this-is-my-fathers-world-september-october-2002

HIDDEN GOD ❘ “LET’S ROLL!” ❘ KUSHNER ON TRAGEDY

MODERN REFORMATION

THIS IS MY FATHER’S WORLD VOLUME

11, NUMBER 5 , SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2002, $5.00

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THIS IS MY FATHER’S WORLD

15 Providence and Common Grace Using contrasting categories of Scripture—revealed/hidden, common/special, secondary/primary, providence/miracle— the author explains why the Reformation view of providence ultimately includes an appreciation for the common, created realm, as well as God’s special activity in the life of the church. by Michael Horton Plus: Providence

22 Suffering, Death, and the Hidden God WORLD TRADE TOWER PHOTO BY AP/WIDEWORLD PHOTOS.

“Where is God when it hurts?” The surprising answer, according to the author, is that he is nearest when his people suffer for he identifies with them by redeeming them from ultimate suffering in the death of Christ. by William Cwirla Plus: Finding Hope Beyond the Ruins: an Interview with Lisa Beamer

32 Human Sin and God’s Purpose: Some Thoughts on the Doctrine of Divine Concurrence Tragedy, like the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, often causes us to question God’s sovereignty or goodness; but the author argues that there is a “concurrence”—a union of action—when it comes to God’s purposes and human sin. by Kim Riddlebarger Plus: Is Providence “Practical”?

COVER PHOTO MONTAGE DESIGNED BY LORI COOK

38 God’s Providence Over All Using his own experience as an example, the author explains how people often try to cope with personal tragedy, leading us to conclude that the Scriptural doctrine of divine providence, while mysterious, is the best option. by Mark R. Talbot

In This Issue page 2 | Letters page 3 | Open Exchange page 6 | Ex Auditu page 7 Preaching from the Choir page 10 | Speaking of page 11 | Between the Times page 12 Resource Center page 26 | We Confess page 44 | Free Space page 45 | Reviews page 47 | On My Mind page 52 S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 2 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 1

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Turning Mourning into Joy

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MODERN REFORMATION Editor-in-Chief Michael Horton Executive Editor Mark R. Talbot

ith barely a year of national perspective on the devastating attacks of September 11, 2001, many people are still trying to come to terms with the violence, fear, anxiety, and a disturbing sense of violation—we’re not

as safe as we thought we were. For several weeks after the attacks attendance at our nation’s churches spiked dramatically. With the passing months, however, the return to preSeptember 11th attendance levels signals the public’s waning interest in spiritual matters. But with every new government-issued terror alert, the pulse quickens, fears re-emerge, and a quick prayer (to the god of their choice) is uttered.

Reformational Christians are supposed to deal with such national tragedies in a significantly different manner. After all, we recognize first and foremost that God is in control of all events—both good and evil. As Creator and Redeemer, he both controls and ordains all that comes to pass. But for many, their understanding of God’s providential care was shaken significantly by the events of September 11th. Beginning, then, with Michael Horton’s article, which distinguishes and relates the themes of God’s work of sustaining creation and his work of redemption, our contributors take a closer look at the doctrine of providence in this issue of Modern Reformation.

The goal of this issue is not to offer any political analysis of the attacks—unique in our nation’s history—but instead to argue that the doctrine of providence informs Christian thinking in the everyday moments of life, as well as horrific national tragedies, like this nation has recently endured. Assistant editor Ann Henderson Hart, in relating Lisa Beamer’s story of coping with the sudden death of her husband, Todd, on United flight 93, reveals the

Next Issue November/December: “Lift Up Your Voice!” Why do Christians sing?

Can we have a “theology of music”? How can I interact with contemporary culture in creative and constructive ways? Contributors include: Gene Edward Veith, Dan McCartney, and Ligon Duncan.

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kind of faith in God’s sovereign purposes that those who are struggling with a terminally ill spouse must appropriate every long and difficult day. Lutheran pastor William Cwirla addresses the twin themes of suffering and death by pointing us to the “hidden God,” who swallowed death and suffering at the cross and is closest to us in our own suffering. Our Free Space interview with Rabbi Harold Kushner (author of Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?) reveals how different this Reformation view of providence is from the hope to which the world clings in times of personal and public crisis. Two articles, by executive editor Mark Talbot and Reformed pastor Kim Riddlebarger, give the doctrinal and exegetical basis for the Reformation’s doctrine of providence.

It is sometimes difficult to sing with conviction that this bloody sod upon which we live is truly our “Father’s world.” Terror, grief, illness, despair, suffering, and death—both personally and corporately—are enough to shake the strongest faith. The “problem of evil” really is a serious point of contention for apologetics and pastoral ministry. But a correct understanding of providence reveals that we do not need to choose between a good—but weak—God and a powerful—but capricious— God; for God has made known his power in weakness. What other god of this world has tasted death for his people? What other god suffers with his people? What other god overcomes death and suffering and mediates his victory to his people? The Christian doctrine of providence is a narrative fraught with drama. It is a drama in which we all partake. It is, simply, the drama of creation’s redemption in time and space as our covenant King extends his victory over sin and death to every corner of his world.

Managing Editor Eric Landry Alliance Council Gerald Bray ❘ D. A. Carson Mark Dever ❘ J. Ligon Duncan, III W. Robert Godfrey ❘ John D. Hannah Michael Horton ❘ Rosemary Jensen Ken Jones ❘ John Nunes J. A. O. Preus ❘ Rod Rosenbladt Philip Ryken ❘ R. C. Sproul ❘ Mark R. Talbot Gene E. Veith, Jr. ❘ Paul F. M. Zahl Department Editors Lisa Davis, Open Exchange Paul S. Jones, Preaching from the Choir Brian Lee, Ex Auditu Benjamin Sasse, Between the Times D. G. Hart, Reviews Staff ❘ Editors Ann Henderson Hart, Assistant Editor Diana S. Frazier, Contributing Editor Alyson S. Platt, Copy Editor Lori A. Cook, Layout and Design Celeste McGhee, Proofreader Katherine VanDrunen, Production Assistant Contributing Scholars Charles P. Arand ❘ S. M. Baugh Jonathan Chao ❘ William M. Cwirla Marva J. Dawn ❘ Don Eberly Timothy George ❘ Douglas S. Groothuis Allen C. Guelzo ❘ Carl F. H. Henry Lee Irons ❘ Arthur A. Just Robert Kolb ❘ Donald Matzat Timothy M. Monsma ❘ John W. Montgomery John Muether ❘ Kenneth A. Myers Tom J. Nettles ❘ Leonard R. Payton Lawrence R. Rast ❘ Kim Riddlebarger Rick Ritchie ❘ David P. Scaer Rachel S. Stahle ❘ David VanDrunen Cornelis Van Dam ❘ David F. Wells Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals © 2002 All rights reserved. The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals exists to call the church, amidst our dying culture, to repent of its worldliness, to recover and confess the truth of God’s Word as did the Reformers, and to see that truth embodied in doctrine, worship and life.

For more information, call or write us at: Modern Reformation 1716 Spruce Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 (215) 546-3696 ModRef@AllianceNet.org www.modernreformation.org ISSN-1076-7169

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Each night, several people call Camping’s radio show to ask about this question. And each night, he quotes Scripture, which he says indicates that we are no longer to attend church on Sundays.

Please respond! People are begging for solid guidance.

J. Patterson Washington, DC

I enjoyed my first Modern Reformation last month and became very sad when 2 a.m. rolled around every night and I had to put it down. Your discussion about justification (March/April 2002) was riveting and I hung on every word.

However, I am still not quite sure if I understand the delineation of when our efforts stop and God’s grace starts. In simpler terms, could it be thus: That when we, as unbelievers, run out of strength denying, crucifying, mocking, rationalizing and running from Christ, that is when he comes?

When we have become utterly exhausted and can no longer lift another shovelful of dirt from the hole we are digging, is that “death of effort” the moment he has been waiting for? Is the day and hour when we realized that God had closed off the last of our exits and finally had us slumped and weeping in the corner, “You win. I’m tired of fighting you. Come take me.” is that small, effortless whimper the event that lights the fuse of genuine justification? Is it simply, “Where man has died, Christ can live”?

Lee Salzman Amery, WI

Thank you for your wonderful magazine and the wonderful discussions of important biblical doctrine. I am writing to ask that you consider a discussion about Harold Camping’s treatise on the end of the church era. I was troubled by this until I began reading his paper (available at his website, www.familyradio.com), which seems to indicate that the Family Radio is one of the few places on the planet where one can find solid biblical teachings.

Editor’s Response Harold Camping has made several serious departures from the Christian faith. This latest departure follows his earlier failed predictions about the return of Christ. For a brief explanation of Mr. Camping's erroneous views on the nature and future of the church, readers are invited to visit the website of Tenth Presbyterian Church (http://www.tenth.org/wowdir/wow2001-12-02.htm) where Alliance Council member Dr. Philip G. Ryken, has posted a short statement. The Alliance will be developing more resources this fall for people who are interested in combating this insidious teaching.

I just received my copy of the May/June 2002 issue of Modern Reformation. I was surprised to see what appears to be a new format: the replacement of endnotes with general and non-page-specific announcements of works cited. I am genuinely puzzled why the decision to go this route was made. If your editorial board is concerned that endnotes were occupying too much space (you’ve previously moved the endnotes from the end of articles to the back of the magazine), why not at least include page numbers in parentheses in the text of an article after a citation is made, so that a reader can track down the reference if desired? For those of us who prefer having the option of tracking down citations, or even just knowing which part of various publications they come from, this editorial innovation is a disappointment. Just as you reconsidered a smaller font size several years ago, enlarging it out of consideration for your subscribers’ reading preferences, I hope you will reconsider this new format as well.

C. B. Carpenter Princeton, NJ

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I am a new reader of Modern Reformation. I thoroughly enjoyed the March/April 2002 issue, my first issue, but I take issue with one comment in the “Between the Times” column. On page 10 you state, “[The] 15 million member Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has a policy against participating in interfaith prayers and worship services. Southern Baptists pray neither with nonChristian bodies, nor with Christian denominations they consider illegitimate, such as Mormons and Catholics.”

I have been a Southern Baptist all of my life.

Nowhere in the SBC documents that I have studied are Catholics listed as illegitimate Christians. The column relied instead upon statements by Dr. Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, based on other interviews with the Orlando Sentinel and numerous appearances on the Larry King Show. I respect Dr. Mohler a great deal for halting the liberal bias that was infiltrating SBC seminaries in the ’60s and ’70s.

He does not, however, speak on behalf of all Southern Baptists concerning “non-essentials” of Christianity. The denomination does include Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons as those not worshiping the Christ of the Bible.

I believe that calling Catholic Christianity illegitimate is unfounded. Read Ephesians chapter four, and compare it with the Nicene Creed pledged by Catholics at every mass and I believe that you will see that Catholics are very legitimate.

There are dogmas of Catholicism with which Baptists disagree, but considering Augustine’s statement: “In essentials, we have unity; in nonessentials, we have liberty; in all things, we have charity,” the disagreements tend to fall into the area of non-essentials. Please do not brand Baptists or the SBC as anti-Catholic when we are simply . . . non-Catholic.

Fritz Vaughn Poquoson, VA

Serious thumbs-down on David VanDrunen’s review of Norman Shepherd’s The Call of Grace (March/April 2002). In essence, VanDrunen has projected onto the book the demand that Shepherd answer charges. This contrived “answer the charges” criteria lamentably colors a review in which Shepherd’s views are deemed contrary to Reformational and Scriptural teaching (p. 39).

Perhaps what most impairs this review is the notion of faith as a kind of abstract assent to Reformational (or, more precisely, Lutheran) propositions. And yet, the faith that lays hold of Christ’s righteousness is indeed a living and not a

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dead faith (James 2:17), inseparable from repentance and a submission to Christ as Savior and Lord (Luke 24:47; Acts 20:21; Rom. 10:9, et al.). On this, Shepherd entirely concurs with the Reformed confessions and more importantly, our Lord and his apostles (may the former never trump the latter!).

The negative review is part of a wider internecine debate among Reformed brethren re: such issues as the law/gospel dialectic, the unity of God’s covenants, and the relationship between promise and obligation within the covenants. Could it be that our “stakes” in these issues hinder us from a more biblical and covenantal perspective, as is proffered

by Shepherd?

Whatever the reason for the negative review, how different the ringing endorsements of The Call of Grace offered by the likes of Gaffin, Nederhood, Greenway and Gore! May their tribe increase, and may Shepherd’s exhortation be taken to heart: “We need to think covenantally. To think covenantally is to think biblically. To think biblically is simply to be loyal to our Savior Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Covenant.”

Brian Harrington Newtown, CT

The responses you received to Dr. Gordon’s article hearken me back to an issue you printed on Christian Prudence (March/April 2000) for which you were later accused of encouraging people to get drunk with wine! I hope your interview clarified the issue for those who missed the point.

I fully submit to the Scripture’s authority as it reveals to me the nature of God and man and how I am to live in this world that he created.

Nevertheless, as a Marine, I have yet to find the Scripture verse that tells me how many clicks of windage and elevation to place on an M-16 service rifle in order to hit the target at 500 meters. Such “wisdom” was imparted to me by my elder Marines in the past. I did not abandon my trust in the Scriptures by listening to them. The biblical principles of submitting to authority and doing everything well grounded my desire to be an expert marksman but did not give me all the specifics.

We need to stop being mentally lazy about our Christian walk which demands, among other things, that we take the time to charitably respond to a brother on the merits of his argument and not respond with false assertions and ad hominem attacks.

Rich Leino Major, USMC Murrieta, CA

I found Paul Helm’s article (“Hell and the Nature of God,” May/June, 2002) offensive and demeaning. While his critique of Marilyn McCord Adams may well be valid, he undermines his credibility by assaulting his readers with manipulative rhetorical tactics.

Mr. Helm’s opening paragraphs declare his views to be the “unmistakable clear teaching of the Lord Jesus Himself.” Anyone who disagrees is labeled a “revisionist,” with “inconsistent ideas,” based on “clues,” “assumptions,” and “contradictory sets of hints allegedly found in Scripture.” This is intellectual intimidation at best, and does none of us any good in open discussion. If Mr. Helm’s views are so scripturally obvious, he should be able to support them unambiguously with chapter and verse.

Mr. Helm’s condescending style is out of place in dialogue with his colleagues. I expect higher standards of scholarship from Modern Reformation.

And I am disappointed in the quality of this article.

Mike Jalkut Pastor, God’s Church Santa Cruz, CA

Romans 14:11 prophesizes, “Every tongue shall confess to God.” The unrepentant will behold God, not as children but as servants and although the name of Jesus Christ will escape them out of sheer pain and blindness, flesh burning and all, the Lordship of God will not be mocked. Therefore, concluding that hell is separation from God isn’t the whole story, though perhaps substantially sufficient. Absolute separation comes when one is forced into—not further away from—his presence as Judge. And, the fact that force will be necessary to compel confession before him should speak volumes about the depths of a depraved soul. In The Christian Life and Salvation, Donald Bloesch states, “Hell might more aptly be defined as an estrangement within union” (p. 101). May Bloesch’s and Horton’s views gain an increasingly broader audience, and the doctrine of hell become “preachable” once again as an adjunct to the Christian gospel of a good, just, and all-loving God revealed to us in Jesus Christ.

A. M. Guimond Eden Prairie, MN

Thanks for the May/June 2002 issue, “Hell: Putting the Fire Out?” All the essays on this oftavoided topic were helpful to both my understanding and preaching/teaching task, and were well written by well-chosen scholars. You do good work.

Roger Roberts, Sr. Pastor Metropolitan Baptist Church Wichita, KS

Editor's Note: Many readers disagreed with Douglas Freeman's letter in "Open Exchange" ("Of Holy Communion..." July/August 2002). The editorial policy, however, discourages printing Letters to the Editor that take issue with previous letters, which “Open Exchange” is, though written as an essay.

While we seek to foster a lively conversation, we also must consider the limited space available to develop the important topics that make MR worthwhile to subscribers.

Thank you for Modern Reformation. Sometimes I have to read with the dictionary in my hand, but it is well worth the time and effort. Thanks again for the timely articles and information. God bless all of you and your ministry.

Tina Cousella Arcadia, CA

This is in response to Michael Horton’s “Is Hell Separation from God?” (May/June 2002). I very much agree with the author that, for the hellbound soul, hell epitomized is God’s presence. His presence is in the very flames because he himself IS an enduring flame. “I shall consume them,” Jeremiah prophesized (8:13). That God is present in hell is not to mean that blasphemers are his children and beneficiaries. His presence in hell is testimony of the fulfilled law and that no one will be allowed eternal lawlessness without reckoning.

Join the Conversation!

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

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by Christopher Olsen

Consider the Testimony

M Interested in contributing to Open Exchange?

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

y family and I currently attend a wonderful Bible church that has a solid, orthodox statement of faith. It is a church that I would heartily recommend to anyone as a place to hear God’s Word proclaimed and to enjoy mutually edifying fellowship and service. Our church recently included in the weekly bulletin the following statement regarding formal church membership: “Church membership is not the most important thing at the Bible Church, but it is not unimportant either.

The elders and pastoral staff would encourage ‘long time associates’ to consider this testimony.”

As one of the “long time associates,” I have asked to begin the membership process. But I have been told that my differences on a particular point of doctrine (namely, Dispensationalism) would bar my acceptance as a formal member of the church. The church leadership has deemed Dispensationalism as a necessary addition to the more historically orthodox statements of faith in order to ensure unity within this local church body.

Does the Bible require this level of doctrinal detail in order for a church to preserve its unity and provide the intended testimony that Christ spoke of in John 13:35? Ephesians 4:2-3 speaks of “bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” How are “bearing” and “endeavoring” related to the unity and peace found in the Spirit? Can it only occur if we limit the opportunities for differences at the local church in areas where, historically, there have been disagreements among God’s people? I believe that it can be demonstrated even better by bearing with one another despite the differences on what are typically considered secondary issues like Dispensationalism, Sabbath keeping, Bible translations, infant baptism, or dozens of other doctrinal areas (although, what is considered secondary often depends on who is defining it). It is relatively easy to get along with those who are most like us; it is harder to do so with those with whom

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we disagree. I think that church organizations have often taken what appears to be the easy way out in an effort to minimize those differences.

I know that some issues are seen as indicators of potential disunity or strife that may distract a church from its mission. These issues, while often worthy of study and consideration, are not usually defined in Scripture with sufficient clarity to make them worthwhile tests for church membership.

Unity does not mean uniformity. Establishing these types of doctrinal requirements for local church membership does not really address our separation from the world and identification with Christ’s church. It often can, however, separate us from fellow believers with whom we should be working to advance the cause of Christ.

In some cases, local churches and their members are like soldiers racing around the countryside looking for a doctrinal battle to fight. Often they think they’ve found an important skirmish, but can it really be so important when our brothers and sisters in Christ are on both sides of the battle?

There is a place for healthy and vigorous debate of doctrinal issues, but why do they need to limit our unity and fellowship? By taking such rigid stands on secondary issues, some believers are in danger of damaging the witness of the church.

We all need to consider the testimony, and ask for God to give us the wisdom to be the witnesses God intends us to be.

Christopher Olson is a Quality Manager and lives in Rancho Cucamonga, California.

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Hebrews 12:22–24

Extraordinary Ordinariness

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ou have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.”

This portion of Scripture shows us that much more is happening to us—and around us now— than meets the naked eye. For here heaven is breaking in on each of you earthlings. You have access to heaven right here at this place on earth.

Here in this plain Divine Service you join a heavenly assembly engaged in heavenly worship.

But all that is hidden from the human eye. It is a matter of mystery which God’s Word discloses to you. Apart from his Word, you would never discover it and could not experience its richness. This mystery involves you in the seven invisible—and extraordinary—realities which are listed in our text.

1. You Gather for Worship in an Extraordinary Place God’s Word declares: “You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem.”

You are right now in two places simultaneously.

On the one hand, you have gathered together as a congregation in this place of worship. On the other, you are also in heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God, which is not located here on earth, even though you have access to it here on earth.

You may remember that Solomon built his temple on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. There in the Holy of Holies heaven overlapped with earth. Only the high priest had access to God’s heavenly presence there

From JOHN W. KLEINIG

Dean of Chapel Luther Seminary Adelaide, Australia

once a year on the Day of Atonement. But you have not gathered there. When you came here to church today, you entered heaven itself. You are now in the city of the living God where God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit reside. This city is in this world but does not belong to this world. Here you have access to the heavenly presence of God. Here you, by faith, enter the heavenly world, without leaving planet earth. Here you join in the performance of the heavenly liturgy.

2. You Receive Extraordinary Assistance for Your Worship God’s Word declares: “You have come … to innumerable angels in festal assembly.” You are not just surrounded by other human beings as you worship here; you are surrounded on all sides by thousands and thousands of angels. More than you can count!

The angels are God’s heavenly servants. The writer of the Hebrews calls them “liturgising spirits” (1:14). Their main occupation is the performance of the heavenly liturgy. They gather in a festal assembly to praise and adore the risen Lord Jesus.

They tell us of God’s glory and his holiness.

Amazingly, they invite us to join with them in their praises. Since we are holy in Christ, we can stand with them singing: “Glory to God in the highest” and “Holy, Holy, Holy.” In fact, they act as a kind of spiritual choir for us and assist us in our praises.

They help us to adore and to glorify the Triune God. They share their wonder at the Father’s grace and their joy at the Son’s gift of peace to us. As we

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lift up both our hearts and our spirits to the Lord, they carry us along and blend our song with their song. We, therefore, join the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven as we adore and magnify the living God in the Eucharistic liturgy.

3. You Assemble as Part of an Extraordinary Congregation God’s Word declares: “You have come … to the assembly (church) of the first born who are enrolled in heaven.”

Here in heavenly Jerusalem you are part of a huge assembly, a supernatural, universal congregation which includes this congregation as well as every other congregation in the whole wide world, for they all assemble, as we do, in the same place, in the presence of the Triune God. So then, you never worship in a small congregation.

Whenever and wherever you gather for worship in the name of Jesus, you gather together with all believers everywhere; you worship together with them, no matter how far you may be separated from them in time and space. You join the whole church of God as it assembles in his holy presence.

As members of that assembly in heavenly Jerusalem you have special status. On the one hand, you are citizens of heaven. The Triune God is your divine king, and you enjoy all the rights and privileges of citizenship in his royal city. You enjoy the life of heaven already here on earth.

On the other hand, you have the status of God’s firstborn son, which is almost too good to be true!

In the ancient world the firstborn son inherited the position and property of his father. Well, since Jesus is the firstborn only Son of God, he alone is God’s heir. But he has wonderfully and generously shared his position and his status with you in your baptism. Each of you, therefore, are sons of God, and you all stand to inherit everything that belongs to Jesus. But you don’t have to wait until you die to enter your inheritance. You are here today with all the other members of God’s royal family to both receive and enjoy your common spiritual inheritance, for, unlike material possessions which can be owned exclusively, spiritual blessings are always shared and held in common. You are, therefore, far more privileged and spiritually rich than you could ever imagine. All that is Christ’s is yours to receive!

4. You Receive Extraordinary Treatment from God the Judge God’s Word declares: “You have come … to God the judge of all.”

Here in heavenly Jerusalem you meet with God the divine judge. And there is no escaping from his

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judgment. Now that may be enough to scare off the bravest and best of you, because you have a guilty conscience. You know that you are not as you should be and have not lived as you should have. Many of you, therefore, fear God’s accusation and condemnation more than anything in this life.

It’s bad enough that we have to face God on Judgment Day. Who of us would wish to face God before we had to?

But God is present here as a judge with a difference. He isn’t out to disapprove of you, belittle you, and reject you as worthless and useless and ugly. No, he comes to free you from the burden of guilt and to undo the awful aftermath of sin; he comes to pardon you, as he did at the opening of this service when he spoke the word of absolution to you. You, therefore, have no reason to be afraid of contact with him. You don’t have to wait until you die to discover where you stand with God. You can settle your accounts with him now, so that you need no longer fear his judgment and condemnation. So why live evasively with a bad conscience and the fear of eventual punishment?

Welcome God’s gracious judgment and receive his pardon now! Only those who are forgiven have access to heaven here on earth.

5. You Have Extraordinary Contact with Deceased Christians God’s Word declares: “You have come … to the spirits of the righteous made perfect.”

You did not invent the gospel and the Divine Service. You received it from your spiritual ancestors who taught you how to worship. They depend on you to be faithful in worshiping the Triune God and in handing on what you have received to those who come after you. You sing their hymns and pray their prayers. Even though they are separated physically from you by death, they are still linked with you spiritually through Jesus. He keeps you in touch with them and them in touch with you. You may, therefore, more properly remember your loved ones at the Lord’s table than at the cemetery. They surround you, as Hebrews says, like “a cloud” (12:1), and support you invisibly, just as all the other people do who worship together with you. Since you are connected with them in the communion of saints, they are involved together with you in the praise of the Triune God. 6. You Have Jesus as Your Extraordinary Liturgist in Heavenly Worship God’s Word declares: “You have come … to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant.”

Heavenly worship centers on the risen Lord Jesus. He is the key to our involvement in it.

Without him we remain earthbound and without access to the heavenly realm. He has bridged the great gap between heaven and earth for us by his death and resurrection. He is now our high priest, our Mediator in the heavenly sanctuary. There he stands in for us with God and stands in for God with us. He links us with all the angels, Christians all over the world, departed believers and our heavenly Father. Our extraordinary position and status depends on him and his gracious presence with us.

Jesus has set up a new covenant for us by the institution of Holy Communion, a new way of worship, in which he gives us his Body and Blood. In his Holy Supper he reaches out to us earthlings and joins us where we are here on earth. By giving himself entirely to us, he unites us intimately and inseparably with himself. In the celebration of the Divine Service which revolves around this Sacrament, he acts as our high priest, our chief liturgist. He not only brings the gifts of God the Father to us but also leads us in our prayers and praises. We can, therefore, approach God the Father through him, together with him, standing, as it were, in his shoes.

In the Divine Service he comes to us here in this place, so that we can be with him in the presence of his heavenly Father. He brings heaven down to earth for us and takes us earthlings up into the heavenly sanctuary, so that we stand with him and all the angels in the presence of his heavenly Father. He shares our life so that we can share in his divine life as God’s Son already, now, in this life.

What could be more wonderful than that?!

7. You Have Been Consecrated for Extraordinary Service in Heavenly Jerusalem God’s Word declares: “You have come … to the blood for sprinkling that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.”

What a surprise! The heart of Christian worship is not simply the presence of the risen Lord Jesus but the gift of his holy precious Blood in the Sacrament, for only through his Blood do we have access to heaven and the angels and the universal church and God the Judge and the faithful departed and Jesus.

In the Old Testament, only the priests were allowed to approach God and officiate in the divine service of the temple. Before they could officiate they had their bodies sprinkled with blood at their ordination into the priesthood to cleanse them from impurity and to make them holy. The right ears of the priests were smeared with blood, so that they could hear the holy word of God; the thumbs of their right hands were smeared with blood, so that they could handle the holy things of God; the big toes of their right feet were smeared with blood, so that they could walk on holy ground (Exod. 29:19,

20). And then blood mixed with the holy anointing oil was sprinkled on them and their vestments to consecrate them (Exod. 29:21). In this way, God shared his holiness with them. They could approach God only as long as they remained clean and holy.

In heavenly Jerusalem each of you can do what no priest ever did in the Old Testament. You can approach God the Father in the heavenly sanctuary and serve there together with Jesus. Jesus has not just sprinkled your bodies with his blood; he sprinkles it on your hearts, your conscience.

Amazingly, he gives you his Blood to drink in Holy Communion. And that Blood speaks something good to you. It doesn’t speak of vengeance and banishment, as the blood of Abel did to his brother who had murdered him. No, it speaks of grace and pardon and acceptance. By giving you his lifegiving Blood to drink, Jesus cleanses you entirely from the sins which you have committed as well as the sins which have been committed against you.

Through his Blood he shares his own purity and holiness with you. He makes you as holy as he is holy, holy through and through. His Blood consecrates you as holy priests for service with the angels in the heavenly sanctuary. You can, therefore, approach God the Father boldly and unafraid, because you have been sprinkled with the Blood of Jesus. You can bring others and their needs to your heavenly Father, even as you mysteriously bring him and his blessing to the people around you as you go about your daily work.

Conclusion You are holy people who live heavenly lives on earth. You are holy people because you are involved here and now in the Divine Service together with Jesus and all the angels. That makes you and everything that happens to you far more significant than you could ever imagine. Treasure the privilege of worship, and live as in God’s presence while you go about your daily business!

Be holy as Christ has made you holy! To him be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Dr. John W. Kleinig (Ph.D., Cambridge University) is dean of chapel at Luther Seminary, Adelaide South Australia.

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Applause—For Whom are You Clapping?

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s a professional musician, I am accustomed to applause. This is what a performer

performance is different than clapping in rhythm with the walking out on the concert stage expects and anticipates again following a music as one sings.) They applauded when a baby was successful performance. But musicians and pastors alike are quick to state that dedicated to the Lord and also when his mother left the when it comes to worship services, we are not platform. I have also witnessed congregations “performing.” Music in church, we rightly applauding their preacher, particularly when a understand, is an essential part of “worship”—an powerful demonstration of oratory skill was offering, prayer, or praise. So how does applause displayed. For me this response, whether cognitive fit into the worship service, or does it fit at all? or emotional or both, begs the question, “For Psalm 47:1 urges all the nations of the world to whom are you clapping?” clap their hands and exhorts them to shout to God To applaud means, literally, “to give praise to” with cries of joy. Later in Psalm 98:8, it is the rivers [ap laud]. In worship, our thoughts and actions are that “clap their hands,” while in Isaiah 55:12, the to be directed to the subject and the object of trees of the field partake in this joyous activity in worship—God himself. Jehovah merits our praise, praise of their Creator. In Lamentations 2:15, so applauding him for his acts or attributes in the however, the clapping of hands is associated with context of worship may be defensible. Otherwise scoffing and shaking of the head in mockery of the though, clapping has no biblical place in worship Daughter of Jerusalem. And in Job 27:23, it is the and should not be directed at musicians, or east wind that “claps” in derision at the wicked, preachers, or babies. There are not many genuine “clap offerings” to God—and this does not appear ruthless man judged by God. Clapping, then, by evidence of Scripture, has to be an activity he requested. More often we more than one socio-cultural meaning according to applaud people with the hope of making them feel both the time and place in which it occurs. Thus, appreciated, or to demonstrate our approval of the it is possible for us to mean different things when rendition, or to show that we affirm the message of we applaud in the concert hall or when we applaud the music. Encouraging, approving, and affirming in church; and further, it is possible to be both are not wrong actions in and of themselves. informed and intentional in our distinction about Although applause directed to God in worship what clapping means in each context. My is defensible, in our cultural context applause is the suspicion, however, is that our understanding is not stuff of the theater, the concert stage, and the all that clear. political convention.

With such strong On vacation in August 2000, I visited three associations, applause in worship is at best different churches one Sunday morning. The inappropriate and at worst could be sacrilegious. In largest of these churches had a congregation that worship, if we applaud someone other than God, applauded frequently. They applauded at the end we effectively rob him of the glory that is due him of each praise song led by the worship team. (And alone. Most people sitting in the pews each it should be noted that applause following a [ C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 4 3 ]

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Speaking of...

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a frowning providence he hides a shining face.

William Cowper, Light Shining Out of Darkness

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e [God] does not want those either who, as lazy, gormandizing bellies, shun both care and work, and act as if they had only to sit by and wait until God lets a roasted goose fly into their mouths.

But he commands us honestly to exert ourselves and to work. Then he will be there with his blessing, and he will give us enough.

Martin Luther, 1532

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consider myself 40 percent Catholic and 60 percent Baptist; but I'm in favor of every religion, with the possible exception of snake-chunking. Anybody that so presumes on how he stands with Providence that he will let a snake bite him, I say he deserves what he's got coming to him.

Earl Long, former governor of Louisiana, quoted in The New Yorker, June 4, 1960

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here is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows aught, what is't to leave betimes? Let be.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet

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et us not deny it up and down. Providence has a wild, rough, incalculable road to its end, and it is of no use to try to whitewash its huge, mixed instrumentalities, or to dress up that terrific benefactor in a clean shirt and white neck cloth of a student of divinity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Fate: the Conduct of Life, 1860

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Two Kinds of Tolerance he Reverend Jerry Vines, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) who serves as pastor of a 20,000-plus member Baptist church in Jacksonville, raised both eyebrows and pens among reporters this summer with his comments at the SBC’s annual meeting in St. Louis. Charging that advocates of “religious pluralism” are hurting America, Vines went on the offensive: “They would have us believe that Islam is just as good as Christianity. Christianity was founded by the Virginborn Son of God, Jesus Christ. Islam was founded by Muhammad, a demon-possessed pedophile who had twelve wives, the last one of which was a nine-year-old girl.” (Though the text is disputed by Islamic scholars, the Sahih Bukhari version of the Hadith does read: “The prophet married Aisha when she was six years old and he

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consummated his marriage when she was nine years old” [Vol. 7, Book 62, Num. 64].)

Vines’ polemics against Islam have a place. But one wonders if his cause might have been better advanced with more careful distinctions about different types of “tolerance,” and different types of “pluralism.” After all, while tolerance is a problem in one sense, it is a good in another.

The same is true of pluralism.

“Tolerance”—especially on college campuses—often means nothing more than relativism. And this was the primary sense in which Vines was attacking it. Christianity is true, Islam is not, and tolerance should not be invoked as the grounds for implying that both religions are equally true—or, as is usually meant, equally false.

But in another sense, tolerance is the wonderful prohibition on solving the “problem” of religious diversity by means of violence. Ironically, it is largely because of the Baptists’

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championing of religious freedom in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that this prohibition on violence against other religionists—this legal tolera-tion of religious diversity—is so deeply engrained in the American mind and experience.

Similarly with pluralism, Vines could have helpfully distinguished between his Christian convictions and his citizenship. As a Christian, he regards pluralism as a consequence of the fall; for we should all be united in the worship of the biblically revealed God. Yet, as a citizen, he can still recognize the empirical reality of pluralism—that is, there are a variety of religions, for people do in fact disagree about religious truth. While he as a Christian does not regard this as a normative good, neither should he want to see the state act to solve this problem of religious diversity. For genuine belief cannot be coerced; religious error is

182 SUM

All-time high reading on the “Rapture Index,” the self-

proclaimed “Dow Jones Industrial Average of End

+ of the =

TIME

Times Activity.” According to Todd Strandberg, founder of the

index and its supporting website, raptureready.com, this reading is noteworthy because “any reading over 145” means “fasten your seat belt.” Others apparently agree, as a recent TIME/CNN poll finds

that over one-fifth of Americans believe the Bible predicted 9/11, and a much larger percentage (35) claim they have now begun to read the news in light of the Book of Revelation.

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not a matter requiring the attention of the sword.

Evangelical spokespeople are not alone in failing to distinguish among different uses of the word “tolerance.” The national media, in their rush to vilify Vines, implied that one must either be an enlightened liberal assuming the basic equality of all religions, or be a wild-eyed extremist advocating legal intolerance toward compet-ing faiths.

But in fact, many Americans—and the best of the Christian tradition—intuitively draw the distinc-tion between a religion’s veracity or falsehood, and the legal rights of its adherents to worship even false gods free from the coercive interfer-ence of the state or other citizens.

The Washington Post illustrated the typical media response by using Vines’ comments as an occasion to reflect on the SBC’s supposed tendency “over the last quarter century” to “antago-nize” other religious groups. One Post writer reproduced blathering quotes from Episcopal clergymen lament-ing the SBC’s violation of the Christian obligation “to love one another,” and from Anti-Defamation League officials dismissively noting that the comments were “not surprising coming from the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention, which has a track record of denigrating and delegitimizing other religions.”

The writer of the piece

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catalogued other alleged instances of SBC intolerance—such as the claim that God does not hear Jewish prayers (1980); the assertion that salvation is found only through Jesus Christ (1988); and the publishing of prayer guides that encourage believers to ask God for the conversion of Muslims, Hindus, and Jews (1999). One of the subtle implica-tions of this coverage was that these examples of Baptist “intolerance” are somehow a departure from the Baptist heritage of “tolerance” and religious freedom. No suggestion was made that many sane citizens believe that the truth and falsehood of a religion might be evaluated on the one hand, while simultaneously believ-ing that legal protection should be granted equally to

Sites Worth Bookmarking Feel free to send letters and e-mails with other valuable sites we should know about, but please don’t write to protest that some of these sites contain links to other sites which are goofy. We know. Such is the nature of the boundary-less virtual religious marketplace. This brief list is necessarily incomplete and unbalanced, but it offers a few interesting places to begin. (Add www. before the following web addresses.)

General religious news christianity.com crosswalk.com religionnews.com

various religions by the state regardless of our judgments about the religions’ truthfulness.

Give Me That On-Line Religion? he spiritual” has been making a comeback for decades in American life— and this is nowhere more evident than on the Internet.

According to recently released data from Jupiter Media Metrix, a firm that tracks traffic on the World Wide Web, visits to religious sites doubled over a six-month period from late 2001 through early 2002. Religious traffic now accounts for 6.4 percent of total on-line activity. (Sex is still the run-away leader, at least in terms of search engine

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beliefnet.com eni.ch crosssearch.com Denominational news and renewal movements: pcanews.com lcms.org (“Belief and Practice” link) baptistpress.org layman.org founders.org wordalone.org Sermons and sermon tools: csl.edu/Lection.htm textweek.com accradio.com lifeaudio.com sermon.org groups.yahoo.com/group/ LetUsPray

reports.)

Analysts such as Stephen Kim of Jupiter believe that a number of factors drove the precipitous increase in e-religion. First, this spring saw an atypical amount of religionrelated headline news, such as the priest sex scandals and the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict.

Kim also notes that there has been substantial growth in the “supply side” the last year, as more religious organizations have developed a web presence. Finally, the post9/11 upsurge in charitable giving and church attendance (which has now apparently returned to pre-attack levels, according to polling organizations) stimulated at least a temporary interest in eternal questions among inhabitants of the electronic world.

Thoughtful Christians

crosssearch.com/Reference/ Bibles/ bible.gospelcom.net/bible?

Creeds and church history: markers.com/ink creeds.net newadvent.org/fathers reformed.org/documents bookofconcord.org ccel.org Reformational sites: AllianceNet.org reformationsociety.org churchreform.org issuesetc.org lifeoftheworld.com capo.org Religious magazines: logia.org

will want to temper their enthusiasm about this development, recalling that we as fallen sinners prefer the idols of our imagination over the biblically revealed God. And the cafeteria atmosphere of virtual—as opposed to embodied—communities does little to tame our narcissistic tendencies. A brief perusal of the daily healthand-wealth email forwards or a quick visit to the bombastic and relativistic “First Church of Cyberspace” will confirm most fears.

Still, there are many useful religious resources available on the web, and Between the Times plans more regularly to bring some of these sites to the attention of our readers.

christiancentury.org firstthings.com booksandculture.net modernreformation.org christianitytoday.com For more lists of links: zondervan.com/desk/ newslink.asp religion.rutgers.edu/vri/ hirr.hartsem.edu/org/ faith_denominations _homepages.html religiousresources.org religion-online.org adherents.com

@ MR RECOMMENDS…

Look for more recommendations from MR in the future.

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THIS IS MY FATHER’S WORLD

Providence and

Common Grace rovidence.” In our culture, when we hear this word, we probably think first of Rhode Island or the TV show based on it. At one time, however, the word bore so much heavy freight that towns like the one in Rhode Island were named after this doctrine. Roger Williams, the Calvinistic Baptist who helped found the colony, certainly had God in mind.

During the Reformation, in the sixteenth century, the doctrine of providence received renewed attention as the reformers recovered the belief that God usually works in quite ordinary ways—through natural or “secondary” causes—to achieve his designs. Distinguishing between natural and supernatural and recognizing that nature is a space of divine activity allowed these to explain someone’s recovery from the plague in medical terms rather than immediately chalking it up to miraculous intervention—even as they still acknowledged God and his glory as the ultimate cause of the art of medicine itself.

Earlier, in popular medieval life, God’s providence was overshadowed by a fascination with the miraculous—indeed, with superstition. People felt they lived in an enchanted realm in which unseen forces of good and evil could be experienced palpably. There was no real division in their minds between the natural and the supernatural.

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Later, during the Enlightenment, the division between natural and supernatural grew into a gulf until, finally, God’s activity in this world was reduced by the deists to his building the great cosmic machine and getting it started, while not deigning to get his hands dirty or upset the rigid laws of nature by involving himself in its day-to-day operations. God became the ideal chairman of the board.

Today, this gulf is even wider, with two prevailing extremes often expressed. At one extreme are those who are, at least in practice, naturalists: they do not consider God involved with the “secular” or “natural” realm of our existence. Like the deists, they see the world as operating like a machine. Winter follows fall and spring follows winter. They stress that what used to be called “acts of God”—interruptions of the ordinary processes of nature—are now increasingly explicable in fully scientific terms (This makes it one of the great tragedies in the history of apologetics that many modern Christian thinkers have used a “God-of-the-gaps” defense of divine activity in nature and history). The naturalists argued that

or denying one distinction for the other.

Hidden and Revealed “Things” he secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deut.

29:29). This distinction between things hidden and things revealed is maintained throughout Scripture. In fact, the exact form that the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy would take in the unfolding plan of redemption is represented as “a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory,” and which now has been “revealed to us through the Spirit” in the gospel (1 Cor. 2:7, 10). This response is elicited after a proto-gnostic assault on Paul’s ministry— an assault based on the belief of certain “super-apostles” that they had a higher form of knowledge than he did. These “super-apostles” claimed to have cracked the code for entry into God’s secret chambers. To their claim, Paul opposes the Word of God entrusted to him and the other apostles, which was the revelation of God’s plan of salvation in the fullness of time.

God has revealed everything we need to know, but not everything we would Yet although God has revealed much more in this like to know.

New Covenant era than he did in the Old Covenant era, he has still not revealed whatever could not (yet) be explained by science everything. In fact, Scripture never indicates that was to be put in the category of “mystery,” which we will ever know everything or have all our quesleft room for the “hypothesis” of God. But as those tions answered. God has revealed everything we gaps have shrunk with the advancement of scien- need to know, but not everything we might like to tific explanations, we at last came to mathematician know. He remains Lord over his counsels. We Pierre-Simon Laplace’s famous announcement, “We know that he has decreed all that comes to pass (see, for example, Psa. 139:16; Prov. 16:4; 16:33; no longer have need of that hypothesis.”

At the other extreme are the hyper-supernaturalists Acts 13:48; 17:26; Eph. 1:4–5; 2:10), but we lack who, like medieval folk, seem to discern God’s any promise that we can access this information miraculous hand in the rustling of a leaf. They through proper formulae. In fact, the attempt to regard God’s direct intervention—that is, miracle— know more than God has actually revealed is charas the ordinary and expected way of encountering acteristic of superstition and magic rather than of God’s presence in their lives and in the world. So, Christian piety. for example, instead of making wise choices based What then of Romans 12:2, which promises on solid common sense, they wait for “God’s lead- that “by testing you may discern what is the will of ing” and seem frozen in their tracks until they can God, what is good and acceptable and perfect”? As discern God’s perfect will for their lives. usual, we must read this verse in context: “Do not Whether at the hands of naturalists or be conformed to this world, but be transformed by hyper-supernaturalists, the doctrine of providence the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may suffers a great deal. Consequently, we need to discern what is the will of God, what is good and recover this great truth and express it in practical, acceptable and perfect.” In context, this is a comconcrete ways to our contemporaries. This means mand to immerse ourselves in the study of we must (contra hyper-supernaturalism) make Scripture, which renews our minds and allows us to some clear distinctions without (contra naturalism) test—or examine or investigate—our beliefs and setting what we have distinguished in opposition practices by God’s Word. In so doing, we are able

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to know God’s will better— Gnosticism: derived from the Greek word for "knowledge" (gnohis good and perfect will as it is revealed in Scripture. sis), refers to a religious movement which claimed that salvation God’s good and perfect will is not secret. It is not hidden was based on secret knowledge conveyed to the elect by a heavfrom us, in the way his eternal decrees are hidden. We enly revealer. Gnostic teachings posed a strong challenge to the emerging orthodoxy in the have no reason to believe that God will specially and Christian church, since its teachers claimed that they, not the orthodox bishops, possessed the supernaturally reveal to us who we should marry or secret revelations which Jesus had transmitted to individual disciples after his resurrection. which job we should take or — New Dictionary of Theology, S.V. "Gnosticism" where we should live, even though we know that he has As Christians, we naturally think of the Holy “determined allotted periods and the boundaries of [our] dwelling place” (Acts 17:26). Yet we can and Spirit’s work in the lives of believers. This perception should be confident that he has revealed every- is understandable given the sheer proportion of biblical passages that treat it in that context. And yet we thing necessary for salvation and godliness.

Thus, even John Calvin acknowledges that while must not overlook the fact that the same Spirit who brooded over the waters in creation upholds all things (along with the Father and the Son) and is just All things may be ordained by God’s plan, as active in lavishing his gifts of intelligence, friendaccording to a sure dispensation, for us they ship, love, passion, vocation, family, culture, governare fortuitous. Not that we think that fortune ment, art, science, and so forth upon non-Christians rules the world and men, tumbling all things as he is in lavishing his saving gifts on his people. at random up and down, for it is fitting that Just as some Christians demand God’s direct this folly be absent from the Christian’s involvement in their lives to the point of presumbreast! But since the order, reason, end, and ing to be able to discern his secret plans, some necessity of those things which happen for Christians expect Scripture to address every possithe most part lie hidden in God’s purpose, ble contingency of their lives. But while we must and are not apprehended by human opinion, limit our “Thus says the Lord” to that which God those things, which it is certain take place by has actually said, we must not limit our pursuit of God’s will, are in a sense fortuitous. For they truth, goodness, and beauty merely to the pages of bear on the face of them no other appearScripture. The reality of God’s common grace ance, whether they are considered in their means that we are free to pursue—and, indeed, own nature or weighed according to our expected to pursue—truth, goodness, and beauty knowledge and judgment. (1.16.9) wherever God’s Spirit has scattered it, even in secEarlier, Calvin declares that “it would not even be ular sources. In other words, we must reject the useful for us to know what God himself . . . willed false dichotomy that assumes that either God to be hidden” (1.14.1); and, recalling a retort directly reveals our every step or God does not reported by Augustine, he adds, “When a certain order our steps at all. We must remember that shameless fellow mockingly asked a pious old man while Scripture leads us into infallible truth even on what God had done before the creation of the points that overlap with “common grace,” God has world, the latter aptly countered that he had been given gifts to all people—believers and unbelievers alike—that we must capitalize on in a variety of building hell for the curious” (1.14.1). earthly callings and pursuits.

Common Grace/Special Grace As Murray points out, common grace accounts resbyterian theologian John Murray has for a variety of benefits that God gives to all peoclaimed justly, concerning the doctrine of ple, indiscriminately. First, it restrains sin. In the common grace, that “On this question aftermath of September 11th, Christians are being Calvin not only opened a new vista but also a new asked, once again, to address the problem of evil. era in theological formulation” (The Collected Writings While acknowledging evil’s mysteriousness, part of of John Murray 2:94). Although the term itself came my response to those requests has included a quesinto use much later, the treatment of what we now tion for the questioner—namely, How do you call “common grace” fell under Calvin’s discussion explain the “problem” of good? In other words, of God’s providence. while some of us are less likely than others to

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become terrorists, in the mirror of God’s law we are all wicked. We all fail to love God and our neighbor in countless ways every day. So the real question is, Why does the world include any good? Apart from God’s providence, September 11th would have been a normal day. Yet we all know that it was, in fact, abnormal. Even though such terrorism is an ever-present threat, God’s common grace usually restrains it from happening. Because of the depravity of the human heart and the corruption of institutions in which sinful habits have become deeply embedded, things are often bad, but they are never as bad as they could be, thanks to God’s common grace. In his common although not saving mercy, God placed a mark even on violent Cain; and so even he was able to build a city (see Gen. 4:15, 17).

Christians think that regeneration confers special benefits that render believers superior artists, politicians, businesspeople, and even parents. But both these Scriptures and experience confirm that unbelievers may excel in their vocations and believers may fail in theirs. In the field of common endeavor ruled by God’s creation and providence, there is no difference in principle between believers and unbelievers in terms of gifts and abilities.

Jesus calls upon his followers to pray for their enemies for just this reason: “For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt. 5:44). Christians are supposed to imitate this divine attitude. In fact, it is clear from the parable of the sower that unbelievers even benefit from the Spirit’s work through the Word; and it is undeniably true that although much Christians must recognize God’s hand not only in the marvel of a miracle, but in harm has been done in the name of “Christendom,” the splendor of providence. innumerable benefits have come to civilization as a result of biblical influences.

Of course, we must not confuse common grace Secondly, God’s common grace restrains God’s own wrath. Because of this grace, God was “long- with God’s special or saving grace. Common grace suffering” in the face of human depravity “in the benefits fallen humanity in the sphere of creation days of Noah” (1 Pet. 3:20). Then, after the flood, but not in the sphere of redemption. It does not God covenanted with us and all living creatures save evildoers nor does it redeem art, culture, the never to destroy the earth again by water (see Gen. state, or families. Unlike saving grace, it is restrict9:8–17). Again (although this overlaps with God’s ed to this world before the last judgment and will plan to save his people), God’s common grace led not stay God’s hand of justice on that dreadful day. him to overlook human ignorance before Christ But this reality does not mean that it is at odds with (see Acts 17:30) and now leads him to delay his saving grace. As Murray says, “Special grace does final judgment (see Rom. 2:4 and 2 Pet. 3:9). not annihilate but rather brings its redemptive, But, thirdly, common grace not only mercifully regenerative and sanctifying influence to bear on restrains sin and wrath, it is also the means by which every natural or common gift; it transforms all God gives us much tangible good. Murray writes, activities and departments of life; it brings every good gift into the service of the kingdom of God. He not only restrains evil in men but he also Christianity is not a flight from nature; it is the endows men with gifts, talents, and aptitudes; renewal and sanctification of nature.” He rightly he stimulates them with interest and purpose observes that this perspective challenges ascetic to the practice of virtues, the pursuance of and monastic versions of spirituality because “its worthy tasks, and the cultivation of arts and practical outlook has been, ‘For every creature of sciences that occupy the time, activity and God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be energy of men and that make for the benefit received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified by and civilization of the human race. He ordains the word of God and prayer’ (1 Tim. 4:4, 5).” institutions for the protection and promotion When we, as Christians, affirm common grace, of right, the preservation of liberty, the we take this world seriously in all of its sinfulness as advance of knowledge and the improvement well as in all of its goodness as created and sustained of physical and moral conditions. (2:102)

by God. We see Christ as the mediator of saving grace to the elect but also of God’s general blessings Scripture is full of examples of God’s providential to a world that is under the curse. This allows us to goodness, particularly in the Psalms. “The Lord is participate in secular culture, to enjoy relationships good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has with unbelievers, and to work beside them in commade…. You open your hand; you satisfy the mon vocations and toward common goals without desire of every living thing” (Ps. 145:9, 16). Some always having to justify such cooperation and com-

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mon life in terms of “ministry” and “outreach.” For me, this has been one of the most liberating aspects of Reformation theology, but one that is often underappreciated even in our own circles, where believers are regularly expected to justify their existence by pursuing some ministry in the church rather than by pursuing their secular callings.

Not only can unbelievers, by common grace, sustain their own goods, truths, and beauties; they can also enrich believers’ lives. One example of Calvin’s theological balance is that he can appreciate not only the depth of human depravity but also the depth of human dignity because of his awareness of God’s creation and common grace. In a celebrated passage, he pleads against the fanaticism that would forbid all secular influence on Christians, concluding that when we disparage the truth, goodness, and beauty found among unbelievers, we are heaping contempt on the Holy Spirit himself: Whenever we come upon these matters in secular writers, let that admirable light of truth shining in them teach us that the mind of man, though fallen and perverted from its wholeness, is nevertheless clothed and ornamented with God’s excellent gifts. If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God. For by holding the gifts of the Spirit in slight esteem, we condemn and reproach the Spirit himself. What then? Shall we deny that the truth shone upon the ancient jurists who established civic order and discipline with such great equity? Shall we say that the philosophers were blind in their fine observation and artful description of nature? Shall we say that those men were devoid of understanding who conceived the art of disputation and taught us to speak reasonably?

Shall we say that they are insane who developed medicine, devoting their labor to our benefit? What shall we say of all the mathematical sciences? Shall we consider them the ravings of madmen? No, we cannot read the writings of the ancients on these subjects without great admiration…. But shall we count anything praiseworthy or noble without recognizing at the same time that it comes from God? … Those men whom Scripture calls “natural men” were, indeed, sharp and penetrating in their investigation of inferior things. Let us, accordingly, learn by their example how many gifts the Lord

left to human nature even after it was despoiled of its true good. (2.2.15) Elsewhere, Calvin even quotes pagan poets and philosophers on religious topics—a practice sanctioned by the Apostle Paul’s example in Acts 17.

Even pagan rulers exercise their dominion as a result of God’s providence (see 1 Pet. 2:14; Rom. 13:1–7); and so God secretly governs the nations just as he does his church. To believe that a government must be framed according to “the political system of Moses,” rather than according to “the common laws of nations” is “perilous and seditious” as well as “false and foolish” (4.20.14). The Mosaic theocracy was limited to the old covenant and is no longer the blueprint at a time when there is no chosen nation (see 4.20.16). Natural law—the law of God written upon the conscience of every person—allows for a marvelous “diversity” in constitutions, forms of government, and laws, all of which are in their own times and places acceptable as long as they preserve the “equity . . . [that] must be the goal and rule and limit of all laws” (4.20.16).

Primary and Secondary Causes or Instrumental Causes he example of Joseph telling his brothers concerning their past treachery, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good” (Gen. 50:20) is paradigmatic of the distinction we are considering here. So, too, is Acts 2, where Peter places the blame for Christ’s death squarely on the shoulders of those people who took part in his crucifixion and yet also affirms that he was delivered up according to God’s foreordination and plan. Since Kim Riddlebarger and Mark Talbot deal with these passages in greater depth later, it now suffices to say that these two examples, supported by many others, indicate the propriety of distinguishing between God’s agency as the primary cause of all that happens and human (as well as nonhuman) agency as secondary or instrumental causes. If Scripture holds humans responsible for their own actions and yet affirms God’s sovereignty, so, too, must we.

Ironically, today many who would not affirm a classic Christian notion of divine sovereignty will nevertheless often speak as if God does all things in their lives directly and immediately, without any instrumental means. If someone attributes a remarkable recovery from an illness to the skill of physicians, well-meaning Christians often reply, “Yes, but God was the one who healed her.” Sometimes some believers even excuse their laziness and lack of wisdom or preparation by appealing to God’s sovereignty: “Just pray about it”—“Well, if God wants it to happen, it will happen”—and so forth. Granted,

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belief in God’s providence should assure us that ultimately our times are in his hands; but God does not fulfill all of his purposes directly and immediately.

Ordinarily, he employs means—whether people, weather patterns, social upheavals, animal migrations, various vocations, or a host of other factors over which he has ultimate control. He even used secular treaty patterns of political organization to institute his covenantal relationship with his people.

Calvin calls God’s providence “the determinative principle of all things,” even though “sometimes it works through an intermediary, sometimes without an intermediary, sometimes contrary to every intermediary” (1.17.1). Running parallel to the distinction between God’s hidden and revealed will is this other distinction between God’s primary causality in governing the universe and creaturely instrumental or secondary causes. Calvin compares what God decrees in his hidden will to a “deep abyss,” in contrast with what God has “set forth familiarly” in his revealed will: And it is, indeed, true that in the law and the gospel are comprehended mysteries which tower far above the reach of our senses. But since God illumines the minds of his own with the spirit of discernment for the understanding of these mysteries which he has deigned to reveal by his Word, now no abyss is here; rather, a way in which we ought to walk in safety, and a lamp to guide our feet,

the light of life, and the school of sure and clear truth. Yet his wonderful method of governing the universe is rightly called an abyss, because while it is hidden from us, we ought reverently to adore it.

(1.17.2; my emphasis) At the same time, Calvin affirms that we can know much about how the universe operates through studying the secondary causes by which God brings his hidden will to pass; and so he rebukes anyone who would use the doctrine of God’s providence as an excuse for fatalism: “For he who has set the limits to our life has at the same time entrusted to us its care; he has provided means and helps to preserve it; he has also made us able to foresee dangers; that they may not overwhelm us unaware, he has offered precautions and remedies” (1.17.4). We are, therefore, obligated to study these secondary causes so that we can appropriate them. No doubt God has planned our future and is actively bringing it to pass. Yet, “nevertheless, a godly man will not overlook the secondary causes” (1.17.9).

This last claim is particularly important for our purposes. To affirm soli Deo gloria (to God alone be glory) is not to deny that both doctors and God heal us—the doctors as the secondary or instrumental causes and God as the primary or ultimate cause. In fact, it is only when we recognize God’s hand in everyday providence, through the instrumentality of various means, that we are ultimately able to attribute everything to his glory.

Provid …Providence is the beneficent outworking of God’s sovereignty whereby all events are directed and disposed to bring about those purposes of glory and good for which the universe was made. These events include the actions of free agents, which while remaining free, personal, and responsible are also the intended actions of those agents. Providence thus encompasses both natural and personal events, setting them alike within the purposes of God. Providence has been carefully distinguished from creation.

The upholding and directing of all things is understood in Scripture to be subsequent to, and distinct from, their having been made. The distinction is partly sequential: first God created, then he sustained and directed. But it also has moral significance, since Christian theodicy [the defense of God’s goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil] has emphasized

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the goodness of original creation (Gen. 1) and recognized the radical transformation . . . that creation underwent with the fall.

The providence of God is largely concerned with the history of a fallen order, and the confounding of this with creation would immediately attribute sin to the creative goodness of God. . . .

The doctrine of providence provides a bulwark against three major errors: 1. Deism. The deists conceived of God as detached from the present workings of the universe, since he had created it and then left it to operate like a machine. Providence asserts the personal involvement of God in every turn of human affairs, and his constant upholding of all natural processes. Natural law therefore represents merely the constancy and regularity of the divine purposes. The natural order no less than the

Evangelical theology desperately needs to recover this balanced understanding of God’s work in our lives—and, indeed, in the lives of all his creatures.

Providence and Miracles he crucial distinction between providence and miracle is related to all of the preceding distinctions. As we have said, people in our highly scientific, technologically sophisticated era, have trouble affirming the need for—much less the reality of—God’s ordinary providence through secondary means. But in many cases the Christian response has not been to reassert this doctrine.

Rather, traditionally it is to leap immediately to the category of miracles. In other words, Christians often respond to naturalism with the claim that God is in fact involved regularly in the course of their lives through miracles. Starved for some practical sense of God’s concern for their daily lives, many Christians flock to groups and individuals promising them daily encounters with the miraculous.

The net result is that naturalism and this hyper-supernaturalism conspire to drive out any real sense of God’s involvement in the normal, everyday, nonmiraculous events of our lives. If God is involved in someone’s recovery from cancer, it is hailed as “a miracle.” I am not for one moment denying that miracles do indeed occur in people’s lives, but what shall we say of the countless cases of recovery that can be medically documented as having been produced by human ingenuity and medical technology? Are we

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to surrender these successes to human beings alone and fail to recognize that even here—in the nonmiraculous, nondirect intervention of God—our sovereign Lord is just as actively at work and, therefore, just as worthy of being the ultimate object of our praise and thanksgiving? Why must we call the birth of a child—probably the most spectacular example of ordinary divine providence—“a miracle” in order to acknowledge God as its ultimate source? A child’s birth is clearly not a miracle; it does not result from God directly and immediately intervening in the natural course of things. It is the ordinary result of the right use of the proper means, from conception to delivery. Nothing could be more natural. And yet nothing could be a more marvelous testimony to God’s providence.

Christians must recognize God’s hand not only in the marvel of miracle, but in the splendor of providence. Here, once more, Calvin’s previously noted insights are helpful. “Nothing is more natural than for spring to follow winter; summer, spring; and fall, summer—each in turn,” he writes. “Yet in this series one sees such great and uneven diversity that it readily appears each year, month, and day is governed by a new, a special, providence of God” (1.16.2). Naturalistic deism, which sees nature as a great cosmic machine obeying rigid and inviolable laws, simply cannot account for the diversity that both our experience and the natural sciences betray.

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dence human expresses God’s personal control.

2. Fatalism. This pagan notion is regaining wide currency through popular astrology. While providence personalizes nature, fatalism de-personalizes man. His free actions are free no longer, since the horoscope’s predictions (unlike the prophet’s) make no allowance for personal response.

Providence never denies free personal agency, though it asserts a higher order of purpose alongside it.

3. Chance. Providence asserts the directional and purposeful character of history, and so provides hope to a fallen world.

God’s hand, as Calvin says, is at the helm. It is customary to speak of providence as general and special (this latter when directed to a special beneficent end), but too much should not, perhaps, be made of the distinction. Scripture speaks of a particular divine concern for the ephemera of nature (e.g. the

sparrows of Matt. 10:29–30). Miracle is a special case of providence, when the normal ordering of natural affairs is set aside for a particular purpose.

The providence of God displays his benevolence (Matt. 5:45), especially to the believer, who is comforted to be told that all things work together for his good (Rom. 8:28). It is, therefore, in this doctrine that the sovereign character of God becomes the ground of practical hope and comfort to all who trust him.

“Providence” by Nigel M. de S. Cameron, taken from New Dictionary of Theology edited by Sinclair B. Ferguson, David F. Wright, and J. I. Packer.

Copyright (c) 1988 Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515. www.ivpress.com

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ruly, you are a God who hides yourself, O God of Israel, the Savior” (Isa. 45:15).

Where is God? Why didn’t he do something? Why do bad things happen to good people? These are the questions asked in the midst of suffering and death. For Lutherans, there are only two theological frameworks from which to answer such questions—the theology of

glory and the theology of the cross. In the Heidelberg Disputation of 1518, Martin Luther distinguished between the two: That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things which have actually happened. He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross. A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is.

That wisdom which sees the invisible things of God in works as perceived by man is completely puffed up, blinded, and hardened.

The theology of glory is the theology of fallen Adam, who, being “like God,” experiences the creation through the categories of good and evil. He does not trust God’s Word but relies on his own rea-

son and senses. He moves from the seen to the unseen, judging God by what he sees and experiences. This is how Eve rationalized her rebellion: She sensed that the forbidden fruit was good for food; she saw that it was pleasing to the eye; she reasoned that it was desirable for gaining wisdom. And so she and Adam “bit into” a way of doing theology that sets the creature over and against the Creator.

With eyes wide open, they saw themselves as autonomous creatures, independent of God, having no need to take God at his word and trust him.

They were self-enlightened, self-sufficient, selfaware, self-actualized—their own persons and their own gods. The theology of glory is the natural theology of fallen humanity, centered in the self.

The theology of the cross is the theology of Jesus Christ, the second Adam, who lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. His glory is the cross; his death is his hour of power. The theology of the cross sees the glory of God hidden under the suffering and death of the Son of God. The cross of Christ is the starting point and the focal

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Death, and point for all theological thinking, comprehending the visible and manifest things of God through Christ’s suffering and his cross. Centered in the cross of Christ, the theology of the cross is uniquely positioned to deal with suffering and death.

The theology of glory calls suffering “evil” and the absence of suffering it calls “good.” It sees suffering and death as defeat and loss, a failure on God’s part to be a decent deity. It sees the sufferer and says, “There but for the grace of God go I.” The theology of the cross sees things as they are and names them for what they are—sin and death, grace and mercy, body and blood. It sees in suffering and death the hidden hand of God at work in, with, and under all things. It sees the sufferer and says, “There by the grace of God goes he.”

Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? his question arises from a theology of glory.

It adopts the categories of good and evil and assumes a person has the ability infallibly to discern the difference between the two. Bad things ought to happen to bad people and good things to good people, if an almighty, merciful, and respectable God runs the cosmos. But bad things routinely happen to good people, and good things to bad people. So the theology of glory concludes

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that something is wrong with God. The Creator is placed on trial by the creature. The clay judges the divine Potter’s handiwork and finds it to be less than acceptable. God has dropped the ball, and so explanations are demanded.

In the Bible, bad things happen to good people (as in the book of Job), good things happen to bad people (as with the wealthy man in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus [Luke 16:19–31]), and many things happen for no apparent reason at all except that the work of God may be manifest (as with the man born blind [John 9:1–3]).

A few days after the terrorism of September 11th, some attempted to explain our national tragedy in moralistic terms: This was God’s judgment on the nation for its immorality. Bad things happen to bad nations. Bad things happened; therefore, our nation must be bad—or, at least, certain elements in this nation must be bad, for which we must all suffer.

But does God operate this way, quid pro quo, this punishment for that evil? Most who suffered had little to do with the bad morals for which God was supposedly punishing the nation. We need to recall that God was willing even to let the residents

of Sodom and Gomorrah off the hook for the sake of ten righteous men (see Gen. 18:32). One wonders, in retrospect, what would have happened if Abraham had gone down to one righteous man, which is where God eventually ended in reconciling the wicked world to himself for the sake of his righteous Son. Consider the classic sufferer Job. The Book of Job is a biblical burr under the saddle of such cause-andeffect theology. Bad things happened to Job, not because he was bad, but because he was good. Job was the kind of man to whom good things ought to happen. By God’s own testimony, he was “blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”

Yet he lost health, wealth, and family for no good reason. We readers alone are privy to the secret that these terrible events happened because God and the devil were having a little tête-à-tête over the basis of Job’s faithfulness. Job’s friends—Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar—were quintessential theologians of glory, interpreting his suffering as evidence of divine displeasure and urging their suffering friend to get right with God so that God would get right with him. But that offered Job no real comfort.

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emember September 11th. Rarely have three words echoed back to such a dark moment in our national past or caused us more anxiety about our future. That Tuesday morning in late summer—a year ago now—made us a fearful global village, reeling to comprehend all that was happening.

While many of our readers may be too young to recall where they were on the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, virtually all of us remember our whereabouts when we heard the news unfolding in Manhattan, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Thirty-two-year-old Lisa Beamer was watching television with a friend in her home in Cranbury, New Jersey, that morning.

“I was standing behind my couch, I’ll always remember, when I heard them say that was the United flight from Newark to San Francisco that just went down,” Lisa told Stone Phillips of Dateline NBC. “And I said, ‘That’s his flight.’ And my friend said, ‘No he might be on a different one, he might not have made it on the plane.’ And I just said, 'No, I know that's his flight' and I just said, 'no.'" Todd Beamer, an account manager for Oracle, Inc., a software company, had planned to leave the evening of September

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10th for his corporate headquarters in San Francisco. He decided, instead, to spend one more night with his wife and two young sons at home. While Lisa Beamer, in characteristically modest fashion, calls her husband an ordinary man who was “extraordinary to me and my children,” she also is proud of the role Todd played on that fateful day on United’s Flight 93 where he recited The Lord’s Prayer quietly for consolation. His now immortalized words, “Let’s roll,” as he and several other passengers tried to overpower the terrorists on board, have become part of our national memory.

Much of this story has been played and replayed in the news.

However, what is woven behind the headlines, over the course of the year, is how Todd Beamer’s faith sustained him in his final minutes and how Lisa Beamer’s faith has buttressed her during a year of grief. Whether she is talking publicly with Larry King or Diane Sawyer or being quietly interviewed for this story, she returns repeatedly to the sovereignty of God in the face of September 11th. She also gives testimony to God’s providence and the fact that he does powerfully preserve and govern “all his creatures, and all their actions,” as the Westminster Shorter Catechism expresses it. “God knew the terrible choices the terrorists would

Even when God finally broke through in a rhetorical whirlwind (see Job 38–40), no explanations were forthcoming. Job never learned why he suffered. Were God to have ventured an explanation, Job would not have understood. God is God; Job is not God—and that’s good enough for Job. In the end, the only response was for Job to repent in dust and ashes for himself and for his friends.

“My ears heard of you but now my eyes have seen you” (Job 42:5). Job and his friends had spoken recklessly. In the end, God vindicated Job’s suffering. He restored wealth, health, and family to Job in a grand type of the resurrection from the dead.

Yet the cause of Job’s suffering remained hidden to him, a mystery disclosed only to the book’s readers.

The theology of glory cannot account for the “innocent sufferer” or the victim of oppression, injustice, or genocide. Moralistic models of cause and effect fail utterly to deal with suffering. It makes good moral sense when the habitual drunkard develops cirrhosis of the liver; it makes no moral sense at all when her baby is born with fetalalcohol syndrome.

Some people confronted Jesus with a political

atrocity that sounds as though it had been ripped straight from the front pages of their tabloids.

Pilate had slaughtered some Galilean worshipers and mingled their blood with their sacrifices.

What did Jesus think?

His answer is a rhetorical question that cuts to the very heart of the theology of glory. “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered thus?”

Can we discern the hidden mind of God or the spiritual condition of these Galileans by their awful suffering and death? Jesus’ answer is a firm “No!” along with a warning, “Unless you also repent, you will all likewise perish.” Then Jesus adds an atrocity of his own—a kind of “I’ll see your act of political terrorism and raise you one construction accident.” “What about those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them?

Were they worse sinners than all the other inhabitants of Jerusalem?” Again, the answer comes back, “No! And I’m telling you that unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:1–5).

The only response to suffering and death, whether by political atrocity or the sheer dumb

s: An Interview with Lisa Beamer make and that Todd Beamer would die as a result. He knew my children would be left without a father and me without a husband,” Lisa says. “Yet in his sovereignty and in his perspective on the big picture, he knew it was better to allow the events to unfold as they did rather than redirect Todd’s plans to avoid death.” She adds candidly, “I can’t see all the reasons he might have allowed this when I know he could have stopped it. . . . I don’t like how his plan looks from my perspective right now, but knowing that he loves me and can see the world from start to finish helps me say, ‘It’s OK.’” In the midst of the pain, you don’t hear Lisa Beamer ever say that she has been left alone. Rather, she most often expresses gratitude for the God-given institutions—mediating structures— which have supported her during this year. These institutions are ways God providentially “preserves and governs” his creatures.

The Institution of Family “I grew up in a Christian family and had no desire to pursue any spiritual path but a relationship with the God of the Bible as a young person. My parents were great examples to me of what being a follower of Christ looks like,” Lisa says. At age 15, Lisa’s

father, Paul Brosious, an IBM research physicist, suffered an aneurysm at work and died the next morning in the hospital. Her mother, a sister, and two brothers—one only a toddler—were left without a husband and a father. “When my father died,” Lisa says, “faith wasn’t so easy anymore. The Sunday school answers didn’t provide the real understanding that I needed. I spent five years asking why, expressing my anger, saying it’s not fair, before God helped me realize that he is who he is all the time—in good circumstances and bad. He is all-powerful and all-loving, but that doesn’t mean that as a citizen of this fallen world he protects us from every ‘bad’ event.”

But Lisa also knows that God’s providence is mysterious. “We also aren’t privy to the perspective he has and shouldn’t claim to know better than he does what should happen and what shouldn’t,” the young widow continues. “Faith means that, regardless of circumstances, we take him at his word that he loves us and will bring us to a good result if we just trust and obey him. Obviously, the ramifications of this understanding have been tremendous for me since 9/11.”

Lisa underscores the importance of family when she considers [ C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 2 8 ]

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In Print September/October Book Recommendations The Providence of God Paul Helm Questions about God’s activity in the world today, his guidance of believers, the place of prayer in the workings of his will, his responsibility for evil are deeply related to our understanding of God and of how we should serve and worship him.

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B-CAR-14, $19.00 The Hand of God Alistair Begg Alistair Begg captures the powerful lesson of Joseph’s life in this richly textured study.

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God’s Will for Your Life THE In this ten-tape series, Michael Horton tackles the WHITE HORSE INN basic question of, “How do I live the redeemed life?” Using the Ten Commandments as his text, he explores each in detail, revealing that the will of God is not mysterious nor difficult to comprehend, but is, rather, summarized in the moral law that he gave to Israel and which is recommissioned in the life of the church.

C-WTC-S, 10 TAPE AUDIO SERIES, $53.00 Suffering: C.S. Lewis and the Problem of Pain The White Horse Inn hosts—Michael Horton, Ken Jones, Kim Riddlebarger, and Rod Rosenbladt— use C.S. Lewis’s moving book, The Problem of Pain,

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to explore the difficult questions of good and evil and the providence of God. C-W421-22, 1 TAPE, $5.00 Overcoming Adversity HE This study from the book of Genesis focuses on BIBLE the early life of Joseph. From studying Joseph’s STUDY life, you can learn how God is working in your HOUR own difficulties. You’ll see why God allows his people to suffer at times, and what he is doing through our pain. This six-part series is taken from Dr. James Boice’s study on the 39th chapter of Genesis.

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Predestination: Tenth Annual Conference on Reformation Theology (1983) The doctrine of predestination has long been the center of controversy. But it is often misunderstood.

Explore the relationship of predestination to other key biblical themes like evangelism, missions, free will, and many others, and come to a better grasp of a very central doctrine of Scripture.

C-83-0A, 7 TAPE SERIES, $38.00 Five Golden Links HE In this audio series, Dr. James Boice explains BIBLE how we can know that God loves us because he STUDY provides salvation for us. We can understand HOUR how God loves us by learning five important truths—foreknowledge, predestination, effectual calling, justification, and glorification—and see why they are rightly “linked” together.

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luck of being under the wrong tower at the wrong time, is to repent, to have a metanoia—that is, a “recognition” or change of mind. We must think entirely differently about how God works in a fallen cosmos where death is the way of life. We must “re-cognize” our life in the midst of death.

The theology of glory assumes a fix-it God in a fixer-upper cosmos. All we need is some rehab and renovation—straighten up our morals with ten handy commandments, get our doctrinal ducks in a row, tighten those spiritual quads and abs with some liturgical aerobics, and we poor sinners are on our way to glory. But that way of thinking is dead wrong from the outset. We are not broken down but dead in sin (see Eph. 2:5). We can’t be rehabbed any more than the dead can be raised with an aspirin and a bandage. We don’t need rehab but resurrection.

How God Actually Works through Death and Resurrection eath and resurrection are God’s modes of operation. Repentance in the face of suffering means that we drop dead to our preconceived notions of how God should deal with us and make the cross of Jesus our reference point.

There we see how God has dealt decisively with sin, suffering, and death once and for all in the sufferings and death of his Son. The cross demolish-

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her own nuclear family and remembers her relationship with Todd. Todd and Lisa Beamer met at Wheaton College, the evangelical liberal arts college in Wheaton, Illinois, but didn’t start dating until after graduation. When asked what brought them together, Lisa replied, “Obviously our shared faith and purpose for our lives—to love God and show that love to others and to prepare for eternity with him—was the core of what we had in common.” She adds, “God makes us each as individuals, though, and many of our characteristics meshed well. I am a relatively strong person and Todd could accept that, but not in a wimpy way. He respected my opinions but voiced his disagreements when he felt it was important. We also shared a strong work ethic, importance of family, love of sports (especially baseball), and a desire to build a few close friendships very strongly.”

The Institution of the Church John Calvin once described the church as “a hospital for souls.”

Underlying that phrase is the concept that all of us who enter the church on Sundays are wounded or hurting in some way. We come needing comfort and we leave hoping to comfort the needy. Lisa recognizes the helpfulness of this idea in her recent

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es the categories of “good” and “evil.” The evil of the cross is the good of our salvation. The miscarriage of Roman justice is God’s justice for the sins of the world. The rejection of Christ by the world is God’s reconciliation of the world. The innocent Sufferer is the sacrificial Lamb who takes away the world’s sin. As Joseph said to his brothers, “You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good” (Gen. 50:20).

The theology of the cross is the paradoxical theology of the law and the gospel. The cross is both law and gospel, both the cursed tree and the tree of life. It is the death of God and the life of man, the punishment for our sin and sin’s atonement.

In the same way, our own suffering and death in the flesh are both law and gospel. Death is law in the sense that it is the just wages for our sin. “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). Suffering is the law’s reminder that in Adam all die. This is not a simple cause-and-effect relationship: “He did X so God did Y.” AIDS babies and genocide victims show us that we do not live in a simplistic causeand-effect world. Death is the intrinsic consequence of our trying to be like God, our common lot as children of Adam. The word of law, spoken to Adam, continues to have its killing way with all of Adam’s sons and daughters: “You will surely die.”

But death is not God’s last word. In his incarnation, Jesus Christ embraces humanity as the second

experiences. “The picture of the church as the hands and feet of Christ, with each person having a special gift, has been well portrayed to me these last months. In the beginning, it was immediate and practical help I needed—meals, child care, managing phone calls and mail. Now that we’re out of crisis mode it is rebuilding help I need—counseling, encouragement, prayer.”

She adds, “The people of Princeton Alliance Church [in Plainboro, New Jersey] have been amazingly sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s direction in providing just what I need when I need it. I can’t thank them enough.”

The Fraternity of College The cover of the Autumn 2001 Wheaton College alumni magazine portrays a poignant photograph of a tear-stained Lisa Beamer, dressed in black, being comforted by an unknown woman in the days immediately following September 11th. In a feature article, entitled, “Hope in the Face of Hatred,” Wheaton College president Duane Litfin wrote to the campus community on September 12th from where he was on sabbatical in England: “We grieve, but not as those who have no hope. Our hope is in the Lord, and we are asking him to comfort and bring healing to

Adam, as humanity’s new head. In his baptism, Jesus stands as a sinner in John’s baptism of repentance, though he is without sin. He becomes the aggregate sinner, made to be sin for us though he himself knew no sin (see 2 Cor. 5:21). In his own flesh, he accomplishes perfect obedience under the law for us, even to his death on the cross. And, just as every sin is atoned for in his death, so every sufferer is embraced in Christ’s suffering. “But I, when I am lifted up, I will draw all men to myself” (John 12:32).

“Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” the Good Friday spiritual asks. Yes, you were there, in the body of Jesus. “Christ died for all and therefore all died” (2 Cor. 5:14). We, together with all humanity, suffered the just punishments for our sin in the body of Jesus nailed to the tree. He is every sufferer, every death, every victim of genocide, and every victim of oppression, violence, and disease. His thirst is our thirst. His pain is our pain—the pain we inflict on others, the pain others inflict on us, and the pain we inflict upon ourselves.

His cry of dereliction, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” speaks for every sufferer in his or her time of abandonment. The Son asks his Father “Why?” on behalf of all of us—and hears only silence from heaven. Yet he trusts his Father even in the silence and entrusts his life to him in the silence. “Father, into your hands, I commit my spirit.” The good news comes with his dying

breath, for his death is good news for the world: “It is finished.”

It would be a denial of this final word from the cross to say that the suffering of the redeemed is punishment for their sins. “The punishments that brought us peace were upon him, and by his wounds, we are healed” (Isa. 53:5). Our suffering and even our death are not God’s punishment, but his discipline (paideia). Our heavenly Father is not our permissive parent in heaven. He disciplines the children he loves (see Heb. 12:7–11).

Certain members of the Corinthian congregation, failing to discern the Body of the Lord by communing drunk and neglecting the needs of their fellow communicants, incurred a temporal judgment in their becoming sick and dying (see 1 Cor. 11:27–32). This judgment (krino) was God’s “discipline” (paideia) in order that they might not be condemned (katakrino), along with the world, by refusing Christ’s gifts. Their suffering and death were instruction, not punishment; a preemptive warning serving the goal of their salvation.

Suffering and death are also gospel. “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his children” (Psa. 116:15). “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on” (Rev. 14:13). The Apostle Paul declares that we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces patient endurance, and patient endurance character, and character hope that doesn’t

those who have borne the brunt of the attack, to their families, and to us as well.”

Members of the Class of 1991, the year Todd and Lisa both graduated from Wheaton, gathered during Homecoming weekend last October to remember the life of their classmate. Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, read the following letter from President George W. Bush: As you gather—members of a class and a community—our Nation stands with you in grief and gratitude. We feel grief for the loss of a husband, father, and friend—a man who was deeply loved by his family, his friends, and by God. We feel gratitude for Todd Beamer’s example of courage and his wife Lisa’s example of grace. On September 11, America saw terrible evil. We also saw how a man can face evil: soberly, directly, without flinching. Our entire Nation now knows what bravery looks like and we will not forget…. Today we thank God for a good man. We pray for his family and friends in a time of sorrow. And we affirm the faith in which Todd shared, knowing that nothing, not even death, can separate us from God’s love.

The Magistrate and Divine Sovereignty President Bush was profoundly moved by the heroic act of Todd Beamer and his co-passengers on September 11th. Besides saluting Lisa Beamer, who sat next to the wife of Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, during his address to Congress on September 20th, Bush wrote a gracious note to the young widow after the birth of her third child, on January 9th. It was addressed specifically to Morgan Kay, who’s name is a combination of Todd and Lisa’s middle names, respectively. “If I could have painted a picture of the perfect baby, it would be her,” proud grandmother Brosious told People magazine. “She’s the only one of Lisa’s three children born with black hair and Todd had black hair.”

When asked if her children provide needed consolation during these months, Lisa responded, “Children are an amazing source of comfort. Not only does the job of motherhood give me direction for each day—and for a lifetime—when direction can be lacking in other areas, but they also have an amazing ability to bounce between despair and joy.” She adds, “We talk about Todd all the time, laugh about things we did with him, and cry about things we’ll never do again. Usually within minutes of a crying [ C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 3 0 ]

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disappoint (see Rom. 5:3–5). He adds that our present sufferings do not compare with the glory that will be revealed in us, and he likens the suffering of the cosmos to the labor pains of a woman about to give birth (see Rom. 8:18–25). Confident in God’s will to save through suffering, the faithful in Christ bear patiently with suffering and death, enduring and even embracing them, because Christ by his suffering and death has embraced us.

“To live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21).

In the cross of Jesus, we see the God who hides life in death, victory in defeat, power in weakness.

He buries his divinity deeply in our humanity and then suffers, dies, and rises to save the world. He is most God for us when he is most forsaken and afflicted in his suffering. Faith in Jesus does not seek displays of power and glory, nor does it demand a blessing God has not promised, as though Jesus’ death were not sufficient. Faith in the crucified and risen Jesus is content to have him present in suffering, silently embracing us as the Man of Sorrows who is acquainted with our grief.

God and the “Problem of Evil” n the parable of the wheat field (see Matt.

13:24–30), Jesus reveals God’s way of dealing with the problem of evil. The enemy has sown evil weeds among God’s good wheat. The inter-

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moment, David or Drew will bring me a tissue and a toy and soon we’ll be playing again and back in the present moment. They do acknowledge their loss, and will continue to in new ways as they grow up, but they balance that with a joy of what they still have.

What a great reminder for me!”

When Marilee Melvin, vice president of alumni relations at Wheaton College, visited Lisa recently at her New Jersey home, Marilee said, “She met me at the door with baby Morgan sound asleep and draped over her shoulder. Lisa is exactly what you see on television—open, direct, transparent, but not naive; sharp.”

Melvin added, “Beneath her signature she writes Genesis 50:20.” (“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”).

“Her disarming quiet confidence in God’s purposes must be the reason Larry King has had her on his show eleven times.”

An Institution Providing a Legacy Among Todd’s closest friends was Doug MacMillan who left his job in medical equipment sales to head The Todd M. Beamer Foundation. The foundation defines itself as “A non-profit organization whose mission is meeting the long-term needs of the chil-

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ventionist farmhands demand immediate action— pull the weeds in order to save the wheat. But God’s course of action is summarized in the words: “Let be!” (The Greek word is aphete, usually translated “forgive.”) Forgive the weeds, let them be, lest you destroy the wheat. The “problem” of evil turns out to be no problem at all. The weeds will be sorted from the wheat soon enough, at harvest time.

God neither abandons the world in its suffering nor does he intervene all that much—except to die on a cross and forgive!

This is not the “Watchmaker God” of Newtonian Deism, who stands completely outside the cosmos and rarely, if ever, intervenes. Nor is he the divine vending machine whose buttons are pushed by our prayer and praise. This is the God who is intimately present yet hidden in, with, and under the created order as the creative and redemptive Word through whom all things were made and in whom all things hold together, who fills all in all, and who embraces the suffering and death of the cosmos in his own divine-human death on the cross. God’s Word and the Sacraments reveal this hidden God who suffers for us and with us. In baptism we are buried with Christ in his death (see Rom. 6:4). In the Lord’s Supper, Christ’s Body and Blood, the fruits of his own suffering and death, are given as food and

dren who lost a parent in the events of September 11th, 2001, assisting future victims of terrorism, and continuing Todd’s passion for mentoring and equipping youth to make the same heroic choices he did throughout his life.” When asked how a good idea turned into a growing foundation, Lisa responded, “The foundation started because, as the events unfolded, my family received more publicity than most, and the generosity of the American people flowed to us in the form of financial donations in the days and weeks following September 11th. I didn’t feel comfortable keeping this for ourselves when there were many unknown families who should share.” In fact, the New Jersey postal system reportedly received an influx of mail addressed simply to: “Lisa Beamer, New Jersey.” The postal service knew how to route it to the Beamer home. However, Lisa discussed the seeming inequity of this kind outpouring with Doug. “[He] suggested starting a foundation to honor Todd and to ensure these monies and others which could be raised in the future went to the best use for all the families as well as continued Todd’s legacy of concern for developing young people.”

In response to a question about where the foundation stands now, Lisa commented, “Today we continue to receive donations

drink (see 1 Cor. 10:16). We live off his suffering and death. “By his wounds, we are healed” (Isa. 53:5).

When we pray for and with suffering people, and when we pray in our own suffering, we pray with that Sufferer of Gethsemane who prayed “not my will but your will be done.” We pray recognizing that God’s will is always a good and gracious will to save (see 1 Tim. 2:4), even when it seems otherwise. We pray knowing that his grace is sufficient for us in our suffering and that his power is perfected in weakness (see 2 Cor. 12:8–9). Prayer motivated by a theology of glory seeks life that avoids suffering and death. The prayer of the cross seeks life in the midst of suffering and death and finds in Jesus the only way through death to eternal life.

Does this mean that we simply accept our fate then and eschew the use of doctors and medicines and “leave everything in God’s hands”? Of course not! This, too, would be a theology of glory. How can we know that it is God’s will that we make no use of his gifts of medicine? Why suggest that God’s hands have nothing whatsoever to do with the doctor’s hands? This would be claiming to know with certainty the hidden will of God concerning the disposition of our suffering. The petition “Thy will be done” means that we actively pur-

sue God’s will, employing whatever means he has placed at our disposal—his Word, baptism and Supper, prayer and confession, medicine and the surgeon’s knife—yet recognizing that whether we live or die, our life is safely hidden with Christ in God, and we are always safe in him. Only through the cross of Jesus are we given to see suffering and death as good news, because only in the death and resurrection of Jesus does suffering and death find its fulfillment and ultimate meaning.

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Look to Jesus on the cross, and ask the question again. Behold the Lamb! He is God’s great nonanswer to the problem of suffering and evil. Where is God? Right there, in the midst of it all. Why does God let this happen? It is for you and for your salvation. ■

William M. Cwirla (S.T.M., Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri) has been pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod) in Hacienda Heights, California, since 1992.

Rev. Cwirla has quoted Theses 19-22 of the Heidelberg Disputation from Martin Luther's Basic Theological Writings, edited by Timothy F. Lull (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), pp.43-45. He also recommends Robert Farrar Capon's The Parables of the Kingdom (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985).

and have a strong organization forming with a vision to ensure that the children left behind are provided with programs and resources that will provide some of the nurturing and positive character development that their lost parent would have provided. I hope one day to see the thousands of children who lost a parent on 9/11 as a unique group with a strong vision and capacity for character, faith, and courage which makes a difference in our world—and to know that this foundation contributed to a little part of that.”

Hurt, Hope, and Comfort Following Tragedy The Heidelberg Catechism begins “My only comfort in life and in death is that I am not my own but belong body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.” Lisa finds these words very comforting. “This is the ultimate truth,” she says. “We are so mired in our human lives and fallen world, though, it is impossible to understand and apply this concept completely. If we believe wholeheartedly, each moment, that our destiny rests in the hands of Jesus Christ—the one with ultimate love and ultimate power—what do we have to be concerned about? Of course, our humanity clouds this truth many times but hanging on

to glimpses of it keeps everything in perspective.”

Lisa is not sure what her future holds. Before September 11th, she planned to go back to work once her children were older. For a few years she was employed with Todd at Oracle as a telesales manager, directing a group of telesales people. “I loved working at Oracle and looked forward to going back into the business world someday when the children were older. We’ll see.”

What Lisa Beamer sees clearly is that in this life we must love God, as well as others, and prepare for eternity with him where “he will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces” (Isa. 25:8).

Ann Henderson Hart (M.A., Temple University) is assistant editor of Modern Reformation. She is also a freelance writer and editor living in Escondido, California. For further information about The Todd M. Beamer Foundation, please visit its website at: http://www.beamerfoundation.org.

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THIS IS MY FATHER’S WORLD

Human Sin and God’s Purpose: Some Thoughts on the Doctrine of Divine Concurrence y phone doesn’t usually ring at 6:45 a.m.

I could hear someone leaving me an urgent message: “Turn on the television!” When I turned the TV on, I watched in horror as a commercial jet airliner crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center in New York. From the smoke pouring out of the other Trade Center tower, it was clear that this was not the first plane to strike. The TV reporter was still specu-

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lating about what was becoming obvious—this was a terrorist attack. Like most Americans, I spent the rest of the morning of September 11, 2001, glued to the television watching the Pentagon burn, shocked at the staggering loss of life, and coming to the inevitable conclusion that Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist network were behind these savage acts.

I knew that America was going to war.

But it was not long before the phone rang again. This

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time a twenty-something-year-old member of our church was calling, deeply troubled by the horrors being witnessed in New York City and Washington, D.C. Looking for some solace, the caller soon checked off a series of difficult questions great tragedies always seem to bring to mind.

“Pastor, Paul says in Ephesians 1:11 that God ‘works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.’ Does this mean that God is responsible for this? Is this horrible tragedy really a part of God’s purpose?”

I was very thankful that the caller divided the question into two parts, because that way I was able to answer each part with fewer qualifications. “No, God is not responsible for this.” “Terrorists flew those planes, not God.” And, “yes, this horrible act is still a part of God’s plan.” We discussed the fact that God is sovereign and omniscient, so nothing like this is outside of God’s will or purpose. God is still on his throne. But we also talked about the fact that God is gracious and compassionate and takes no delight in the suffering of his creatures. Indeed, God promises to comfort all those who call upon his name. Then we talked about hope. According to Romans 8:28, somehow and in some way, when all is said and done, God will turn this horrible event to good.

Whether the caller did so purposely or not, making a distinction between God’s moral responsibility for sinful human actions (the first question), and the question of whether or not sinful human acts fall within the scope of God’s eternal decree (the second question), is an important one. Indeed, this is what the Scriptures teach. But making this distinction inevitably brings us to the topic of divine concurrence, which is defined as God’s relationship to secondary causes. How can it be that the horrible tragedy of September 11th is a part of God’s eternal purpose?

And if it is, how can we at the same time affirm that God is good and that those who plotted these acts and flew the airplanes into the Twin Towers are fully responsible for their crimes against humanity? This is one of the most difficult and perplexing questions in all of Christian theology. But tragedies such as September 11th bring such questions to the forefront, and there is no escaping them.

Before we proceed any further, we need to make several very important qualifications. Questions such as this have been asked before. So we are not left totally on our own in this regard. September 11th was shocking to many Americans—especially younger Americans—because terrorist attacks upon civilians have rarely happened on American soil before. But since human tragedy is as old as Adam and the fall of the human race into sin, the questions raised by the events of September 11th are certainly not new. Christians have thought about these mat-

ters before, and so have the biblical writers.

Therefore, in order to formulate answers to such questions which not only supply pastoral comfort but deal with the weighty issues at hand, we must first look to the biblical data dealing with God’s relationship to human sin. While the biblical writers do speak to certain aspects of this relationship, we must also note that a great deal of mystery remains.

Another qualification we ought to keep in mind in this discussion is that we are creatures, limited in knowledge, and bound by time and by space. But God is not subject to such human limitations.

Therefore, when we as creatures wrestle with questions such as these—which, it must be candidly admitted, are often beyond our full comprehension—we find ourselves in a difficult predicament.

God’s ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts (Isa. 55:9). The secret things belong to him alone (Deut. 29:29). Since this is the case, there is a great temptation on our part to answer in the abstract difficult questions like this: Can God do such and such? What about the hypothetical case where … ? Although the temptation to answer in this way is great, we must avoid it at all costs.

Not only is a little creaturely humility in order when we deal with questions like this, but if our curiosity gets the better of us, we risk entering a maze from which we cannot escape. It is not a sin, after all, that some questions remain unanswerable.

When it comes to the subject of divine concurrence and the September 11th tragedy, there are certain things we must affirm because Scripture affirms them, and certain things we must be careful not to affirm, because Scripture is silent about them. From the outset, it is essential to avoid defining divine concurrence in the abstract, as just mentioned. If we tackle this topic without reflection upon how this matter is developed in the biblical text, we risk creating a god in our own sinful image. The best way to proceed, therefore, is to observe how it is that God acts in this regard throughout redemptive history. As we will see, this includes the exercise of God’s sovereign will over all things, coupled with the fact that God’s will is exercised in such a way that his creatures function as true secondary causes. But only by discussing this topic within the context of God’s self-revelation can we establish clear theological boundaries from which we ought not depart, while at the same time leaving sufficient room for the mystery we know is here, precisely at the point where Scripture leaves it, with the secret things of God. Let us begin, then, with those things we must affirm about God’s relationship to human sin. First, we should be clear that God’s plan and purpose includes the creation of all things. Paul tells the

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Colossians, “For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him” (Col. 1:16; cf. Rom. 11:36). Things created by God, are said to be “for God,” that is, for his own purposes.

Indeed, once we have in mind the fact that God created all things, it is very reasonable to assume that God created all things for the specific plans and purposes just mentioned. He has also given created things the capacities to fulfill the purposes for which they are made. The prophet Isaiah makes this very point: “For this is what the LORD says—he who created the heavens, he is God; he who fashioned and made the earth, he founded it; he did not create it to be empty, but formed it to be inhabited—he says: ‘I am the LORD, and there is no other’” (Isa. 45:18).

Second, as my caller indicated on the morning of September 11th, it is natural to attempt to answer all questions about God’s relationship to human sin within the context of God’s sovereignty. But there are several things we ought to keep in mind before we turn to texts such as Ephesians 1:11. When Paul tells us that God works all things according to his eternal purpose, which is worked out according to

the counsel of his will (Eph. 1:11), Paul is certainly presupposing the fact that this is the case because God is also the creator of those very creatures who carry out his purposes. This means that whenever we talk about divine concurrence, we must begin by affirming that God’s eternal plan and purpose defines not only the ends for which all things have been created, but also entails the creation of the specific agents with the necessary capacities to bring about those things which God has decreed.

This means that all things, including human sin, fall within God’s plan and purpose.

Third, as soon as these words proceed from our mouths, it is vital to point out that the Scriptures are also crystal clear about the fact that whereas human sin is part of God’s eternal purpose—the way in which human sin operates within God’s purposes will remain a mystery—God is not in any sense the author of sin. James 1:13 tells us plainly that “when tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone.” In Deuteronomy 32:4, we read, “He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he.” Likewise, the psalmist declares, “The LORD is upright; he is my

Is Providence “Practical”

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ven committed confessional Protestants can view the doctrine of providence with mixed feelings. Yes, it is biblical.

Yes, it glorifies God. Yet it raises difficult questions about the existence of evil and our ability to make free choices. And, after all, what practical difference could this doctrine make in our daily lives?

In the late sixteenth century, the inhabitants of Maldon, England, could have answered that question with authority. In their case, a healthy doctrine of providence literally saved lives.

Maldon and its surroundings were witchcraft hotspots. In 1572, Mary Cowpar and her father were apparently bewitched by Alice Chaundler, who was also accused of using magic to murder Robert Briscoe and his two children. Chaundler was found guilty and hung. Five years later, her daughter, Ellen Smyth, was condemned for bewitching Susan Webbe. Between 1582 and 1584, at least fifty-three county women were condemned as witches.

In the midst of this witch-hunt mania, George Gifford, a young Cambridge-educated Puritan, received his first pastoral

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call. He spent the rest of his life ministering to Maldon’s people.

His pastor’s heart is seen in the pains he took to help both his sermons and writings capture the attention of the “simpler sort” of people. In particular, he spent years contemplating the doctrine of providence and its implications for his flock. And as he meditated on what it meant to believe in a sovereign God, he drew strikingly important conclusions for the women who were being accused and condemned as witches, although there was little or no evidence against them.

He reasoned that if God truly governs the universe, if nothing stands outside his control, then witches in themselves do not possess any real power. What can chants or sacrifices to demons accomplish? The devil, too, is bound by God’s controlling hand.

Even if witches believe they have magical powers, they are really only dupes of Satan; their incantations and rituals are mere shams.

What conclusion did Gifford draw from this? He began to explain to his parishioners that since God controls the universe they need not fear. Even if a witch were to cast spells against

Rock, and there is no wickedness in him” (92:5).

Therefore, even though human sin is part of God’s plan and purpose, it nevertheless remains human sin, not God’s sin.

A fourth point we must make is that human sin is the fruit of the human race’s fall in Adam. As the late apologist Francis Schaeffer so memorably put it, “We are talking about real sin and real guilt before a holy God.” This is important for several reasons. For one thing, it serves to reinforce the previous point that God is not in any sense the author of sin. Sin may be a part of God’s plan and purpose, but sin did not enter the human race until Adam violated the terms of his probation in Eden.

As we read in Genesis 2:16–17, “And the LORD God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.’”

Another reason it is important to trace human sin to the fall of Adam is that the entire human race is guilty before God, not only for our sin in Adam (who acts as our biological and federal head [cf.

Rom. 5:12–19]), but also for our own individual acts of sin which spring from our sinful hearts (Psa. 51:5; Rom. 6:33). This means that even though

human sin is part of God’s decree, sin is not only the fault of the creature, but sinful acts are genuinely sinful. Just because God has decreed that certain acts will come to pass, this does not remove real guilt from the agent who commits the act in question. Nor does it mean that sinful and evil acts of human agents are somehow “good” because God has decreed them. Sin is sin. Evil is evil.

Throughout the biblical drama we find that God’s creatures are always held responsible for their actions, even though Scripture repeatedly indicates that these acts were part of his plan and purpose.

That this point is a difficult one is certain. That it is taught in Scripture is clear. But the question as to how God can decree that a certain act comes to pass while holding the party who acts morally responsible for that action, is a mystery. But even though we may not understand how this can be, the fact remains that this is exactly what Scripture teaches. This can be seen in several well-known biblical incidents.

We begin with the story of Joseph as recounted in the latter part of Genesis. As the story goes, Joseph’s older brothers grew to hate him, because it was becoming obvious to them that their father Israel (Jacob) “loved Joseph more than any of his

”? A Historical Anecdote them, what harm could she do? They should not turn to talismans or folk magic to protect themselves but instead look to the heavens and trust in the mighty power of God’s providence.

Those with faith in Christ, he assured them, would be like Mt. Zion, which cannot be moved.

In Gifford’s writings he addressed those who would constitute the juries of future witch trials. How did the doctrine of providence affect his advice to them? He reminded them of their solemn duty before God and man to judge impartially. Since witches have no real power, they did not have to condemn the accused to death simply out of fear that they would wreak havoc in the land. Witches could do no harm that God did not providentially allow. Juries were obliged to render a verdict based on the facts, rather than on hearsay or common opinion. It was better to let true witches go free than to have the blood of innocent men and women on their hands.

The effects of Gifford’s teaching, preaching, and writing were remarkable. For example, in 1591, Margaret Wiseman, who lived

close to Maldon, was accused of witchcraft. She, however, was not executed. Six women from Maldon, who were all closely associated with Gifford, appeared with her at trial and swore oaths declaring her to be innocent. She was released. But in the summer of that same year Wiseman was accused again. At her second trial, fourteen inhabitants of Maldon swore to her innocence and she went free again, this time for good. As before, most if not all of them were Gifford’s friends and parishioners.

His teaching on providence gave them the freedom to stand up against what they saw as an unjust accusation.

What possible difference could a healthy understanding of providence make in someone’s life? For Margaret Wiseman, it undoubtedly made a great deal.

Patrick J. O’Banion (M.A., Westminster Theological Seminary in California [Escondido, California]) is currently a doctoral student in history at St. Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri.

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other sons” (Gen. 37:1). As a demonstration of his great love for his son, Israel gave Joseph a richly ornamented robe, the infamous “coat of many colors.” But “when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated [Joseph] and could not speak a kind word to him” (37:4). When Joseph had a dream which foretold that his brothers would one day bow down before him, we read “They hated him all the more” (37:8 ff.). Joseph’s fate was sealed.

When Israel sent Joseph to check on his brothers at Dothan, they were already plotting to kill “the dreamer,” as they now called him. Reuben, we are told, pled with his brothers not to kill Joseph and instead hoped to deliver Joseph back to his father (37:22). But things did not go as Reuben had hoped. The other brothers stripped Joseph’s robe from him. They threw him in a dry cistern and shred his coat, covering it with blood to make it look as though a wild animal had killed him. But when a trade caravan came by unexpectedly, the brothers sold Joseph into slavery for a mere twenty shekels. The guilt of selling their younger brother into slavery was much less, apparently, than that of killing him. And so Joseph was eventually taken to Egypt, where he ended up in the service of a certain Potiphar, who happened to be captain of the Pharaoh’s guard and the husband of a woman with a very active libido.

Throughout this entire account, the foibles of sinful human nature are everywhere on display.

We have a doting father, with a favorite, albeit, somewhat brash son who revels in his father’s favor.

Then we have a number of jealous older brothers, although one of them, Reuben, has a conscience and tries to save his little brother from the fate his other brothers were plotting. The biblical narrative everywhere attributes the culpability for all of the emotions, the scheming, and the plotting directly to the individuals involved. It is the father who dotes. It is Joseph who is brash. Reuben is troubled in conscience. The older brothers are jealous of Joseph to the point that they plot his death. Indeed, they mock their little brother, “the dreamer,” with these words: “We’ll see what comes of his dreams” (37:20). Their actions are evil, and they are guilty for them.

But once in Egypt, Joseph, as we know, went on to become an interpreter of dreams and eventually rose to such a high rank that the Pharaoh put him in charge of all Egypt (41:41). Some time later, because of famine throughout the land of Canaan, Israel (Jacob) sent his sons into Egypt to purchase grain, where, unbeknownst to them, they encounter the very same little brother they plotted to kill but instead sold into slavery. When the time

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comes for Joseph to reveal himself to his brothers in what turns out be a very emotional reunion, he informs them: “Do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you” (Gen. 45:5). In fact, Joseph goes on to say to them, “So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt” (45:8).

How can it be that God sent Joseph into Egypt when his brothers were the ones who plotted the act and carried it out? Years later, when Jacob died in Egypt, Joseph, in order to assuage his brothers’ fear that he would take revenge upon them, reminds them of the following. “Don’t be afraid.

Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Gen. 50:19–20). With these words, we have the doctrine of divine concurrence set forth in the most basic of terms. “You intended to harm me,” says Joseph. Therefore, Joseph’s brothers are truly guilty for their own evil acts. But Joseph also goes on to say, “God intended it for good,” so as to accomplish his purposes—that which he has decreed to come to pass, the preservation of Israel and the twelve tribes in Egypt. Therefore, God is sovereign, executing his eternal decree in time and in space, but doing so through the agency of these men, who, through their own willful and sinful actions, bring to pass the very thing God has decreed. Thus, Joseph’s actions fulfill God’s purposes, while the sin involved is theirs. That this happens is clear. It is what Scripture teaches. How this works—the mechanics of it—is never explained. This is one of those “secret things” which belongs to God. Another biblical incident is even more infamous, but equally important in developing a doctrine of divine concurrence. Recall that during the Pentecost sermon, Peter is preaching to the crowds who have assembled after hearing a great commotion in the upper room. When Peter comes to the point in his sermon of explaining that what has just happened is the fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel 2:28–32, he goes on to say in Acts 2:22–24, Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.

But God raised him from the dead, freeing

him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.

FYI

Divine Concurrence:

Because God sustains the universe's

moment-by-moment existence, nothing comes about independ-

ently of his will. He governs all creatures and events so that they Just as in the case of Joseph and his brothers, accomplish what he intends, either by their acting freely (as through human choice) or conPeter likewise asserts two fundamental points in verse tingently (as when something happens that did not have to happen) or necessarily (as with the 23.

Jesus was crucified according to God’s plan and law of gravity). Thus God, in ways beyond our understanding, works in and through everypurpose (“God’s set purpose and foreknowledge”), and thing to bring about his good purposes. those who actually crucified — Mark R. Talbot him are fully responsible for their actions (“with the help of wicked men, you put him to death”). The same divine concurrence. Joseph’s brothers meant him set of circumstances apply here as they did with harm, but God intended their actions for good.

Joseph and his brothers. We read in the Gospels of The wicked men who crucified the Savior committhe Pharisees’ evil conspiring (e.g. John 11:45–57, ted a horrible travesty, but it was a travesty that where the Pharisees plot to kill Jesus because he secured for us our redemption from the guilt and raised his friend Lazarus from the dead). These power of sin. And just as God did not leave Jesus men are the ones who scheme. These men willful- in the grave, but raised him up as Lord of life, let us ly and culpably plot our Lord’s death for a variety never forget that God has the power to turn sinful of selfish reasons. They are guilty—Peter calls human acts into good. The resurrection of Jesus them “wicked men”—for putting to death the sin- Christ is the proof. less Lamb of God. Indeed, throughout the Where does all of this leave us? God created all Gospels, Jesus himself speaks of the necessity of his things and gave to them the abilities for fulfilling own death (Matt. 16:21; 20:17–19; Mark 8:31; the ends that he has determined. Indeed, all things Luke 9:22–27). His death was not only foreor- that come to pass fit within God’s plan and purdained by God (Rev. 13:8), it was predicted by pose, including human sin. And yet, God is neither Israel’s prophets (Psa. 22:16; Isa. 53:5–12). the author of sin, nor its primary cause—the creaTherefore, Christ was crucified according to the ture is. For sin entered the world through Adam’s plan and purpose of God, and yet, those who cru- fall, so that we are not only guilty for Adam’s sin, cified him committed the greatest crime imagina- we are guilty for our own acts of sin. Therefore, ble, putting to death the Son of God and their own sinful acts deserve God’s punishment; they are truly Messiah. But what amazing good came from this sinful, even if God has included them in his plan horrific event! and purpose. But God can and does use sinful And this brings us back to the events of human acts to bring about good. In faith, we must September 11th. Mohamed Atta, along with all believe that God can and does do this in the midst those who acted with him, is fully responsible for of human tragedy. He did this with Joseph. He crashing civilian airliners, full of passengers, into an did it with Jesus. unsuspecting and crowded commercial center. At Finally, we must humbly admit that a great mysthe moment of his death Atta did not enter paradise tery remains, not as to the fact of divine concurrence, to receive the favors of seventy-two virgins as he had but as to the precise means by which God works out hoped. Instead, he entered into eternal torment. As his purposes without being in any sense the author of John tells us, in the Apocalypse, hell is not the human sin. After all, he is God and we are creatures. absence of God, but the eternal presence of God, The secret things belong to him alone. ■ without the cross of Jesus Christ turning aside his Kim Riddlebarger (Ph.D., Fuller Theological Seminary) is wrath (Rev. 14:10–11).

And yet, Mohamad Atta’s despicable act is nev- senior minister of Christ Reformed Church (URC) in ertheless part of God’s unfolding plan and purpose Anaheim, California, and is co-host of the White Horse Inn for the nations, as well as for all of those individu- radio program. als involved in the events of September 11th. But as difficult as this is to comprehend and accept, let us not overlook a very important point about

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THIS IS MY FATHER’S WORLD

God’s Providence Over All hen I was seventeen, I fell about fifty feet off a Tarzan-like rope swing, breaking two of my thoracic vertebrae; I became paralyzed from my waist down. I spent six months in hospitals regaining some use of my legs. Once I had regained a little movement, the doctors tried to help me regain more by having me crawl to breakfast each morning. At the time, I had developed an undetected calcified stone that had formed in my bladder and that was causing raging bladder infections. And so, as the doctors would put me on the floor each morning, I would wet myself and remain soaked for the rest of the day. When I left the hospital six months later, with the stone finally removed, I was able to control my bladder in most situations and could walk awkwardly with a cane.

I’m now fifty-two. My youthful accident has had several long-term consequences. Walking is increasingly more difficult. Especially at first, I worried about bladder and bowel control. I walk with great effort, by forcing my leg muscles to spasm, and consequently raising my blood pressure. Physical discomfort is pretty steady. It is hard to find ways to exercise adequately to stay in cardiovascular shape.

In the last ten years or so, I have developed sleep-robbing leg spasms.

Yet my accident’s enduring spiritual effect has been that although I doubted God’s existence before it happened, ever since my physical condition has assured me

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that God loves me, especially when new physiological complications arise.

God and the Problem of Evil or many people, the “problem of evil” is their biggest hurdle to trusting God. Most simply, the problem is this: If an almighty and allgood God exists, then why is there any evil? For if God is almighty, then he could prevent evil; and if he is all good, then he would want to. Evil seems to testify against God’s power, or his goodness, or his very existence. And it often seems most telling when we—or those we love—are in its grip.

I never found myself asking after my accident, Why did this happen to me? From the beginning, it seemed obvious that God was manifesting his love to me through it. Yet after I had been out of the hospital for a while, I did find myself asking, Why is this continuing to happen to me? If the God I love and worship is all-powerful and allgood, then why doesn’t he heal me now?

For a while, I sought a miracle. But I came to believe that a miraculous healing wasn’t God’s will for me—and this didn’t involve any lack of faith on my part. I then tried to give God the opportunity to heal me gradually. During my first two springs as an undergraduate at Seattle Pacific University in Washington, I spent hours struggling up and down Queen Anne Hill while constantly praying that God would use those labors as the means to restore my walking ability.

Finally, it became clear that it was not God’s will to make me physically whole again. And then I found myself wanting to understand why.

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My First Answer: The Free-Will Defense y attempt to understand God’s relation to this world’s evils has gone through three stages. I worked out my first answer over a year of thinking about the problem virtually every evening during part of my sophomore and junior college years. It was my own rude version of what I afterward learned that both philosophers and theologians call the “free-will defense.” Free-will theists attempt to preserve our belief in God’s almightiness and complete goodness by arguing that this world’s evils are fully explained as the effects of wrong choices made by God’s free creatures. Moral evil results whenever some morally responsible creature decides to do what is wrong. Natural evil—any evil in our world that is not moral evil, such as hurricanes, influenza epidemics, and random birth defects—then comes about indirectly as a consequence of moral evil.

Sometimes the links between moral and natural evil are obvious. Suppose a drunk driver runs a

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stoplight and hits another car, crippling its occupant. The long-term pain and disability resulting from that accident are natural evil, but natural evil that clearly has its origin in the moral evil of someone driving drunk. In other cases, such as with influenza epidemics, the links aren’t so clear. Yet free-will theists maintain those links are really there. All of creation groans, they remind us, because of Adam’s sin.

With this distinction between moral and natural evil in hand, free-will theists then add this: Creatures can be morally responsible only if they are really free, which means, according to free-will theism, that they must not only be able to choose to do what they actually do but that they must also be free to choose to act in other ways. Exactly what this means can be pretty difficult to explain.

But for now all we need to keep in mind is this.

This view of freedom means that even God cannot govern what his free creatures choose. For as soon as he would do so, they would no longer be free.

So if God is committed to making free creatures, then the “cost” of their being free is the risk that they will make bad or wicked choices. Even an allpowerful God must live with this risk.

As I thought about this in my college years, I reasoned like this: God has created us to love him.

But love isn’t love if it is coerced. Genuine love, then, requires free will in the free-will theist’s sense—it requires that we are free to choose to love God or not. God has given us free will hoping that we will freely choose to love him. But in giving us this freedom, he runs the risk of our choosing not to love him. Not loving God is bad; indeed, it is the ultimate source of all of this world’s evils. But for God not to have created some free creatures who are capable of love would have been even worse. Consequently, God in his goodness has created free creatures who can love him but who can also do wicked and evil things.

This concept seemed to explain why God hadn’t kept me from having my accident. He could have done so, I thought, only by infringing on my free will. It also seemed to explain why he left me as he did. God would not heal me because that would threaten other people’s freedom. For if God were to heal me, then it would be obvious that there is a God who will act to remove the sufferings of those who love and worship him. Then God’s power and goodness would become so apparent to those who had seen what he had done for me that they would, in effect, be forced to worship him.

Then only fools would freely turn away from him.

So just as evil first came into our world because of wrong free choices by morally responsible human beings, so God really has no choice but to allow it

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to remain if he is not to make his existence, power, and goodness overwhelmingly clear. And if it were that obvious, then human beings would no longer be free to love him in a way that was truly uncoerced.

often does bring good out of evil, but that is not the same as saying that God ordains what is really evil for our good.

Yet this is exactly what Scripture claims.

Genesis provides us with one of the clearest instances of this when Joseph summarizes what My Second Position: Sometimes God God was doing through his brothers’ wickedness in Ordains Real Evils for Our Overall Good this way: “As for you,” he says to his brothers, “you worked out that answer with little reference to meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, Scripture and no reference to historical theolo- to bring it about that many people should be kept gy. It seemed the natural solution to my ques- alive, as they are today” (Gen. 50:20). The word tion of why God would allow me to continue suf- “evil” here is the Hebrew ra‘ in the feminine singufering as I did. But as time passed, I gradually saw lar. And the “it” in Joseph’s declaration that “God that the free-will defense was inadequate in various meant it for good” is also feminine singular. So this ways. Initially, this involved my realizing that my “it” clearly takes as its antecedent the previous ra‘. continuing disability was the chief means by which But this means that Joseph’s claim is most accurately translated like this: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant that evil I came to realize that some things that are really evil…are also really good and for good.”

In other words, Joseph is that, as such, these evils are actually ordained by God. here referring to just one specific event—namely, his brothers selling him into Egypt—and describing it in God continued to bless me and keep me near to two different ways: the same specific event was himself. As my accident had more bad effects— meant by his brothers for evil even as it was meant weakening hands from damaging my ulnar nerves by God for good. when, losing my balance, I fall on my elbows, comAs I began to think more about this, I realized ing under permanent risk of stroke from dissecting that these dual descriptions run throughout the my left-internal carotid while trying to keep in Scriptures. Indeed, they are central to the Bible’s shape—I found that, rather than these things interpretation of our Lord’s crucifixion. In that becoming occasions for doubting God’s goodness case, the most awful act ever done—the crucifixion to me, they became sources of spiritual strength by by “lawless men” of God’s only Son, “the Holy and helping me to see where I could not place my Righteous One,” the very “Author of life” (Acts heart.

2:23 and 3:14, 15)—was and is also the most wonIn other words, I came to realize that sometimes derful event that ever happened because it was the God was protecting me from specific kinds of self- means by which God was reconciling us to himself sufficiency (which is really a kind of idolatry) by (see 2 Cor. 5:18–21). taking various goods away from me so that I would not be tempted to rest satisfied in them. Every My Third and Final Realization: Nothing morning as I get up, my physical condition Befalls Us—Nothing Good and Nothing prompts me to trust God rather than to rely on my Evil—That Is Not Ultimately from God his realization gave me a new way of underown strength. And so, in this second stage of my standing how God relates to this world’s coming to understand how God works in and evils. In free-will theism, God must work through our difficulties, I came to realize that some things that are really evil—Christians are not to bring good from evils he did not ordain. God Christian Scientists who say that evil is illusory— works to make good of bad situations. Because he are also really good and that, as such, these evils are is almighty, he can do a lot to salvage what we have actually ordained by God. What does it mean to say messed up. And because he is good, he does what that God ordains something? It means that he has he can. Yet he is still merely working to repair what he did not ordain. Indeed, if “open theists” eternally willed it to come about.

Free-will theists reject the claim that God are right, then God is often working to repair what ordains evil. They want to say that if something is he could not even anticipate. Open theism is free-will really evil, then God does not will it in any way. theism taken to its logical extreme. It claims that Of course, they readily concede that God can and because God has given us free will, even he cannot

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know what choices we will make and so the portion of the future that will be determined by stillunmade free human choices is “open” and unknown to him as well as to us.

Thus, in his God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence, the open theist John Sanders writes that God had “no reason to suspect” that Adam and Eve would sin. He claims that God and Jesus only realized in the Garden of Gethsemane that Jesus would have to be crucified. “The path of the cross,” he says, “comes about only through God’s interaction with humans in history. Until [Gethsemane] other routes were, perhaps, open.” In Gethsemane, however, “Father and Son … both come to understand that there is no other way.” At that point in Jesus’ life, Sanders states, “the canyon narrows even for God.” So Father and Son resolve to make the best of it as Jesus proceeds to the cross. Yet even as they do so, Sanders tells us, they do not know whether this “gambit” will work—whether, in other words, Jesus’ death will lead to anyone’s salvation.

In the third stage of my attempting to understand God’s relation to this world’s evils, I realized that I, as a Christian, was obliged to try to understand what all of God’s Word had to say about this.

For the Scriptures, like other writings, can be twisted to support almost any position if they are quoted selectively enough (see 2 Pet. 3:16). For instance, it is only by very selective quotation that open theism can seem to be a Christian option because several of its claims contradict central biblical themes. What do open theists do with verses such as Luke 24:25–26, “And Jesus said to them, ‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’” Sanders cites these verses only to dismiss them, although they contradict his claim that until Gethsemane Christ’s crucifixion was not God’s settled plan for redeeming sinful human beings (see also Matt. 26:24; Luke 22:22; Acts 2:23; Rev. 13:8; among other passages).

As I have attempted to understand what the whole Bible says about the problem of evil, I have discovered that Scripture supports what I have sensed since the time of my accident. This is that nothing befalls us—nothing good and nothing bad— that does not ultimately come from God’s hand.

You will recall that I said it is often right after some complication of my accident—a messy fall or something worse—that I feel God’s love and care for me most intensely. My sense is not that God will “patch things up” and “make them right” in spite of what has just happened; it is that God’s love and care for me are somehow the cause of what has just happened, as bad as in one sense it really is.

This is what Scripture both asserts and assumes.

Yet here, if we are not to misunderstand Scripture, we must be very careful. Genesis 50:20 gives us the primary picture: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant that evil for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” Here Joseph’s brothers’ evil intention and God’s good intention are butted up against each other, both referring to— both taken as accounting for—the same event, but referring to or accounting for it under differing descriptions. By their act, Joseph’s brothers meant to do him harm; by means of their act, God meant to do Joseph (and many others) good.

Earlier, in Genesis 45:4–8, when Joseph first reveals who he is to his brothers, these two separate ways of accounting for the same event are even more clearly differentiated. There Joseph first says, twice, “you sold me into Egypt,” referring to his brothers’ act; and then he says, three times, “God sent me here,” referring to the same event. Indeed, the final time Joseph refers to this event, he even seems to deny that his brothers played any real part at all in his coming to Egypt—“So it was not you who sent me here, but God” (45:8)—in order to emphasize God’s primary agency.

As we shall see, this does not really deny Joseph’s brothers’ agency and responsibility, but Joseph’s words at the very least suggest that nothing—not even wicked human acts—happen without God’s ordaining them. Some Scriptures oblige us to think very carefully about the relationship between divine and human agency (see, e.g., Mark 6:5; Matt. 23:37; Ezek. 18:30–32). Yet, nevertheless, the Scriptures do either presume or claim that God ordains everything, including natural and moral evil. And while some Scriptures oblige us to think very carefully about the relationship between divine and human agency (see, e.g., Mark 6:5; Matt. 23:37; Ezek. 18:30-32), nevertheless, the Scriptures do either presume or claim that God ordains everything, including natural and moral evil. Thus, Amos asks rhetorically, “Is a trumpet blown in a city, and the people are not afraid? Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it?” (Amos 3:6 my emphasis). And through Isaiah God declares, “I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, ¯ ¯ as in and create evil” (in Isa. 45:7, “create” here is bara’, Gen. 1:1; and “evil” is again ra‘.)

Other Scriptures support this straightforward way of reading Joseph’s words (see Exod. 4:11; Deut. 32:39; 1 Sam. 1:6, 7; Lam. 3:32, 38). And so we see that the Scriptures both assume and assert that, no matter whether we are dealing with the moral or the natural realms, no matter whether we are focusing on moral good and evil or natural

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good and evil, absolutely nothing comes about that God does not will in some sense.

“All right,” you say, “but in what sense? Does he merely permit evil things to happen? Or does his willing them amount to something more?”

Space does not allow me to make the full case for what I think Scripture shows us here, but let me state what I believe it shows while citing a couple of Scripture passages in support of my view. The biblical view is that God has ordained or willed or planned everything that happens in our world from before creation. God is the primary agent—the primary cause, the final and ultimate explanation—of

on our part to understand it involves our trying to understand the unique relationship between the Creator and his creatures in terms of our understanding of some creature-to-creature relationship.

But this, it should be clear, involves us in a kind of “category mistake” that dooms our attempts at understanding it from the start. A category mistake involves attempting to think about something under the wrong category. How the Creator’s agency relates to his creature’s agency is to be categorized quite differently from how any one of his creature’s agency relates to any other creature’s agency. This should be clear merely by our remembering that God has created everything ex nihilo— out of nothing—while all Nothing befalls us—nothing good and nothing bad—that does not ultimately come creaturely creation involves some sort of limited action from God’s hand. on some preexisting “stuff.”

When Scripture pulls back the veil enough to tell us anything about the relaeverything that happens, yet the causal relation- tionship between divine and human agency, it ship between God and his creatures is such that his merely reveals what Joseph affirms in Genesis having foreordained everything takes nothing 50:20: it affirms both divine and human agency, away from their creaturely power and efficacy. with each kind of agency referring to—each taken Their activity—as “secondary causes” considered as accounting for—the same event, but each refersimply on the created level—fully explains what ring to or accounting for it under differing descriphappens in this world, unless we are dealing with a tions. Thus, Scripture reveals that both human situation in which God has miraculously inter- agency and divine agency are to be fully affirmed vened and thus overridden mere creaturely causal- without attempting to tell us how that can be.

We find this dual agency in passages such as ity. And this is as true of the relationship between divine and free human agency as it is between Acts 2:23 and 4:27–28, which state that “this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and divine and natural agency.

So we should hold that human beings are free foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by and fully responsible for their actions, even while the hands of lawless men” and that “truly in this city holding that what they freely do was ordained by there were gathered together against your holy serGod before creation. It was Joseph’s brothers’ free vant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and and unfettered and wicked intention to do him Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the harm; it was God’s free and unfettered and good peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and intention that Joseph’s brothers would freely intend your plan had predestined to take place.” Various to do him harm, but that their free act would actu- phrases of these two passages clearly affirm both ally bring good to him and many others. divine and human agency. Similar statements But how can this possibly be? How can Joseph’s assuming the ultimate consistency and indeed brothers have acted freely if what they did was complementary nature of divine and human what God had previously ordained? How can God agency are found in the accounts of Jonah being govern the choices of human beings without that cast into the sea (see especially Jon. 1:14–15 and entailing that those choices are no longer free? 2:3) and in Luke’s account of Paul’s shipwreck (Acts The correct answer to these questions is that we 27:13–44). cannot understand how these things can possibly In summary, as my knowledge of Scripture be. We cannot understand how some human act grew, I found myself prompted to affirm the agecan be fully accounted for in terms of God’s having old Christian doctrine of God’s complete provifreely intended it without that taking away the dence over all, by which he has sovereignly freedom of its human intenders. Yet—and this is ordained, before the world began, everything that the really crucial point—we can understand why happens, but in a way that does no violence to crewe cannot understand it. It is because any attempt ation’s secondary causes. (I say “age-old” because it

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has been held by many of the church’s greatest theologians, including Augustine and Aquinas.)

But Doesn’t This Raise the Problem of Evil All Over Again? ut doesn’t taking God as ordaining everything, including evil human acts, raise many new questions, such as, Must God then be taken as an evildoer because he has, in at least one sense, willed what is evil?

In response to this question, we must note that Scripture never attributes wickedness or evildoing to God, even while it emphasizes that he has ordained what is evil. To attribute evildoing to God merely because he ordains what is evil is to make that “category mistake” again; it is to try to think of the relation between God and his world in a way that inevitably smuggles in some illicit creature-to-creature analogy. Scripture prohibits our doing that (see Exod. 9:14; Job 42:1–6; Isa. 46:8–11; Jer. 10:6, 7; Rom. 9:19, 20).

I would not deny for a moment how hard it can be to avoid thinking about God’s relation to the world in a way that attributes evildoing to God simply because he ordains what is evil. How could a good God ordain the Holocaust? How can he ordain the sexual abuse of even one child? How can he ordain the slow, lingering death of someone I love? Yet, as with all other Christian doctrines, the test of the truth of this doctrine is not that we find it plausible or attractive to us but that we find it in Scripture. Romans 8:28 assures us that God works all things together for good for those who love God and who are called according to his purpose. Yet how some very evil event that God has ordained could possibly be intended by him for some Christian’s ultimate good may very well not be apparent as the evil occurs nor even, perhaps, at any time in that Christian’s earthly life. Yet stories like Joseph’s remind us that appearance and reality are different things.

In any case, whenever I am in some dire medical situation, I remind myself of all of the implications of this doctrine of God’s providence over all. I remind myself that it is my business, in that situation, to do everything I can to bring about a good result, for I am obliged to exercise my agency responsibly.

Consequently, I must select careful, exceedingly competent doctors who will take their jobs with the utmost seriousness; I need to listen to the counsel of more than one of them; and so on. Yet at the same time I am comforted in knowing that, at the end of the day, God’s hand is in it all—that I would not be in this dire situation if God had not ordained it and that whatever happens is what he has ordained for my good because I am one of his precious children.

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It is my responsibility to do everything I can to bring the situation to a good conclusion, but it is also my responsibility to take the situation, as grim as it is, as coming from God’s hand. In the last analysis, then, my ultimate responsibility is to trust him and let my trust of him show in my interactions with everyone else in the midst of the crisis.

It is by looking at whatever happens to me in this way—and only by looking at it this way—that I can do what Paul urges me to do: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thess. 5:16–18; my emphasis). ■

Mark R. Talbot (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is associate professor of philosophy at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois and executive editor of Modern Reformation magazine.

Preaching from the Choir [ C O N T I N U E D F R O M PA G E 1 0 ]

Sunday are not bothered by this relatively new phenomenon, however. In fact, it has become so customary to clap that we instinctively applaud for almost anything. This particularly seems to be true at the conclusion of a solo piece that ends fast, loud, and high.

More often than not, this is simply an unexamined carryover from the entertainment industry.

We applaud in church because we have not thought much about it and instead have allowed our secular society’s response to entertainment to gain a place where it does not belong. Pastors and musicians should address this subject in their churches. If they do not, who can or who will?

Musicians who recognize that their offerings in the context of worship are solely for the glory of God—soli Deo gloria—do not desire your applause. In fact, it may trouble them and diminish their joy in giving back a small part of what God has given them.

A better response to the musician would simply be to say, “I thank God for how he blessed me through you this morning” or “I appreciate you and pray for you.”

Comments like these are encouraging to the church musician. But the best response to music or other ministry that blesses you is to thank God for it. ■

Paul S. Jones (D.M., Indiana University) is the organist and music director of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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We Confess…

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ehold, thus God wishes to indicate to us how he cares for us in all our need, and faithfully provides also for our temporal support. And although he abundantly grants and preserves these things even to the wicked and knaves, yet he wishes that we pray for them, in order that we may recognize that we receive them from his hand, and may feel his paternal goodness toward us therein. For when he withdraws his hand, nothing can prosper nor be maintained in the end, as indeed, we daily see and experience.

Martin Luther’s Large Catechism on the Fourth Petition of the Lord’s Prayer, 1530

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od the Great Creator of all things doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by his most wise and holy providence, according to his infallible fore-knowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of his own will, to the praise of the glory of his wisdom, power justice, goodness, and mercy.

Although, in relation to the fore-knowledge and decree of God, the first Cause, all things come to pass immutably, and infallibly: yet, by the same providence, he ordereth them to fall out, acccording to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently.

God in his ordinary providence maketh use of means, yet is free to work without, above, and against them at this pleasrue.

Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter Five: Of Providence, 1647

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But why do you call God a Creator merely, while it is much more excellent to defend and preserve creatures in their state, than to have once made them?

A.This term does not imply that God created his works at once, and then threw off the care of them. It should rather be understood, that as the world was once made by God, so it is now preserved by him, and that the earth and all other things endure just in as far as they are sustained by his energy, and as it were his hand. Besides, seeing that he has all things under his hand, it follows, that he is the chief ruler and Lord of all. Therefore, by his being “Creator of heaven and earth,” we must understand that it is he alone who by wisdom, goodness, and power, guides the whole course and order of nature: who at once sends rain and drought, hail and other storms, as well as calm, who of his kindness fertilizes the earth, and on the contrary, by withholding his hand, makes it barren: from whom come health and disease; to whose power all things are subject, and whose nod they obey.

Q. But what shall we say of wicked men and devils? Shall we say that they too are under him?

A. Although he does not govern them by his Spirit, he however curbs them by his power as a bridle, so that they cannot even move unless in so far as he permits them. Nay, he even makes them the ministers of his will, so that unwilling and against their own intention, they are forced to execute what to him seems good.

Q. What good rebounds to you from the knowledge of this fact?

A. Very much. It would go ill with us could devils and wicked men do any thing without the will of God, and our minds could never be very tranquil while thinking we were exposed to their caprice. Then only do we rest safely when we know that they are curbed by the will of God and as it were kept in confinement, so that they cannot do any thing unless by his permission: the more especially that God has engaged to be our guardian, and the prince of our salvation.

The Genevan Catechism, 1545

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An Interview with Rabbi Harold Kushner

God’s World, Good People, and Bad Things MR: Most serious thinkers recognize that, before we begin using terms like “good” and “bad,” we need to know what we mean by them. What do you mean by them? Is there a universal, transcendent law or standard of some sort by which good and bad are to be measured?

RABBI HAROLD KUSHNER

Rabbi Laureate Temple Israel of Natick Natick, Massachusetts

RHK: At the very foundation of my religious faith is the conviction that God has built into the universe standards of good and evil as fixed as the laws of gravity and chemical reactions. Some of them (murder, harming children) we intuitively recognize as wrong, and others (courage, helpfulness) as intuitively right. Others, we have struggled to discern God’s will. For a long time, cheating was seen as an admirable form of cleverness; it later became disreputable. One hundred fifty years ago, decent people debated the legitimacy of slavery; a hundred years ago, the propriety of extending the right to vote to women.

Today we are struggling with the moral acceptability of abortion, homosexuality, and nuclear war. But I believe that with time and effort, we will discern God’s will on these matters as we did on the earlier ones, and our grandchildren will wonder about us, as we do about people of the nineteenth century, why we found the issue so hard.

MR: What do you think are the “bad things” that good people must wrestle with in their lives?

RHK: Some bad things are the result of other people’s meanness, selfishness, or thoughtlessness.

Others are the result of biology. Some people are born susceptible to illness; others are born without the physical or intellectual gifts that would enable them to lead fulfilling lives. Still others have the bad luck to be born into a family ill-equipped to raise them, or into a time and place of war. As a result, they experience barriers to fulfillment not of

their own making. A teacher of mine at seminary used to say “Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are an honest person is like expecting the bull not to charge you because you are a vegetarian.”

MR: Aren’t there circumstances in which something that appears to be bad, even evil, is actually the means for a greater good? For instance, it seems that the story of Joseph’s brothers selling him into slavery is related by Joseph, later on in life (Gen. 50), as the means to a blessing—both for his family and for the nation of Egypt. Should cases like this affect the way we understand the events and circumstances of our own lives?

RHK: The story of Joseph and his brothers, as I understand it, carries a profoundly important theological message. When Joseph, as vice-regent of Egypt, reveals himself to his brothers and says to them, “You intended to do me harm but God turned it into something good, to save many lives,” I don’t understand him to be saying that being sold into slavery was part of an elaborate plan on God’s part. I hear him saying “God could not prevent you from doing something mean and vicious. But God guided me to turn that act of evil into something redemptive.” In the same way, I don’t believe that God wanted my son to be born with an incurable illness, not to punish him, not to punish me, not to inspire me to write a book that would comfort millions, a book I would otherwise not have been qualified to write. But God did for me what he did for Joseph. He led me to turn that personal tragedy into something redemptive that would bless the lives of many people.

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Interestingly, in the past few years, two books appeared independently of each other, one by Jack Miles, and the other by Richard Friedman, both making the same point. In the beginning of the Bible, God is in charge of everything that happens.

RHK: I am not sure that people are basically good, But gradually, God recedes and leaves more of the but I believe that virtually all people are born stage to human actors, so that in the time of the capable of goodness. Some have that capability prophets, God pleads and warns more than he realized; others find their lives distorting them so controls events, and by the time we reach the time that they never become the good people they of the Book of Esther, God goes entirely unmentioned. For my part, if n the same way, I don’t believe that God wanted my son to be born I must choose between an allpowerful God who is not with an incurable illness, not to punish him, not to punish me, not kind and fair, who could have prevented the Holocaust or to inspire me to write a book that would comfort millions, a book I the birth of the deformed child and chose not to, or otherwise would not have been qualified to write. else a kind and fair God who is awesomely powerful but might have been. I believe that there are a few not omnipotent, I choose to affirm God’s goodness psychopaths among us, but fewer than most people even at the expense of his power. Maybe in a would guess. I believe that most of the bad things medieval world where the emperor had power over that are done in the world are done by good people the life and death of his citizens, one had to affirm who are frightened, angry, lazy, or misled by evil that God was at least as powerful as the emperor. teachers. Specifically to the events of 9/11, I hold Today, I find it more desirable to worship goodness those who planned the attacks to be evil because than to celebrate power. they chose to celebrate death instead of life (“evil” is “live” spelled backwards; it is the rejection of the MR: Does human history have a purpose or a point? Is God value of life and the celebration of death, as Hitler, in control, and is he bringing time and space to some final Stalin, Pol Pot, Osama bin Laden, and serial killers consummation? Does how we answer that question have any have done). But the people who carried out the effect on someone’s perception of meaning, purpose, and justice attacks may not have been evil. They may have in this life? been ordinary people who, had they been wiser in their selection of teachers to follow, might have RHK: One of the great and original ideas of the Hebrew Bible is that time is not cyclical but is been capable of goodness. heading toward an ultimate goal, and that the end MR: How do you square your view of God, who—like the of the story has not been written but is waiting for rest of us—is somewhat hamstrung by circumstances, with the us to write it. The challenge to every human being portrait of God in the Bible as an almighty Creator controlling is to move the world in some small way in the the circumstances of his creation? direction of that goal. The person who can look back at his or her life and see where he or she has RHK: I believe that, in the beginning, God could made the world a little bit more like the world God have kept total control of the world and everything had in mind when he fashioned it, can deem his or that happened in it, but chose not to, leaving her life a success. human beings free, as no other creatures are free, to choose between good and evil. Only in that way would goodness be possible. If we did not have a Harold Kushner is Rabbi Laureate at Temple Israel of Natick, choice, if we were “programmed” to do good, it which is affiliated with the United Synagogue of Conservative would be necessary, but it would not be good. It Judaism. The author of numerous best-selling books including may be that God loves goodness more than he When Bad Things Happen to Good People (Avon, loves perfection and, at great risk to his creatures 1997), Rabbi Kushner’s most recent book is Living a and his creation, fashioned us free to choose. I also LifeThat Matters: Resolving the Conflict Between believe that God, at the outset, determined not to Conscience and Success (Knopf, 2001). interfere with the workings of Nature, no matter how much harm befell the innocent as a result.

Does this diminish the greatness of God? MR: Your books seem to regard it as settled that human beings are basically good. But should that be taken for granted, especially after 9/11?

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Wright for Everyone

W Mark for Everyone

by N.T. Wright London: SPCK, 2001 $19.95, 243 pages, Paperback

Luke for Everyone

by N.T. Wright London: SPCK, 2001 $19.95, 319 pages, Paperback

ith their “for EVERYONE” books, the Society for the Promotion of

welcome, if for no other reason than its tendency to Christian Knowledge (SPCK) launches a major new series of guides to the lend itself to quiet, concentrated contemplation.

New Testament. The first two volumes available in the series, Mark and Luke, The series is also very easy to manage for those issue from the pen of prolific author and unaccustomed to the Bible’s and, therefore, the Canon Theologian of Westminster Christian community’s characteristic vocabulary.

Abbey, England, N. T. (Tom) Wright. Words such as “covenant,” “gospel,” “justification,” The remaining books of the New “parousia,” and “repentance,” are distinguished by Testament are to follow over the next bold type throughout the text to indicate a glossary several years, all by the same author. reference where a simple description explains what This new series touts highly accessible they mean. The same glossary and map of Palestine expositional commentaries from a world- in New Testament times are reproduced in each renowned and respected New Testament volume. intellectual but with minimal esoteric As one would expect, Wright’s historical language, no scholarly apparatus, lucid insights are one of the chief benefits of the books. expositions, fresh (i.e., original) These contributions consist of contextualizing translations of the entire texts by the respective biblical texts within their historical/ author, very readable discussions with political/social/economic/religious settings. As background information, and thoughts as such, they consistently assist the reader in to how the explanations and suggestions may be deciphering many of Christ’s sometimes difficult relevant today. The publisher’s intent is that these sayings and symbolic actions, especially with nonspecialist guides, which assume that the reader reference to the nature of the kingdom and the may have little or no knowledge of the Christian “end of the age” (e.g., Mark 13, Luke 21:5–19).

Scriptures, would be used for personal or group Thus, the fruits of Wright’s well-established work reading, the format lending them to evangelistic are readily gleaned by the reader and frequently endeavors and daily study. prove themselves illuminating and learned, though The first thing to be said is that the format never recondite. To the author’s credit, he is able to chosen for the series should be applauded. Stripped draw the reader into a conceivable historical of all the bells and whistles that typically setting for a clearer understanding of the meaning accompany daily devotional materials in the form of the text at that time, yet without ever losing vision of snappy titles and summaries, decorative of the timeless quality and nature of Scripture’s graphics, snippets of poetry, and synthetic life- kingdom message and salvific purpose. What is application questions, the “for EVERYONE” more, he does this while sustaining the impression approach unadornedly sets forth the biblical text in that the reader stands present in the midst of an its natural divisions (be it four or twenty-four unfolding historical drama. This impression is then verses) and immediately follows with Wright’s challenged through suggestive applications: the three- to six-page expositions. This is a no reader is present as a spectator for the nonsense approach that many readers will announcement and inauguration of the kingdom,

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but also present in its twenty-first century reality, with the added responsibility to worship and serve in the kingdom accordingly.

Despite these commendations, however, this is a project with a number of serious deficiencies. To begin with, though the author’s lucid prose makes for interesting reading as he typically opens his expositions with some anecdote or illustration relevant to his purposes, it must be lamented that the publishers opted to incorporate the same writing style for a contemporary “translation” of the Scriptures. Admittedly, this is the least of the problems with this series, but its effect reverberates throughout the guides and thus is worth mentioning.

Baldly stated, Wright’s translation can be dire at times, even awkwardly strained. For instance, John the Baptist’s declaration in Mark 1:7–8 reads, “‘Someone a lot stronger than me is coming close behind,’ John used to tell them. ‘I don’t deserve to squat down and undo his sandals. I’ve plunged you in the water; he’s going to plunge you in the Holy Spirit’” (Mark, 1). Wright’s mastery of New Testament Greek could have been a tool advantageous to the reader. Instead, his fashionable translation stands as an obstacle to the richness of the text. This causes one to wonder why he would offer a glossary for genuine biblical terms when such a “translation” is offered as bona fide biblical text? The reasoning behind this kind of radical contemporarization (viz. “The [translation] I offer here is designed for … one who mightn’t necessarily understand the more formal, sometimes even ponderous, tones of some of the standard ones”) neither seems consistent, nor necessary, nor warranted if there is a biblical vocabulary to be learned. Indeed, as George Lindbeck has stressed time and again, authentic Christianity is a community with its own language; being part of that community, insofar as that community is to be distinguished from other communities, necessitates learning the language peculiar to it. The mine for the riches of the Christian community’s language is Scripture: so let readers wrestle not only with the dynamic message of the kingdom, but also with the literal medium of the kingdom.

What would be of particular interest to ministers and students of theology and New Testament studies is Wright’s treatment of the gospel. Regrettably, however, the content of these volumes will offer little reprieve for the debate surrounding Wright’s controversial interpretation of “the righteousness of God,” by which he understands Pauline justification.

Although Wright’s What Saint Paul Really Said (Oxford: Lion, 1997) and other publications have

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received poignant responses from confessing Anglicans, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Lutherans alike, all who call for more deference from the author to the Reformation tradition’s doctrine of justification by faith alone, yet Wright remains unmoved from the James D. G. Dunn - cum - E. P. Sanders camp. As he states elsewhere, the gospel has little or nothing to do with a “romantic or existentialist” Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone. Instead, it is a matter of God vindicating his kingdom claims through Jesus Christ, as well as the vindication of those who believe those kingdom claims (see The Challenge of Jesus [London: SPCK, 2000]).

With respect to the “new perspective” on Paul and first-century Judaism, then, Mark and Luke for Everyone recommend no variation in Wright’s position on justification and, lamentably, must be appraised as further disappointments. Here we have two gospel accounts from the New Testament and only one reference to justification between them: none in Mark; and one in Luke when Wright comments on the tax collector “who went back to his house vindicated by God” (Wright’s translation, Luke, 212). Wright’s commentary is acutely insufficient as he provides only one dimension of justification’s theological connection: “‘vindication’ or ‘justification’ here means upholding their side of the story, deciding in their favour. This word ‘justification’, which we meet a lot in Paul but hardly ever in the gospels, means exactly this: that the judge finds in one’s favour at the end of the case” (Luke, 212). True enough, there is the forensic declaration of juridical vindication present, but as Wright’s glossary definition shows, he has no intention of even hinting at alien righteousness and imputation: “justification[:] God’s declaration, from his position as judge of all the world, that someone is in the right, despite universal sin. This declaration will be made on the last day on the basis of an entire life (Rom. 2.1–16), but is brought forward into the present on the basis of Jesus’ achievement, because sin has been dealt with through his cross (Rom. 3.21—4.25); the means of this present justification is simply faith” (Mark, 233). As it stands, this definition is unsatisfactory to all Reformation theology confessional standards.

Troubling omissions from the glossary include such elemental terms as “sin,” “transgression,” and the like, which may be said to be reflective of their inconspicuous role in Wright’s commentary.

Indeed, sin, as such, is rarely and only tangentially discussed. And when brief commentary is offered it regularly stands objectionable. A case in point would be the healing of the paralytic in Mark 2:1–12. As an explication of verse 5, “And Jesus

seeing their faith saith unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins are forgiven” (ASV), Wright says: “Jesus himself was the unlucky householder who has his roof ruined that day. This opens up quite a new possibility for understanding what Jesus said to the paralyzed man. How would you feel if someone made a big hole in your roof? But Jesus looks down and says, with a rueful smile: ‘All right—I forgive you!’” (Mark, 16–17). Christ’s “symbolic” action for Wright concerns the forging of a new social standard of forgiveness and healing, which we ourselves can emulate by finding “ways of bringing healing and forgiveness to our communities. It can be done—think of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa— but it is enormously costly” (Mark, 18). This would hardly qualify as an orthodox representation of the biblical doctrines of sin and forgiveness, or, for that matter, the relation of forgiveness of sins and guilt to faith.

In a similar vein (and perhaps consequently), one also fails to find discussions worth mentioning on Christ’s substitutionary atonement or the doctrine of propitiation or Jesus Christ’s role as “Mediator,” again, none of which are items worthy of the glossary. This is unfortunate because Wright on a couple of occasions approximates orthodox pronouncements concerning Christ’s work of representation, the cruciality of the cross, the need for reconciliation, the justness of divine judgment, expiation, and even on one occasion, the cup of God’s wrath. Commenting on Mark 10:32–45, Wright happily links Christ’s death with “a kind of baptism – going down beneath the waters of death, so that sins might be forgiven” (Mark, 141). But then he pulls short – this is only suggestive, a way that “some very early Christians understood their own baptism in relation to that of Jesus” (ibid).

Thus, Wright never seems to lay his cards on the table concerning soteriology, biblical anthropology, or the sacraments. (In the reviewer’s estimation, a telling symptom of the malaise affecting neo-evangelicalism.) As a result, the reader is left wondering what doctrines the Gospels might hold.

Consequently, the effectiveness and usefulness of the guides are comparatively impoverished due to the diminished radical character of sin, the only cursory allusions to Christ’s sacrifice as such, an exclusively “new perspective” rendition of justification-as-vindication, and the failure to develop adequately either Luther’s description of Christ by the twofold office of king and priest or Calvin’s and Reformed theology’s conception of Christ’s three offices, which adds that of prophet to his work as covenant Mediator. In short, the

guides suffer because Wright does not flush out his Christology and soteriology in a manner worthy of the Reformation tradition and, more importantly, Scripture itself.

On the whole, then, while the project’s format and Wright’s style and historical illuminations make the guides attractive and at times insightfully beneficial, especially when Wright articulates the kingdom motif of the gospels, yet the “for EVERYONE” series thus far faintly but surely misleads theologically. The guides themselves are a good idea, but prospective readers must be conscious of the “new perspective” agenda that omits (or substitutes!) more sacred theology than it promotes.

Dr. John J. Bombaro Resident Director The John Newton Center for International Christian Studies Carlisle, Pennsylvania

SHORT NOTICES Going Public: Christian Responsibility in a Divided America

by Lawrence E. Adams Brazos Press, 2002 $18.99, 192 pages, Paperback

Christianity Incorporated: How Big Business Is Buying the Church

by Michael L. Budde & Robert W. Brimlow Brazos Press, 2002 $22.99, 191 pages, Hardcover Time was when the Protestant publishing world was clearly divided between evangelical and mainline readers and authors. Over the last decade, this division has become less discernible and these recent books from Brazos Press, a division of Baker Book House, are representative of the trend.

According to its own publicity material, Brazos is “an ecumenical confessional Christian publishing house … grounded in the Great Tradition common to Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anabaptist, confessionally oriented mainline Protestant, and Protestant evangelical Christianity.” One way of

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interpreting this is to say that this division of Baker will no longer be exclusively an evangelical press.

But Baker is not alone here. For many years other evangelical publishers, such as Eerdmans and Zondervan, have been attracting mainline Protestant authors and readers, while mainline Protestant presses such as Augsburg, Westminster/John Knox, and Abingdon have been publishing evangelical authors.

Perhaps these changes in Protestant publishing help to account for the conflicting messages from these thoughtful books from Brazos about the role of the church in public life. The book by Lawrence E. Adams, an Episcopalian political scientist who conducts research at the University of Virginia, is a modest call for the church to participate in the cultivation of a common civic culture in the United States. His conception of the church is not clearly defined, thus leaving the reader unsure if Adams is referring to individual Christians as a community, to the corporate church as ministry of Word and Sacrament, or to denominational organizations.

But Adams is clear that his call for the church’s engagement of public life is not an argument for more Christians in politics. Instead, it is a plea for greater systematic reflection, on the basis of biblical teaching, theological understanding, and political philosophy, by Christians about the divisions that exist within the United States and whether their faith may cultivate a commitment to the common good which, Adams argues, is necessary for civic public life. He argues that electing Christian politicians will make little difference if it generates greater partisan division.

Adams’s intent is not to prescribe a way for Christians to do this, but to offer a set of questions and resources to assist believers in their engagement with public life.

A decidedly different argument issues from Christianity Incorporated, a book by two Roman Catholic laymen, Michael L. Budde and Robert W. Brimlow, associated with the Ekklesia Project. In a biting analysis of the various ways in which the authors believe the gospel has become a product for sale and distribution on the market of goods and services, from spiritual chaplains for corporations, military chaplains, the marketing and retailing of Roman Catholic kitsch, the big business of funerals, burials, and memorials, to official Roman Catholic and Protestant statements on politics and economics, this book follows Stanley Hauerwas’s notion of the church as a radically separate political community that manifests God’s kingdom in practices that are different from free markets or liberal democracy.

The following sentence, from the chapter on the

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growing interest of corporations in spirituality, summarizes well the book’s basic point: “By telling employees that spirituality properly pursued makes for happy corporate functionaries, a wealthy firm, and a stronger nation, corporations further absorption of Christianity by the capitalist worldview and culture, in the process robbing the church of its prophetic and eschatological qualities” (50). As a call for the church to be the church and, in particular, to resist a utilitarian understanding of the gospel, the authors make any number of legitimate and thoughtful points. But in their understanding of the realization of God’s kingdom this side of glory, their critique falls short.

In addition, as a book published by the same press as Adam’s Going Public, these authors take a decidedly different approach to the problem of the common good, one that apparently leaves little overlap between citizenship in the kingdom of God and citizenship in the kingdom of man.

The temptation is to attribute the disparity between these two books to the seemingly eclectic mission of their publisher. However well readers resist this temptation, the editors at Brazos deserve credit for finding authors capable of making worthwhile arguments on these important subjects.

He Shines in All That’s Fair: Culture and Common Grace

by Richard J. Mouw Eerdmans, 2001 $14.00, 101 pages, Hardcover How should Christians respond to the example of the believing marriage counselor who helps a nonbelieving married couple recover from the husband’s adulterous affair? If this counselor rejoices in saving the marriage, even though he has tried but can’t save the couple’s souls, has he somehow betrayed his prior allegiance to Christ and the gospel by fulfilling his professional duties?

These are the sorts of questions that Richard J. Mouw addresses in this highly readable, wise, and short treatment of the doctrine of common grace, first presented as the 2000 Stob Lectures at Calvin College and Seminary. This particular doctrine is one that was debated by Calvinists extensively throughout the twentieth century, even to the point of prompting the breach in 1925 within the Christian Reformed Church that led to the founding of the Protestant Reformed Church. But as much as this has been an intramural struggle among Reformed Christians—and Mouw does

justice to the parochial (in the good sense) nature of the discussion by linking this doctrine to the supra-infralapsarian debates in Calvinist theology—he shows well how common grace is of interest to all Christians.

Common grace, as this book reveals, is the Calvinist way of discussing where to draw the line between believers and nonbelievers, or between the Church and the world. Some Christians have adopted a separatist position by insisting on the radical difference between Christians and nonChristians thanks in part to regeneration. For these believers, it makes no sense to talk about God extending grace to the unsaved in such providential blessings as rain and sunshine, when it would be equally inappropriate to speak of illness and poverty among believers as examples of divine wrath. For those who defend common grace, as Mouw does, believers need some category to account for the goodness of creation that the saved and unsaved enjoy, as well as the duty that Christians have to love their neighbors and seek the peace and welfare of their neighborhoods. He admits that common grace may not be the best way to talk about these matters, but it is at least an effective way to map out the territory that unites believers and nonbelievers.

In the end, Mouw observes, following the example of the forgotten but insightful Dutch Reformed theologian, Foppe Ten Hoor, that although common grace exists, he does not know exactly what it is. “We stand before a mystery,” he writes. As much as this conclusion may appear to be an evasion, it is actually a refreshing approach to a topic that theologians and church leaders have too often treated as a matter of orthodoxy when it is more a matter for careful and restrained reflection.

Providence and Common Grace [ C O N T I N U E D F R O M PA G E 2 1 ]

of nature has largely disappeared, giving way to the recognition of mysterious diversity and apparent disorder. While “chaos theory” has led to a belief in radical indeterminism on the part of some, mainstream scientists increasingly acknowledge that such apparent chaos could not possibly exist unless there is some ultimate, underlying order— something that keeps complete chaos at bay.

Naturalism flies in the face of nature itself. At the same time, hyper-supernaturalism errs by failing to acknowledge that there is real order—that season follows season in an annual pattern—and that this order does not result from God’s constant, miraculous intervention but from his providential oversight of and involvement in nature through indirect and secondary means.

We do not know God’s secret will. And so when, for instance, sexually transmitted diseases wreak havoc in a promiscuous society, we are not at liberty to announce that a particular disease, such as AIDS, is a direct judgment of God on a particular group, such as homosexuals. At the same time, however, precisely because God has revealed his moral will for sexual behavior in Scripture and in conscience, we can be assured that there are practical consequences for immoral action. We should not call these consequences “miraculous” (as in direct divine intervention) but we can recognize them as “providential” (God’s so ordering nature that people usually reap what they sow). Such consequences are due to the regularity of nature, rather than to the eschatological judgment that will come on all flesh.

Making these important distinctions has many practical consequences, provided we do not set them in absolute opposition or deny one of them to affirm another. God is Lord in his secret counsel and in his revealed will; in both common and saving grace; through his primary causality as well as through his upholding the universe’s secondary causes; in miracle and in providence. Yet nothing confirms God’s universal lordship more clearly than that he has revealed his central plan, hidden in past ages but made known in these last days, to reconcile all things together in Christ to the glory of God the Father so that he may be all in all. ■ Michael Horton (Ph.D., Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and the University of Coventry) is associate professor of apologetics and historical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in California (Escondido, California), and chairs the Council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. Dr. Horton’s newest books are A Better Way (Baker, 2002) and Covenant and Eschatology (Westminster/John Knox, 2002).

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It’s Not Just for Housewives

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ubmission is a dirty word. At least that’s the impression I get whenever I perform

between husbands and wives (Eph. 5:22–33), children and weddings for couples with lots of non-Christian friends. Mention that God wants parents (Eph. 6:1–4), and slaves and masters (Eph. wives to submit to their husbands—as I generally do—and then watch the looks of 6:5–9). Today many people advocate mutual submission horror on the bridesmaids’ faces. “What kind of in marriage. But can we apply the same principle church is this, anyway?” they wonder. to the rest of the family? In that case, fathers and Part of the problem is that most people think mothers would be required to submit to their sons submission means something like subservience, and daughters. Some parents do this, of course, rather than the free, creative, and loving gift that but the results are usually disastrous. And what the Bible has in mind. But part of the problem, too, about the workplace? Should bosses submit to is that almost no one considers submission a virtue. their employees? This would invert the proper Instead, it is seen as a weakness. But submission to order of things. Thus, it is obvious that mutual authority is necessary to the success of everything submission cannot be universalized.

PHILIP GRAHAM from the local florist to the United States Army. It So what does it mean for us to submit to one RYKEN promotes healthy relationships in the family, at another? It means that each one of us has relationships that require our submission to Godschool, on the job, at church, and in the nation.

Submission isn’t just for housewives; it’s for given authority. As an American citizen, I must Senior Minister everyone. Before telling wives to “submit to their submit to the government of the United States. As Tenth husbands in everything” (Eph. 5:24), the Bible says, a pastor—at least under the Presbyterian form of Presbyterian Church “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” church government—I must submit to the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Eph. 5:21). This verse is often considered to teach collective wisdom of the elders in my church. As a a principle of mutual submission, especially youth soccer coach, I must submit to the league between husbands and wives. “See, it’s not so bad,” commissioner. Having to yield to authority in ministers sometimes say to reassure Christian these and other situations does not threaten my personal dignity. On the contrary, submission is women. “We all have to submit to one another.”

This is a misinterpretation, although as we shall for my own good, spiritually and otherwise. see, it is true that we all have to submit. The NIV As a pastor, I see the consequences of failing to reads “Submit to one another.”

This is submit almost every day. I see families falling apart. grammatically inaccurate, and therefore I see workers struggling on the job. I see church misleading. What the Scripture literally says is members failing to grow in grace. These problems “Submit each one to others.” This does not mean often come when people insist on having their own that everyone has to submit to everyone else. That way, rather than on giving in to the authority God would destroy the whole social order. If everyone has ordained. has to submit to everyone else, then no one What happens when we finally learn to submit exercises any real authority. The alleged principle “each one to others”? We bring glory to God. of mutual submission is not simply a grammatical Ultimately all our submission to others is inaccuracy, but also a logical impossibility. submission to God. To submit is to recognize his To see why this is so, consider the three authority over us. And this is a virtue. relationships that Ephesians goes on to mention:

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