the-peace-that-starts-the-war-july-august-2006

DISCOMFORT ❘ DOUBT AS VIRTUE ❘ CARNAL CHRISTIANITY

MODERN REFORMATION The Peace that Starts the War

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

TABLE OF CONTENTS july/august

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The Peace that Starts the War

Assistant Editor Brenda Jung Department Editors Diana Frazier, Reviews William Edgar, Preaching from the Choir Starr Meade, Family Matters Staff | Editors Ann Henderson Hart, Staff Writer Alyson S. Platt, Copy Editor Lori A. Cook, Layout and Design Ben Conarroe, Proofreader Contributing Scholars David Anderson Charles P. Arand S. M. Baugh Gerald Bray Jerry Bridges D. A. Carson R. Scott Clark Marva Dawn Mark Dever J. Ligon Duncan Richard Gaffin W. Robert Godfrey T. David Gordon Donald A. Hagner John D. Hannah Gillis Harp D. G. Hart Paul Helm C. E. Hill Hywel R. Jones Ken Jones Peter Jones Richard Lints Korey Maas Mickey L. Mattox Donald G. Matzat John Muether John Nunes John Piper J. A. O. Preus Paul Raabe Kim Riddlebarger Rod Rosenbladt Philip G. Ryken R. C. Sproul Rachel Stahle A. Craig Troxel David VanDrunen Gene E. Veith William Willimon Paul F. M. Zahl Modern Reformation © 2006 All rights reserved.

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Union with Christ: The Double Cure In Romans 5-6, the Apostle Paul explains how to properly relate God’s saving work for us and his saving work in us. By appealing to the concept of union with Christ, the author makes crucial distinctions between how salvation is attained and how the Christian life is sustained. Understanding the Christian life in terms of our union with Christ helps us to avoid both extremes of antinomianism and legalism.

by Michael Horton

13 The Discomfort of the Justified Life Contrary to what we might expect, the more we grow in Christian character, the more sin we discover in ourselves.

When the flesh fights back and wages a war against the Spirit, those who are justified experience an uncomfortable internal conflict.

by Jerry Bridges

16 Romans 7 and the Normal Christian Life

by Kim Riddlebarger

19 Doubt as a Christian Virtue What role does doubt play in the Christian life? The author argues that the healthy Christian mind learns how to “doubt faithfully.”

by Donald T. Williams

22 Are We There Yet? What distinguishes the Christian from the rest of humanity? According to Romans 8, it is the indwelling of God’s Spirit in the believer. The author explores the work of the Holy Spirit.

by Kelly Kapic Plus: What Shape is Your Theology?

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Romans Road page 2 | Letters page 3 | Preaching from the Choir page 4 Interview page 28 | Reviews page 31 | Family Matters page 40

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ROMANS ROAD i n

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Our Road Through Romans

Boots on the Ground

January/February: Romans 1:1-17, The Romans Revolution Introduction and overview of a year spent exploring the transforming message of the Book of Romans.

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March/April: Romans 1-2, Does God Believe in Atheists?

What role does general revelation play in our witness to nonChristians? How can we use natural law to establish a place in the public square with people of other faiths? Included in this issue is a handy apologetics chart detailing the differences between different schools of thought and answers to basic apologetics questions.

May/June: Romans 2-4, What Does It Mean to be Good?

Look around you: sin is redefined as weakness and grace is merely selfhelp power. No one wants to believe that all of us are under God’s righteous judgment. But along with the consequences of our sin is the promise of good news: the turning away of God’s wrath and a righteousness not of our own making.

July/August: Romans 5-8, The Peace that Starts the War God’s divine pronouncement that we are righteous in Christ is not the end of the story. It is the prelude to a much larger narrative of victory and defeat in our ongoing battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil. How do we live the Christian life in the midst of a war zone?

September/October: Romans 9-11, Has God Failed? Can God be trusted? His work in history—specifically in the nation of Israel—becomes an object lesson for how we relate to God and grapple with the mysteries of his divine will.

November/December: Romans 12-16, In View of God’s Mercies Truth must make a difference in our real lives. How does knowing and believing the message of Romans actually play itself out in our daily interactions with our family, neighbors, and church?

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he mind-numbing “reality TV” that is the war in Iraq is an appropriate illustration for understanding the life of the justified Christian. Think about it: every day brings news of both victory and defeat; each passing month seems to suggest that final victory is no closer than when we first engaged in combat; and, although “victory” and the end of “major combat operations” were proclaimed three years ago, the daily battle does not seem to let up. Hope and frustration are the watch words of Christians engaged in the close, hand-to-hand combat that might also be called “sanctification.”

The news that God waged war with death and emerged from the grave a victor was merely the beginning of our long struggle in this life. God’s just verdict of peace actually begins our fight against the world, the flesh, and the devil that will characterize this life until the Lord returns again to establish his claim of victory.

Our daily battle of living the sanctified life is closely joined to our understanding of justification. There is no good news of final victory if our justification depends in any way on our own doing or winning this long war. So, while serious scholars continue to write impressive tomes alternately defending a Reformation view of justification or advocating for one of the new perspectives, we should never forget the practical and pastoral implications of their conclusions. If justification by faith doesn’t mean what Luther, Calvin, and the Reformation tradition thought it meant, how are we to understand our lives as Christians? What hope is there for normal men and women, boys and girls who—at the end of this age—cannot say they have been absolutely faithful in keeping either the old or new covenants? This question and others like it are excellent examples of the immense practicality of theological discussion. While certain aspects of the controversy over Paul’s teaching will never find their way down from the ivory tower of academia, other parts of this dialogue have a direct bearing on the lives of ordinary Christians who find that their living the Christian life is more akin to life in a war-zone than rest in a promised land.

In this issue of Modern Reformation, we’re looking at both sides of this angst: the verdict of peace that belongs to every justified sinner and the warfare that follows. To begin, editor-in-chief Michael Horton re-examines Paul’s concept of union with Christ in Romans 5 and 6 as the key to understanding God’s work for and in us. Popular author Jerry Bridges then wrestles with the unsettling questions of Romans 7, especially as they relate to remaining sin in the Christian. College professor Donald Williams argues that doubt rightly understood can be healthy for our sanctification, and college professor Kelly Kapic concludes this issue with an examination of Romans 8, giving all of us Paul’s comfort and consolation in the midst of this warfare.

There are only two issues left in our Romans Revolution series. We hope that this extended treatment of Paul’s important epistle has been both a challenge and a comfort to you in your growth in Christ. Drop an email to letters@modernreformation.org and let us know how you have been formed and reformed by your walk on the Romans road.

Eric Landry Managing Editor

LETTERS your

I found William Edgar’s comments in “A Love Supreme” (January/February ’06) that the African Orthodox Church in San Francisco is “absurd” and calling John Coltrane a “cult leader” is unfair and misinformed. Attending the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church has been a refreshing and God-centered worship experience that has many surprisingly sound theological similarities to the Reformed (PCA) services I have attended over the past ten years. Edgar’s notion that Coltrane is used as a “cult leader” is out of touch with the history of this church.

Over three decades ago, the church explicitly strengthened its focus on Christian doctrine by formalizing their service in the framework of an Orthodox liturgy. In fact, their current liturgy makes no mention of John Coltrane in the text, though it uses his music, and is almost strictly Scripturally based. I believe this church takes Coltrane’s thought in the same way Reformed believers take Calvin or Luther’s thought: As an insight or deeper understanding of theology from a fellow, fallen saint. Thus, in contrast to an absurd cult, this church vibrantly perpetuates Coltrane’s theologically profound ideas, which Edgar admirably noted, in a God (not Coltrane)-glorifying worship service.

Michael Whealy Omaha, NE

William Edgar Responds: Thanks very much for your thoughtful response to my remarks about the Coltrane Church. I must admit it’s been a few years since I visited the church, so things may have changed dramatically since I was there in person. If I have misrepresented the church, I do apologize.

The present-day liturgies I could find look a good deal like the Protestant

Episcopal Morning Prayers service, but with the addition of hour-long jams and prayers taken from the liner notes of A Love Supreme. A visit to the main website does not reassure me that there are no cult-like elements present. The church was founded in 1971, and its original slogan was: “One Mind Temple Evolutionary Transitional Body of Christ.” Bishop F. W. King at the time believed that Coltrane was an incarnation of God. In a move to downgrade him to sainthood, the name was changed in 1984 to St. John, the full name being: “St. John Will-I-Am Coltrane African Orthodox Church.”

The Sunship Catalogue carries products such as twice-blessed healing oil, Coltrane-related skin tattoos, and musical products of all kinds. If the church were only perpetuating the theological insights of Coltrane, that would be a partial encouragement, though only partial. As it is, I fear that more worrying things are going on as well.

Your survey of Christian apologetics (A Summary of Apologetic Positions, March/April ’06) provided a germane discussion of these topics in light of the recent public scuffles over intelligent design. I was disappointed, however, to find that your analysis failed to deal with the Reformed epistemology movement.

Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff, the movement’s primary articulators, synthesize many of the strengths of both British analytic philosophy (evidentialism) and German idealism (presuppositionalism) in a way that avoids the dual extremes of empiricism and Van Tillian biblicism.

Maybe you’re just waiting to devote an entire future issue to the thought of these two important Reformed thinkers.

Robert Dailey Durham, NC

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Wow! Your Romans Revolution series is altogether remarkably revolutionary for the contemporary "Christian" church. Deo gratias for such nourishing parsing of the Word of God. There's nothing we look forward to more from the USPS than your monthly White Horse Inn CDs and Modern Reformation.

Rev. Don Webber Redmond, WA

Modern Reformation Letters to the Editor 1725 Bear Valley Parkway Escondido CA 92027 760.741.1045 fax Letters@modernreformation.org Letters under 200 words are more likely to be printed than longer letters. Letters may be edited for content and length.

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usic is such a vital part of our emotional and social lives. Why, then, did

Though fallen, all of our activities, including musicnot the Lord give us a few basic verses in the Scriptures telling us what making, are good in themselves, because the cremelodies to sing, whether drums can be used in church, and whether ation order is still functioning. Consequently, we Middle Eastern microtones are as legitimate as Western can find no people on the planet, however undeveloped, intervals? Part of the answer, no doubt, is that if we were that has no music. Music in the Bible is found accompanyto know such specifics, we might try to idolize them, much ing every kind of social activity: worship, work, warfare, in the same way we would idolize the face of Jesus if we edification, courting, lamenting, and so forth. knew what he looked like. Yet even in the absence of eviFurthermore, we find music connected to the most signifidence, we have tried to do both. cant events in human experience. Jesus led the disciples in But the deeper reason is that the Bible is not a dictiona hymn after the first Lord’s Supper (Matt. 26:30). ary, nor is it a textbook. How often we wish it were!

Teaching and admonition with the Word of Christ was set However, we have something much better: we have a to music in the early church (Col. 3:16). Barzillai, the covenant book. The Bible reveals what we need to believe eighty-year-old man mercifully protected by King David, concerning God and what our duty is toward our neighbor complains that two parts of human life elude him because (Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q&A 3). And it does so of old age: tasting food and enjoying the singing of men and using seasonal, progressive dispensations of truth, revealed women (2 Sam. 19:35). in association with redemptive history. We can no more A sacred-secular dichotomy did not exist in biblical learn what the Bible teaches about pitch and harmony times. Music was used in a great variety of contexts, than we can about using laboratories or including concentrated worship when God’s telling children what time they must be in people were gathered for celebration and Music is bed, by searching for individual verses. There praise (1 Chron. 16:7–10). Indeed, music are plenty of specifics in the Bible, of course, could be used for reveling and making a deafa gift but they come in a context. “Text without ening noise to push God away (Amos 5:23). from God, context is pretext,” the old saying goes. And That kind of music needs to be stopped (Jer. this certainly applies to music, even though 25:10). But at its best, music is a gift from meant to be there are literally hundreds of references to God, meant to be used for his praise, in every used for instruments and songs. circumstance of life: “Singers and dancers So, where do we begin? One way to look alike say, ‘All my springs are in you’” (Ps. his praise, for the scriptural view of the place of music in 87:7). in every life is the famous cultural mandate of Genesis So, then, what is music? This is actually 1:28ff. Coming right after the description of a very hard question. We know it when we circumstance humanity being made in God’s image, it calls hear it, but to define it biblically is not as simof life. us to go into the world and have proper ple as it may appear (or sound!). Indeed, dominion over it. To find out what role music music is unique, sui generis. It is a cultural might have we need only go to chapter 4, and response to God’s covenant presence in the the description of humanity’s first serious cultural endeavaspect of sound. As such, it resembles language, particuors, which included tent-dwelling, animal husbandry, larly when that language is poetic. Yet, caution must be metallurgy, and music-making (Gen. 4:21). You may be exercised with this analogy, because there are numerous thinking, but those activities are in a fallen world, and ways in which music is not like language. Language is practiced by the children of Cain. Yes, but cultivation, one organized by grammar and vocabulary, whereas music is of the most basic cultural labors, began with Adam and organized in time and with sounds. Language always has Eve (2:15). So did poetry (2:23). By inference, the others a linear quality, requiring time or at least sequence on the belonged to the vision of human calling established before page. Music employs sounds that are sometimes linear, as the fall. Culture is not an alternative to cult, but its comin melody, sometimes vertical, as in harmony or tone clusplement, throughout the Bible. ters, and sometimes both.

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Perhaps it is this singular nature of music that makes it so appealing, so able to move the soul. Yet, the meaning and power of a piece of music may be from so many different factors, depending on the culture and the genre.

Gregorian chant is strongly tied to the words of a Psalm or a particular text, and thus carries a meaning closely tied with words. And yet, the phenomenon of chanting or cantillation means there is a special kind of atmosphere associated with these words, one which medieval tradition associated with worship. West African music often uses rhythmic patterns that interlock like a jigsaw puzzle.

When all the separate pieces are functioning together, and especially when listeners and dancers are involved, then another time besides “clock time” kicks in, known as “inner time.” The Kpelle people say this happens when “the foot has stepped down.” The Jiangnan Sizhu ensembles in China, a chamber group consisting of winds and strings, plays music that to Western ears sounds almost disorganized. But it relies on conventions. For instance, there is no fixed tempo, yet musicians know when to come in and also when to accelerate. They will freely improvise over the basic melody. That, and the variations in tuning, result in a sort of thickness we are not used to.

Pieces often have names taken from nature and are meant to help people relax and escape the day’s worries.

The day is coming when people from every language and tribe will praise God together in the New Jerusalem.

What will it sound like? We don’t know, exactly. No more deafening pagan noise, for sure. And, like everything else, it will have continuity with what we have known on earth. It will combine the song of Moses with the song of the Lamb (Rev. 15:3). It will be a new song in response to the glory of Christ, yet in continuity with the new songs of yore (Ps. 33:3; Isa. 42:10; Rev. 5:9). We honestly do not know what this will sound like. But it’s worth the wait until we find out!

of which, we should mention Suzanne Haïk-Ventura’s intriguing work, The Music of the Bible Revealed (2nd ed., D. F. Scott, 1991) together with the CD (Harmonia Mundi 190989). The author claims that the Tiberian subscripts in the Old Testament Hebrew represent musical indications from which we can know the scales and melodies used by the ancient Israelites. The claim is controversial, to say the least. Far more convincing is John W. Kleinig’s The Lord’s Song, a study of choral music in the Chronicles (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series 156, JSOT Press, 1993). While he covers some of the same material found in Braun, Kleinig has more focus and goes well beyond the phenomena, drawing various theological conclusions. Speaking of the theology of music, years ago I wrote a study with the (unfortunate) title, Taking Note of Music (Third Way Books, London: 8PCK, 1986).

Beginning with Jubal in Genesis 4, it argues that music is a cultural response to God’s revelation, whether it is in creation, fall, or redemption. Someday I need to update it, or write a new one! Finally, we should mention Reggie M. Kidd’s beautiful book on singing in worship, With One Voice (Baker, 2005). Taking as a premise that Christ sings and leads us in song, he guides us through all kinds of musical and theological issues with sanity and wisdom.

Resources & Reviews Perhaps surprisingly, few significant books are available on the theology of the music of the Bible, or, for that matter, on the phenomenon of music in the Bible. Of course, there are countless volumes on Psalm-singing, the “regulative principle,” and related topics. But there are very few that take biblical theology as their interpretive principle.

The classic study is Eric Werner’s The Sacred Bridge on music and liturgy in the synagogue and the church in the first millennium (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959).

A more recent and more comprehensive work is the fascinating, if rather technical, study by Joachim Braun, called Music in Ancient Israel/Palestine: Archeological, Written, and Comparative Sources (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002). Its nearly 370 pages represent the first modern examination of Israel’s music based on archeological sources. In it we learn about the variety of ancient instruments, such as the lyre or the double pipes. And we find out how the superscriptions on the Psalms, which are often performance instructions, raise more questions than answers. Speaking J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 5

T H E P E A C E T H AT S T A R T S T H E W A R

Union with Christ: The Double Cure

by Michael Horton

“G

od likes to forgive, I like to sin: what a great relationship!” In that line W. Robert Godfrey nicely captures the often hidden assumption that Christ came merely to save us from sin’s guilt

while leaving us under its slavery. Throughout church history, preaching and teaching have attempted to properly relate God’s saving work for us and his saving work in us. Antinomianism is the view that we need not submit to God’s

law as the rule of life, since we are saved by grace alone, while legalism maintains that following God’s law is not only the rule of life but the way to life.

In short, while legalists confuse the law and the gospel, antinomians separate 6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

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them and reject the former altogether, at least with respect to its authority in directing the lives of believers. Since our direction, ever since the fall, is to be “curved in on ourselves,” as Augustine put it, our natural tendency is to trust our own inner righteousness (legalism) and our own inner light (antinomianism). However, the gospel is the answer to both: it calls us out of ourselves, to look to someone else both to save and rule over us. The Jesus who is Savior is also Lord; faith knows nothing of receiving him merely as prophet and priest but not as king. Thus, in his famous hymn, “Rock of Ages,” Augustus Toplady wrote, “Be of sin the double cure: save us from sin’s guilt and power.”

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ome people seem to stop at salvation from guilt. For them, Christ’s high priestly role is not simply a glorious consolation but an apparent excuse for their continuing sins. They need not struggle with their temptations and transgressions because Christ has already struggled for them to victory. Others rush quickly over Christ’s priestly office to the supposedly more practical question, What would Jesus do? Emphasizing his prophetic and royal offices, they may even sign off on a solid evangelical understanding of justification, but their real interest lies elsewhere. Eventually, whatever might be affirmed casually in relation to justification by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone, sanctification is, perhaps unwittingly, built on some other foundation.

In other words, “getting saved” is attributed to justification, but “staying saved”—or at least growing in the Christian life “here and now”—is detached from justification “then and there.” Thus, people may be saved by the gospel, but they are expected to be sustained by a diet of practical prescriptions for life.

To counter these misunderstandings, we have to turn to Paul’s argument in Romans 5 and 6. Just when we think the good news is as good as it gets (justification), Paul tells us that there is more good news to come. It is not separate from the good news of justification, but follows upon it: God has not only seen to it that we will be justified by grace through faith because of Christ, but that we will be sanctified and glorified in this way as well.

To be sure, justification is a verdict—a once-and-for-all declaration that we are righteous before God only on account of Christ’s obedient life, death, and resurrection, which we embrace through faith alone, while sanctification is a lifelong process of the Spirit’s work within us. Thus, justification is a completed event, without degrees, perfect in every respect, while sanctification is incomplete in this life and each believer is at different places along that pilgrim way. There are clear differences between justification and sanctification and a lot of errors in church teaching and practice result from confusing them. Nevertheless, if we do not see sanctification as the necessary and inevitable outcome of justification, we will become at least theoretical antinomians; if we do not see justification as the fountain of sanctification, we will become legalists. God loves us too much to justify us while leaving us under the tyranny of another king whose dominion is sin and death, but he does not justify us by Christ alone through faith alone only to then condition our final salvation (glorification) on our own obedience (sanctification). We have been saved from the guilt of sin (justified); we are being saved from the tyranny of sin (sanctified), and we will yet be saved from the presence of sin (glorified). Yet all of these aspects of our wider salvation are based on our justification, not the other way around.

The theme before us is “union with Christ.” In much of the evangelistic preaching and outreach familiar to many of us, the emphasis was on “getting saved” by “making a decision for Christ.” This involved offering assent to a few

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propositions, such as “Jesus died for my sins and I accept him as my personal Savior.” But this is more like a contract than a covenant (especially when we’re led to “seal the deal” by signing a card or raising our hand). How much richer is the covenantal understanding that we find in the scriptures, as summarized by the Westminster Confession: It pleased God, in his eternal purpose, to choose and ordain the Lord Jesus, his only begotten Son, to be the Mediator between God and man, the prophet, priest, and king; the head and Savior of his Church, the heir of all things, and judge of the world; unto whom he did, from all eternity, give a people to be his seed, and to be by him in time redeemed, called, justified, sanctified, and glorified. (WCF, ch. 8) Union with Christ expresses a covenant—specifically, in the covenant of grace, a gift of inheritance; making a decision for Christ expresses a contract. If I am saved because I accepted Christ, then what happens when I fail to keep the stipulated terms? But if I am saved because of God’s electing and redeeming grace “by which he made us accepted in the Beloved” (Eph. 1:6), then even the fact that I accepted and continue to accept Christ is due to the fact that I have been included by God in his eternal covenant mercies in Christ. In fact, Ephesians 1:1–13 repeatedly emphasizes this point with the prepositional phrase, “in Christ.” Even my decision to accept Christ is effectual not because of some autonomous transaction on my part but because the Spirit has granted me repentance and faith to embrace Christ and all his benefits.

Romans 5: The Two Adams p to this point in Paul’s argument in Romans, God’s righteousness has been vindicated. How can God condemn even those who claim to follow God’s law (the Jews) while justifying even those who are wicked (the Gentiles)? Paul answers this in two ways: First, by demonstrating that God’s righteous law condemns everyone, both Jew and Gentile, and second, by announcing the good news of the righteousness that God freely grants to the unrighteous in Jesus Christ, through faith alone. By substituting Christ for the sinner, God has not only propitiated his just wrath so that there is no wrath left to pour out on those who are in Christ; he has justified those who are in themselves wicked by imputing Christ’s righteousness to his heirs. In this way, God’s law is upheld, his righteousness vindicated, his holiness proved—and at the same time, he has spared us from the consequences of our own sin. Just as everyone stands condemned by the law, Jew and Gentile alike, everyone who trusts in Christ alone stands justified. The law itself testifies to our righteousness before God because “in Christ” we are regarded as having perfectly fulfilled it. “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access

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by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Rom. 5:1–2). Even our trials in this life can only serve our salvation, since it is all secured for us in Christ alone (vv. 3–5).

None of this is due to a mere contract. Rather, it’s a matter of covenant. Ancient Near Eastern civilizations knew nothing of individualism. To be sure, the individual had an important place, but it was within a larger web of relationships. Treaties or covenants were sworn not simply by individuals but by representatives on behalf of their people, much as a monarch or a congress in more recent times. It is difficult for us in a modern democracy to understand this outlook, but it is the whole framework of biblical thinking. We have trouble with original sin because it seems unjust for God to hold every person from the moment of conception accountable for Adam’s transgression. Yet the Bible is full of such representative (covenantal) examples, such as the theft of Achan, for

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grace abounded much more, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (v. 20b).

Romans 6: Shall We Continue in Sin? aturally, the logic of Paul’s argument thus far raises a crucial question: “What shall we say then?

Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?” (v. 1). Antinomianism apparently answers in the affirmative. To repeat Godfrey’s line, “God likes to forgive; I like to sin: what a great relationship!” I have to admit that I have never really met a full-blown antinomian in this sense. Genuine believers cannot have such a casual attitude toward the sin that their Father hates, that cost their Redeemer his precious life, and that offends the Spirit who indwells them. However, all of us struggle to reconcile our hatred of sin with the fact that we so often yield to temptation. It is sometimes easy to slip a little bread and water under the door of indwelling sin, comforting ourselves with If we do not see sanctification as the necessary and the assurance that we are, inevitable outcome of justification, we will become at least after all, saved by grace and God will forgive us.

However, despite the theoretical antinomians; if we do not see justification as strongest defense of free grace, Paul’s answer is a the fountain of sanctification, we will become legalists. decisive “no!” to the question he has raised.

On the other hand, legalists will have trouble with which God held all of Israel guilty (Josh. 7:1–15). everything that Paul has said up to this point that even Paul unfolds this logic in chapter 5: Sin, condemnation, raises the question in the first place. D. Martyn Lloydand death entered the world through one man, Adam. Yet Jones once wrote to pastors that if they have never been the solidarity is so strong that he can say that we really accused of preaching antinomianism, they have never were present with Adam in the garden, participating in his truly preached the gospel. That is a great point. After all, transgression (v. 12). Even those who have never it is precisely because Paul has so clearly and forthrightly committed exactly the same sin as Adam are gathered explained the gospel of justification apart from works that together with their covenantal head in that action (v. 14). he even has to confront such a charge. (And it was not the Yet this is simply the bleak backdrop for the work of that first time or the last that the apostle would hear it!) other covenantal head: Christ, our Second Adam (vv.

Legalists are always too worried about people not 15–21). Thus, there are two families on the earth: Adam’s behaving themselves to allow the gospel to have its full and Christ’s. Those who are “in Adam” are under the say. However, Paul is prepared to go all the way with the domain of sin, death, judgment, and condemnation, while gospel and face the charges. those who are “in Christ” are under the domain of On the more legalistic side of the room, Paul’s question righteousness, life, and justification. “Moreover the law might be answered with various threats. “Shall we entered that the offense might abound,” Paul says (v. 20a). continue in sin that grace may abound?” “No! Don’t you Although that sounds strange at first glance, remember the know that if you do that the ‘contract’ will be declared null case that Paul has been making thus far: “Now we know and void? You’ll lose your salvation—or at least you’ll lose that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under all of your rewards and end up in the outer precincts of the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the heaven?” (In his book, Eternal Security, Charles Stanley world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the argues that while believers cannot lose their salvation, the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in his sight, for by place of “weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth” is the law is the knowledge of sin” (3:19–20). Apart from the not hell, but a place reserved for carnal Christians. At least law, there is no sin, since sin is a transgression of a law in Roman Catholic teaching, purgatory is a different place (5:13). So the law was given not in order to cause sin but than heaven.) in order to name sin as sin and to sweep it all into one heap, No, Paul neither accepts an affirmative answer to his at one place, so that it could be dealt with once and for all. question nor a legalistic response. His gospel of grace does Christ is that place, Paul adds: “But where sin abounded,

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the good news is that we are not identified with a dead prophet, but with a living blood and righteousness. Nevertheless, everyone thus priest-king who triumphed over sin’s guilt and power. justified is united with Christ and therefore shares in his The gospel is the answer to that is the point that both: resurrection life, so that Christ is being formed in us and antinomians and legalists miss in their own way. forming us to his image.

Through the preaching of the gospel, the Holy Spirit not only go so far and then turn back to a principle of grants faith to sinners and this faith not only justifies, it salvation by works when it comes to Christian obedience sanctifies. Every good work proceeds from this justifying (sanctification). Instead, he just preaches more gospel! faith that looks to Christ alone and draws upon our union with him. We must not find our justification in Christ and How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? our sanctification somewhere else. We find everything— Or do you not know that as many of us as were salvation from sin’s guilt and power, the love of God and baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his neighbor, the new life and ripening fruit of good works, death? Therefore we were buried with him through the gifts of the Spirit, and the kingdom to come—in Christ baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised alone. And it belongs to every believer, even the weakest, from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we at every moment. As the Heidelberg Catechism instructs in also should walk in newness of life. For if we have Question 36, “How does the holy conception and birth of been united together in the likeness of his death, Christ benefit you?” Answer: “He is our mediator, and certainly we also shall be in the likeness of his with his innocence and perfect holiness he removes from resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was God’s sight my sin—mine since I was conceived.” crucified with him, that the body of sin might be We are not justified by union with Christ, but by done away with, that we should no longer be slaves Christ’s blood and righteousness. Nevertheless, everyone of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. thus justified is united with Christ and therefore shares in Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall his resurrection life, so that Christ is being formed in us also live with him, knowing that Christ, having been and forming us to his image. The age to come has broken raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer into this present evil age with Christ’s resurrection from has dominion over him. For the death that he died, the dead as the firstfruits of the harvest. As our living he died to sin once for all; but the life that he lives, head, he enjoys the perfect consummation of what we will he lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon all experience in our glorification. Thus assured of our yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God participation in Christ, we struggle against sin because we in Christ Jesus our Lord. (vv. 2–11) already know that it is a defeated foe.

The imperatives must be drawn forth from the Here we again encounter the distinction in the Greek indicatives. In part, this is because unless our conscience language between the imperative and indicative moods. is persuaded of God’s good pleasure toward us, we cannot Indicatives tell us what has been done; imperatives tell us even will to love him and our neighbor, much less perform what we are to do. While the legalist replies to Paul’s it. Once again, many (even evangelical scholars) today question with more imperatives, Paul replies with more will say that this emphasis is the product of a Protestantism indicatives! The apostle does not respond, “Do this or too overwrought with Luther’s “troubled conscience.” else!” Instead, he says, “Look, the gospel not only justifies, However, it is an emphasis of Scripture. When Jesus it regenerates and sanctifies. Anyone who is in Christ is famously charged the accusers of the adulteress, “Whoever the heir of everything that God has promised.” is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her In other words, anyone who thinks that grace offers first,” we read that liberty for sin is actually not taking grace seriously enough.

God has done far more in Christ than justifying the …those who heard it, being convicted by their wicked. Precisely by justifying us, he has made every good conscience, went out one by one, beginning with the and perfect gift that he has for us fully guaranteed in oldest even to the last. And Jesus was left alone, and Christ. Every person who has been baptized into this the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had Second Adam’s death (which grants forgiveness) is also raised himself up and saw no one but the woman, he baptized into his resurrection life (new birth and said to her, ‘Woman, where are those accusers of sanctification). Who would want to be identified with a yours? Has no one condemned you?’ She said, ‘No supposed “savior” who remained in the grave? How one, Lord.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Neither do I would that differ from being “in Adam”? No, says Paul, condemn you; go and sin no more.’ (John 8:7–11)

We are not justified by union with Christ, but by Christ’s

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The role of conscience is important in Paul’s thinking, both in relation to God and fellow creatures (Acts 24:16; Rom. 9:1; 13:5; 1 Cor. 10:25; 1 Tim. 3:9; 4:2). So, too, the writer to the Hebrews explains that if the old covenant sacrifices in some sense sanctified the worshipers, “how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this reason he is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance” (Heb. 9:13–15).

For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins. (Heb. 10:1–2) Entering the Holy of Holies “by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way” that is none other than Jesus himself as our High Priest, “let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful” (Heb. 10:19–23). Peter adds that the baptism that now saves us is “not the removal of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God” by Christ’s resurrection and ascension to the Father’s right hand (1 Pet. 3:21).

Only that certain knowledge that God has already secured the whole of salvation in all of its stages, with Christ as the guarantor and guarantee, can create in us the faith that yields the fruit of peace, love, and good works.

Once our consciences have been assured that God has made peace through Christ, the new life begins and a new obedience flows out of genuine love rather than out of self-interest and self-righteousness. On sanctification, the Belgic Confession declares, In fact, if we had to appear before God relying—no matter how little—on ourselves or some other creature, then, alas, we would be swallowed up… We believe that this true faith, produced in man by the hearing of God’s Word and by the work of the Holy Spirit, regenerates him and makes him a ‘new man,’ causing him to live the ‘new life’ and freeing him from the slavery of sin. Therefore, far from making people cold toward living in a pious and holy way, this justifying faith, quite to the contrary, so works within them that apart from it they will never do a thing out of love for God but only out of love for themselves and fear of being condemned. (Articles 23–24)

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With this justifying faith as its root, however, sanctification is assured. Otherwise, we are thrown back on ourselves. “So we would always be in doubt, tossed back and forth without any certainty, and our poor consciences would be tormented constantly if they did not rest on the merit of the suffering and death of our Savior” (Belgic Confession, Article 24).

The moral law continues to command us but can no longer condemn us. It is only on the basis of this gospel indicative, then, that Paul can go on to issue this imperative: “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God (Rom. 6:12–13).” Yet even here Paul insists on letting the indicative have the last word: “For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace” (Rom. 6:14). ■

Michael Horton is professor of apologetics and systematic theology at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California) and host of the White Horse Inn weekly radio broadcast.

We Confess…

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e believe that for us to acquire the true knowledge of this great mystery [of

justification] the Holy Spirit kindles in our hearts a true faith that embraces Jesus Christ, with all his merits, and makes him its own, and no longer looks for anything apart from him. For it must necessarily follow that either all that is required for our salvation is not in Christ or, if all is in him, then he who has Christ by faith has his salvation entirely… Therefore, we justly say with Paul that we are justified ‘by faith alone’ or by faith ‘apart from works.’ However, we do not mean, properly speaking, that it is faith itself that justifies us— for faith is only the instrument by which we embrace Christ, our righteousness… And faith is the instrument that keeps us in communion with him and with all his benefits. When those benefits are made ours they are more than enough to absolve us of our sins.

— Belgic Confession (1561), Article 22

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Ten Propositions on Faith and Salvation In an era when faith is redefined as a sort of religious power and salvation is merely self-help, it is more important than ever to be clear about what we believe about the cardinal doctrines of our faith. These ten propositions address some of the most contentious debates that are raging within American Christianity and also form the core of the Reformation’s complaint against Roman Catholicism.

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It is impossible that saving faith can exist without a new nature and thereby new affections (love, a desire for holiness, and so on).

Saving faith is nevertheless not the same thing as such affections or desires and does not include in its definition the effects of which the new birth is the cause.

It is not enough to say that we are justified and accepted by grace alone, for even Rome has agreed that it is only

by God’s grace that we can become transformed in holiness. We must add that we are justified by grace through faith alone, and it is a great error to change the meaning of faith to include acts of obedience and repentance in an effort to make a disposition other than knowledge, assent, and trust, a condition of justification.

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The definition of saving faith is: Knowledge, which we take to mean the intellectual grasp of the relevant historical and doctrinal facts concerning Christ’s person and work and our misery; Assent, or the volitional agreement of our hearts and minds that these facts are true; and Trust, which is the assurance that these facts that are true are not only true generally, but true in my own case. In this way I abandon all hope for acceptance with God besides the holiness and righteousness of Christ.

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Not only is the ground of our justification the person and work of Christ; the assurance, hope, and comfort that this salvation belongs to us must have Christ alone as is sufficient object and faith as its sufficient instrument.

While evidences of the new birth can be discerned by ourselves and others, such evidences do not have sufficient righteousness or holiness to form a ground of assurance or a clear conscience. For, as Calvin says, “A fine confidence of salvation is left to us, if by moral conjecture we judge that at the present moment we are in grace, but we know not what will become of us tomorrow!”

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We affirm that, although no one will be justified by works, no one will be saved without them.

We affirm that it is contempt and presumption, not faith, that produces apathy with regard to the commands of God. He seeks to tear Christ apart who imagines a savior without a lord. Christ offers no priesthood outside his prophetic ministry and kingly reign.

Those who are confident in this: that because they have exercised their will or mind in such a way that God is obligated thereby to save them, show contempt for God’s holiness and Christ’s cross.

This was taken from Christ the Lord: The Reformation and Lordship Salvation, edited by Michael Horton (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995), pp. 209-210.

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T H E P E A C E T H AT S T A R T S T H E W A R

THE DISCOMFORT of the

JUSTIFIED LIFE I am writing this article just after the conclusion of the high school basketball season. The girls’ team from one of our city’s high schools had a successful season, going all the way to the state championship game where they lost. The next morning the sports section of our daily newspaper showed a pathetic picture of some of the girls sitting on the bench watching the clock run down and knowing they had just lost the championship game. There they sat, chins in hand, looking quite dejected because they had been defeated.

We Americans don’t like defeat, whether it’s in a basketball game or in dealing with sin in our lives.

I suspect that’s why we don’t like the seventh chapter of Romans. It sounds too much like defeat. It really isn’t about defeat, however. It’s about struggle; a struggle between the flesh and the Spirit. As Paul wrote in Galatians 5:17, “For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. For

these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” This is a picture of struggle. Then Peter urged us in 1 Peter 2:11, “To abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your souls.” Notice the war metaphor. There is indeed a guerilla warfare going on in the soul of every believer that causes us a great deal of discomfort. We don’t like the struggle, and we especially do not like it when we feel defeated in the struggle.

Unbelievers don’t have such a struggle. For the most part, they enjoy their sin or rationalize their sinful attitudes. They feel justified in their selfrighteousness, their critical and unforgiving spirits, and their pursuits of pleasure and materialism.

Occasionally, they regret the consequences of their attitudes and actions, but they do not see them as sin. There is no guerilla warfare for the unbeliever.

They may or may not have conflicts with other people, but there is little conflict within themselves.

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JERRY BRIDGES

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ot so with the believer. The moment we trust in Christ as Savior, we are made new creations in Christ. The Holy Spirit comes to dwell within us to animate and empower this new life. He comes to deal with those sinful attitudes and actions, but they don’t disappear overnight. They must be, to use Paul’s words, “put to death” (Rom. 8:13, Col. 3:5). And that’s when the guerilla warfare begins. The flesh—that is, our persistent inclination towards sin, which we have from birth—that generates those sinful attitudes and actions begins to fight back. Romans 7:14–25 helps us understand this internal conflict with the flesh in a helpful way because it describes the experience of a growing Christian who is continually discovering the depths of sin still present in his or her life. Many Bible students will disagree with that last sentence. In fact, this passage of Scripture has been something of an exegetical battleground for centuries. Pages have been written by capable and godly people presenting other views and rejecting the view to which I subscribe. This is not the place, however, to discuss the various interpretations of Romans 7:14–25. Most readers of Modern Reformation will already be familiar with them.

For those who want to pursue this debate, James Montgomery Boice’s expositional commentary on Romans has an excellent, nontechnical discussion of four main interpretations.

Theological giants, such as Charles Hodge and John Murray, have ably defended the view that Romans 7:14–25 describes the internal conflict between the flesh and the Spirit. And I certainly cannot add anything to their technical arguments. However, I can offer two of the most compelling reasons for seeing the passage as descriptive of the internal conflict with sin that any growing Christian experiences.

First, there is the natural, literary sense of the passage.

What would those reading Romans 7:14–25, untutored in familiar theological debates, understand Paul to mean?

Would they not assume that Paul is describing himself in his present state at the time he is writing? They might not fully understand what he is saying, but they would assume Paul is describing the reality of his present experience.

Paul did not play literary games with his first-century readers. Admittedly, as Peter wrote in 2 Peter 3:16, some things in his letters are hard to understand. But from his point of view, Paul wrote his letters in a straightforward manner to people who were fairly new believers. I believe the first-century Christians in Rome would have assumed Paul was describing his own experience as an illustration of how all believers struggle with the flesh.

The second reason I believe Romans 7:14–25 describes the experience of a growing Christian is that it so accurately reflects the experience of any believer who is intentional about his or her pursuit of a holy and Christlike life. For the reality is, the more mature we become, the more anguish we experience over the difference between desire and accomplishment in our efforts to put

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sin to death and to put on Christ-like character.

Early in my Christian life I was exposed to the view that every Christian should “get out of Romans 7 into Romans 8.” This view depicts the Romans 7:14–25 person as one who is seeking to live the Christian life in the energy of the flesh, whereas Romans 8 depicts him as living by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Romans 7 person is living a life of spiritual defeat, but the Romans 8 man is living a life of continual victory. This view created great frustration for me because I never seemed to be able to make the transition from Romans 7 to Romans 8.

I could see myself described in Romans 7, but I assumed that was because I was a “defeated” Christian. Then gradually I came to the conviction that a person never does get out of Romans 7 in the sense that he or she no longer struggles with the flesh. God providentially brought me into contact with the works of the older Reformed writers who reinforced my newly developed conviction. This was a great liberating experience. I found I could deal with the reality of the Romans 7 conflict when I realized it was the normal experience of people who are sincere and intentional about spiritual growth.

Again, the reality for every believer is that the more we grow in Christian maturity, the sharper this conflict becomes. The more we understand the perfect will of God, the more we see how far short we come in obeying it.

And we should keep in mind that we are not only to joyously obey the moral will of God but we are to graciously submit to the providential will of God—that is, to the circumstances, whether good or bad, that he brings or allows into our lives.

One of the most difficult precepts to obey of the moral will of God is found in 1 Thessalonians 5:18: “Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” That this is a moral command is shown by Paul’s identical expression in chapter 4, verse 3 where he writes: “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality.” It is God’s moral will that we abstain from immorality, and it is also God’s moral will that we give thanks in all circumstances.

Now, most Christians readily understand that it is God’s will that we abstain from sexual immorality. That command seems relatively easy to obey, especially if we focus on the act and not the thoughts of the heart. But to give thanks in difficult circumstances is an altogether different matter. Oftentimes I find myself giving thanks not wholeheartedly but as a sheer act of the will. But I don’t think that is really giving thanks. Recently, in a situation that did not turn out the way I had hoped it would, I said to God: “Father, I give you thanks for the way this has turned out, but I am disappointed.” Then the thought came to me, Jesus would not have been disappointed. Jesus so perfectly trusted his Father’s providential care of his life that he freely submitted to whatever circumstances came his way.

Now, I know and have taught numerous times that nothing happens to us that God does not ordain; that a

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day when he will be delivered from this body of death. Paul knows that when I realized it was the normal experience of people who when that day arrives, he will be forever free from the are sincere and intentional about spiritual growth. struggle with indwelling sin. At last his experience sparrow cannot fall to the ground apart from his will and that will exactly coincide with his standing of perfect we are of more value than many sparrows” (Matt. 10:29–31). righteousness in Christ.

This being true then, why do I not give thanks genuinely and The second reason we can rejoice in the midst of our joyously? Why do I not accept the fact that my infinitely wise struggle is because of the truth of the gospel, which and loving Father has ordained these circumstances for my actually brackets the whole chapter of Romans 7. In good? It is because “when I want to do right [that is, joyously verses 1–6, Paul teaches us both by analogy and directly give thanks] evil [that is, the desire for my own agenda] lies that we have “died to the law through the body of Christ” close at hand” (Rom. 7:21). The flesh in the form of my own (v. 4). That is, through our union with Christ in his death, desires is often in conflict with the will of God. we have died to the curse and condemning power of the I have deliberately chosen to use my recent experience law. We have died to the reign of the law in our lives. It with 1 Thessalonians 5:18 because it illustrates a point. can no longer pronounce us guilty because Christ has The more we grow in Christian character, the more deeply already borne our guilt on the cross.

God digs into our inner being to expose the works of the Then in Romans 8:1, Paul assures us that “there is flesh that are still there. As a young Christian, the therefore now no condemnation for those who are in command of 1 Thessalonians 5:18 was not an issue for Christ Jesus.” So, Romans 7:4 and 8:1 say essentially the me. There were more obvious desires of the flesh I had to same thing: God does not look on our struggles against contend with. Now, after 57 years of being a Christian, I indwelling sin with an attitude of condemnation and realize that God is not content merely dealing with the judgment because the condemning power of his law has surface sins. He wants to take on the more subtle issues. been forever dealt with by Christ.

So often then I now find the words of Romans 7:18b true: So in the midst of our struggle with indwelling sin, we “For I have the desire to do what is right but not the ability must continually keep our focus on the gospel. We must to carry it out.” I have the desire to give thanks in all always go back to the truth that even in the face of the fact circumstances but not the ability to do it wholeheartedly, that so often “I do not do the good that I want, but the evil without reserve. That’s because the desires of the flesh, in I do not want is what I keep on doing” (v. 19), there is no the form of my agenda, are against the desires of the Spirit condemnation. God no longer counts our sin against us (Gal. 5:17). It is because the passions of the flesh still (Rom. 4:8). wage war against my soul (1 Pet. 2:11).

Or, to say it another way, God wants us to find our primary Someone has stated that sanctification (that is, spiritual joy in our objectively declared justification, not in our growth) is more often characterized by desire than by subjectively perceived sanctification. Regardless of how much performance. I believe that is true of the person in progress we make in our pursuit of holiness, it will never Romans 7. He wants to do what is right. He delights in come close to the absolute perfect righteousness of Christ that the law of God. But evil lies close at hand, waging war is ours through our union with him in his life and death. against the law of his mind (vv. 21–23).

So we should learn to live with the discomfort of the I hasten to add, however, that these verses in Romans 7 justified life. We should accept the fact that as a stillare descriptive only of a person who is sincerely and growing Christian, we will always be dissatisfied with our intentionally seeking to grow in Christ-like character. The sanctification. But at the same time, we should remember person who is complacent about his Christian experience that in Christ we are justified. We are righteous in him. and is not concerned about remaining sin in his life should There is the familiar play on the word “justification,” find no comfort in this passage of Scripture. Romans 7 which means “just as if I’d never sinned.” But there is does not provide an excuse for tolerating sin but simply another way of saying that which is even better: describes the experience of one who does not tolerate it justification means “just as if I’d always obeyed.” That’s but rather struggles against it. the way we stand before God—clothed in the imputed How then does the person who is sincere and righteousness of Jesus Christ. And that’s the way we can intentional about dealing with sin in his or her life handle live with the discomfort of the justified life. ■ the tension and frustration that seem so pervasive in verses 14–25? Is there no hope of ever experiencing the Jerry Bridges has served on staff with The Navigators since 1955 joy of the Christian life? Yes, there is. And Paul gives us and is author of several books, including The Pursuit of two reasons to rejoice.

Holiness, The Gospel for Real Life, The Discipline of Grace, First, there is the confident expectation of future and most recently, Is God Really in Control? deliverance. In verses 24–25 Paul looks forward to the

I found I could deal with the reality of the Romans 7 conflict

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ROMANS 7 and the

NORMAL CHRISTIAN LIFE BY

KIM RIDDLEBARGER

n the evangelical world in which I was raised, it was the minister’s job to ensure that everyone in his congregation was “living in victory.” What this meant was that those who were truly committed to Jesus Christ and had made him Lord over every area of their lives would not be content to remain “carnal Christians.” If you were truly committed to Jesus, you would strive with everything in you to move into the “victorious life” described by the Apostle Paul in Romans 8. In that passage, the Apostle Paul supposedly speaks of victorious Christians as people who had made the determination to walk according to the Spirit and to no longer walk after the flesh (Rom. 8:1, KJV). Those hearty souls who managed to completely dedicate themselves to Christ could attain that lofty goal spoken of by Paul as “more than a conqueror” (cf.

Rom. 8:37). To demonstrate that we were striving to attain victory, there were the familiar behavioral taboos.

And you certainly did not want to be “left behind,” forced to endure the seven-year tribulation and risk coming face to face with the minions of the Antichrist.

While this version of the Christian life is widely accepted throughout much of American Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism, it is apparently now on the decline.

This understanding of the victorious Christian life can only be sustained by an unfortunate misreading of Paul’s

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description of the Christian life as it unfolds in Romans chapters 6–8. This conception of the Christian life is framed by a combination of decisional regeneration, dispensational eschatology, and Keswick, Wesleyan, or mystical versions of the Christian life, all of which involve a “higher life” or “victorious” Christian life, centering in a conscious experience of victory over indwelling sin. In this scheme, Paul supposedly speaks of death to sin in Romans 6, and then describes his unregenerate (preconversion) condition in Romans 7, which is, in turn, followed by the critical passage in Romans 8:1, which, according to a textual variant that is not found in the better-supported Western and Alexandrian manuscripts, includes the exhortation to “walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”

But is Paul defending this understanding of the Christian life in Romans 6–8? The critical hinge upon which this faulty understanding of the Christian life turns is Paul’s discussion of an intense struggle with sin depicted in Romans 7:14–25. In this passage, Paul speaks of a personal struggle that is so deep and intense that the person in view there describes himself as someone who is “sold under sin” (v. 14). He does not understand his own actions (v. 15). He wants to do what is right but ends up sinning anyway (vv. 15–16, 18). He speaks of sin almost

as a force, living within him controlling his actions (vv. to be more than a conqueror. But I felt like Paul’s 16–17). When he does the evil he does not want to do, wretched man! he feels like his members (his body and its passions) are Relief came when I learned that the view that Paul was waging war on his mind, which knows what is right even speaking of his present experience as a Christian was held though he lacks the power to do it (vv. 22–23). So intense not only by a number of Christians (including all the is this struggle with sin that the author speaks of himself as reformers), but this was the view expressed in the a “wretched man” in desperate need of deliverance by Reformed confessions, which I was only then beginning to Jesus Christ. embrace. In Romans 7:14–25, Paul is speaking of a Surely, such a person cannot be a Christian—or at least Christian’s struggle with sin; this is not a picture of defeat that is what I was told. And yet, I knew that deep down but a description of the struggle with sin that every inside, Romans 7:14–25 is describing me. Whoever Paul Christian must go through and is a necessary part of was describing in these verses—I was told that this was sanctification. In other words, Paul wasn’t talking about either Paul’s own experience as a Jew before he was the goal (to end the struggle), but Paul is speaking about converted, or else this was a description of those Jews the process by which God does bring us to victory over sin under the condemnation of law—he was just like me! (our sanctification).

While there is always a great danger in interpreting God’s Despite all of the renewed debate in Reformed and Word through the lens of personal experience, it seemed evangelical circles over this passage since the publication of that the more I tried to live in victory mode and leave my Kümmels’s famous essay on Romans 7 (Römer 7 und die carnal desires behind, the more I felt like that person Paul Bekehrung des Paulus, 1929) and despite the publication of was describing in Romans 7. several recent evangelical commentaries (for example, the I had accepted Jesus as my personal Savior from my outstanding commentary by Doug Moo, The Epistle to the earliest recollection, so I knew that I was a Christian. The Romans, NICNT, 1996), which argue that in Romans solution that was held out to those struggling saints like 7:14–25 Paul is not speaking autobiographically but of a me (although I never admitted to anyone that I was hypothetical Jew before conversion, I remain convinced struggling like this because my fellow Christians might that Paul is describing his present experience of the think that I was still a “carnal struggle with sin.

Christian”) was to rededicate Furthermore, I do not believe The poor, struggling sinner who my life to Christ, or to ask God that this section of Romans is is erroneously told that the struggle to give me more grace so that depicting a deficient condition the desired victory might soon experienced by those with sin he or she is currently come. It never did. Then Christians who choose not to experiencing is a sign of defeat and there was the counsel which be victorious (the so-called held out that instead of trying carnal Christian).

No, I that the person is not yet a Christian, with everything in me to be believe that this is a holy, I should stop trying and or else has chosen not to take advantage description of the normal just “let go and let God.” of the victory offered to all those in Christ, Christian life. The reasons for It was a great relief to learn this interpretation of Romans should instead see the struggle that many Christians actually 7:14–25 are spelled out in understood Paul to be great detail elsewhere (e.g., with sin as proof that sanctification describing his present Cranfield, “Romans,” ICC; J. I. is actually taking place. experience as a Christian in Packer, Keep in Step with the Romans 7, even the experience Spirit), and we can but of being an apostle! I recall this being raised during a summarize them here.

Bible study, only to have it shot down as a complete First, in Romans 7:14–25, Paul speaks in the present impossibility, since, if true, it would mean that someone tense, which stands in sharp contrast to the use of the past could become a Christian and yet live as a “carnal tense in the previous section (Rom. 7:7–13). This makes Christian.” If Paul was describing a Christian’s the natural sense of the passage a description of Paul’s experience, there would be no incentive to seek the kind current experience at the time of the writing of this epistle. of victory it was believed that Paul was describing in Second, in Galatians 5:17, Paul speaks of a similar Romans 8. This, it was stated, would justify someone struggle in which he is clearly describing the experience of remaining in defeat, if that was Paul’s condition. And all Christians, including his own: “For the desires of the while you could not lose your salvation, if you did not flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are follow Paul’s example and move from the defeat depicted against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to in Romans 7 into the victory of Romans 8, then you would keep you from doing the things you want to do.” Thus, lose out on your rewards in heaven and miss out on the Romans 7:14–25 and Galatians 5:17 are parallel passages. victory promised to you by the apostle. It was left up to If Galatians 5:17 is a description of a war within every me to decide which I wanted: defeat or victory. I wanted Christian, why can that not be true of Romans 7:14–25?

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Third, an unconverted person could not delight in the law of God, such as Paul depicts here, nor desire to do what is right. This is a description of those affections for and delight in the things of God that only a Christian actually experiences. Furthermore, no non-Christian ever experiences the kind of godly sorrow described here.

They may feel guilty, but they do not experience the despair of sinning against the revealed will of God, which they love inwardly.

Fourth, the argument that a Christian, such as Paul, would never speak of himself as a slave to sin, since he has already testified to the fact that Christ has set him free, is mitigated by the fact that Paul is aware of this freedom (“with mind my I serve the law of God”), and yet, because of indwelling sin, still feels as though sin has a death grip upon him. In other words, the final outcome of the war is a foregone conclusion—Christ wins and so will all those in union with him. But there are a number of battles with indwelling sin still to be fought, and this is what Paul is describing (the struggle, not the final outcome).

Fifth, that Paul is not speaking of his struggle before his conversion becomes clear when we consider how Paul felt about himself before he encountered the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. Consider Paul’s testimony in Philippians 3:3–10: For we are the real circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh—though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness, under the law blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

How could Paul see himself as blameless before his conversion (Phil. 3), if, in Romans 7:14–25, he’s describing his intense struggle with sin before his conversion?

Therefore, in Romans 7:14–25, the Apostle Paul is describing the normal Christian life. This is a struggle that every Christian will experience. The poor, struggling sinner who is erroneously told that the struggle with sin he or she is currently experiencing is a sign of defeat and that the person is not yet a Christian, or else has chosen not to take advantage of the victory offered to all those in Christ, should instead see the struggle with sin as proof that 1 8 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

sanctification is actually taking place. The New Testament knows of only one victorious life—the life of Jesus Christ.

All of those who are truly in Christ’s will go through the refiner’s fire so that when Jesus returns, he will receive a spotless and radiant bride. Far, then, from a description of Paul’s journey from a defeated Jew to a victorious Christian, in this passage, Paul is describing what every Christian will experience—a desire to do what is right and a continual struggle with indwelling sin. While final victory is assured, it will finally come when we are glorified: freed not only from sin’s guilt and tyranny, but its very presence.

Kim Riddlebarger is senior pastor of Christ Reformed Church in Anaheim, California, and co-host of the White Horse Inn weekly radio broadcast.

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ar is not its own end, except in

some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It’s peace that’s wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with.

— Lois McMaster Bujold

T H E P E A C E T H AT S T A R T S T H E W A R

DOUBT AS A CHRISTIAN VIRTUE

BY DONALD T. WILLIAMS Agnosticism is, in a sense, what I am preaching. I do not wish to reduce the skeptical element in your minds. I am only suggesting that it need not be reserved exclusively for the New Testament and the Creeds. Try doubting something else.

— C. S. Lewis, “Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism”

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nglish professors find irony irresistible, historians find it unavoidable, and theologians find it inescapably persistent in trying to move beyond itself to the level of a Chestertonian paradox. The fact that I am a bit of all three may go a ways toward explaining my title: “Doubt as a Christian Virtue.” Most believers understandably view doubt as a straightforward Christian vice. After all, the New Testament tells us that we are saved by faith, that we walk by faith and not by sight, and that faith is the victory that overcomes the world. By contrast, the modern world unambiguously translates faith as gullibility and sees doubt, if not skepticism, as the infallible indicator of intelligence and sophistication. To a literary-minded and historically-grounded theologian, the absence of irony on either side is a sure sign that somebody has missed something.

No Christian can doubt that faith in the right things is a virtue, nor that doubting them can be a problem.

Anselm’s Fides quaerens intellectum (“Faith in search of understanding”) and Augustine’s Credo ut intelligam (“I believe so that I may understand”) are the indispensable foundations of intellectual life for people who have put their faith in Christ. But by the time these principles had reigned supreme for a millennium and half, it should not be surprising that faith had attached itself to many objects unworthy of it. Even Christians are not supposed to believe everything—false prophets, for example. But how do you identify them? Faith has to be in the right object to be biblical faith, but how do we recognize that object?

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wisdom was henceforth rested not on the living, creative, and revealed Word the prescribed rounds of piety and discipline of of God but on the fragile foundation of the flickering monastic life, the most serious form of the spiritual consciousness and fickle rationality of the fallen quest to escape the implacable Judge’s wrath available human individual.

It is hardly astonishing that such to him, and found it incapable of producing peace or a structure should develop some severe cracks and confidence in his acceptance by God. eventually shatter as modernity gives way to postmodernity, which has of either authority. So it was perhaps inevitable that a honestly recognized the fragments without being able to reaction would eventually set in, and, given the history of do anything about putting them back together. human folly, not surprising that it should be an Apparently, doubt too has its limits. overreaction.

Though they seem at first to be enemies, faith and Modernism has assumed doubt as an intellectual virtue, doubt need each other if either is to be healthy. There is and postmodernism has only extended the range of what the irony. Now we need a concrete example of the is considered doubtful. This project seriously begins with principle at work if it is to be meaningful. Martin Luther Descartes (1596–1650), the seventeenth-century in his struggles makes a good one. rationalist who first proposed systematic doubt as the most Luther was not a modern. He did not doubt God’s reliable path to enlightenment. Since people manifestly existence, but rather his goodness, his benevolence, his believe many things that are unproven at best and false at love. Bainton gives a fine summary of the confusing worst, why not try to doubt everything in search of those “tensions which medieval religion…induced” in many clear and plain ideas that would remain when doubt had people: “God was portrayed now as the Father, now as the done its worst? The one proposition Descartes found that wielder of the thunder. He might be softened by the could withstand this onslaught was his own existence, intercession of his kindlier Son, who again was delineated because in order to doubt that, he had to be there to do the as an implacable judge unless mollified by his mother.” doubting.

Luther threw himself wholeheartedly into the prescribed rounds of piety and discipline of monastic life, There once was a man named Descartes the most serious form of the spiritual quest to escape the Who asked, "Where should Philosophy start?" implacable Judge’s wrath available to him, and found it He said, "If I can doubt it, incapable of producing peace or confidence in his I'll just do without it. acceptance by God. A modern might have shoved his sin Now, that ought to make me look smart!" under the psychological rug and pretended that a benevolent God could ignore it, but Luther knew both the So he doubted the clear and the plain Scriptures and his own heart too well to go that route. So To see what would finally remain. he practically killed himself with fasting, he drove his 'Twas thus he found out confessor crazy, and all he had to show for it was doubt, There was no way to doubt anguished guilt, and fear. On a pilgrimage to Rome he The doubt in the doubter's own brain. climbed Pilate’s stairs on his hands and knees repeating the Lord’s Prayer on each step and kissing the step to boot, "I exist!" then with joy he concluded. hoping that such observances would help to atone for his “On this point I cannot be deluded: sins. And then he stood on the top step and asked, “Who Even though it sounds dumb, knows whether it is so?” If the imminent prospect of a If I think—ergo sum!" very untheoretical Hell is at stake, such a sentence is To this day he has not been refuted. devastating. So Luther says of himself, “I know a man who has gone through such pains that had they lasted for Building on this foundation, Descartes managed to one tenth of an hour he would have been reduced to conclude that the rest of the universe and God also existed. ashes.”

(I pause to let your sigh of relief exhaust itself.) But two It was the anguish of such doubt that drove Luther with subtle changes occurred in the process. First, doubt as such desperation to the Scriptures, and which partly such had replaced faith as such as a virtue—patently as enabled the light of justification by faith to break through inadequate simply in itself for that role as faith had been. the spiritual fog that had so long overlaid them. The light And second, the whole edifice of human knowledge and broke through not only from the crucial doctrine of

Luther threw himself wholeheartedly into

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Romans and Galatians but also from the cry of dereliction from the cross: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Luther’s own struggles with feeling abandoned by God allowed him to identify with Christ and to plumb the meaning of this experience. Luther knew that he felt forsaken because he deserved to be. Christ, on the other hand, could only have felt so in his identification with us in our sins. Here was a surer basis for acceptance

by God than anything man could do for himself! On the cross, wrath and love were reconciled at last.

Luther came to understand something of the role of his doubts in making possible his assurance. It was part of what led him to his “theology of the cross.”

God works by contraries so that a man feels himself to be lost in the very moment when he is on the point of being saved. When God is about to justify a man, he damns him. Whom he would make alive he must first kill… Man must first cry out that there is no health in him… When a man believes himself to be utterly lost, light breaks. Peace comes in the word of Christ through faith.

Cartesian doubt without faith is sterile, indeed futile, for one must trust in the validity of the rational processes of one’s own mind even to conclude that one’s doubt proves one’s existence.

Augustine’s Credo ut intelligam is ultimately inescapable, no matter how hard we try. On the other hand, faith without doubt in a fallen world is untested and hence runs the risk of being misdirected at worst or shallow at best. But Luther realized that the depths of despair need not be reached merely because doubts come, for even Christ had his moment of asking, “Why?” Therefore, we may ask too, and come to realize that we can honestly trust in Scripture, and indeed in God, only when our doubts have been at least acknowledged, if not satisfied. That is why the greatest saints are often those who have learned the paradoxical skill of doubting faithfully. They are not typically people of unassailable faith, but rather people who have learned to pray like the man whose son Jesus healed on his way down from the mount of transfiguration. “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief” (Mark 9:24).

Though Satan threatens always to deceive And oft the veil seems heavy on my face, Lord, help mine unbelief, for I believe.

I’ve seen through every subtle wile he weaves And would with all my heart your truth embrace, But Satan threatens always to deceive.

The tyranny of sight gives no reprieve, More garish than the glimmers of your grace; Lord, help mine unbelief, for I believe.

The evidence is there; I do perceive It clearly and myself can make the case, But Satan threatens always to deceive.

The certainty you help me to achieve

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Can sometimes disappear without a trace.

Lord, help mine unbelief, for I believe.

It’s all so plain! How deeply you must grieve To see me still in doubting Thomas’ place.

Since Satan threatens always to deceive, Lord, help mine unbelief, for I believe.

Our Lord’s positive response to this prayer, his serene lack of the slightest tendency to be put off or made insecure or defensive by it, may be the greatest comfort honestly doubting Christians can receive. As we learn to doubt faithfully, we will find that he answers it still. ■

Donald T. Williams is an ordained minister in the Evangelical Free Church of America who serves as professor of English and director of the School of Arts & Sciences at Toccoa Falls College, Georgia. His most recent book is Mere Humanity: G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien on the Human Condition (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2006).

In his article, Dr. Williams cites C. S. Lewis, “Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism,” Christian Reflections, Walter Hooper, ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), pp.

152–166; and Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther, (New York: Mentor Books, 1950), pp. 21, 38, 47, 63. All vianelles are original works of Dr. Williams.

Speaking Of…

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f you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

— Rene Descartes

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n coming to understand anything, we are rejecting the facts as they are for us in favor of the facts as they are.

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Introduction: What Changes? hen a person becomes a Christian a strange thing happens—nothing changes! If they were struggling financially before their conversion, their financial woes are not instantly taken away. If they were previously divorced, the new believers do not awake to find themselves happily married. If they were living under an oppressive government, they are not straightaway ushered into a land of liberty. On the surface of things, nothing changes for the person who becomes a Christian.

However, the great promise of Scripture is that, while on the one hand, nothing changes, on the other hand, everything does. These changes can be understood only in the light of God’s Spirit, and when such changes are recognized, they transform how we live in the present, even as we face the pain, frustration, and struggle of this life.

The Flesh and the Spirit n Romans chapter 8, the Apostle Paul describes two ways of living: the life of the flesh and the life of the Spirit. The first way looks backward, while the second way looks forward. For us to appreciate Paul’s perspective, we must begin by recognizing what he means by “flesh” and “spirit.”

When Paul calls Christians to “walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (8:4), he is not primarily making a distinction between the physical and nonphysical. In the preceding chapter, Paul argues that the flesh represented living under the power of sinful passions and death, with nothing good being found in one’s sinful nature (Rom. 7:5, 14, 18). Flesh in this context is not physicality, but rather it is associated with human rebellion and enmity toward God. “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law” (8:7). This is important to bear in mind when one reads that when God sent his Son “in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh” (8:3). Though exploring the history of debate about this particular verse and its implications is well beyond our purposes here, it is important to acknowledge that “likeness” should not be read as a denial that Jesus was fully human; Jesus certainly did have a real physical body, a human mind and emotions. (For historical context of this debate, see the article “The Son’s Assumption of a Human Nature,” listed at the end of this article.) Yet by the power of the Spirit, from conception through ascension, Jesus was without sin. Nevertheless, he lived in a fallen world, which meant that real suffering, sadness, and even death were not outside of his experience. Jesus remained, however, free from the power of indwelling sin, and thus he is the embodiment of life in the Spirit as opposed to life in the flesh. Sin surrounded him in the world, but it found no residence within him—no evil spirit could reside in the one who was filled with the Spirit beyond measure. He genuinely felt the pain and anguish of a broken world,

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wept and expressed anger over death and sin, and was tempted in all ways as we are—yet by the Spirit he remained without sin. This same Spirit, who preserved Jesus in purity, is given to the elect.

The Christian is distinguished from the rest of humanity not by a change in circumstances, but rather by the indwelling of God’s Spirit: “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you” (8:9). Why is that so important? Because, in Paul’s mind, this Spirit is our link to the life of God. Notice Paul’s fluidity of language in verses 9–11. Here he speaks of him who dwells in us as the “Spirit of God,” the “Spirit of Christ,” “Christ is in you,” “the Spirit [who] is life.” To be given the gift of the Spirit is nothing less than to know that God himself is with us in the present. For Paul, receiving the Spirit changes one’s orientation to the present and to the future. It is the Spirit’s presence, rather than human faithfulness, that grounds God’s guarantee that his promises will come to fruition for the saint (Eph. 1:14; cf., 2 Cor. 5:5). Such a future promise is based on the fact that God’s Spirit, who raised Jesus from the dead, dwells in us.

He is the very Spirit “by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption” (Rom. 8:11; Eph. 4:30). Paul seems to believe that those who have the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead live not simply in the reality of the present, but in the power of the future which breaks into the present. They need not fear looking forward, for God’s Spirit dwells in them presently, and this reality should transform how they view their current circumstances and actions.

Although the language of Spirit/spirit (pneuma) appears throughout Romans (thirteen times in chapters 1–7 and 9–16), in chapter 8, Paul pauses and gives extensive attention to God’s Spirit (chapter 8 has Spirit [pneuma] twenty-one times, far more than any other chapter in the New Testament). In almost all of the occurrences of this word (pneuma) in Romans 8, Paul seems to be referring distinctly to the Holy Spirit. What captures the apostle is contrasting life in the flesh with life in the Spirit. Life in the flesh is focused on self, rebellion, and idolatry. Life in the Spirit is understood in terms of freedom before God— freedom from enslavement of sin, law, and self-absorption, and freedom to love God and serve others. Such an understanding of freedom guides the life of the believer.

Dying to Live: The Spirit’s Ongoing Work in God’s Children reedom before God is demonstrated in the Christian’s life of repentance. John Calvin saw in the Scriptures a pattern for how to frame the Christian experience of repentance, and he drew much from the imagery of Romans 8. The language he used was of “vivification” and “mortification” (Institutes, 3.3.3-16). Philip Melanchthon, the great Lutheran reformer, also employed this terminology when he discussed the life of repentance in the first systematic theology of the Reformation, produced in 1521. These exhortations must be understood in terms

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of the work of God’s Spirit outlined in Romans 8, lest the believer fall into an impossible program of “self-help” moralism rather than confidently trusting in the biblical portrait of God’s renewing work in his children.

For theologians following in the tradition of the Reformation, vivification (from vivificátio) conveys the idea of giving life: to vivify, to quicken. Simply put, the Christian is a person who is made alive by the Spirit of God. According to Calvin, this means, not simply being born again at one moment in time, but also being refashioned by the Spirit throughout time to reflect more and more the image of God. It is, as Calvin says, the “desire to live in a holy and devoted manner” which arises from “rebirth” in the power of the Spirit.

Mortification (from mortificátio) conveys the idea of

putting something to death. This language was used to convey the Christian’s call, empowered by the Spirit, to “put to death the deeds of the body” (8:13). When unpacking the application of this truth it was often portrayed in terms of warfare: war against sin and Satan.

Elsewhere Paul employs similar imagery which exegetes have often drawn upon to understand these two aspects of repentance: “put off your old self [think mortification], which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed [think vivification] in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:22–24).

In his letter to the Colossians, Paul similarly calls the congregation to put to death the “earthly” in them (Col.

What Shape Is Your Theology?

by Todd Wilken We are all natural-born theologians. Consider the endless variety of religions in the world. From animism to Zen, from Zoroastrianism to atheism—everyone is a theologian. But not everyone is a good theologian. In fact, by nature, we are all lousy theologians. St. Paul puts it this way: What may be known about God is plain to all people, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

(Rom. 1:19b–21) We are fallen, so our natural-born theology is fallen, too. Paul continues: “Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles” (Rom. 1:22–23). Our fallen theologies are man-shaped, bird-shaped, animal-shaped, or reptile-shaped theologies.

What do all these theologies have in common? Paul says, “they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him … [but they] exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images.”

Instead of giving glory to God, fallen humanity always seeks its own glory. It began in the Garden of Eden: “’You will not surely die,’ the serpent said to the woman. ‘For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God…’” (Gen. 3:4–5). In all of their fallen theologizing, human beings seek for themselves the glory that belongs to God alone. This is the theology of glory.

Scripture says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death” (Prov. 16:25). The way that seems right is the theology of glory. We are all natural-born theologians of glory. A theologian of glory believes that: God’s ways are apparent.

God’s favor is manifested in the circumstances of life, in particular, life’s successes and victories.

God is pleased by sincere human effort.

Except for Christianity, all theologies are theologies of glory. Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism—all are theologies of glory, but this theology is the way that leads to death.

How is God disposed toward me? Is he pleased or displeased? To answer these questions, the theologian of glory must speculate based upon his or her own life’s circumstances. If things are going well in life, you can conclude that God is pleased with you.

Why is God pleased with me? The theologian of glory speculates further and draws the only conclusion that his theology permits: God is pleased with me because I have pleased him. But if things are not going well, God must be displeased, and more effort to please him is required. The theologian of glory invents a god who can be—and must be— manipulated with human works.

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3:5–11): “sexual immortality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” Paul adds to this list other sins that formerly characterized those who now find their identity in Christ. Thus, believers are called to reject previous ways of living, such as “anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.” Lying to one another displays the former life (i.e., life in the flesh), which is to be abandoned since believers have now been called to put on the new self (i.e., life in the Spirit). Again, Paul does not seem to be attacking physicality in general when he says to get rid of the “earthly,” but rather he is warning against sins that characterize their former life in the flesh. Because of the presence of God in them, believers should now seek to display the marks of the Spirit’s presence: “compassion, kindness, humility,

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meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other. …And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (Col. 3:12–14).

As Paul made clear to the Galatians, Christians walk by the Spirit, which means they attempt not to “gratify the desires of the flesh” (Gal. 5:16–26). Why? Because the Spirit and flesh are two different manners of living; one imitates God, the other imitates those at enmity with God. Signs of the Spirit in a person are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and selfcontrol, while the marks of the person without God’s Spirit include impurity, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, envy, drunkenness, and orgies. To live according to the Spirit is not about hating your body or

But Christian theology is fundamentally different. Christianity is not the theology of glory, but the theology of the cross.

In contrast to the theologian of glory, the theologian of the Cross believes that: God’s ways are paradoxical and hidden to human reason.

God’s favor is manifested in Jesus, in particular, his suffering, death, and resurrection.

God is pleased only by Jesus.

Isaiah writes, “Truly you are a God who hides himself, O God and Savior of Israel” (Isa. 45:15). Why does God hide himself? The answer is a paradox: God hides himself in order to reveal himself as our Savior.

Where does God hide himself? The answer is another paradox. God, who is all-powerful, hides himself in weakness.

God, who is all-wise, hides himself in foolishness. God, who is ever-living, hides himself in death.

Here is where the theologian of glory objects: God is not weak, foolish or dead! Here the theologian of glory shows his true colors. Luther rightly diagnosed the problem: This is clear: He who does not know Christ does not know God hidden in suffering. Therefore he prefers works to suffering, glory to the cross, strength to weakness, wisdom to folly, and, in general, good to evil. These are the people whom the apostle calls “enemies of the cross of Christ” [Phil. 3:18], for they hate the cross and suffering and love works and the glory of works.

(Heidelberg Disputation, “Proof for Thesis 21”) To know Jesus Christ is to know God hidden in weakness, foolishness, and death—the weakness, foolishness and death of the cross.

How is God disposed toward me? Is he pleased or displeased? In the suffering and death of Jesus, the theologian of the cross sees God’s favor, forgiveness and mercy. Why is God pleased with me? The theologian of the cross knows that God is pleased by Jesus alone. There is no need to speculate. God is pleased with me because of Jesus and Jesus alone.

The circumstances of my life, good or bad, are not signs of God’s favor or displeasure, but are comprehended in the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

The theologian of glory defines God according to human concepts of reason, power, and wisdom; the theologian of the cross permits God to define himself, regardless how paradoxical, weak, and foolish he may appear. It is a cross-shaped theology.

Christians are not immune to the theology of glory. In many churches today, the glory of works outshines the cross of Christ. Pulpits free of paradox proclaim the Christian rather than the Christ. God is presented as easily understood and easily pleased by human effort. But this is a god who requires neither a cross nor a dead Jesus. The theology of glory leaves sinners speculating.

The cross and its theology require no speculation about God or his disposition toward sinners. There, written in the broken body and shed blood of his Son, is God’s final Word.

Todd Wilken hosts the nationally syndicated radio program Issues, Etc.

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sinful desires and actions.

Believers live in the tension between the promise of their their unhindered communion with God in heaven and unhindered communion with God in heaven and their daily wrestling with sin in the present. While sin their daily wrestling with sin in the present. While sin always negatively impacts the Christian’s relationship always negatively impacts the Christian’s relationship with God, it never jeopardizes their union with him. with God, it never jeopardizes their union with God’s good creation, but rather it is meant to describe the him. While secure in our union to Christ, we nevertheless person, who by God’s Spirit, follows after him who is “the recognize the deceitfulness of sin which can cloud our way, truth, and life” (John 14:6). vision, harden our hearts, and make us feel distant from When believers read the various traits of the “flesh” as the Father. opposed to the “Spirit,” very often they sense they have We must, therefore, consistently rise up against sin in more in common with the former than the latter. They the power of the Spirit, for this enemy does not grow tired find themselves far more aware of the sin that so easily of attacking God’s people. According to Calvin, “this entangles them, and far less aware of how they are being warfare will end only at death.” Similarly, the Puritan renewed. Just as new believers do not awaken after their John Owen (1616–1683), who wrote an entire treatise conversion to find themselves free from earlier established based on Romans 8:13, exhorted the Christian with sober financial woes, neither do they, under normal words: “Be killing sin or it will be killing you.” Owen’s circumstances, instantly find themselves free from observation that neutrality or premature rest from fighting longstanding struggles with anger, jealousy, and lust. If this battle is not an option, reveals a kind of exhausting, anything, the new saint senses personal failing in these yet accurate truth. None can escape the ongoing battle areas to a greater degree. They now have eyes to see their with sin this side of glory, but believers fight that fight in sin with painful clarity. the confidence that the actual battle has already been won Here we find the importance of gaining what might be on the cross. Victory has been secured even as we await called an “eschatological perspective.” Although a the full realization of that victory. scholarly word, “eschatology” simply means a discussion New Testament scholar Oscar Cullman memorably of the last things (eschatos). Commonly, when we talk argued that the Christian experience is equivalent to living about eschatology, we focus our attention on what is yet between D-day (June 6, 1944, the launch of the Allied to come, such as heaven, the dangers of hell, and the invasion of France in World War II) and VE-day, (May 7–8 return of Christ. According to Paul, however, those 1945, Victory in Europe day). Once the bloody battle of Drealities should never be exclusively relegated to day was won by the Allies, there was little doubt that final discussions of the future. Eschatology in the New victory over the German army would eventually be Testament must also be understood in light of the past as realized. Men and women who remained in the towns well as that which shapes our experience of the present. and prisons still occupied by the Nazis tell of being able to

By God’s Spirit, we taste the future in the present—we hear the approaching American troops; they waited enjoy true fellowship with God now, even though in the expectantly for their final deliverance, but many could not future such experiences will be far richer. And we must fully enjoy their freedom until the advancement was recognize that the Christian’s link to the future is the complete on VE-day. Similarly, believers live between a eternal Spirit who now dwells in them. different D-day (the cross and resurrection) and VE-day Let us try to draw these things together in light of (the triumphant return of Christ). Our lives must be Romans 8. Christians are those who receive the Spirit of shaped by the assured knowledge of God’s climactic work life, which has set them free from the bondage and on the cross, where we hear the earth shattering words, “it dominion of sin’s reign. In the Spirit, they have been is finished” (John 19:30). In the shadow of the cross, we made alive to the Father; now they have the distinct are confident of God’s faithful ongoing renewal in the privilege to call out to him in intimacy: “Abba” (8:16). present, and the yet-to-be experienced but certain realities Only those who have the Spirit of Christ can rightly come of the future. Through the Spirit, saints hold together the to God in such intimacy (Gal. 4:6–7). God’s perfect love past, present, and future in what forms an empowering has cast their fear of condemnation and punishment and eschatological perspective. has set them free to enter God’s presence in confidence, knowing that they come as sons and daughters of the Hope: Confidence That God Is with Us n eschatological perspective reminds us that we toil King, rather than as slaves frightened of losing their and struggle, not in our own strength, but “with all position in the home. God’s Spirit not only gives them life his energy that he powerfully works within” us (Col. and access to him but also empowers them to mortify

Believers live in the tension between the promise of

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1:29). God’s Spirit in us changes everything. While this is not a life free from suffering and pain, it is a life lived in the confidence that “he who began a good work in you will carry it to completion” (Phil. 1:6).

Notice a remarkable example of promise and fulfillment in Romans 8. Early on Paul claims that we received the “Spirit of adoption,” which enables us to cry out to God as our Abba, Father (8:15). However, later in the same chapter, he highlights the yet-to-be realized nature of our adoption when he writes that “we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (8:23).

We are God’s children now, and yet we still long for the time when we will be present fully with the Father without the hindrance and destructive power of sin. We will be free from decay and transience (1 Cor. 15). This is our hope, and our confidence in that this is God’s work.

When our eyes turn back to the cross they never remain there, for we worship the risen Lord who has overcome sin, death, and the devil. Jesus has ascended into the heavens and sent his Spirit among us. This Spirit consistently points us to our heavenly reigning Lord, whose love is immeasurable and whose heavenly intercession is unceasing. Such love is the basis for our divine predestination, calling, justification, and ultimate glorification (Rom. 8:30). These promises are based on God’s character as displayed in the righteousness of his Son and the power of his Spirit. Here is the foundation of our hope in the present.

According to the Apostle Paul, a Christian’s confident hope was not meant as an intellectual exercise to escape present sorrows. Instead, his vision puts our current struggles in a larger context—that of our reigning with Christ in the heavens. “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (8:18). Just as Jesus suffered and died, so we inevitably face such grief, often for his name’s sake. In fact, Paul and the Apostle Peter agree that Christian suffering for the gospel is not abnormal, but rather to be expected (Rom. 8:17; 2 Tim. 2:3; Phil. 1:29, 3:10; 1 Pet. 4:12–19).

Christian hope is not about the absence of pain but about the presence of God’s Spirit. Our hope is not based on what is seen but on what is unseen and patiently expected (Rom. 8:24–25; Heb. 11:1). We cannot fully see the future, but we have seen him who is the future—the risen Christ. We have his Spirit in us, who enables us to pray in the midst of confusion, fear, and grief. While we may not be able to find the right words in our weak prayers, God’s Spirit takes our groans and intercedes for us (8:27). Even when circumstances in our lives cause us to question God’s love and provision, the gift of his Spirit reframes our vision to include the future. Paul elsewhere connects the Spirit in us with our ability to see the present in light of God’s completed and promised work: “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set

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your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you will also appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:1–4).

Consequently, even through our tears we can claim—not naively, but nevertheless with eschatological confidence— that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him” (8:28, NIV).

What is the evidence that God can be trusted with our hopes? Does not the chaos and sin of this world make hope impossible? The only way to experience hope is to focus on him in whom we hope. “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (8:31). How do we know God is for us?

Paul argues that it is abundantly clear when we look to the Son. The logic is irrefutable in Paul’s mind: if God was willing to give up his own Son for us and then to raise him from the dead, how could we not trust him with our own lives? Our identity is now located in the reigning Lord who has united himself to us by his Spirit. Our Intercessor stands in the authoritative position at the right hand of the Father. In light of this, God’s elect stand justified and free from condemnation because they are sheltered in the finished work of Christ. This is the most secure position a person could ever ask for, and it provides the basis for Paul’s beautiful doxology. We can do no better than to conclude with Paul’s own words, which frame our present struggles in the light of the finished work of Christ to whom we are united by his Spirit.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? …No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 8:35–39). ■

Kelly Kapic is associate professor of biblical and theological studies at Covenant College (Lookout Mountain, Georgia) and author of Communion with God: The Divine and Human in the Theology of John Owen (forthcoming, Baker Academic).

In the preceding article, Prof. Kapic has cited or drawn on the following sources: Gerald Lewis Bray, Romans: Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), p. 6; John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 vols. Vol. 1, The Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 3.3.3–16; C. E. B. Cranfield, Romans: A Shorter Commentary, American ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985), p. 172; Oscar Cullmann, Christ and Time: The Primitive Christian Conception of Time and History (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1950), J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 2 7

INTERVIEW f o r

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An Interview with Bishop C. Fitzsimmons-Allison

The Secularization of Justification In April 2006, Michael Horton conducted the following interview with Bishop C. Fitzsimmons-Allison, the recently retired bishop of South Carolina for the Episcopal Church, for the White Horse Inn radio broadcast.

Bishop Allison, we have appreciated your encouragement of our work, especially Modern Reformation and the witness for the gospel you have maintained in the Episcopal Church and beyond.

I can tell you it’s mutual. I just love Modern Reformation and all that you are doing.

In a chapter that you wrote recently for a Festschrift for Gerhard Forde, the Lutheran theologian who died last year, you talked about the yeast of the Sadducees. We’re used to thinking of our problem being similar to that of the reformers, where they were dealing with the Pharisees, and we’re dealing with a sort of new pharasaism, a new moralism, but you point out in this chapter that unlike what the reformers were dealing with, we’re facing the “yeast of the Sadducees.” Could you explain what you mean by that?

Yes, I’ll be glad to try. It seems to me that the Sadducees are a good biblical synonym for secularism.

They didn’t believe in spirits or angels or the resurrection. Is that not just exactly what Reinhold Niebuhr calls secularism: thisworld-is-all-there-is-ism? If there’s no resurrection, it’s just us chickens here in this world and in the confines of history. And there are certain implications to that that are inevitable.

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In your chapter, Bishop Allison, you talk about the secularization of justification: Justification by self-esteem, justification by victimization, justification by acceptance. Can you walk through each of these starting with justification by self-esteem?

How does the yeast of the Sadducees turn justification into a justification by self-esteem?

Well, I think human beings are made in the image of God. They have a built-in need for righteousness, for justice. We can see it in children who say “It’s not my turn” or “It’s not fair.” I think Parade magazine some years ago pointed out that the average adolescent says “It’s not fair” nineteen times a week. I think that’s part of our very nature, to demand righteousness, and when there is no transcendent righteousness – there’s nothing after the grave – then it naturally comes back in my lap that I must be righteous. So, the way to be righteous is to think well of oneself and self-esteem has become a kind of justification as a result of the yeast of the Sadducees.

And we hear this not just in mainline liberal circles; we hear this in popular evangelical circles where people are told the good news of the gospel is “God loves you anyway,” or “You’re the center of God’s attention. Boy, he’s just so excited about you.”

Yes, I think it’s affected the whole culture.

You say this leads to a nation of sociopaths.

Well, the last thing in the world that self-esteem can stand is guilt, and guilt is regarded almost universally in our culture as some neurotic thing, whereas the Scripture sees guilt as a great friend. I think it’s Romans 3:18-19: “Let every mouth be stopped and all the world become guilty before God.” Guilt is a discrepancy between where we are and where we ought to be if we’re made in the image of God and we are far gone from that original intention.

Guilt is not something terrible and bad – true and responsible and authentic guilt, that is – is not something bad, but it is a good and hopeful indication of “that eye has not seen nor ear heard nor the heart of man conceived of all that God has prepared” for each of us.

Guilt is the very thing that sociopaths lack. I remember talking with a therapist in my parish in New York City, and she said if she could ever find any guilt in some child who had been abused, it was great and good news. It was something she could build on then, to straighten out – there was a lot of false guilt of course, but true guilt is what most sociopaths never are able to come up with.

So, really, facing our guilt is a sign of sanity.

Absolutely – and hope.

Justification by victimization – how does that happen?

Well, I think we are a nation of victims and I’ve forgotten the name of the book that says a large number of the United States population can claim some victimization. So if you’re a victim, you’re no longer held responsible. It’s a destructive thing to not give someone any sense of responsibility and accountability by which they can move from where they are to where they should be – and the kind of dignity that comes from being held responsible.

atonement, or even Christ. It was simply God accepting you, why don’t you accept yourselves…

It becomes now the law. If you have a difficult child and you’ve just said the whole thing is acceptance, then you just have to grit your teeth and accept this terrible behavior along with the child. And the child can sense that because it shows up in the tone – that teethgritting tone about accepting. It doesn’t work – it’s just reduced back to a law, not grace.

How about justification by acceptance?

Well, I think – I can even remember Paul Tillich saying in a lecture that his little attempt to define justification by grace through faith in contemporary words as “accepting oneself” – as having been accepted though unacceptable – was not the use of biblical words. And he warned us about that – that acceptance was not the biblical use of the words – and we forgot it and ignored it and we took Tillich to mean that we can lose the transcendence and reduce justification to mere acceptance. So I will be more effective if I am accepted.

And if I am misbehaving and doing something very neurotic, it’s because I haven’t been accepted.

So the worst behavior I am manifesting only means that you must listen and do more accepting for me. So justification by acceptance becomes a secular substitution for justification by grace through faith.

So you’re saying it’s a law to tell people, “Accept yourselves”; it’s gospel to tell people, “Here is how God has made you acceptable to him.”

Yes. I think we can be misled here in the sense that – and I think a lot of people are, because evangelicals are shown to be just as immoral as the secular folks in all the disturbing statistics I’ve seen lately — so therefore we’ve got to go back to the law and threaten people: “Hell ain’t full and there’s plenty of room for you.” But I think that’s just to revert back to the law without grace. That doesn’t provoke the change that we are promised in the Scripture.

That’s fascinating, because you can sit down with some evangelical pastors and ask them, “What does the doctrine of justification mean?” and often get, “Well, that I’m accepted even though I’m unacceptable.” For instance, our producer forced me to listen to a Joel Osteen sermon recently and the whole program was about acceptance, and this is what the Christian message is: The gospel is, “accept yourself” — and he never mentioned sin,

You’ve said that to really overcome this secularization of justification we have to recover the robust biblical words like justification and at the heart of it, you say, imputation. Why imputation?

I think that’s the crucial word in all of Scripture. People laugh at me about that, but that’s because the English word is translated in such an awkward way and the Greek word is translated in such awkward way, as “to reckon, to treat, to impute, to regard as, to think,” and none of those are very powerful words; but the word itself, logizomai, is logos — in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And it’s the verb form of logos. And it’s not merely that by his action Jesus Christ has made it

possible for us to have mercy, but that it’s because of what the Logos did – it was the verb, the action of the Logos. I am imputed as righteous even though I am not righteous, and by that wording of me as righteous, I begin to become that kind of righteousness that we see in the second person of the Trinity.

So it is actually a speech event.

God has declared us righteous.

That’s right. It seems to me that there’s imputation in the whole discrepancy between a righteous God ever forgiving anybody. He’s got to impute; he’s got to regard something that is bad as good in order to make it good. Logizomai, translated most frequently as “impute,” is that very action of the whole Christian faith by which God’s absolute justice deals with absolute evil and sin and injustice and begins to turn them around and make them right. But that cost, that infinite price which was paid in Jesus Christ, was his death.

So it’s not a legal fiction to say that God accounts us as righteous because of a righteousness that is fully in Christ but not in me?

Liberals and Roman Catholics have always accused the Reformation of being a legal fiction; whereas after Trent — Roman Catholicism — you are righteous because you are made righteous. Well, if there’s ever a legal fiction — I want you to show me someone who’s been made righteous. I’ve never found one, I’ve never buried one, and that’s the true legal fiction. The liberals say you must be like Jesus.

Well, I just don’t find anybody like Jesus around. You talk about a legal fiction; those are legal fictions. What is not a legal fiction is for God — because of the price he paid on Good Friday that enabled him – to take upon himself our injustice and our evil and our sin in order for the Father to look upon us with mercy, and for

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Christians who’ve been shown that mercy therefore to show that mercy to others. That is not a legal fiction; that is just what makes redemption work.

As we’ve been going through Romans, obviously we’ve been talking of introducing our listeners to a term that they may not have heard before in church history called Pelagianism, following the monk Pelagius who believed that we could pull ourselves up by our own moral bootstraps. You write that Pelagianism is not only the banana peel on the cliff of Unitarianism but it is also “pastorally cruel.” We’re not only talking about getting your doctrine straight as an end in itself – why do you think getting justification wrong is pastorally cruel?

Well I was thinking of a lady that was in our prayer group some years ago who had a terrible problem with gossip – she was aware enough that she just loved it – it was invading the prayer group.

She found in herself some glee in finding foibles in other people, and it was bringing a spirit into the prayer group that was not very good – it wasn’t a graceful thing.

And it occurred to me that gossip is the compulsive endeavor of hope that God will grade on a curve. If you’re in a class in which 70 is passing and you make 69, you flunk. But if the professor grades on a curve, and no one makes higher than a 70, you’ve got a good chance with your 69 of being an A-, at least. So if we can find enough ugly, evil things in the world and in other people in the world, especially in the clergy, or people who pretend to be righteous, then maybe God will grade on the curve and I’m in. So it’s a kind of feeding our self-righteousness. Now if we’ve heard what the Sermon on the Mount says, we go to Good Friday on our knees because there’s no way in the world an honorable, authentic 3 0 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

reading of the Sermon on the Mount leaves us with anything but “Lord, have mercy.”

So “What would Jesus do?” is not the gospel.

It’s a contemporary adoptionism.

What do you mean by that?

It’s an ancient and classical heresy which reduced the work of Christ to give us a good example. When Jesus was baptized, we heard the father say “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.”

According to the adoptionists, he did what none of the rest of us have ever done, which was to be perfect. And therefore he’s like a kind of Roger Bannister who breaks the four-minute mile. And he becomes the image by which if we just try harder, if we fuss at people enough, if we are scolded enough, if we scold other people from the pulpit enough – then they will run the four-minute mile, then they will be like Jesus.

It ignores the complete Old Testament presentation of a Messiah who came to take away the sins of the world, that God did something of which we were unable to do, that the Messiah came and made it all right by his actions. It leaves out two-thirds of the whole meaning of the gospel.

Bishop Allison, thank you so much for upholding that wonderful announcement of the gospel in your ministry.

REVIEWS what’s

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An Introduction to the New Testament and the Origins of Christianity

D

elbert Burkett and Cambridge University Press (CUP) have con-

thing from the historical and religious background of Jews, ceived a well-constructed, thoughtful, and highly informative colle- Greeks, and Romans, to studies in conflict within St. John’s giate textbook introducing the New Testament and the origins of Apocalypse. Burkett’s writing style also minimizes the impact Christianity. Burkett, of trying to access and assimilate 600 pages of a specialno stranger to CUP ized discipline and its esoteric nomenclature. All told, imprints and the this dignified and orderly textbook bears the marks and pages of New Testament standards of excellence and user-friendliness one would Studies, as well as expect from a world leader in academic publications.

Novum Testamentum, is But what shall we say of its ideological methodology? associate professor of Just what is it that Burkett and CUP present so well? religious studies at These questions have to be answered two ways. First, we Louisiana State answer in the positive. Burkett has done his homework in University. A respectan objective manner, presenting his findings, as well as ed author and ascendaccurately summarizing the learning of other scholars and ing authority in the the extrabiblical literature in an authoritative and windiscipline of New some style. Opinions and speculations are withheld in Testament studies, order to achieve—as much as possible—a factual, nonparBurkett draws on a tisan presentation of the subject and its documentary wide spectrum of sources. This professional and scientific approach makes established biblical Burkett’s research and writing so appealing, (one imagines scholarship. He disfor the newcomer), if not altogether compelling, even tills frequently comwhen it comes to the content of the gospel itself. What An Introduction to the plex research and adds to the author’s seemingly impartial presentation is New Testament and the detailed theoretical that, on the whole, he lets the text speak for itself by simOrigins of Christianity analysis of the text ply delineating in a summary format the contents of a

by Delbert Burkett and origins of given gospel, epistle, or nonsacred ancient manuscript.

Cambridge University Press, 2005 Christianity in order The ideological methodology that the contributors to An 600 pages (paperback), $34.99 to present the inforIntroduction to the New Testament and the Origins of Christianity mation thoroughly to nontechnicians. In his research, have ostensibly striven for is one that is philosophically Burkett initiates the contents of the apostolic writings neutral, that is, non-indoctrinating. and first-century socioreligious developments pertinent However, this enlightened and celebrated tabula rasa to the formation and legacy of the Christian church. approach does not work. It never works. Interpretation of The organization of this textbook is laudable. In addithe sacred texts and therefore indoctrination concerning tion to the judicious inclusion of wide margins for collatthe sacred texts inevitably take place, thereby shaping and ing notes, the book includes many well-appointed illuscoloring the presentation to the reader. This is especially trations, charts, graphs, tables, maps, and appendices. true when the proposed methodology is the byproduct of An Introduction to the New Testament and the Origins of a theoretical-scientific approach to Scripture, appropriated Christianity utilizes these to facilitate the digestion of its from associated noncanonical sources (where such an massive seven-part, forty-chapter presentation of everyapproach does, in fact, achieve a greater degree of objectiv-

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ity). Stated baldly, Burkett cannot get out of his own ideological way when attempting to get out of his own hermeneutical way when it comes to the books of the New Testament. He is programmatic about reading horizons.

The result of feigning stark neutrality with a theory-laden scientific analysis of the New Testament (especially its authorial and documentary sources) is a presumptive investigation that itself yields a hyper-interpretation of the sacred texts. Thus Burkett, whether he intends to or not, endlessly prefaces the contents of some New Testament book, epistle, or pericope with either an undermining documentary theory (usually espousing redaction) or a sociological theory that renders the subject of study the mere result of an anthropological phenomenon. Either way, it comes off sounding, well, so scientific, so factual. The newcomer to the New Testament and the origins of Christianity, and the believer weak in faith, could and likely would dismiss the verity of the sacred text given such influential proposals, especially if the reader did not have recourse to the interpretative faith community to substantiate the contents of Holy Scripture.

Moreover, there is the problem of melding an investigation into the literature of the New Testament Scriptures and corroborative, noncanonical literature into one. The application of one’s methodological approach to noncanonical literature, with all of its parameters, criteria, and assumptions, simply cannot do justice to the essential distinctiveness of Holy Writ as a unique literary genre with its own in-built hermeneutical principles.

Faith communities, particularly ministers and instructors at Christian institutions, will want to be guarded about the use, let alone recommendation, of this otherwise exemplary textbook and resource due to its subtle interpretative paradigm and undermining proposals.

John J. Bombaro Koloa, Hawaii

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Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World

by David F. Wells Eerdmans, 2005 339 pages (hardcover), $25.00 David Wells’s latest book, Above All Earthly Pow’rs, is one that I found next to impossible to put down once I started reading it. This work truly is the culmination of his theological thought. Wells has published a book that describes the essence of postmodern thought as well as a remedy that enables the church to return to her historical underpinnings. While I found all of his first three books in this series filled with helpful insights and profound analyses, his latest work stands head and shoulders above the others, although it builds on them.

In eight chapters, Wells covers a wide range of components and philosophies of modern and postmodern societies. He introduces Chapter 1 (“Miracles of Modern Splendor”) with a captivating line: “We think little about the world. We think about the things that it imposes upon us. We must think about the workplace, about appointments we have made, people we will meet, and jobs that must get done” (13). His opening sentence typifies modern man as well as the twenty-first-century church. For far too many, life is lived almost totally unreflectively. The cheap, tawdry, and superficial gets our attention, but that which requires effort and reflection is easily jettisoned.

Wells tackles the nature of culture and demands that we reflect with him on what it entails and how it affects our lives. As his approach unfolds, he leads us into one of the watershed times in the history of the world: the Enlightenment. He juxtaposes Enlightenment thought with the pre-modern era as well as what is called modernism, while at the same time, clearly demonstrating the links between the two eras.

One of the key tenets of Enlightenment thinking has to do with discarding the God hypothesis. Man, using his enlightened reason, will bring about a bright future. Wells points out that “The experience of our modernized world leads us to think of it not only as the absence of God, but as it turns out, the absence of human nature. This is no coincidence. The death of God is always followed by the death of the human being” (48).

Citing C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, Wells demonstrates how the evisceration of human nature resulted in the world being “emptied of the possibility of real, objective goodness and real, objective evil” (48).

It was precisely in the “modern period” that three major paradigm shifts occurred. First, there was “the replacement of Virtue by values” (49). Second, there was a shift from “a focus on character to one on personality” (50). In general, this shift was a movement away from the older moral concern with personal restraint and sacrifice and towards self-absorption in the forms of self-realization and self-expression. Finally, these two shifts paved the way for the third major change: “that of speaking of the self in place of human nature” (50). All of this was merely the culmination of Enlightenment thought. Previously, what people believed only God could do, “the Enlightenment now placed within human reach” (53)—at least theoretically. Man’s “belief in human omnicompetence” was supplanted by postmodernism.

I have read quite extensively on postmodernism, but have found Wells’s analysis to be the most helpful by far.

He entitles the second chapter “Postmodern Rebellion,” which is apt in a number of ways. Pointing to the secular roots of postmodernism, Wells delineates several cultural contributors including pragmatism, existentialism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminism, language theory, and theories about science (61).

Yet even though postmodernists desire to sever the ties with the modern past, Wells questions whether they actually accomplish their desires. In fact, he argues “modernity and postmodernity are actually reflecting different aspects of our modernized culture. They are more siblings in the same family than rival gangs in the same neighborhood” (62). He also makes the observation that for the longest time Christianity and Christian scholars were critical of the tenets championed by the Enlightenment. It is not as if there is an equivalent correspondence between Christian living after the Enlightenment and the Enlightenment itself.

What intrigues Wells is how the influence of postmodern intellectuals such as Foucault and Derrida filters down to MTV or how the pragmatism of American philosopher Richard Rorty surfaces in our movies. This is what Wells sets out to explain in his cultural analysis.

One of the foundational pillars of postmodern thought is the notion that there is nothing transcendent to give meaning to life and to make life cohere rather than fragment.

This, in turn, wreaks havoc on one’s worldview, since at least radical postmodernism rejects absolute truth and purpose. Postmodernism is the death knell to all worldviews, except that postmoderns realize that no one can live consistently within such a framework, so their “surrogate” for the modern life and worldview is a privatized version where they “set themselves up autonomously as the acknowledged legislators of the world” so that they can conceptualize reality and shape the nature of life as they please (74).

It is instructive to note that the language and principles of the postmodern philosophers are, more and more, evident in mega-church leaders and their congregations as well as in what is known as the Emergent Church (continued on page 34)

SHORT NOTICES Contending for All: Defending Truth and Treasuring Christ in the Lives of Athanasius, John Owen, and J. Gresham Machen

by John Piper Crossway/Goodnews, 2006 192 pages (hardback), $17.99 Cantankerous pursuit of doctrinal minutiae is a problem. But more common is the vapid repetition of religious language either divested of any true content or replaced with antibiblical error. Through the lives of three lifelong doctrinal controversialists, Piper indicates the necessity of contending for the truth against false claims. Loving Jesus Christ requires speaking true and loving words about him.

— Matthew Harmon

Lost Women of the Bible: Finding Strength & Significance Through Their Stories

by Carolyn Custis James Zondervan, 2005 239 pages (hardback), $16.99 Readers of When Life and Beliefs Collide will be glad to see a new book from popular author and speaker Carolyn Custis James.

Tackling the topic of women in the Bible from a fresh angle, James continues to bring sincere and humble dialogue to the discussion of the role of women in ministry. She deals with women who are well known—Eve, Sarah, Mary—and some who are not—“Mrs. Noah”— from the perspective of being lost—lost apart from redemption by God’s grace and lost in the sense that we tend to overlook them and miss what they have to say to us.

— Diana Frazier, Modern Reformation Book Review Editor (continued on page 35)

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(continued from page 33) Movement. This consists, among other things, of attempting to join what is really not “join-able.” For example, many Emergent leaders wish either to deny, discount, or downplay the history of the church. Wells devotes an informative section in Chapter 4 (“Christ in a Spiritual World”) on the spirituality of postmodernity (“The Empty Landscape, My Own Little Voice, and It’s About Me”).

He proceeds to discuss Christ in a meaningless world (Chapter 5) as well as Christ in a decentered world (Chapter 6). In the latter chapter Wells supplies a trenchant analysis of Open Theology.

In the seventh chapter (“Megachurches, Paradigm Shifts, and the New Spiritual Quest”), Wells examines the “new way of doing church” in postmodernism and offers an excellent critique of serious misgivings and shortfalls of modern Evangelicalism as it has been captivated by cultural trends. As a historian, Wells calls us to reflect upon the demise of the churches in Europe and to ask ourselves if modern Evangelicalism might not be heading down the same path as its European counterparts.

Wells is convinced that our almost-obsession with reinventing and reengineering the church (often called “doing church”) in order to reach the postmodern is clearly not the way to go (265). Why? In his mind, the common element in modern evangelical “seeker-sensitive, user-friendly” churches is that “success requires little or no theology” (265). This approach is tantamount to marketing the Christian faith and turning the local congregation into a business more than a church. Of note is that “Seeker methodology rests upon the Pelagian view that human beings are not inherently sinful, despite credal affirmations to the contrary… ” (299).

What is the remedy? What are churches existing in the twenty-first century to do? Wells concludes this about the place of God’s truth in our modern society, “The fact is that as dazzling as the modern world has become, it has never outgrown its need for this kind of truth, never invalidates it, and therefore the liberal (and now seeker-sensitive) fear of becoming outdated is as groundless as the small child’s nervousness about a monster in the closet” (300–301).

It is time for the various churches of Jesus Christ to engage in some serious “values clarification.” “If they cannot clarify for themselves who is sovereign—God or the religious consumer?—what is authoritative in practice— Scripture or culture?—and what is important—faithfulness or success?—they will find themselves walking the same road and facing the same fate as the churches that failed before because whatever seriousness now remains will dissolve into triviality” (301). We’ve been warned and warned well.

Rev. Ron Gleason Grace Presbyterian Church Yorba Linda, California

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POINT OF CONTACT: BOOKS YOUR NEIGHBORS ARE READING A Million Little Pieces

by James Frey Doubleday/Anchor Books, 2005 448 pages (paperback), $14.95 For some poor souls, those substances that lubricate conversation, ease pain, or invoke euphoria can become demanding mistresses that destroy lives. When the problem gets out of control, Alcoholics Anonymous and various other twelve-step programs are the most popular and well-known methods addicts use to conquer their demons.

James Frey argues against the twelve-step method of recovery in his melodramatic tale of overcoming addiction to booze, crack, and assorted other pharmaceuticals, A Million Little Pieces. Frey’s memoir, which chronicles his six weeks in rehab, was a bestseller even before America’s spiritual leader Oprah Winfrey picked it for her book club in September 2005. Although it was first published in 2003, A Million Little Pieces was the second bestselling book of last year and continues on the New York Times best seller list at this writing.

The sustained success and increased profile of the memoir led investigative journalism outlet The Smoking Gun to look into the book’s outlandish details in late 2005. Frey claims he was wanted in three states, served time in prison, and left a priest in Paris for dead. His litany, “I am an Alcoholic and I am a drug Addict and I am a Criminal,” is repeated over a half-dozen times. But it turns out that he greatly embellished his most-wanted status. A minor real-life incident involving an open Pabst Blue Ribbon can in his car is turned into an arrest for “Possession, Possession with Intent to Distribute, three DUIs, a bunch of Vandalism and Destruction of Property charges, Assault, Assault with a Deadly Weapon, Assaulting an Officer of the Law, Public Drunkenness, and Disturbing the Peace.”

That anyone needed The Smoking Gun to tell them the book had problems—other than annoying random capitalization and wholesale rejection of meaningful punctuation—is a sad statement on people’s gullibility.

The very first page has Frey waking up on a commercial flight with an open facial wound and clothing covered with “a colorful mixture of spit, snot, urine, vomit and blood.” Anyone who has ever traveled by air should question whether such a passenger would be permitted past the ticket counter, much less security. And if they bought that, Frey’s claim that he underwent a double root canal without anesthesia should have gotten them.

It’s not because the pain is unendurable so much as the number of dentists willing to have their hands in the mouth of an unmedicated madman is probably quite low.

Memoirs are supposed to be true, and Frey claims repeatedly that everything he shares is brutally factual.

Indeed, while contemplating suicide, he writes his obituary with shocking details about record-setting bloodalcohol levels, narcotics rap sheets, and defecating blood daily. The obituary is important because it doesn’t hide the harsh details of his life, he writes. “It tells the truth, and as awful as it can be, the truth is what matters. It is what I should be remembered by, if I am remembered at all. Remember the truth. It is all that matters.”

Truth, it turned out, was rather subjective. Winfrey brought him back on the show to announce she was shocked and disappointed by his rampant lying. The publicity, while certainly humiliating, increased the sales even more.

Frey’s opposition to Alcoholics Anonymous is still interesting, even after it becomes obvious his addiction was more garden variety than criminal. Rather than seeing his affliction as a disease that victimizes individuals who are genetically predisposed to overindulge, he believes that addiction is the product of poor decisionmaking. Frey writes, An individual wants something, whatever that something is, and makes a decision to get it. Once they have it, they make a decision to take it. If they take it too often, that process of decisionmaking gets out of control, and if it gets too far out of control, it becomes an addiction. At that point the decision is a difficult one to make, but it is still a decision.

At a time when victim status is revered everywhere from college campuses to the halls of Congress and the most repulsive sins are reclassified as virtues, a book making a persuasive case for personal responsibility is welcome. It’s a shame his message is undercut by his pervasive dishonesty.

But the other main reason why Frey opposes Alcoholics Anonymous is juvenile: He hates God. “I am shaking my fist at the Sky and calling God a piece of **** Mother******, I am calling God a *****,” he says. The tough man cussing carries through 430 vomit-caked pages. Later he decides he doesn’t need to be so angry at God. “I will not fight God anymore. I will not fight anything Higher. Fighting is an acknowledgement of existence. I no longer need to fight or acknowledge what I know is not there.”

He mocks his fellow patients at the Minnesota rehab clinic for testifying that God helps them in their struggles. They have replaced one addiction for another, he says. The twelve steps are based on a belief in a higher power, which is a notion so nebulous and fragile that it seems impossible anyone could develop the passion to (continued on page 36)

Short Notices (continued from page 33)

The Letters of Geerhardus Vos James T. Dennison, editor P & R Publishing, 2006 300 pages (hardback), $29.99 The wealth of Vos’s biblical-theological insights continue to aid today’s students of Scripture. This biography and collection of Vos’s extant letters will introduce readers to the retiring scholar who modeled faithful engagement and critique of contemporary trends in biblical and theological scholarship. In an age of substantial theological upheaval, Geerhardus Vos passed his teaching career at Calvin Theological Seminary and Princeton Theological Seminary without enduring the same scrutiny and controversy as his betterknown contemporaries and colleagues Abraham Kuyper, Herman Bavinck, B. B. Warfield, and J. Gresham Machen.

This volume highlights Vos’s intimate connections with these leading Reformed figures on both sides of the Atlantic and his role in the confluence of Dutch Calvinism and American Presbyterianism.

An invaluable resource for the study of Vos, the book has only two shortcomings. First, letters of Vos’s conversation partners are not included. The resulting effect is similar to hearing one side of a phone conversation. Also, the lack of introductory information for individual letters at times hinders an appreciation of context. These faults are ameliorated somewhat by referencing the biography and the editor’s explanatory notes.

—Matthew Harmon

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(continued from page 35) fight it. But fight he does. He dumps the Bible the clinic gave him out of his window. When someone brings the rain-soaked Scriptures back to his room, he says he wishes he could flush it down the toilet. “I have read the New Testament. I will not waste my time on it again.”

His brother brings him the Tao Te Ching, a book of platitudinous philosophical truisms—“If you want to get rid of something, you must first allow it to flourish … If you want to know the World, look inside your heart”—which he devours with glee.

He likes the Tao, as opposed to Christianity, because the sayings “do not tell me to do anything or be anything or believe in any thing or become anything. They don’t judge me or try to convince me. There is no righteousness or pretension. They don’t fight me or insult me or tell me what I do wrong. There is no Authority and there are no Rules.”

It is not surprising that someone like Frey would hate the Law of God, pronouncing judgment upon him for his sins. We are all dirty liars. When we tell stories, we’re the hero or the wronged victim; we repeat those compliments others give us but bury insightful statements that reveal our deepest insecurities.

“I’ve read the Bible. It didn’t ring true to me,” Frey writes. Because it is his own tome that fails to ring true, perhaps he should give the Scriptures another try. Perhaps what didn’t ring true for him was the idea that God would take his sins, his addictions, his lies and distortions and remove them as far away as East is from West. But it is true. Frey has a long way to go in his battle against God, but the forgiveness, which we receive through Christ Jesus, is for him and all of the rest of us liars, gluttons, and juvenile God-haters.

Mollie Ziegler Washington, DC

MODERN REFORMATION WRITERS John Williamson Nevin: High Church Calvinist

by D. G. Hart P & R Publishing, 2005 271 pages, (hardback), $22.99 Who brought about the greater changes in American Protestantism: Charles Darwin or Jonathan Edwards? Most historians argue that the sea change came after the War between the States. Protestantism had to grapple with the problems created by cities and industries, the challenges of higher criticism, the changes brought about by looking at religion through the lens of psychology, and the apparent undermining of biblical faith by Darwinism. This period is considered the point at which Protestantism had to go on the defensive. The result was that some tried their best to adjust to the changing realities (Liberalism), while others circled the wagons (Fundamentalism).

Such is the conventional wisdom.

But in this fine biography of John Williamson Nevin, an obscure nineteenth-century one-time Presbyterian, then German Reformed professor, Hart argues that American Protestantism experienced its most determining change much earlier through the work of Jonathan Edwards and his co-revivalists (the term “revivalist” does not identify Edwards with the errors of Charles Finney, the excesses of the Second Great Awakening, or Revivalism’s current incarnations).

If, as historians assume, the measure of the church is its healthy relationship to matters external to it, such as the economy, the world of learning, or domestic or international affairs, then the period after 1870 was indeed a critical one for American Protestants. But if, as Nevin argued, the well-being of the church is determined by its own internal affairs, its worship, its sacramental life, its creed, then the critical period for American Protestants came well before the nineteenth century. (233)

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Hart contends that Nevin, …recognized not simply the historical discontinuity between Calvin, Ursinus, and the Westminster divines on the one side and Edwards and Finney on the other. Nevin also articulated the fundamental incompatibility between revivalism (the system of the [anxious] bench) and the historic branches of the Protestant Reformation (the system of the catechism [here standing for the whole of the ministry of the ordinary means of grace]).

The former was subjective, individualistic, and didactic, while the latter was objective, corporate, and sacramental. In a word, the anxious bench located religious authenticity inside the believing individual, the (system of the) catechism in the corporate practices of the church. (234) Herein lies the primary significance of Nevin for Reformed and Presbyterian churches today.

Let’s get this out of the way: Nevin was quirky in personality and in views. He struggled with depressive episodes and had an acerbic pen. He made much too little of preaching for a Reformed Protestant and perhaps over-read Calvin on the Lord’s Supper (though this may be excused partially by the generally low view of the Lord’s Supper held in his day, to say nothing of ours).

He put too much emphasis on the incarnation and not enough on the atonement. He was influenced by German philosophy (though perhaps no more so than the Princetonians were by Scottish philosophy). He is not the man Westminster Calvinists would want to see teaching systematic theology in a Reformed seminary.

Let’s also get this out of the way: The Federal Visionists seem to like this biography (apparently because they perceive Nevin as an historical ally). It is true that the Federal Visionists are concerned, as was Nevin, with the effects of Revivalism on the church and with the low view of the church and sacraments that is found among Reformed Protestants, but neither the Visionists nor Nevin are alone in those concerns. The errors of the Federal Vision theology must not be used to dismiss Nevin, or others who share a higher view of the visible church and the effects of the sacraments and a different view of conversion and piety. To hold such views is not to believe that all the blessings of redemption are actually bestowed at baptism but may be lost by covenant unfaithfulness, or that election is conditional, or to question the Reformation’s formulations of justification, or imputation, or covenant.

Consider the following questions: 1. What is the nature of the church? Is the word “church” roughly equivalent to “all the Christians in the world,” or is it an institution with a body of doctrine, a system of government, a unique mission, and a form of worship? Is the church the earthly agency of applied

salvation, or is salvation an individual and personal matter essentially between the soul and God? Do the Reformed truly believe, as their confessions teach, that outside the visible church there is no ordinary possibility of salvation? Is the church our mother apart from which we cannot have God as our Father? Are Reformed Baptists and historic Presbyterians one except for differing views of the subjects and modes of baptism and of forms of church government, or are there profound differences about the nature of the church, of the covenant, and of conversion?

2. What are the effects of the means of grace? Are the means of grace the channels by which the grace of God flows into those who receive them? Is not baptism among some Presbyterians little more than a “baby dedication” with water? Is not the Lord’s Supper in practice little more than an ordinance that stirs pious remembrances and feelings? Fully acknowledging that there is no ex opere operato in connection with the means, do we believe that the Spirit ordinarily accompanies their use to make them effective? Do we expect the work of God to go forward by the faithful administration and reception of the means of grace or are we treading water while we await revival?

3. What is the nature of conversion? Are baptized children to be pressed regarding the need of a distinct and memorable conversion experience, or do we expect them to believe as they are taught the faith in the ministry of the church? Are professing Christians, faithful in attendance at the means of grace and communicants in good standing, to be led toward a form of self-examination that leads the person to ask, “Have I been truly converted? Has the transaction occurred? Have I closed with Christ?” Or, are they to be treated in accord with their profession and standing, charged to walk worthy of the faith, and encouraged as they make the long and difficult journey to the world to come?

4. Why are some Protestants tempted, as was Nevin, to “go over” to Roman Catholicism? Is one reason the lack among “low-church” Reformed churches of historical connectedness with the church of the ages, especially with the post-apostolic fathers? Could another be the frothy superficiality, the lack of substantial edification, the loss of awe, and the random nature of worship that has been infected and affected by Revivalism? Does the word “liturgy” conjure up thoughts of Roman Catholicism (and/or Liberalism)? Could yet another be the lack of unity that seems to be one of the unintended consequences of the Reformation? (Or are we to be satisfied with some sort of undefined ethereal spiritual unity requiring no visible form?) Is it possible that one of the reasons the Federal Vision has gotten such traction is because of these nagging doubts about what Protestantism has wrought?

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5. What is the nature of church office, especially the minister of the Word? Are ministers men through whom Christ speaks? Or, are they enablers and equippers whose service is to get church members to do the “real ministry”? Are ministers to be respected, or are they to be treated with suspicion and any power they may have kept in close check? Does the minister really have the keys to the kingdom in his hands as he preaches the Word and administers the sacraments?

What are our intuitional answers? Would they have been the same in the nineteenth century? Or are they the same in the twenty-first as they would have been in the sixteenth century or even the seventeenth, that is, in the period of the writing of all the Reformed statements of faith? No doubt there are differences that can be detected between Heidelberg and Westminster, but this book contends that despite the differences, their conceptions of the church, of the sacraments, of the ministry, of conversion, and of piety share a broad consensus that is different from what developed after the age of Edwards as Revivalism reshaped Protestantism.

Nevin’s importance to us today is not so much in his views of the “real presence” or his incarnational theology, but in his seeing clearly what Revivalism had done and calling the church back to what he thought was an age of more healthy piety. William F. Buckley defined a conservative as someone who stands athwart history and shouts, “Stop!” That is what Nevin tried to do as he saw untoward changes in the ecclesiology, the worship, and the experiential soteriology brought about by the triumph of Revivalism. The evidence is all around us today that, whatever we may think of the value of Nevin’s insights or the correctness of his views, he failed.

So pervasive is the influence of Revivalism on the theology and practice of Protestantism that those with whom Nevin may resonate have before them a task nearly as large as the Reformation itself.

D. G. Hart has given us the second in the series of biographies of American Reformed men, and an excellent volume it is. Here is a sympathetic, but nonetheless critical, telling of Nevin’s life and theology. It is a fitting complement to Hart’s near-magisterial work, The Lost Soul of American Protestantism. Those who would understand where we are, how we got here, and what may be wrong with it, will do well to purchase and read these two volumes.

William H. Smith Jackson, Mississippi

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God of Promise: Introducing Covenant Theology

by Michael Horton Baker Book House, 2006 208 pages (hardback), $19.99 Growing up in a Baptist home while attending a Presbyterian church, I heard quite a few discussions about covenant theology. Nearly every time, though, the focus of the discussion was on the legitimacy of paedobaptism.

This happened often enough that I naturally associated the two subjects; whenever covenant theology came up, I assumed paedobaptism was not far behind. Even for those Presbyterians who grew up without any Baptist influences, I suspect covenant theology is often viewed as primarily a theological support for infant baptism, or else a riposte to dispensationalism. And it is precisely for that reason that Michael Horton’s new book God of Promise is such a welcome addition to the literature on this topic.

Horton labors to show that covenant theology informs a wide variety of theological topics, including, but far from limited to, baptism. He even goes so far as to say that “whenever Reformed theologians attempt to explore and explain the riches of Scripture, they are always thinking covenantally about every topic they take up.” (14) To defend this claim, Horton begins by explaining just what is meant by “covenant.” He describes two kinds of international treaties that were common in the ancient Near East: suzerainty treaties and royal grants. In a suzerainty treaty, the lesser king (vassal) could enter into a covenant with the great king (suzerain), or as often happened, a suzerain could rescue a vassal from impending doom and therefore claim his right to annex the beneficiaries of his kindness by covenant to his empire. They would be his people, and he would be their suzerain.

The vassal state would then be given a set of stipulations to live by, and the covenant would be ratified by a meal or ceremony. In treaties of this kind, the benefits of political allegiance with the suzerain would obtain to the vassal state provided that it obeyed the suzerain’s stipulations.

A royal grant works oppositely. In a royal grant, “an inheritance [is] bestowed freely and in utter graciousness on the basis of the Great King’s performance.” In short, a royal grant is an unconditional bequest. Horton quotes an ancient near eastern example: “From this day forward Niqmaddu…king of Ugarit has taken the house of Pabeya…which is in Ullami, and given it to Nuriyana and to his descendants forever…Seal of the king.”

God accommodates himself to these two sorts of treaties and makes two sorts of covenants in the Old Testament. The covenant at Sinai is patterned after the suzerainty treaty, while the covenant with post-Fall Adam, Noah, Abraham, and David are all modeled after the royal grant. As such, the latter covenants are essentially gracious and promissory, while the Sinaitic covenant is a covenant of works. In the promissory covenants, God swears by himself (dramatically portrayed in the covenant ritual of Genesis 15) that what is promised will come to pass and will not fade away. In the Sinaitic covenant, however, that which is promised is contingent on the people’s obedience, and the possibility of forfeiture is very real.

Horton does not mean to suggest that these two covenants absolutely contradict each other. As to what is promised—a land and descendants, each pointing to the future eschatological blessings of the New Covenant—they are in continuity with each other.

However, there is a genuine antithesis between them as to how those blessings are to be appropriated. “When it comes to how we receive the inheritance and so are made beneficiaries of everlasting life, Paul sets these covenants in absolute antithesis. They represent two different ‘principles’ (nomoi): the principle of works (law) and the principle of grace (promise).”

Horton suggests that failure to recognize these two kinds of covenants will make it very difficult to do justice to the biblical data: “…we must resist concluding that the covenant concept is inherently conditioned upon personal performance and…that it is inherently gracious in character. In both cases, we are making a priori judgments about what a covenant can and cannot be rather than attending to the diverse ways in which the word is used in the Scriptures. Covenant in both Old and New Testaments is a broad term encompassing a variety of arrangements—most notably, conditional covenants of law and unconditional covenants of promise.”

Of course, acknowledging this does not mean recognizing two distinct modes of salvation. Salvation was always by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. The purpose of the Sinaitic covenant of works was not to propose an alternative to that arrangement via works, but to point to Christ both by underscoring Israel’s inability to keep the law and by providing typological images such as the sacrificial system and the temple. Even so, the difference between these covenants based on the contrast between law and promise is quite real.

The New Covenant, Horton says, is not a suzerainty treaty, but a royal grant.

service, the New Testament teaches that believers become coheirs with Christ…inheriting by grace that which he has inherited by personal obedience.

Horton is careful to point out that this does not mean the law has no role in the life of the believer. “The apostle Paul,” he writes, “was not an antinomian.” For one thing, royal grants always carried an implicit obligation to reasonable service and fidelity. But beyond that, obedience is actually one of the New Covenant blessings. As Horton writes, “The new covenant announced by the prophets long ago included both justification and rebirth, imputed and imparted righteousness, forgiveness of sins and a new heart that thirsts for God and his glory.” All these things are part of the “royal grant” bestowed on those in Christ. The believer, then, will have an intimate relationship with the law, but the law will never again be the basis of the believer’s covenant standing before God. Obedience is now a promise, not a condition. “While the Scriptures uphold the moral law as the abiding way of life for God’s redeemed people, it can never be a way to life.”

With these categories in place, Horton goes on to discuss the ways in which these two kinds of covenant relate to the older concepts of the eternal covenant of redemption, the pre-Fall covenant of works, and the covenant of grace. He also discusses how covenant theology affects one’s view of common grace, of the canon, of the relationship between Israel and the church, of the sacraments, and of the relationship between divine and human agency. He closes the book with an entire chapter focusing on how the law is meant to function in the life of the New Covenant believer.

On the whole, God of Promise is a good example of how redemptive-historical hermeneutics can be of service to systematics, and it is unique in its appreciation of the broad sense of the term “covenant” in Scripture, its balanced consideration of both recent and classical scholarship, and its attention to the broad theological implications of covenant theology.

Michael Vendsel La Salle University

The blessings of the New Covenant are not obtained through obedience to the law, but as a gift through faith in Christ: The New Testament…identifies its new covenant with the royal grant, a promissory oath made to Noah, Abraham, and David… Just as a great king bestows a gift on a loyal vassal in view of noteworthy J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 3 9

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Children’s Church by participation the reverence and awe with which we are to come before a course, this church has one. Don’t all churches? Imagine the holy God, a reverence and awe unlikely to be found visitor’s surprise to discover that not only does this church not to the same degree in a children’s church. have a children’s church, but this is a deliberate choice.

Children who always go to another service, designed Mystified, the visitor wonders why a church would not around their needs, miss the opportunity to learn that have a children’s church. A biblical understanding of something is expected of all of us when we come to worchurch, children, and family presents us with several good ship. In this age more than ever, when so much of how reasons.

Americans “do church” flows out of what potential attenThe New Testament continually calls attention to one dees would like to have, our children need to understand of the church’s most startling characteristics: it unites. that the focus of worship is God, not the preferences of the There are no divisions in the church. Gender, class, race— worshiper. By including children in our worship service, these all dissolve before the unmerited grace of God. Then all of these elements can combine to assist our children’s why should we divide by age? Certainly, age-appropriate spiritual development. The effect is a cumulative one, teaching for preschoolers, school-age children, and teens growing out of years of faithful practice. A visit to “adult has its place. But we do this in Sunday school and in midchurch” once a year simply will not have the same results. week programs. If we wish to reflect the New Testament’s If our children do not regularly participate in our church’s understanding of the church united, we need to regularly worship service, they will go without these benefits. come together—completely together. The church includes The church is the family of God. As such, it is compersons of all ages. When we come together as a church posed of many smaller families. A church should want to body to worship and to hear God’s word proclaimed, peoencourage the family life of its families. We should want ple of all ages should be among us. to encourage our parents to model corporate worship for “My children won’t get anything out of church,” our their children. We should be willing to demonstrate visitor may protest. True, children may not understand all patience with the children among us as they learn to parthe words spoken in the church service, nor all the conticipate with us in worship. Can we clearly teach our famcepts taught. Nonetheless, children in the worship service ilies the critical importance of corporate worship if we pull will gain a great deal which they can obtain in no other them apart and send their members off in different direcway. By regularly worshiping with the entire church body, tions to worship in age-graded groups every Sunday children will come to sense that this is their community, morning? their family; they belong here. They will watch, Sunday after Sunday, the example of the people most important to them, their own parents. They will watch their parents Starr Meade is author of Training Hearts, Teaching Minds: interact with the proclaimed word of God and will grow in Family Devotions Based on the Shorter Catechism (P & R their own ability to understand and respond to it. (Some Publishing, 2000). churches keep the children in the service until time for the sermon, then dismiss them—but what does this teach about the central role of preaching in worship?) Children may hear music from the church choir unlike anything they hear anywhere else, and they will become familiar with our Christian heritage as they become familiar with the words and tunes of hymns. In the worship service, children will witness the solemn joy with which believers partake in the elements of the Lord’s Table. They will learn

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here’s the children’s church?” a visitor asks, assuming that, of

4 0 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

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