regenerated, body, mind, and soul by the powers of the age to come brought to him by the Holy Spirit through the gospel.” This is why Paul says, “You cannot live in sin.” He doesn’t say, “You’d better not sin; you’ll lose your salvation,” or, “Well, yeah, you can continually sin, kind of. As long as you have justification, you don’t need sanctification. You can be a carnal Christian; just accept Jesus your Savior, and if in five years you want to make Jesus Lord of your life as a separate act of commitment, then great!” If Christ is the answer to my guilt but does nothing to relieve the bondage and the power of my sins, then this is not good news. But the gospel is

much greater than that: we don’t just die with Christ; we’re raised with him as well. What happened to Christ has to happen to me, and that’s why Paul essentially says, “I’m sorry, but I have more good news for you: For you have died and your life is hidden with God in Christ” (Col. 3:3). For you (and your role as the hero of your own movie, where Christ is your sidekick) have died. We died, and he’s written us into his script from the foundation of the world. A friend of mine is a former chaplain at Duke University, and he told me a story about a young woman who said he wasn’t relevant. “I’m all ears,” he answered her. “I’d love to hear how I could be more relevant.” “Well,” she replied, “if you can just insert things that appeal to people like me, where we are.” “And where are you?” She then described her demographic profile—the one the marketing industry created for her and everyone else in the world: “I’m a white, single, twenty-something urbanite…” “Oh, that’s where you are,” he responded. “So you’re lost. Are you baptized?” “Yeah, but what does that have to do with anything?” “If you’re baptized, then that’s where you are, that’s your location, that’s your identity.”

The Reformers were familiar with this temptation to imitate Christ’s piety. Calvin directly addresses it when he writes that Christ is “called a redeemer, but in a manner which implies that men also by their freewill r e de e m t h e m s e lv e s from the bondage of sin and death. True, he’s called righteousness and salvation, but so that men still pursue salvation for themselves by the merit of their works.” Jesus is not a rung on our ladder; he is the ladder. Calvin says, “The situation which was truly hopeless had the very majesty of God descend to us, since it was not in our power to ascend to him.” Jesus was not sent to help us attain righteousness but to be our righteousness himself. Calvin writes:

“ CALVIN SAYS, ‘THE SITUATION WHICH WAS TRULY HOPELESS HAD THE VERY MAJESTY OF GOD DESCEND TO US, SINCE IT WAS NOT IN OUR POWER TO ASCEND TO HIM.’”

Let us know that the apostle does not here simply exhort us to imitate Christ, as though he said that his death is a pattern which all Christians are to follow, for no doubt he ascends higher to something greater, announcing a doctrine with which he connects in exhortation, and his doctrine is this, that the death of Christ is efficacious to destroy and demolish the depravity of our flesh and his resurrection to effect the renovation of our nature, and that by baptism, we are admitted into participation of this grace. The foundation being laid; Christians may very suitably be exhorted to strive to respond to their calling.

This is what Paul is telling us: we’ve died with our sin, with our need to identify ourselves by anything and everything apart from God. We’ve died and are united to Jesus Christ. He’s not just standing as a Savior external to us; he has united us to himself by the Holy Spirit. This doesn’t mean that we no longer sin, but that we should no longer be in bondage to sin. He loves us too much to save us from the penalty of sin but leave us under its cruel tyranny. There is no middle point between being dead and alive— we’re either dead in Adam or alive in Christ. Both antinomians and perfectionists misunderstand the gospel because they both want to be the stars of their own show.

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This is precisely what Paul does: he turns first to the gospel, to widen the aperture to show people how broad and wonderful the good news

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“ CALVIN SAYS, ‘THE SITUATION WHICH WAS TRULY HOPELESS HAD THE VERY MAJESTY OF GOD DESCEND TO US, SINCE IT WAS NOT IN OUR POWER TO ASCEND TO HIM.’”

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This is precisely what Paul does: he turns first to the gospel, to widen the aperture to show people how broad and wonderful the good news

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“ PAUL IS SAYING HERE TO STOP LETTING SIN BULLY YOU. DON’T GRAB THE KEYS FROM YOUR LIBERATOR AND GIVE THEM BACK TO THE PRISON WARDEN; DON’T GO BACK TO YOUR CELL AND CHAIN YOURSELF UP. ‘SIN SHALL NOT HAVE DOMINION OVER YOU’ (ROM. 6:14).” really is. He then shows us that we’re called to realize that something happened in history, in the past, but it is also so close I can actually be said to be in Jesus Christ, even as Jesus Christ is in God the Father. Our recognition doesn’t make the facts the facts; it embraces the facts and then lives in light of the facts. Paul makes it clear that this is a struggle. Any notion of sanctification as a “let go and let God” process doesn’t understand the Christian life. It is literally a fight to the death. The reason why the Christian life is so hard is because we can’t help but fight sin—not because we’re good but because we’re in Christ, because we’re new creatures. On the basis of God’s action, we’re called to action

ourselves, but not because we’re completing Christ’s mission—because we must come to terms with Christ’s mission and work every day.

SIMUL IUSTUS ET PECCATOR Paul is saying here to stop letting sin bully you. Don’t grab the keys from your liberator and give them back to the prison warden; don’t go back to your cell and chain yourself up. “Sin shall not have dominion over you” (Rom. 6:14). He turns back from the imperative to the indicative again, to announce what is true: that sin shall not have dominion over us, since we are

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not under law but under grace. The gospel is the answer for both justification and sanctification; Christ’s death and resurrection are the double cure. When Paul says we are not under the law, he doesn’t mean the law is no longer applicable; rather, we have been put to death in relation to the law. “You also have died to the law through the body of Christ” (Rom. 7:4). The law is alive and well, but we have been put to death and made alive to Christ, so the law has a different relationship to us than it had before. The gospel answers the law’s condemnation, and takes on a sweetness the psalmist realized when he knew his sins were forgiven. It is Christ who won this freedom for us; this is a gift of his saving passion. What this means is that the normal Christian life is very strange: if the bondage of sin has been broken, then we should be able to live free from sin, right? But, like Paul, we find ourselves doing the very thing we hate, feeling like the chief of sinners (Rom. 7:15; 1 Tim. 1:15). This is where the “carnal Christian” argument comes from—the idea that there are some believers who are justified but not regenerate and therefore not living a true Christian life. “Romans 6 Christians”—the ones who are genuinely regenerate—can live above all known sin because they’ve surrendered all to Jesus. This isn’t what Paul is saying. Every true Christian is simultaneously in Romans 6 and Romans 7. Your average day is equally described by chapter 6 and by chapter 7. The great Scottish preacher, Alexander White, said, “As long as you’re under my charge, you’ll never leave Romans 7.” But we must remember this: As long as we’re Christians in this life, we never leave Romans 6; and we never leave Romans 8, longing for the resurrection, because the Holy Spirit has been given to us as a down payment. So where does this leave us? We are once again with Paul when he cries out and says, “Oh wretched man that I am.” If, in your reflection on your Christian life, you aren’t led to that conclusion, then something is wrong. At the same time, we are no longer dead in sins but are alive in Christ and therefore find obedience to him to be joyful. Yes, joyful! “Take my yoke upon you and learn of me,” Jesus said,

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“for my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:29). Our daily lives as Christians are characterized by living in Romans 6, recognizing the reality of Romans 7, and looking out of ourselves to thank God for our salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord. That’s how we fix our eyes on Jesus Christ, the author and finisher of our faith. Calvin offers a fitting summary of all of this in one of his most pregnant passages in the Institutes (2.16.19): We see that our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in Christ. We should therefore take care not to derive the least portion of it from anywhere else. If we seek salvation, then we are taught by the very name of Jesus that salvation is of him. If we seek any other gifts of the Spirit, then they will be found in his anointing. If we seek strength, then it lies in his dominion not ours; if purity, in his conception; if gentleness, it appears in his birth. For by his birth he was made like us in all respects that he might learn to feel our pain. If we seek redemption, then it lies in his passion; if acquittal, in his condemnation; if remission of the curse, in his cross; if satisfaction, in his sacrifice; if purification, in his blood; if reconciliation, in his descent into hell; if mortification of the flesh, in his tomb; if newness of life, in his resurrection; if inheritance of the heavenly kingdom, in his entrance into heaven; if protection, if security, if abundant supply of all blessing, in his kingdom; if untroubled expectation of judgment, in the power given him to judge. In short, since rich stores of every kind of good abound in him, let us drink our fill from this fountain and from no other. MICHAEL S. HORTON is the J. Gresham Machen Professor of

Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido. 1 G. K. Chesterton, “The Flag of the World,” in Orthodoxy (repr., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008). 2 J. Gresham Machen, The Christian Faith in the Modern World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967). 3 John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), 212.

ourselves, but not because we’re completing Christ’s mission—because we must come to terms with Christ’s mission and work every day.

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HERE’S TO 25 MORE YEARS As part of our 25th Anniversary celebration, we have partnered with Hendrickson Publishers to release a new book in January 2017, The Reformation Then and Now: 25 Years of Modern Reformation Articles Celebrating 500 Years of the Reformation. We’re grateful to God for sustaining us for the last quarter century. We’re also

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Book Reviews 66

A Woman’s Place: A Christian Vision for Your Calling in the Office, the Home, and the World

The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss by David Bentley Hart

by Katelyn Beaty

“ The New Atheists and their opponents ironically share a metaphysics that really does not do justice to the God of the Christian faith.”

grateful to you for the opportunity to spread our work through your gifts and subscriptions.

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REVIEWED BY

Lauren R. E. Larkin

Carl R. Trueman

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Book Reviews 66

A Woman’s Place: A Christian Vision for Your Calling in the Office, the Home, and the World

The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss by David Bentley Hart

by Katelyn Beaty

“ The New Atheists and their opponents ironically share a metaphysics that really does not do justice to the God of the Christian faith.”

grateful to you for the opportunity to spread our work through your gifts and subscriptions.

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REVIEWED BY

Lauren R. E. Larkin

Carl R. Trueman

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The Angel in the House and the Woman in the Church A Woman’s Place: A Christian Vision for Your Calling in the Office, the Home, and the World by Katelyn Beaty Howard Books, 2016 272 pages (hardcover), $22.99 o be honest, as a Christian woman I don’t read Christian books intended for Christian women. I find them to be (often) legalistic in approach to womanhood: focusing on the function of my womanhood (typically translated in terms of mother and a wife) rather than looking at me as a whole person. Surely I am more than the few organs constituting my reproductive system and my relation to my husband. Surely I was as fully human when I was single and twenty-eight as I am now at forty, married, and the mother of three children. So, when I received an e-mail offering me a copy of Katelyn Beaty’s book A Woman’s Place: A Christian Vision for Your Calling in the Office, the Home, and the World, I rolled my eyes and went to hit the delete button: No, thank you. But something stopped me, and I replied yes to the free copy. I’m glad I did; Beaty’s book is rescue from the maelstrom of Christian books written for Christian women. Beaty’s goal in writing this book is to create (new) dialogue with new language about the role of work in the life of the Christian woman and to call attention to the reality of the inner turmoil so many Christian women suffer, as they contemplate both the function of their form and the set of gifts God has given them apart from the function of their form. Beaty accomplishes this goal in three ways.

First, in chapters 1 through 3, she articulates in no uncertain terms that she (the reader) has been created as a co-vice-regent alongside man and has been given the gift of work in having dominion over creation. This incorporates more than merely her womb and her status as “wife.” This gift of work is none other than part of the image of God—who is a creative and working God—given to our first parents when they were created. As Beaty writes, “We were meant to work so that flourishing, wholeness, and delight would spread to the furthest reaches of creation” (78). Second, in chapter 4, Beaty brings to the table a much needed look at the history of women at work. Take even the briefest of looks at world history and you’ll see that women have worked not merely as wives and child-bearers but alongside man on the land. The western part of United States, where I live, was settled on the backs of women as well as men. Beaty also rightly challenges the errant gender theology of evangelical theologians such as John Piper and Wayne Grudem (et al.) who actively propagate gender-specific spheres by proclaiming that men are to work and be the breadwinners and women are to remain at home (even when they don’t have children) and not work. An emphasis on the separation of spheres according to gender is bringing more death than life to both Christian men and women. Third, Beaty highlights the beauty that is the totality of being a woman. In chapter 5, she exhorts her reader that being female is a good thing, and that a woman’s femininity is beautiful and adds dimension to the world alongside the male and his masculinity. As women, we should be women and not men in the work world, because it shouldn’t look like

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“We have been equipped (all of us, men and women) in both common and unique ways to serve creation and our neighbor and bring glory to God.” “working like a woman is a liability or source of shame” (140). In chapter 6, she reinforces the beauty that is childbearing and childrearing and calls into question the archaic and patriarchal molds that form the workplace. With current business practices dealing with maternal (and paternal) demands the way they are (paltry), it is difficult for moms (and dads) to maintain an integrated work/home life. Sometimes the system needs to be dismantled in order for a better system to be created in its place. Beaty articulates that along with being the child-bearer, a woman is given gifts and talents unique to her and separate from childbearing; this is an important point to make. For a stay-at-home-mom to have work separate from childbearing and rearing is not only beneficial to her but to her children: they will be able to leave and initiate their own lives apart from her without worry and concern that mom will have nothing when they are gone. In chapter 7, she articulates the beauty and fruitfulness that stems beyond procreation and incorporates the single woman’s contribution to society and the world. She also addresses the problem of the church’s inability to meet the needs of single people, in general, and single women who work, in specific. Her last move is a call to ambition: highlighting the good that is ambition (unselfish ambition), and how it can be a good used to encourage women to pursue their work-related aspirations. We were created to work, and our work rightly oriented toward God and his

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creation glorifies God. We have been equipped (all of us, men and women) in both common and unique ways to serve creation and our neighbor and bring glory to God. Beaty’s argument throughout the book is well articulated and coherent. However, there is an oversight: Beaty makes no mention of the doctrine of justification. While Beaty exhorts her reader to see work in a different light—beautiful, reflecting the Imago Dei, reflecting our humanity, and feeding our sense of purpose and identity in life—I’m left wondering how that happens. Two things need to happen: I need to be brought to death (by the law) and be recreated (by the gospel), and I need work to be transformed from toil. In hearing the word of the law, I am brought to death because I see that I am toiling, trying to justify myself by my works, that I am finding my identity, purpose, and self in my works. From this I need relief, and that relief is wrought through the death that comes from the word of the law—not only from the word of the law but also by the second and final word, the word of the gospel, which brings me (as a new creation) into new and full life in union with Christ by faith in Christ apart from my works. By hearing the word of the gospel, I am given true existence and a true identity that is mine always apart from my works, because my identity and purpose is found in the One who died for my sins and was raised for my justification (Rom. 4:25). In having my works separated from me in death and recreation, I am given back my works. In the event of justification (hearing the word of absolution

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proclaimed to me), work (toiling) is removed from me and from the seat of judgment over me (domination) and put in its proper place: under my dominion; toil becomes work and is a blessing to the creation and my neighbor and to me. The doctrine of justification is the missing linchpin in Beaty’s argument. Even in light of this oversight, I can wholeheartedly say that A Woman’s Place, from beginning to end, delivers a much needed breath of fresh air to Christian women who have wrestled, are wrestling, or will wrestle with the tension that comes part and parcel with being a woman in the twenty-first century. We are women who may be able to be wives and bear children, but we are also gifted human beings capable of much variety of work. This book is a categorical “must-read” for Christians, men and women alike. LAUREN R. E. LARKIN (MDiv, STM) is currently a doctoral

candidate at Universität Zürich in systematic theology and social ethics. She is married and stays at home with her two boys and her daughter. She regularly contributes to the theological blogs Mockingbird and Key Life, and she is one-half of Ezer Uncaged (www.ezeruncaged.com).

The Sublime Sensibility The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss by David Bentley Hart Yale University Press, 2014 376 pages (paperback), $17.00 ome years ago I wrote on what I called “the aesthetic fallacy” in a small book I authored on how to do history. I am not sure if I coined the term, but what I intend by it is this: a fallacious argument that appears compelling because of the aesthetics of presentation, whether merely physical (as in nicely printed and bound to look serious) or well written. I would suggest that much of the

“Try as Richard Dawkins might, he cannot explain so much of what is intuitive to human beings.”

New Atheism—whether we are talking of Richard Dawkins’s use of scientific rhetoric or Ricky Gervais’s witty one-liners—is compelling, precisely because it plays to modern aesthetic sensibilities. This is where—and why—David Bentley Hart is so important and, indeed, so enjoyable to read. Hart is the equal of Christopher Hitchens as a writer, though his style might be a little too relentless for some. Longer and longer sentences, adjectives piled upon adverbs, obscure and learned high cultural references casually thrown into the mix every other line— these are his stock in trade. The effect can be dazzling, though it risks losing some of its power because of its remorselessness. Nevertheless, he is a master of the sneering put-down Hitchens could do so well. Hart’s book focuses on the three topics of its subtitle: being, consciousness, and bliss. This offers him a twofold advantage in discussion. First, as he himself makes clear, these are three categories of human experience for which a reductive scientific view of the universe cannot give an account. Try as Richard Dawkins might, he cannot explain so much of what is intuitive to human beings. Indeed, his arguments for the beauty of the evolutionary process are parasitic upon aesthetic concepts for which he

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cannot offer any justification—a point we might extrapolate to the ethical arguments the New Atheists try to make (which Nietzsche so effectively exposed as fraudulent in The Gay Science). Thus, while the title talks of “experience,” this is neither pietism nor mysticism but rather a metaphysical argument derived from the intuitions of human existence. Second, this approach exposes what Hart (correctly, in my opinion) sees as an error made by both the New Atheists and their most notable theistic opponents: They are not actually arguing about the existence of the Christian God but rather of something more akin to the god of deism. To debate whether the Christian God exists is not like debating whether a unicorn or the Loch Ness monster exists. Unicorns, if they exist, possess being in a manner similar to human beings. If God exists, his existence is of a different order. He is not one object of existence among many; he stands in an utterly unique position relative to the created order—that of creator and sustainer. The New Atheists and their opponents ironically share a metaphysics that really does not do justice to the God of the Christian faith. Hart thus cares nothing for who wins that debate, because it is a debate about the wrong thing. As with his earlier work, Atheist Delusions, The Experience of God is a great book for Christians to read. It is wonderful to see someone treat some atheistic arguments with the contempt that logically and factually erroneous presentations deserve. Given the modern penchant for aesthetics that come with the authority of “science” and “reason,” there is a temptation to take atheism too seriously, to see it as a respectable position with all the good arguments. Hart shows time and again that

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this is nonsense. Most satisfyingly, he puts to death the idea that atrocities committed by atheist movements in the twentieth century were merely incidental—or even accidental— to their a-theology. And he does it without breaking a sweat. I do, however, have a number of concerns. First, Har t’s contempt for conservative Protestantism is evident at numerous points. That does not offend me. Hart is Eastern Orthodox, and so I expect him to despise Protestantism just as I assume the pope is Roman Catholic. But his caricature of conservative Protestantism is simply that—an inaccurate caricature that makes Hart guilty of precisely the same accusations he makes against the New Atheists: misrepresentation of an opponent’s position in order to score a quick, cheap, and (false) victory. We must all be wary of winning by means of the aesthetic fallacy. Second, Hart’s metaphysical brilliance leaves me with one nagging question: Is Hart a Christian because it gives him a sound metaphysics, or does he have a sound metaphysics because he trusts Christ as Savior? That distinction is important. This book certainly presses home the metaphysical urgency of the Christian faith. The one thing missing in this treatment is the existential urgency of the truth of Christianity. Hart would no doubt dismiss that as the concern of a conservative Protestant pietist, but surely it is also the concern of the God of the Bible. CARL R. TRUEMAN is the Paul Woolley Professor of Church

History at Westminster Theological Seminary, Pennsylvania, and pastor of Cornerstone OPC in Ambler, Pennsylvania. He blogs regularly at First Things and does a weekly podcast with Aimee Byrd and Todd Pruitt, Mortification of Spin.

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“Try as Richard Dawkins might, he cannot explain so much of what is intuitive to human beings.”

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GEEK SQUAD

Whose Incarnation Is It Anyway? by Lionel Windsor

ithin the heart of the Christian faith is an astounding truth. God— who created and sustains the universe—became incarnate. The immortal and perfect Son of God shared our messy, sin-prone death-ridden lives of flesh and blood; he became human, walked with us, suffered with us, and subjected himself to our temptations. Ultimately, he died for us, satisfying God’s wrath, destroying death. While we all exist firmly and squarely on the “human” side of the God-human divide, the incarnation means that we rebels can share in intimate fellowship with God himself through the Spirit of the risen Lord Jesus—now and for all eternity. What are we supposed to do with this great truth?

Some will urge us to use the incarnation as the basis for an “incarnational” ministry or missionary strategy. That is, our task is to “incarnate” Christ, or the love of Christ, in other people’s lives. This quest to imitate the incarnation is understandable. It’s an attempt to affirm what the incarnation affirms: that God is deeply interested in the physical world, the whole person, and the body as well as the soul. But an attempt to use the incarnation as a direct model for our own ministry or mission is wrong-headed. Although it tries to affirm the incarnation, in the end it trivializes its uniqueness. It puts us in the place where only God can be. If we’re “incarnating,” we’re actually being “condescending”: coming down from our lofty positions, making God real in the lives of others,

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bringing Christ from heaven to earth. But if we’re doing that, we’re failing to recognize the truth that we are not, like God, in a high and lofty position. We are sinners in need of grace. The voice of faith tells us that we cannot and must not attempt to ascend to heaven to bring Christ down; our role is simply to confess and to believe that God has done it all for us in Christ (Rom. 10:6–8). We always need God’s grace just as much as those we are ministering to. We cannot incarnate anything: we are always the beneficiaries of the incarnation; God is always the subject. The incarnation event itself, then, is matchless, unique, and unrepeatable. Indeed, it’s the beginning of the most awe-inspiring series of events in the history of God’s dealings with the world. As such, it’s one of those deep truths that we can’t “do”—we can only believe it and confess it, as in the Apostle’s Creed. We can’t ourselves become incarnate; we can only stand in awe at the truth that God became one of us; we can only put our trust in the man who is indeed God, and so be saved. The incarnation does, however, teach us how to live. This is especially the case when the incarnation is placed, as the Bible always does, in the context of Jesus’ ongoing life, death, and resurrection. The humility of the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus acts, for example, as a model for our own other-personcentered humility (Phil. 2:1–11). We cannot claim to follow the Son of God who became incarnate and who died on a cross, while at the same time seeking power, honors, benefits, or high positions for ourselves. The incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus also shows us that God is not detached from our lives, but is intimately interested in our world and in our actions toward others. The true Spirit of God is the Spirit who confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh (1 John 4:2). That means we can’t simply wish others well without also seeking to care about their physical needs (e.g., 1 John 3:17–18). The incarnation, in that way, is made real in our lives when we put ourselves at

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“The incarnation...is made real in our lives when we put ourselves at the service of others; when we abandon quests for greatness; when we care for the flesh-and-blood needs of those around us.”

the service of others; when we abandon quests for greatness; when we care for the flesh-andblood needs of those around us. This Christmas, then, let’s savor the incomparable incarnation. We cannot repeat it. But we can and should stand in awe of it. Let’s delight in it. Let’s follow through on its implications. And let’s confess it to others. LIONEL WINDSOR, a former church pastor, is a lecturer at

Moore Theological College in Newtown, Australia, where he teaches Greek, Hebrew, and New Testament. He has authored a number of scholarly and popular articles and is a prolific blogger. Reproduced from The Briefing website, December 24, 2012 (http://matthiasmedia.com/briefing/2012/12/whose-incarnation-is-it-anyway/), published by Matthias Media (www. matthiasmedia.com). Copyright. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

GEEK SQUAD

Whose Incarnation Is It Anyway? by Lionel Windsor

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“The incarnation...is made real in our lives when we put ourselves at the service of others; when we abandon quests for greatness; when we care for the flesh-and-blood needs of those around us.”

B AC K PAG E

Jesus’ Speech to His Fearful Followers by Michael S. Horton

ear drives us more than we’d like to admit, and we’re drawn to it in a macabre sort of way—in horror stories, action movies, even news updates. Making up with hype what they lack in data and logic, pundits bully the public into agreeing with them through scare tactics and rhetoric. What would you list as the major turning points in world history? Topping the list would probably be moments defined by war: before, during, or after it. We’re told that September 11, 2001, “changed everything.” Changed everything in military and political strategy? The West’s view of terrorism? Or just everything, period? The first Christians were under far more imminent threat than Western believers today. Jesus prepared them for it: “In the world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33). There are a lot of preachers who, like these talking heads, never tire of inspiring fear, and as a result much of the church’s speech resembles the fearmongering of the pundits. Jesus addresses our fear in Luke 12:32. There will be persecution, but what are his next words? Is there a defense strategy for these Christians as they prepare for battle? “Fear not, little flock, for it is the Father’s pleasure to give you a kingdom.” So the world is going to give us hell, but the Father is going to give us an everlasting kingdom. That’s it? No blueprints for an underground rebellion, like the Resistance? No, the answer to their fear is that the Father has decided to give them a kingdom.

This kingdom is what Jesus has come to secure by his life, death, and resurrection. It will seem as if the very existence of this rag-tag group will be obliterated. But it won’t be: he will ascend to the Father as the victorious conqueror of the world, the flesh, and the devil, to intercede for us as our captain and elder brother, with the Spirit poured out, distributing the spoils of his victory. He will build his church, and hell’s gates will not be able to withstand the force of his advance. Notice that Jesus says that his church is a little flock, not a global superpower. We really don’t like being a little flock—we want to be the Supreme Galactic Empire Church. We want our leaders and the media to affirm (however insincerely) the superiority of Christianity in culture. How often do we hear lamentations concerning the fall of Christian influence on society? The ensuing response is often anger driven by fear. What does this say about what we think the kingdom is in the first place? What the world needs is not a fearful and resentful church, but a little flock driven by the confidence that Christ has secured the victory over death and hell, the real enemies. What our neighbors need most from us is not our opinions on ISIS and the West’s decline into a new dark ages, but how an execution in AD 33 changed everything. They need a little flock that really heard Jesus when he said, “Fear not…for I have overcome the world.” We need the promise that was proved at Golgotha—that God is for us and that he wins in the end. MICHAEL S. HORTON is editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation.

Vol. 25 No. 6 Nov/Dec 2016

IS THE REFORMATION

OVER? JANUARY 13-14, 2017

On the campus of WSC Join us for our annual conference as we celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation and explore its history, theology, and abiding relevance for the church today.

FEATURED SPEAKERS W. ROBERT GODFREY R. SCOTT CLARK J. V. FESKO MICHAEL S. HORTON JULIUS J. KIM JOEL E. KIM

WSCAL.EDU/CONFERENCE

PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS!

Prospective students who attend our Seminary for a Day event on Friday, January 13, are invited to join us at the faculty conference for free! To register and find more information regarding our Prospective Student Travel Grant (up to $300), go to WSCAL.EDU/VISIT.

B AC K PAG E

Jesus’ Speech to His Fearful Followers by Michael S. Horton

Vol. 25 No. 6 Nov/Dec 2016

IS THE REFORMATION

OVER? JANUARY 13-14, 2017

FEATURED SPEAKERS W. ROBERT GODFREY R. SCOTT CLARK J. V. FESKO MICHAEL S. HORTON JULIUS J. KIM JOEL E. KIM

WSCAL.EDU/CONFERENCE

PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS!